Matthew had been delighted when we’d called him from the police station
but less amused when we called asking him to bring our ID in. The problem
with tiny evening bags was that they didn’t really facilitate the carrying of
passports. Not that I’d been planning on getting arrested.
‘When we put “break the law” we meant nick something,’ Matthew
yawned in the taxi home. He really hadn’t needed to come down in his
pyjamas but I was grateful regardless. ‘Break the speed limit. Put a cat in a
dustbin. Not set the fire alarms off at The Savoy and punch a supermodel in
the face.’
‘Emelie punched the supermodel in the face,’ I clarified. ‘And I didn’t set
the fire alarms off at The Savoy. There are no witnesses, only Ana’s word
against mine and, as the lovely police officer pointed out, she’s a bit mental.
It was clearly an accident.’
Em sat silently between us. She stared straight ahead, dazed and
confused.
‘I’m glad you’re taking the new you thing seriously,’ he replied. ‘But
maybe, when you write the letter to Simon, you don’t do it in the blood of a
sacrificial virgin, OK?’
‘OK.’ That sounded like a fair compromise. ‘Oh, and Dan tried to kiss
me.’
‘What?’ Emelie snapped out of her catatonia and Matthew spat his coffee
all down the back of the driver’s seat.
‘Sorry.’ He gave me a full Exorcist turn across the back seat of the cab.
‘Dan tried to kiss you? Before or after your Ocean’s Eleven impression?’
‘Before,’ I rubbed my shoulder, thinking about the shiver down my spine
when he’d touched me. ‘We were talking and then he just leaned in a boom.
Busted a move. And Ana reckons he thinks I’m obsessed with him?’
‘No one’s obsessed with him but himself,’ Matthew scoffed. ‘Hot or not,
he’s a totally self-absorbed knob.’
‘I know,’ I nodded thoughtfully. ‘She says he talks about me all the time.’
‘Ew,’ Em chimed in, ‘that’s so weird. And, more importantly, was he a
good kisser?’
‘I didn’t actually kiss him.’ And I absolutely did not regret that fact, I
reminded myself. ‘I stopped him.’
‘Oh,’ she looked disappointed. ‘Oh!’ And then strangely happy.
‘That guy at the bar, he was looking for you.’ She shone the light of her
phone into her clutch. ‘He said he went to the loo and when he came back
you were gone. He gave me his number. Ashley or something?’
‘Asher,’ I said, taking the slip of paper. Wow. He actually had gone to the
toilet. I’d walked away from a cute yoga instructor that told the truth to
narrowly avoid kissing an arrogant photographer who was full of bullshit.
‘Wow.’
‘The miracle of the list.’ Em waved her hands around and made spooky
noises. ‘Call him. Tomorrow. Or I will.’
‘Think you two have done enough communicating on my behalf,’ I said,
resting my head on Emelie’s shoulder and watching the lights of London
rush by. Strangely enough, I was quite tired. ‘I’ll call him.’
Thursday morning came around altogether too quickly. When I finally came
to around eleven, I lay in bed for an hour, trying to work out just what
exactly had come over me the night before. Just what had come over Dan.
And whether or not I would ever work again. At least I had one welcome
distraction. A Facebook friend request from Ethan. I lay looking at my
phone, happily scanning through his photos and rejoicing in the lack of an
apparent significant other. If it weren’t for the fact he openly specified that
he was interested in women, I’d have been worried. As it was, I was just
taking in all the different action poses. Ethan rock climbing. Ethan running
in a race. Ethan walking his dog on a beach. Thank you Mark Zuckerberg,
all is forgiven.
I tapped out a short message, enjoying the fluttering feeling in my
stomach.
‘Hi Ethan, great to hear from you too. I can’t believe you’re in Canada,
but I can absolutely believe you’re a music teacher. You were always the
best in orchestra.’
Too cheesy? Nah, I rolled over onto my belly, I was leaving it in. It was
true, and weren’t you supposed to flatter boys’ egos?
‘Unsurprisingly, my career didn’t take a musical route. I’m a make-up
artist now, living in London. I share a flat with my best friend in Islington,
it’s fun.’
Technically that was true. Yes, Emelie had her own place, but she hadn’t
spent a night there since Simon had and ‘I live alone because my boyfriend
abandoned me but my best friend is temporarily staying with me on suicide
watch’ just didn’t have the same devil-may-care ring to it.
‘Do you still have family over here?’
Roughly translated as the world’s worst version of ‘do you come here
often?’
‘Loving the pictures of your dog. I think about getting one all the time.
Anyway, must dash, busy day – speak soon!’
And round off the message with three out-and-out lies. Perfect.
After five more minutes of Facebook stalking, I rolled across the bed to
locate my handbag and pulled out my notebook and pen. The single girl’s
to-do list was coming along a treat, but today it was time for a more
common-or-garden variety of list. It was bizarre; I hadn’t gone a day
without making a to-do list since 1998. I’d even made one every day on
holiday, even if all it said was go to beach, drink lurid-coloured cocktails
and pass out. In fact, they were some of my favourites, even if Em tried to
piss on my chips by complaining that diarizing a hangover didn’t make it
any easier to deal with. Figuring it would help my brain stop thinking mad
thoughts about moving to Toronto and having beautiful children who played
ice hockey and pronounced about ‘aboot’, I started on a new list. Matthew’s
birthday was on Saturday and I was contractually obliged to throw him
some sort of party. Usually this took place in the pub, due to my general
lack of hostess skills and Simon’s general grumpiness at finding king
prawns from the Iceland party platter down the back of the sofa a week
later.
But not this year. This year I was throwing him the party to end all
parties and there wouldn’t be an Iceland platter in sight. Oh no, this year we
were M&S catering all the way. M&S catering and enough booze to put
Mel Gibson on his arse. Or that one from Girls Aloud who liked a drink. I
never could remember her name.
First things first: online invite. It really was true, nothing actually
happened now until it happened on bloody Facebook. So what if it was only
two days to the party, it wasn’t like anyone had anything better to do, was
it? We were 28: Saturdays weren’t for having fun. They were for X Factor
and family events you were obligated to attend. Once I’d sent a desperate
plea to everyone Matthew had ever met, I went to work on the real list. I’d
basically been falsely imprisoned the night before; after all, I deserved a
treat. And oh what a treat. Food shopping list, booze shopping list, present
shopping list. And I still had to buy a dress for my dad’s wedding. The
purple silk Warehouse sale number that I trotted out to everything just
wasn’t going to cut it any more. If only I had a lucrative and high-profile
job in Sydney to look forward to …
For the first time in I couldn’t remember how long, I actually had to put
some thought into getting dressed. All my new ensembles were hung up
along the curtain rail, out where I could see them and where they could
block the bloody sun out of my bedroom. It looked like some kind of very
glamorous branch of Oxfam. What to wear today? Now, was Thursday
more of a stripy sundress day or a floral Fifties option? I opted for the floral
number and tiptoed into the living room to check myself out in the mirror.
Being a short-arse, I had to climb on the sofa to get the full effect. And it
wasn’t horrible. My new bob skirted around my shoulders and the pretty
patterned dress squared up my skinny shoulders with adorable cap sleeves.
The biggest miracle was that, somehow, the dress had created a waist where
there was No Waist. On anyone else, it would have been criminally short,
but my midget proportions worked in my favour on this occasion. It looked
good. I, on the other hand, did not. Unless waxy corpse was the ‘in’ look of
the season. And, as a professional, I was pretty sure it wasn’t. Ever.
Settling on the sofa, I opened my make-up kit and started to play. A little
foundation, a lot of blusher, some mascara, maybe a flick of blue eyeliner? I
didn’t know if it was just because the girl in the mirror was gradually
beginning to look human, or because I hadn’t had to do this professionally
for all of three days, but making myself up was fun. I looked lovingly at the
colourful pots of MAC eye shadow, stroked the rubberized casing of my
Nars blusher, smiled sweetly at my Lancôme lip gloss. I had to stop
thinking of make-up as drudgery, just like everything else. Maybe if I was a
better ad for my own work, I’d get more editorial stuff. I didn’t need Dan to
take me to Sydney; I was bloody good at my job. Veronica should just put
me forward and the editors could make a call based on my book. Redhead
Rachel had spoken.
Before I left the house, I put a couple of minutes’ thought into Matthew’s
birthday present. Usually, buying for old friends was an easy job, but he
was impossible. He despised shopping for himself but he hated when
people bought him clothes. If you gave him skincare products, you were
calling him old. He was a foodie but he had a nut allergy. He loved sweets
but if you got him chocolate, you were trying to make him fat. And even
though he loved music, he was a terrible, terrible muso snob and so CDs
were out of the equation. Possibly some vintage vinyl but, even then, it had
to be mint. And not ironic. So vinyl was an option. There was only one
thing I could be certain he would love and that was a clone of himself. If all
else failed, there was his annually requested gift, a bottle of whiskey and
gay porn. The gift that kept on giving.
Vinyl.
Simon’s vinyl.
I shot up off the sofa and catapulted over to the music stand in the corner
of the room. Simon had insisted on buying a turntable a couple of years ago
and ever since had been collecting rare vinyl to show off whenever my
brother or any of his muso friends came over. As far as they were concerned
he specialized in the Sixties. In reality, I knew the only music that ever got
any play on his iPod was Lady Gaga’s first album and Coldplay’s last
record. Not even Parachutes. There it was. His treasured ultra-rare Beatles
record. The one he’d held to his chest and whined like a baby until his mum
had given it to him. Hmm. Couldn’t hurt to get it valued, could it? I’d
probably be doing him a favour. And if I had something very valuable on
the premises, I could be robbed. He’d feel awful if I was robbed and
murdered in the night because he’d left me here alone with a rare Beatles
record. I should get it valued. I was going to Soho anyway. Popping it into a
protective sheath fashioned out of two issues of Heat, I slipped the record in
my bag and left the house, feeling strangely elated.
Soho always seemed like a strange part of London to me. Close enough to
Oxford Street for tourists to wander in accidentally, mingling with the
middle class ‘meedja’ types who weren’t cutting edge enough to have
moved their business out east, and of course gay man upon gay man upon
gay man. Not literally upon each other obviously. At least not in daylight
hours. Most of my time on its cobbled streets was spent either in one of the
classy hotels on shoots or hanging out in the Friendly Society with Matthew
and Stephen in happier times. In unhappier times, it was the O Bar for an
hour until he’d pulled, at which point I’d go and repeat the process with
Emelie at Floridita before meeting Simon for a Wagamama’s round the
corner. Maybe I was a bit boring. But today Soho only meant one thing:
birthday shopping. Determined to redeem myself for last year’s boxer
shorts and beer combo (I’d been very busy. And very lazy), I headed into
Vinyl Junkies, looking for something special.
Record shops aren’t made for girls. This was a fact. Just like comic
shops, Dungeons & Dragons tournaments and reading the newspaper on the
toilet, record shops, especially specialist vinyl stores, were property of the
Y-chromosome. I felt uncomfortable the second I walked through the door,
just wishing I’d gone for jeans and trainers instead of a dress and eyeliner.
The two middle-aged men, one bald, one overly hirsute, both misogynists,
had me pegged as a novice before I’d even opened my mouth.
‘Hi.’ I gave them my best please-don’t-laugh-in-my-face-or-rip-me-off
smile.
They gave me their best you’re-shit-out-of-luck-darlin’ nods in return.
‘I’m looking for a record,’ I squeaked. ‘For a birthday present.’
They exchanged a look.
‘Course you are,’ Bald Music Shop Man replied. ‘We’ve got lots of
records, though. Anything in particular?’
Great. They had confirmed that I was a moron. Why hadn’t I asked my
brother Paul to come with me? He was probably best friends with these
arseholes.
‘My friend’s a bit of a muso,’ I elaborated, scanning the glass display
cases behind the counter. ‘He really likes …’
Oh dear god, my mind was completely blank. Why? Why? Don’t say it
Rachel, don’t you dare say it.
‘He really likes music.’
Neither Bald Music Shop Man nor Hairy Music Shop Man had an answer
to that. OK, there was only one way to save this. Delving into my bag, I
pulled out my Heat sheath.
‘Don’t think we’ve got anything they’re reviewing in that, darlin’,’ said
Hairy Music Shop Man. This was the funniest thing Bald Music Shop Man
had ever heard.
With a tilt of the head and a small smile, I peeled away the Cheryl Cole
cover and revealed my bounty. Oh, would you look at that? Suddenly I had
the attention of both muso men.
‘While I’m here, I was wondering if you could have a look at this for
me.’ I laid the record on the counter very carefully. John, Paul, George and
Ringo looked up and gave me a smile.
Obviously, these were men who weren’t able to communicate in a nonsarcastic
fashion and so I took their silence as approval.
‘It’s my mother’s,’ I lied unnecessarily. ‘I want to get it valued for her.
Obviously I’ve looked online.’
I hadn’t looked online.
‘Um, well.’ Bald Muso Man went to pick it up but paused, looking to me
for approval. I gave him a nod and quietly enjoyed the power trip. ‘I don’t
know, it’s rare.’
‘Sleeves in good condition,’ Hairy Muso Man began giving it an
automatic once-over. ‘Mirror vinyl, Canadian import. Very nice.’
Maybe it’s a sign, I thought to myself, while they ummed and ahhed: all
roads lead to Canada. Maybe I was supposed to sell this and use the money
to fly to Ethan where we would fall in love and immediately get married.
That made sense, didn’t it?
‘I reckon we could do you about five hundred quid,’ he said, not letting
go of the record.
Until that second, the proudest moment of my life had been when I’d
picked up the keys to my flat. Or the time I did not dry-hump James Franco
in the make-up chair. As of that moment, it was not snatching the money
out of Hairy Muso Man’s hand and running for the hills. Five hundred
quid? Really?
‘Oh,’ I shrugged and held my hand out for the record. ‘I can probably get
more than that on eBay. Thanks though.’
‘Eight hundred,’ Bald Music Shop Man said quickly.
‘Hmm.’
‘Eight-fifty. Best I can do.’
I tried very hard to look unconvinced while I weighed up my options. On
one hand, there was a chance that this was sort of technically stealing. But
at the same time, Simon was an evil scumbag who had callously abandoned
me with the record, which sort of somehow suggested that he wanted me to
sell it. Didn’t it? And I would very much like eight hundred and fifty
pounds.
Hairy and Baldy were literally on the edges of their seats. Pursing my
lips, brushing off the skirt of my stripy sundress and hitching my handbag
back up on my shoulder, I shrugged.
‘Done.’
Walking back out into the sunshine, I felt a little dazed. I had nearly nine
hundred quid in my handbag. I pulled out my notebook, checking my
shopping list to try and ground myself, but instead of seeing a list of tasks, I
just saw £850, written about seventeen times. The worst thing was, I didn’t
even feel bad. Not a jot of remorse. He hadn’t picked that record up since
bringing it home two years ago; he would never even know it was missing.
I hoped.
Dodging a fruit and veg stall set up in the middle of the street, I headed
back up Berwick Street, narrowly avoiding walking face first into a stupidly
hot man. We danced around each other for a moment until he laughed and
hopped into the street.
‘Sorry,’ I said. I hated the left-right swerve game – why couldn’t we just
agree everyone would walk on the left, like on Tube escalators?
‘No worries, angel,’ he smiled back. Why couldn’t everyone be as
friendly as a gay man wandering around Soho in the middle of a Thursday
morning, I wondered, almost immediately encountering an identical
situation with an angry looking man in a suit. Gays were lovely.
Unless you forgot to buy their birthday present. Oh bugger. There was no
way on god’s green earth I was going back into the record shop, not now I
was winning. Which left only one option. Looking up, I spotted exactly
where shorts guy had come from. Prowler. Lovely Soho and its gay sex
supermarkets …
Ten minutes later, I was back on the street, clutching a gay porn parody
of Jersey Shore and a selection box of Trojans just to be a bit fancy.
Matthew would love it. Done with Soho for the day, I prepped myself and
my eight hundred and fifty pounds to brave the sprint to the Northern Line
at Tottenham Court Road. And I really was just about to leave when I
spotted a glass-fronted shop off to my left. In the windows were two
dummies, decked out in nothing more than nipple tassels and top hats. It
was hardly a shocking sight in Soho but this shop made me stop in my
tracks. Because this wasn’t just any shop. This was Agent Provocateur.
Emelie had been a devotee of luxury lingerie since she’d opened the
floodgates in La Senza in the second year. Since then she’d graduated
through Elle Macpherson Intimates, Cosabella and Calvin Klein and now
she was onto the hard stuff. La Perla, Coco de Mer and of course, Agent
Provocateur. It wasn’t that I didn’t like pretty things; I did, but Em earned
an awful lot more money than I did. Two hundred quid on a bra? I just
couldn’t do it. She’d spent several years trying to convert me, insisting that
spending that much on something created exclusively to make you feel like
a sex kitten could only be good for you, but I could always think of at least
five other ways to spend that money. But now, newly single Rachel was
going to have to Do It with someone new for the first time in years. And I
wasn’t twenty-three this time. Sure, new Rachel had already proved she was
confident and potentially certifiable – but sexy? It just wasn’t a word that
sat well with me. A confidence boost couldn’t hurt, could it? And I didn’t
have to spend two hundred quid. I could just look. Probably.
‘Hi, can I help you with anything?’ asked a painfully beautiful pin-up-alike
as I walked through the door. Clad in a short pale pink dress and black
stockings, she gave me a smile with deep red lips. Speaking as a
professional, it was a great make-up job. Speaking as a normal girl it was
wildly intimidating.
‘I’m just browsing, thanks.’ My plan was to make a polite lap of the
store, pick up two things, check the prices and then go for a tactical exit.
Until I saw it. Pink silk, black lace overlay and oh my but it was beautiful.
Just seeing the bra hanging there made me want to have sex; I couldn’t even
begin to imagine the power it might wield on an actual person.
‘The Françoise. My favourite.’ The pin-up spoke in a quiet voice. Her
reverence was entirely appropriate. ‘Would you like to try it on?’
‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘Yes please.’
Looking at myself in the dressing-room mirror was an extraordinary
experience. My boobs hadn’t got any bigger, my thighs hadn’t got any
slimmer, and I hadn’t suddenly developed Jessica Rabbit curves, but
suddenly I was sexy. I was wearing nearly five hundred quid’s worth of lace
and elastic and I’d never felt more incredible. Not that I’d be able to get
into the stockings and suspenders ever again without the shop assistant’s
help. But when was I going to wear it? I asked myself, turning around,
holding up my hair and checking out the back view. It was entirely
pointless. I could get just as nice stuff from M&S. Probably. Just because
I’d sort of stolen nearly a grand from my ex-boyfriend didn’t mean I was
made of money, this was ridiculous, this was … I stopped striking
ridiculous poses in the mirror for one second and carefully removed the
single girl’s to-do list from my handbag. Buy something. And unless I was
very much mistaken, the addendum to that decree was ‘something
obscenely expensive and selfish.’ Like designer lingerie. Like five hundred
pounds’ worth of designer lingerie. With the money you just made from
selling your ex-boyfriend’s ultra-rare Beatles record. Well, his mum’s
Beatles record but she had it coming as well. The cow never had given me
her chocolate cheesecake recipe and I had asked for it time and time again.
Maybe she kept it from me because she knew we were never getting
married and she wanted it to stay in the family. Cow.
‘Everything OK?’ Pin-Up Gal asked outside the changing room. ‘Can I
get you anything else?’
‘Do you have any more of the knickers in stock?’ I said, letting redhead
Rachel take over. It was just easier if she dealt with these decisions.
‘Absolutely,’ she confirmed through the door. ‘Just the briefs?’
‘All of it,’ Redhead Rachel confirmed. ‘I’ll take all of it.’
And from that moment on, with Dita von Teese as my witness, I vowed I
would never wear a greying bra with no elastic and a little bit of plastic
underwiring poking out, ever again.
Having spent the morning buying designer underwear, hanging out in gay
sex shops and selling expensive records that didn’t belong to me, I felt like
the afternoon belonged to tasks my mother would have approved of.
Stashing my ill-gotten gains in the bedroom, I changed out of my dress, into
a T-shirt and started painting. More people than I’d anticipated had
responded to my Facebook invite to the party on Saturday, presumably pity
acceptances given that they’d all seen my newly single status on FB. Not
that I cared. Pity popularity was still popularity. Of course that meant I
couldn’t really leave the living room in its current state – masking tape
around the light switches wasn’t avant-garde, it just looked stupid. As Em
had pointed out. Yes, oddly enough, neither she nor Matthew were available
to help me out when I’d called to see what they were up to. In Emelie’s
defence, she was working. Dead-Dad rich Matthew however, had no such
excuse. He was just AWOL. As he had been a lot over the last couple of
days. If he wasn’t with me, he wasn’t giving up where he was. Pushing
away my concerns that there was no estranged dead dad and that he was
turning tricks somewhere in South London, I got back to the job at hand.
Hands on hips, I stared down the tins of paint in the corner of the room.
‘It’s just you and me,’ I said out loud, plugging in my iPod dock and
putting it on shuffle. And then skipping when ‘Love Me Do’ came on.
Maybe just a bit of Madonna. Me, Madonna and two tins of Dulux Sexy
Pink silk emulsion. What could go wrong?
About a month or so after we’d moved into the flat, Simon and I had
been scoffing spaghetti bolognese on the sofa, watching Kirstie and Phil,
when it happened. Laura the journalist was looking for a London crash pad
and, after several misses, Phil eventually found her a beautiful studio in
Clapham. And inside that studio in Clapham was a hot pink wall and a red
leather sofa. My eyes had lit up in a way that scared the pants off Simon. I
hadn’t even said anything before he declared a loud, clear ‘no’, got up, put
the kettle on and refused to listen my pleas. Eventually, I got my red leather
sofa but he wasn’t having any of the hot pink wall. Well, fuckadoodledoo,
Simon; now it was my living room and I was having my hot pink wall. And
I was listening to Madonna while I did it. In a T-shirt and my knickers.
Mostly because it was really hot but also because who cared? Who knew
how long I’d be able to stay here if he decided he wanted to sell, but for
every last second I had in the flat, it was going to feel like home. My home.
Checking the sofa and all immovable furniture was properly covered, I
stood back, paint tray in hand, and made sure I was ready to start. It was a
big day for proud moments. Having actually used masking tape was the
kind of achievement that made me want to call my dad. It was Facebook
status update big.
Singing very loudly, I merrily started slapping paint on the wall,
beginning with the edges and then moving onto some more experimental
designs. Such as writing ‘Simon is a dick’ in two-foot-high letters right in
the middle of the wall. I stopped to take a quick snapshot with my phone
before beginning to paint over it. Utterly absorbed in the task at hand, my
mind started to run away with itself. Maybe I could stretch out from makeup
design to interior design. I was clearly a natural. Perhaps I could put
some colour in the bedroom. Maybe some red. Maybe blue. Caught up in
redesigning the apartment, and halfway through a vital reinterpretation of
‘La Isla Bonita’, I realized the doorbell was ringing. Missing out on
anything being one of my greatest fears in life, I turned down Madge,
dashed to the front door and pressed the buzzer to let them up, only then
remembering I wasn’t wearing any trousers. Oh well, I told myself,
probably a Jehovah’s Witness, they wouldn’t mind. Regardless, I was
already on shaky ground with the commandments as it was, so one of
heaven’s reps turning up while I was semi-naked was hardly likely to be the
crucial black mark against my name. As it turned out, I would have been
much happier with a Jehovah’s Witness. Or even a Coldseal Windows
salesman. Or Hitler. In fact, I’d have been happier with pretty much anyone
but Dan Fraser.
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