‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’ve been risk averse.’
‘You’re not a pension fund,’ she tuts.
‘I’ve spent my entire life firmly within my comfort zone.’
She puts her hands on her hips. ‘Emma, don’t you dare have a one-night stand. I mean it.’
Suddenly, this is about more than winding her up. ‘Marianne, I am a grown woman and I can think for myself.’
‘Don’t be so pathetic. Honestly.’
I hesitate, thinking of a retort.
‘Well, guess what?’ A smile twitches at my lips. ‘I’m doing it.’
I suddenly feel outrageously confident; outrageously clear. I am free from the shackles of my constant over-thinking and have a moment of clarity that removes any doubt from my mind.
‘Why?’ she shrieks. ‘Because I told you not to?’
‘No, Marianne. Because I am twenty-nine years old and counting,’ I reply, spinning on my heels. ‘And I’m about to do some living.’
Chapter 10
Simply saying those words makes me feel fabulously worldly-wise, a sensation that’s tripled when I make a conscious decision that this is one occasion that absolutely requires a fifth drink. So I buy one, before slipping through the crowd like a Bond girl, pretending I’m a woman who lives on cocktails of danger and passion, not M&S ready meals.
If I’m going to go to the trouble of doing some living, it goes without saying it needs to be with someone gorgeous. I wouldn’t usually approve of putting looks ahead of personality, but in these circumstances I’d have to make an exception.
The only way I can reconcile myself with unleashing my inner trollop is if it’s with someone so jaw-droppingly bootilicious that anyone could be forgiven for doing the same.
Plus, although I’m now seriously feeling the effects of the fifth drink, I’m vaguely aware that Marianne is right and there’s every chance I might regret this. So I need to mitigate it in the most effective way possible: by thoroughly enjoying it.
Problem is, there’s no one here better-looking than Rob, who set the benchmark depressingly high. I look down and realise my glass is empty – so plump for one more cocktail in the perverse hope that I develop beer goggles.
‘A French martini, please,’ I ask the barman, and, as I focus through my spirit-induced haze, I realise that he isn’t bad-looking. In fact, the further I lean in to examine him, the more twinkly eyed, cheeky-smiled and adorably dimpled he is.
‘How are you?’ he winks, flashing me a smile that could drop knickers from ten paces.
I grin. ‘Fine, thanks.’
Flirting isn’t one of my natural skills; I’m better at Scrabble and cracking my knuckles. But as I force myself to pout and run my tongue subtly across my lips – noting how well it goes down with the barman – it’s easier than usual tonight.
‘Having a good evening?’ He shakes the cocktail, dropping his eyes to my cleavage.
‘Ab-so-lute-ly,’ I breathe, handing over a note.
He scrunches up his nose. ‘I’m afraid we don’t take those.’ I glance down and realise I’ve handed over three Tesco Clubcard vouchers.
‘Whoops!’ I mumble woozily, rustling in my purse for valid currency. Dimples is still smiling when I find some and he gives me my change.
Over the course of the next half-hour – which I spend chatting intermittently to Chris, the barman – it becomes apparent that I am definitely in. His flirting becomes so suggestive, I feel as though we’re in the first forty-five seconds of one of those special DVDs you can get in Ann Summers.
I can’t be certain of how much sense I’m making. The French martini had a fairly drastic effect on my ability to think straight and the subsequent Piña Colada finished it off altogether.
He looks only vaguely impressed when I tell him I’m an air hostess, having suddenly convinced myself it’d be more of a turn-on than what I really do for a living. But I’m pretty sure that the button I undo on my top doesn’t go unnoticed, nor does the hair flicking – especially the flicking, which I employ so enthusiastically I almost fall off my stool.
I snatch pieces of information about him and learn that by day he’s studying medicine at Liverpool University, but I need to get down to business. I’m now so squiffy I’m seriously concerned that if I get him into bed, I’ll lose consciousness before I’ve removed my shoes.
‘What are you doing later?’ he asks finally.
I smile sweetly. ‘Sleeping with you.’
I’m instantly astonished at the fact that these words came out of my mouth. Still, this is no time for subtlety, and the effect on him is astounding. He’s stunned into silence, but one thing’s absolutely clear – he looks perfectly chuffed.
‘She isn’t – she’s coming home. Come on, Emma. Everyone’s in a taxi outside. We’re waiting for you.’
I spin round and narrow my eyes at Marianne. ‘Look, Mother Superior, could you leave me in peace?’
I won’t bore you with the ensuing conversation, except to say that it is a word for word repeat of the earlier one – with a few slurrier words – and culminates in a ‘FINE!’ from Marianne that’s so loud and furious it nearly singes the salsa dancers’ feathers.
Still, at least I get rid of her, and spin back to Chris. ‘What time do you finish?’ I purr.
He leans over and brushes my hair away from my face. ‘In two and a half hours.’
I sit bolt upright. ‘You’re kidding?’ Keeping my eyes open for two-and-a-half minutes is a challenging enough prospect.
‘I’m on the late shift,’ he explains.
‘But that’s no good at all.’
‘I’ll make it worth your while,’ he adds with an air of desperation.
Dejectedly, but with no better offers, I order a double Red Bull, followed by another. I am about to go for a third, but spot myself in the mirror behind the bar.
I am not the vision of grooming I thought I was – unless you’re comparing me to an Afghan hound on the way to getting its fur washed after jumping in a puddle. One thing’s for sure: I can’t wait around for – I glance at my watch – two hours and twelve minutes. I need to find someone else. Quickly.
Chapter 11
Some chat-up lines are corny. Some are classy. Some are memorable, earth-shattering or stop-in-your-tracks offensive. But, even for someone who is no great authority on the art form, I’m aware that mine is unusual.
‘Hello, I’m Emma. Do you think you’re likely to want to leave in the next hour or so?’
He’s the fifth person to whom I’ve put this question and I’m not sure why I’m persevering. Not that my opening line is the only problem – in three cases I realised instantly that, close up, they didn’t look remotely like they did from the other side of the room. One transformed from Ryan Gosling to Tom Jones at close range, and it was a similar story with the other two. The fourth turned out to be a paramedic on his way to a woman who’d gone into labour in the restaurant upstairs.
I’ve decided that if I don’t get talking to a serious prospect within ten minutes, I’m going home. Only . . . well, the fifth one . . . he has potential.
‘Probably. Why do you ask?’
He looked like Tom Hardy from a distance and while, as with the others, he’s nothing like him up close – he’s still gorgeous. Very good-looking, with dark, cropped hair, a lovely physique and stubble that’s strangely alluring, even if it looks capable of removing the make-up from my chin with one snog.
The other physical feature that can’t go without mention is his smell; it’s nothing less than knee-trembling. They say physical attraction is a chemical thing, influenced by the mingling of pheromones and stuff (clearly, I am paraphrasing the relevant articles in the New Scientist here).
If you buy that, all I can say is his pheromones and my pheromones are getting on like a house on fire. I could sit here and sniff this man all day, if that were considered in any way socially acceptable.
‘I need someone t
o share a taxi with.’
He frowns, amused. ‘We might live in totally opposite directions.’ His voice is accentless, erring towards posh.
‘Where do you live?’
‘At the moment, Crosby.’
In totally the opposite direction. ‘That’s on the way!’
He eyes me suspiciously. ‘Are you okay? You seem a little . . .’
Flirtatious?
‘. . . drunk.’
I straighten my back. ‘I am not drunk. What a cheek!’
‘Sorry,’ he concedes, looking naively guilty. ‘Aren’t you here with friends?’
‘I was, but they had to leave. I decided to stay a little longer. There’s no stopping me! Aren’t you here with friends?’ In a conversation I’m aware is less than stimulating, this is the best I can do.
He gestures to the corner, where a guy with red hair has his tongue down the throat of a tall blonde in a barely there skirt and earrings that look like they belong on the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree.
‘They look like they’re having fun,’ I say.
He laughs. ‘Whether Jeremy will be as enthusiastic in the morning has yet to be found out.’
There’s something about the way he says this that alarms me. A tone that isn’t disapproving exactly . . . but hints that this isn’t the sort of thing you’d catch him doing.
The second this doubt enters my mind, it takes on a life of its own. What makes me assume he’s single anyway? Or straight? Or – most fundamentally – interested?
I take a deep breath. If I’m going to go through with this, I need to get down to business and come on to him, at least a little. But, suddenly, I feel stupidly self-conscious, and the lack of inhibition that’s required for this endeavour deserts me.
‘Are you all right?’ he asks.
I’m about to respond when I get a waft of his aftershave and it sends a flash of heat across my chest that nearly sets my bra straps on fire.
I reach out and put my hand behind his neck, pulling him into me as I stand on my tiptoes. Then I place my lips languorously on his cheek, noting how much softer than expected his stubble is. ‘I feel great,’ I whisper. ‘But I can think of something that’d make me feel even better.’
Chapter 12
Waking up after my first ever one-night stand is an experience that I will never, ever forget. From the painful shafts of sunlight to every swirl in that heinous orange and brown carpet – it’ll be there with me until the day I die.
Nor will I forget running from the flat. Or rather, attempting to run – with one broken shoe and every tiny, rancid cell in my body pleading for mercy. I hobble down a set of stairs, down a strange street and don’t stop until I’ve turned several corners and am certain I’m not being followed. At that point, I pause, breathless, aching and on the verge of vomiting, as I scan the street for any landmarks.
It’s then that I spot Crosby Cinema and know exactly where I am – miles from home.
Deep breaths.
A taxi will cost a fortune from here but I don’t care. Only, as I look in my purse and realise I have precisely four pounds twenty-seven and a handful of Tesco Clubcard vouchers to my name, it becomes apparent that the train’s the only option, unless I find a cashpoint. Which, in the event, I don’t.
The trek to the station takes approximately eight minutes, but it’s one of the most unremittingly miserable experiences of my life. Not a single car is capable of whizzing past without its passengers rubbernecking at this heap of a human being, its broken heels, tangle of hair and asbestos eyes.
I arrive at the station, pay for my ticket and head for a bench on the platform, desperate to take the weight off my feet. The only available seat is next to a handsome, straight-backed woman in her early sixties, who is wearing a chic cashmere throw and taupe wide-legged trousers. She is reading the Mail on Sunday, from which she pauses, looks up briefly, then sniffs and returns to the article.
My eyes surreptitiously dart to the page, which boasts the headline:
BRITAIN: CAPITAL OF CASUAL SEX
Next to it, with a nice blue border, there is a panel about genital warts; apparently these have reached epidemic proportions among eighteen-to-thirty-year-olds – a category I remain part of – just.
She looks up again and catches my eye. I glance away and straighten my back, as if sitting up nicely is going to alter the fact that, currently, I could be mistaken for someone heading home to pay her pimp then breakfast on a crack pipe.
I board the train and avoid sitting near her, not because I resent her disapproving looks, but because I deserve them. The headline flashes into my brain and my throat goes dry, before I open the clasp on my clutch bag and carefully unzip the side pocket. I pull out a small cardboard packet marked ‘Durex’ and my stomach turns over.
It is unopened.
And I want to cry.
Chapter 13
When you earn your living conjuring up heart-warming stories to make small children smile, it can be difficult to focus when you’re convinced you’ve contracted chlamydia – or worse.
‘Would it breach the brand guidelines to make a Bingbah ride a bicycle?’ Giles muses, knocking back an espresso the colour of Marmite.
‘Not sure,’ I reply distractedly.
‘Can you check while you’ve got it open?’
‘What open?’ I barely register his voice.
‘The brand book. You said you had it open, twenty seconds ago.’
I shift in my seat. ‘Oh. Sorry, I shut it down.’
Giles scratches his head. ‘Forget it, I’ll look. Though I don’t know why I’m bothering. Our new unofficial creative director will no doubt take one look at the script and suggest I turn it into a frigging solar-panelled spaceship.’
Giles’s knickers have been in a terrible twist over the issue of Sarah’s replacement – and the fact that Perry is showing no urgency to appoint anyone. Nevertheless, he’s slightly calmer today for a reason I can’t put my finger on, but it could be something to do with him consuming only twelve cups of coffee by two p.m. instead of the usual fifteen.
Yesterday was a different story.
Having presented a script to Perry – seeing as there’s nobody else to present it to – Giles was advised by our esteemed boss that he should inject a little more ‘oomph’ into his dialogue. At which point I was convinced the veins in Giles’s neck would burst, as if someone had attached him to a 12-volt tyre inflator and forgotten to turn it off.
‘What are we going to do, Emma?’ he howls. ‘About Perry, I mean. It can’t go on like this. The place is . . . Em?’
‘Hmm?’
‘What are you working on?’ He leans over curiously.
I shut down my browser so rapidly I almost sprain my wrist, although I don’t know what I’m worried about; the only time Giles actually gets up and walks to my desk is when I’ve got Hobnobs.
‘The usual,’ I grin.
I haven’t produced a jot of work since I sat in this seat at a quarter to eight this morning, having arrived early to try to make up for the work I failed to produce yesterday.
I have instead spent the day Googling sexually transmitted diseases, trying to work out the odds of me having contracted one – or, more likely, a suite of them – and, as a result, how rapidly this will result in symptoms ranging from mild itching to certain death. And that is not something for which you can go to Boots and get the morning-after pill, as I did. Twice.
‘I thought you weren’t even sure you’d had sex with him?’ Cally says on the phone as I pace up and down Rodney Street later that afternoon, attempting to hear her over the hum of traffic.
‘I’m now ninety-nine per cent certain that I did,’ I tell her despairingly. ‘I’m now itching. Plus, I’ve been on this medical website and—’
‘Oh Emma,’ she interrupts. ‘Steer clear of those websites.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you type in “mouth ulcer” and three clicks later you are convinced you’ve go
t throat cancer with six weeks to live.’
‘Did you know that incidences of chlamydia have more than doubled since 1999?’
‘That doesn’t mean you’ve got it!’
‘I’m bound to now, aren’t I?’ I huff. ‘Even you at the height of your sexual escapades never went out without a handbag bursting with prophylactics, did you?’
‘Well, that’s true. The time that led to Zachary was my one and only misdemeanour.’
Cally’s little boy was the result of the briefest of liaisons (four hours from start to finish) that she had with a guy called Pete, whom she met in a bar nearly three years ago when she and I were on a night out in Manchester.
He was tall but otherwise unremarkable, with blond hair, a faint Mancunian accent and, presumably, a soft spot for redheads with generous curves. Cally last set eyes on him the same night she met him. She has no idea where he is, and he has no idea that Zachary exists.
‘Let me ask an indelicate question,’ Cally continues. ‘Did you feel like you’d had sex? Down there, I mean. You know . . . gynaecologically speaking.’
For a reformed nymphomaniac, Cally can be surprisingly coy.
I take a deep breath. ‘I don’t know. I was asking myself the same on the way to the station and . . . sometimes I convinced myself I couldn’t feel anything . . . other times I definitely could.’
‘Do you know who this person is?’
‘The man I slept with? No idea. His name was Mike. No – Matt.’
Marianne, clearly, does not have a clue about all this. As far as my sister’s concerned, I got in a taxi immediately after she did; there’s no way I’m prepared to discuss this with her. It was bad enough when I was half cut and convinced I was right.
‘You didn’t get his number?’ Cally asks.
‘No – and there’s no way I’d contact him anyway.’
‘So knocking at his door is out of the question?’
The Wish List Page 5