The Unsures

Chapter One: Hope

Hope was lying naked in bed with a man.

And that was as much an aphorism for her life as it was a description of her current situation.

 She gently lifted the covers - to check if he was naked too. That would make this awkward scenario, slightly less strange.

But he wasn’t. He was fully clothed.

Shit.

She vaguely remembered his name: Something beginning with E. Or was it B? Bum move. Men with names that began with B were so rarely sexy. They weren’t the Smiths or Tristans of the world, those were where the hot was at. There was Bulgarian. But did he count? He wasn’t really called Bulgarian, or rather it would be pretty fortuitous if he was, no - that was the moniker she gave him on account of where he was from, and to differentiate him from her other Eastern men who all had names she could not pronounce. 

 Eytmology was important to Hope who liked to believe her own name symbolised so much. She didn’t know any other Hopes. She was The Only Hope. And she liked this, however baffling and frightening it might sound to everyone else when said out loud.  One day she would meet Despair. And immediately marry him. Or discover that he was already wed, and start modelling herself as ‘The single Hope… In a world of married Despair.’ She’d got it all planned out ready.

But for now, this naked Hope was caught between snuggling up to the definitely-enigmatic, possibly-sexy, likely-not man at her side, and running unlclothed into the street. Which wouldn’t be so bad, all of her favourite things were best enjoyed with her clothes off, (icecream and politics included).

 This one was certainly a politician, she inferred, surveying the mess of his room. Some sort of electoral map hung on his wall…   At least it looked like an electoral map. Maybe it was a sex map. Maybe the red areas were places he’d had sex, and the blue areas were places he wanted to. This was definitely something she wanted to rush home and replicate, though her blue areas were becoming pretty sparse. Where was she right now? Was this another borough of London she could mark off as red?  A wig hung over the side of a chair, she instantly knew it was a delightfully funny Maggie Thatcher get-up that he wore on Halloween and to scare his friends and frighten children.

 She was quickly falling in love with this politically-invigorating young man.  He was probably with the Green party. She liked the Greens, as she liked to buy her free-range eggs safe in the knowledge that the hen who’d laid them had grown up in a Belgravia mansion and enjoyed the right to vote. A green party candidate was certainly the sort of man to procure her drunken gaze. She’d have smelt the humus and self-satisfaction as he breezed in to buy organic wine at the bar. They must have fallen madly in love over a discussion about fair trade with Uganda. She’d probably gone in for the snog when he mentioned his dreams of a robust and comprehensive global Arms Trade Treaty, and he’d dragged her home in the same fashion he’d vowed to drag the Tories out of Downing Street. Christ, she wanted to sex him again immediately.

 She couldn’t wait to tell Ella and Kate that she was screwing the first Green PM. Maybe she should wake him up and thank him for gerrymandering her boundaries the night before. Not that she had any boundaries to speak of, (and he probably knew that by now.) but it was exactly the sort of thing she liked to say in these situations. 

 But then she saw them. 

And if the line of blue ties hanging by the wall and the “SEND THE POOR TO JAIL!” window sticker weren’t a giveaway then the poster of Ken Livingstone with darts in it certainly was. 

OH GOD. She was in bed with a Young Conservative.

 If only she’d known last night. What terrific bed banter it would have made... NO! Because despite how fabulous she’d look in a big hat at Henley Regatta, she’d sooner drowned in those waters than take their babies rowing there.

She couldn’t find her skirt. She had probably left it at the pub after they’d been caught making out in the toilets and been swiftly ejected from the bar. Now she remembered it: All fabric-flying, angry-manager-banging-at-the-door, toilet-flusher half up her arse… He’d roughed her up like she was the unemployed.

 And so she scurried off and left him Hope-less. “Just like your chances for re-election!” She would have shouted… if she hadn’t been trying to hide the fact she was rushing out into society in her knickers.