Love Songs for Sceptics

by Christina Pishiris

  ‘Alright, girls?’

  ‘Piss off, sunshine,’ said Annette.

  Alice giggled. ‘We’re in the middle of something, that’s all,’ she said. ‘She didn’t mean to be rude.’

  ‘Yes, I bloody did,’ said Annette, and I suddenly really, really liked her.

  With one last roll of the dice, Mr Ukes said: ‘Anything I can help with?’

  Helen eyed his ukulele. ‘Yeah, can I borrow that?’

  He looked at her uncertainly. ‘You want me to go away but leave you my uke?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied.

  He blinked slowly, his reflexes visibly dulled by too many Jägermeisters. ‘No problem, dudette.’ He smiled, handed her his ukulele then sidled off.

  ‘Well played, Helen!’ exclaimed Annette.

  A bell rang to indicate that the second part of the singing experience was about to start.

  Mr Ukes wandered over a couple of times to sing with us, and to no doubt keep an eye on his £30 ukulele, but his voice was so bad it kept making us go off-key. Annette had no inhibitions telling him every time he hit a dud note, but we were too pissed to get annoyed and eventually his tone-deafness just made us laugh.

  The lights blinked on and off to signal last orders. I checked my watch and was amazed it was already eleven.

  ‘Last song!’ shouted someone from the bar.

  We all turned to the monitor to see what our swansong would be – ‘Bring Me Sunshine’, announced the screen. It was a surprisingly emotional song, and having teased Alice for getting teary during the Everly Brothers, I found my own eyes filling with tears.

  We hugged like old friends as the dying notes rang out.

  ‘Damn, that’s a pretty song,’ said Alice, not trying to hide her sniffles. I had a lump in my throat so I couldn’t respond, and Annette was touching up her eye make-up, although we all knew what was really going on.

  We swapped numbers and emails, and laughed on our way back to the tube. We were halfway down the stairs at Great Portland Street station before any of us noticed that Helen was still holding her borrowed ukulele.

  7

  If I Were Your Woman

  It was Saturday afternoon and I was due to meet Simon in a few hours. I was walking around my flat, trying to view it with fresh eyes. It’s not that I expected Simon to end up here, but on the off-chance that he did, I wanted the place to give the right impression.

  In the kitchen was a poster of Elvis in black leather for his 1968 comeback special – kitsch or classic? Were the Diptyque candles on either side of the Victorian fireplace elegant or pretentious?

  I threw myself onto my bed and then all I could imagine was him standing in the doorway, undoing his cuffs and slowly walking towards me.

  Stop it!

  Who the fuck wore cufflinks?

  I needed a cold shower.

  After spending longer than I normally did getting ready, I got the bus into town so I could avoid sitting in a hot and sweaty tube carriage, and a breezy half hour later I was outside Simon’s hotel.

  The restaurant at The Halson was in the same room as the bar, but at night, the lights were dimmed and candles flickered on the tables, giving everything a warm glow. I was wearing indigo jeans and a black sequinned top accessorized with a chunky silver bangle and ballerinas. The drama was upstairs: my hair was blow-dried glossy and my lips were MAC Red.

  I was shown to an empty table and I checked my watch as I sat down. Nope, not early. It was coming up to ten past eight. He hadn’t cancelled, had he? I felt a rustle of nerves in my belly. I was about to check my phone when Simon appeared, looking great in a blue shirt and dark jeans.

  ‘Hope I didn’t keep you waiting, Frixie.’ He kissed me on the cheek and I got another blast of that citrus scent.

  ‘Just got here, Si.’

  We ordered a bottle of wine and the first sip went a long way in settling my nerves.

  ‘I know it’s been two years, but congratulations on being made editor,’ he said. ‘I think we can safely say you’ve fulfilled all your teenage dreams.’

  The top button of his shirt was undone, revealing the hollow of his neck. Plenty of my teenage dreams had involved that very spot of his anatomy. Admittedly a few other spots, too.

  ‘I’ve still got one or two more things to cross off my list.’ Christ, did I sound like a terrible hussy?

  ‘Of course, I know all about one particular fantasy.’

  My hand was halfway to my glass and I almost knocked it over.

  He knew? I tried to sound breezy. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You want to interview Marcie Tyler. You’ve worshipped her all your life.’

  I smiled, hoping it masked my disappointment. Of course, I’d told him as I was leaving his hotel on Friday about my grand plan.

  ‘I won’t lie. It would be an amazing career high. But I’m not sure I can pull it off.’ I shook my head. ‘She’s a hard woman to reach.’

  He smiled. ‘I have faith in you.’

  ‘That means a lot. Thanks.’

  He held up his glass and chinked mine. ‘To Miss Zoë Frixiepants, the most determined woman I’ve ever met, and the first girl I ever kissed.’

  I nearly choked on my Sauvignon.

  ‘We’ve never kissed,’ I said, with possibly a bit too much feeling. Unless he meant that kiss he placed on my cheek the morning he and his mum got a cab to Heathrow to start their new life in America. I’d wanted to bawl my eyes out, but had courageously held it in, feigning moderate sadness and blathering on about how internet phone calls and MSN Messenger meant everything could carry on just as before. I couldn’t eat for twenty-four hours after he left. Mum was all set to take me to the doctor’s until I finally relented and nibbled a piece of baklava she’d bought especially to tempt me.

  ‘Maybe you’re confusing me with the previous editor of Re:Sound. He had slightly less hair, but was quite a fox, if you like sweary Scousers.’

  He clutched at his shirt over his heart. ‘Did it mean so little to you?’

  I was ninety-nine per cent sure he was joking, but as I was frantically trawling my brain for a stray memory, a waiter appeared to take our order. I’d never been so keen to get dinner ordered in my life. I literally asked for the first thing that caught my eye – a risotto – and Simon ordered duck confit. I really wanted to press Simon on this phantom kissing memory, although part of me didn’t, because I suspected he was thinking of another girl. Specifically Harriet Smythe, his mum’s hairdresser’s daughter. I knew because my mum went to the same hairdresser and she told me.

  The waiter hovered for a few more agonising seconds, flamboyantly shaking out our napkins and placing them on our laps.

  When the waiter finally left, Simon leant forward. ‘The time I’m talking about is when you’d just discovered your mum’s lipstick. You wanted to conduct an experiment and you recruited me to help. How could I stand in the way of scientific progress?’

  ‘Oh. My. God.’ I covered my face with my hands. ‘I did that with you?’ I had a vague memory of trying out my mum’s lipsticks, but in my head, I’d been kissing the back of my hand. I remember wanting to rope Simon into it, but never getting round to it.

  Suddenly, however, it all came rushing back in excruciating detail.

  My overly curious ten-year-old self had been intrigued that whenever actors kissed on screen, the woman’s lipstick never smudged or transferred onto whoever she was kissing. It didn’t make sense, and it really bothered me, but before I started writing letters to my favourite film directors – yes, I was exactly the sort of kid who did that – I wanted to be sure of the facts.

  Sitting cross-legged on the green carpet of my parents’ bedroom, in front of Mum’s fake rococo dressing table, I had pressed my waxy lips against Simon’s innocent mouth, held for a count of five, decoupled, then checked the results. A quick wipe with cotton wool doused in baby oil and then the process was repeated. We did this with every one of Mum’s sixteen lipsticks.

  ‘
I’m so embarrassed. What was I thinking? And more importantly, why didn’t you stop me?’

  ‘Well, it was dumb that all those movies perpetuated the myth of the unsmudgeable lipstick.’ He grinned. ‘Hey, sometimes I wish my life was still full of girls wanting to make out with me in the name of science.’

  It was a casual quip – right? I sipped my wine, trying to cultivate an aura of serenity and mystique, but probably only succeeded in looking like I was ignoring him.

  How had talking about childhood kisses turned into such a minefield?

  I felt much more like we were on solid ground when Simon remembered a record-signing trip we made to Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus one afternoon – the one and only time I’d ever bunked off school. My parents were livid when they found out. I really should have hidden my signed Soundgarden CD a bit better.

  I was in such a good mood that after dinner and coffee, I let Simon talk me into going to a club – and not one of my usual places. He picked a neon-signed monstrosity, far too close to Leicester Square, that promised ‘banging toonz’.

  We waited forty-five minutes to get in. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d queued that long for anything. We stood alongside boys wearing too much Lynx and girls with thickly painted eyebrows. One girl muttered ‘Wotchit, grandma’ when I accidentally trod on her stiletto, but even that didn’t dampen my mood.

  Once inside, Simon burrowed his way to the bar and returned with two bottled beers. The music was loud, so his lips were brushing my earlobes as he tried to make himself heard. His breath made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Before I knew it, he’d persuaded me to dance, even though they were playing Chesney Hawkes’s ‘The One and Only’.

  But I didn’t care. Simon’s hand on the small of my back made me sizzle and each time he twirled me, I felt a rush.

  We danced to Bon Jovi, to S Club 7, and even to someone I suspected had recently won The X-Factor. Simon’s energy was boundless. We bopped to Take That and Backstreet Boys, but when Hands Down came on, my bubble burst. That’s the downside to working in music – listening to it is how most people relax, but when it’s your job it can intrude on your fun. Hands Down reminded me of Nick Jones, which reminded me of my failure with the Marcie interview.

  ‘I need another drink,’ I mouthed to Simon, and headed to the bar. By the time I got back to him, someone with taste had taken control of the DJ booth and ‘Under Pressure’ was playing.

  I hastily put down our drinks and grabbed his hands. We were jumping up and down and I was fifteen again, in my bedroom, listening to this song with Simon, bouncing on the carpeted floor till my mum came up to tell me we were shaking the bulbs out of their sockets. Bowie’s voice going up the scale in the middle eight still gave me goosebumps.

  *

  We left the club at 3 a.m. and I was all set to get on the night bus when Simon objected.

  He put his arm around my shoulder. ‘Your mum would kill me if she knew I’d let you get on a bus alone.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, Si. We’re not thirteen anymore. The bus practically goes to my front door.’

  ‘I’ll come with you, then. You’ve got a couch, haven’t you? I’ll sleep on that.’

  ‘I’ve actually got a sofa bed,’ I said, mentally high-fiving myself for hoovering under it earlier. ‘But still, it won’t be as comfy as your hotel room, which is a ten-minute walk away.’

  He held my eye for a second. Was that a coded invitation back to The Halson?

  ‘I want the full London experience,’ he said. ‘A bit of night bus conviviality would be marvellous.’

  *

  Our night bus experience on the 94 to Acton Green offered plenty of shouting, belching, steamed-up windows and, just after Holland Park, a puddle of vomit.

  Conviviality must have taken the N207.

  We staggered through my front door just as the dawn light was beginning to creep over the horizon.

  Simon slumped down at the kitchen table and rubbed his face. ‘I need another drink after that.’

  ‘Welcome to London,’ I said, opening the fridge, but the only bottles of wine I had had long since been consigned to the recycling crate. I prodded some sad-looking onions; I was sure an ancient Absolut Vodka was hiding in here somewhere . . .

  ‘Not alcohol,’ said Simon. ‘I’m getting too old for this. I need a coffee. Actually, scratch that, Frixie, a tea would be great.’

  ‘Listen to you, you almost sound British.’

  ‘I can never win. Over there I’m a goddamned Limey and here I’m a bloody Yank.’

  I moved to where he was standing to get to the cupboard. ‘The cups are behind you,’ I said.

  He was leaning against the counter, but didn’t move. I went up on my toes and for a few seconds my face was level with his collarbone. He’d undone a second button, and in those stretched-out moments all I could think about was how close my alcohol-sensitised lips were to his tanned skin.

  Then I remembered what I was here for and grabbed two mugs with my clammy paws.

  I made us both tea and we sat down at the kitchen table to drink. After a couple of minutes, Simon rubbed his eyes. ‘I don’t know if it’s late or early, but I am exhausted.’ He gave me a sheepish grin. ‘I guess my body can’t take jet lag like it used to.’

  ‘Shall I make up the sofa bed?’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘Just show me where your bedding is.’

  I went to the cupboard in the hall, almost tripping over my own feet. I was drunker than I realised. Simon followed me and held out his arms as I pulled out the linen. My only clean pillowcase had ‘Cyprus – Island of Aphrodite’ emblazoned across it. Talk about passion-killer.

  Simon must not have noticed, however, because as I handed it to him, he leant over and planted a soft kiss on my lips.

  ‘Night, Miss Frixiepants,’ he said, his voice low.

  I didn’t find mine to answer him, and a moment later he’d disappeared into the living room.

  Thirty minutes later, I was still feeling dazed. I lay in bed, my mind too full to sleep. I could just about act normal having Simon back in my life, but a single, gobsmackingly sexy Simon, whose preferred method of saying goodnight was a kiss on the mouth, was something else entirely.

  8

  Every Rose Has Its Thorn

  Despite the late night, I was awake by nine the next morning, but was surprised to find Simon already up when I came into the kitchen. If I’d known, I would have brushed my teeth.

  ‘Mornin’, Frixie.’

  He looked remarkably poised for 9 a.m. on a Sunday morning. His clothes were crease-free, which must have meant that he’d hung them up last night and slept naked.

  Oh God, I need to stop.

  ‘Morning, Si,’ I said, busying myself with tea bags and mugs. ‘Did you sleep okay?’

  ‘I did, thanks. I went out like a light. Last night is a complete blur.’

  If I looked disappointed, he couldn’t see. I was facing the sink, refilling the kettle. What had I expected this morning? Certainly not a continuation of last night’s kiss. Without the benefit of alcohol and tiredness, would it even have happened? What I needed was a plan for the day. Something the two of us could do together, something fun but subtly coupley. Maybe a trip to Hyde Park, and some boating . . .

  I reached for the bread. ‘Want some toast?’

  ‘That would be great, thanks. By the way, your mom rang, she was going to leave a message on the machine, but I picked up when I heard her voice. I hope you don’t mind.’

  Simon had always got on well with my parents, and they liked him, Mum especially. She mentioned him from time to time, and when she did, she’d get that faraway look in her eyes, as if he were The One That Got Away.

  ‘She invited us over for lunch.’

  I was halfway between the bread bin and the toaster. I stopped, a slice of bread going limp in my hand. ‘You didn’t say yes, did you?’

  ‘Of course I did,’ he said. ‘It was so sweet of her
, and I would love to see them. They’re like family to me.’

  His eyes had gone glassy and I looked away. When his parents’ rows got really bad, he’d climb over the broken fence at the bottom of our garden and come and watch telly with us. Mum knew he was feeling scared and so was always extra nice to him, even when it was after our bedtime.

  ‘They’d love to see you too,’ I said, feeling bad for my initial reluctance.

  Simon stayed for a mug of tea, then left to go back to his hotel to shower and change. We agreed he’d come back around midday and then we’d go together to see my parents.

  I finished the remains of my tea, then half-heartedly tidied the kitchen. Sharing Simon with my parents was the last thing I wanted to do, but he’d sounded so happy to see them, I didn’t have the heart to cancel.

  A couple of hours later we were outside my parents’ home in Ealing. My brother’s Alfa was in the drive and my heart sank. Alice was most likely with him, and would surely put two and two together that Simon was the mystery ‘S’ from Friday night. And to top it all off, if there were six of us it had officially morphed into a Proper Family Do. Mum would have rolled out the more expensive cutlery, and not the Ikea set that everyone preferred.

  The smell of charcoal gusted over the fence, making me hungry. Dad’s barbecues were famous, mainly for their frequency – neither rain, hail or snow could stop him. My Greekness had embarrassed me when I was young. I didn’t like having darker hair than everyone in my class, or that my lunchbox was packed with strange food. Back then, even pitta bread seemed exotic to my Anglo-Saxon classmates.

  Mum was in the kitchen preparing a salad. She was swaying from side to side, in her denim skirt and FitFlops, singing along to something, even though the radio wasn’t on. When she saw us, she rushed over, waving a half-peeled cucumber. I had to duck to avoid getting it in the eye. Then she swept her gaze up and down Simon. ‘Look at you! You’ve put on weight.’

  Personally, I didn’t think that was a great way to greet someone you liked.

  ‘Leave him alone, Mum.’ I glanced at Simon, but he didn’t seem bothered.