Life and Laughing_ My Story - Michael McIntyre [90]
‘It’s complicated,’ she repeated for the millionth time.
It seemed I had little choice but to trust her as she went out that night with ‘it’s complicated’ guy. I suppose I understood. I had to trust and respect her. I just didn’t trust him. I know what men are like; I am one. He was going to try everything to make her change her mind about me and that really pissed me off. She might think she’s saying goodbye to him, but she’s actually giving him a final chance.
After she left my flat for the first time in days, I spent the afternoon amplifying my fears to fever pitch. I asked her to come back to me later that night, but she said I was being ‘Silly, and it’ll be late. We’ll talk tomorrow.’ I knew I couldn’t stay at my flat alone that night, counting the minutes until morning, so I went round to a friend’s house. He lived just up the road in Belsize Park, equidistant from my rented flat and the flat Kitty shared with her parents. I continued to worry, panic and work myself up while getting steadily drunk on cheap white wine. Repeating myself again and again, slurring my words, belching, ranting like a madman:
‘Why does she have to meet him?’
‘Why can’t she come back to my flat?’
‘I thought she loved me, she’s supposed to love me.’
‘What does she mean, she’ll be home late, how late? Why late? How long does it take to tell someone to fuck off? Let’s time it … “Fuck off” … how long did that take?’
At about 1 a.m., I stumbled to my feet and said goodbye to my friend, who must have been thrilled to see the back of me. Standing on his doorstep, I could have turned left to my flat or right to Kitty’s. My judgement clouded by alcohol, I concluded that I should go down Kitty’s road to see if her blue Mini was there, to make sure she was back. She should be back; it was 1 a.m. As long as I knew she had returned, I could take myself home, pass out and then wake up and hopefully spend the rest of my life with her.
I staggered up her road towards the substantial Victorian house where she lived in the ground floor flat, but there was no sign of the Mini. There were also plenty of available spaces. She wasn’t back, it was one in the morning, and she wasn’t back. I was starting to despair, and then just at the moment I was walking past her front door, I heard a car. I turned around and caught an unmistakable glimpse of her Mini chugging up her road.
‘Shit!’ She can’t see me here. This looks awful! So I quickly dived behind a bush in her front garden. Luckily, it was a bushy bush so I was pretty well hidden.
I heard her park her car. In the dead of the night only her sounds broke the still atmosphere. Her turning the engine off, shutting the car door and locking it, her high heels clicking on the pavement getting louder as she approached. I was confident she hadn’t seen me.
But then her footsteps stopped. She was standing directly in front of the bush. I remained motionless, trying to suppress my breathing. What a mess I had got myself into this time. I’m convinced that only I could have created such a surreal moment. I have found the girl of my dreams, she has pronounced her love to me and within our first week together here I am, hiding in a bush in her front garden at one o’clock in the morning.
‘Michael?’ she said to the bush, tentatively.
I had no choice. I bolted upright from the shrubbery and tried to act as normal as possible.
‘Hello, darling,’ I said, just like a husband to his wife coming home from the office.
‘What the fuck are you doing hiding in my garden? Have you been here all night? Are you insane?’ she shouted.
This was a key moment in our relationship. The fact is, I am slightly unhinged, otherwise how would I have found myself in this mess? As I tried to explain how I came to be in such a compromising situation, Kitty (as she told me later) stood there looking at me popping out of the bush and had to decide if she was up for this. Could she cope with this badly dressed, floppy-haired comedian-wannabe, riddled with anxiety?
‘Do you want to come in or are you planning