‘I can’t face it for now. Geoffrey was vile about Dad as well,’ I gabble. I’m can’t get into this with Esther but I need her to understand the depth of my anger.
‘Oh, what did he say?’
‘… That he was useless.’ I can’t think of a substitute for ‘adulterer’ off the top of my head, another word which has the same impact without the information. ‘… That he let us down and Geoffrey’s better than him.’
‘Hmm, well. He shouldn’t have, but he’ll have heard Mum’s—’
‘Don’t say it. There’s no excuse for that man to run our dad down to me.’
‘You can’t pretend he was Husband and Father of the Year, Gog, and I miss him too.’
‘I don’t, but that’s for us to say, not that crypto-fascist with a comb-over.’
Esther laughs heartily and I feel much better. The conversation ends, and I switch the phone off, haul the door open and meet the dark, perennially accusing eyes of Lucas McCarthy.
‘Afternoon,’ he says, swigging from a coffee mug. ‘Everything alright?’
‘Yeah?’
Did I imagine a knowing look, an extra weight in his intonation? Could he hear me talking outside? Does he know Devlin told me about Niamh?
This is the first time I’ve seen Lucas since that revelation and I was planning on adjusting my attitude around him. Now, I decide if Lucas wanted to be treated like a newly widowed man, he’d have told me he was one, and I should respect that by giving him business as usual.
Dev pops up next to him, in sitcom surprise manner – he must’ve been doing something under the bar – points at me and says, ‘Oh my days, it’s shaping up for a turd!’
I startle, until I realise he’s pointing at Keith, tucked round the corner.
‘That’s just the way Keith sits. Unless you mean Georgina,’ Lucas says and Devlin laughs.
‘Shall I take Keith for a walk round the block?’ I say, to distract from the image of me defecating, putting a hand under his collar.
‘No!’ Lucas almost shouts, and then says: ‘No, no thank you, I’ll take him.’
He walks round the bar, clips his lead on and says: ‘Come on, boy. Uncle Devlin’s making accusations against you, let’s get some fresh air.’
As the door shuts behind them in a waft of some citrusy aftershave and slightly damp dog (a heady olfactory combination I never thought I’d appreciate), Dev says: ‘Ah, he’s very protective of that scragbag, don’t take it personally,’ which makes me feel worse because I hadn’t thought it was that obvious.
The memory of that afternoon in the park still lingering, I hope I never get drunk and bellow at Lucas: Well you seemed to want me to touch MUCH more than your dog, once upon a time.
26
‘What I am saying, is that she’s Monday through to Wednesday’ing me. I am not good enough for a Thursday through to Saturday. I am not priority boarding.’
Clem is trying to explain to Jo and I – while Jo does my hair – why her sort-of-friend Sadie is sort of a friend, and sort of not, based on when she suggests they meet up. The chicanery and machinations in the vintage fashion boutique scene is quite something.
‘Maybe those are genuinely the days she’s free?’ I say.
‘Pffft! No. She’s always out at weekends. I see the tagged photos. I mean, we all have second tier, third tier friends, but there’s no need to make it so explicit. It’s not classy.’
Clem often confidently claims we’ve all done this or we all secretly think that, and it used to intimidate me, until I learned she enjoys overstatement. As with her clothes. She is sitting, hair bouffed, eyes heavily kohled, legs crossed in gold tap shoes, Afghan coat and vape stick on, enveloping us in billowing clouds of vanilla steam.
‘You look superb, by the way, Clem – what is the look?’
‘Thank you. My look tonight is Anita Pallenberg arriving at Heathrow from New York in the late 1960s slash early 1970s with Keith Richards, small block of hashish hidden in her bag.’
There’s always a narrative. ‘Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface after she moves back home to Tulsa to go to rehab’ ‘Miss Moneypenny at Bond’s funeral – but she knows he’s not dead’ etc.
I’m glad Jo and I met Clem in our early twenties because she’d terrify me now. You get more risk averse as you age.
We’re good for Clem I think, and she’s good for us. She cuts like lemon juice and salt through the cloying consensus that Jo and I could so easily become, and we stop her hanging around with similarly angular limbed ‘influencers,’ who seem to be eternally trying to outdo and undermine each other. In looks and attitude, Clem is one of them, in her heart and soul she is not.
Apart from anything else, being a competitive prima donna seems so exhausting to me. One perk of underachievement is you don’t meet many of them.
We’re at Jo’s salon, as every so often, Joanna insists on doing mine and Clem’s wash and blow-dries before a big night out. Rav’s thirty-first is officially an occasion worth it. Clem waives hers as she’s going for the slept-in look. ‘Think transatlantic flight then a blizzard of Batiste.’
Jo loves a challenge, so tonight I’ve brought a diamante and pearl clip in the shape of trailing flowers and ivy that I found in Clem’s shop, and asked Jo to give me the ‘do to suit it.
‘You have some of my favourite hair in the whole world,’ Jo says, doing that stylist riffle with her fingers, pulling strands down straight at the front to check the length. ‘A starlet kind of shiny buttercup blonde you don’t see anymore.’
‘Yeah, you make me want to hit the peroxide again,’ Clem says, observing the magical effects of Jo’s rolling flicks of the wrist, with paddle brush and dryer.
Jo’s shop, between Crookes and Broomhill, is called, believe it or not, The Cut And Snark. I remember when she got the bank loan and the lease and I thought she was about to send it all up in flames with poor punning. I mean, chippies like Northern Soul and The Codfather love them, but …
‘That is a terrible idea and not just because of the Cutty Sark groan,’ I said at the time. ‘Snark makes it sound like you’ll be insulting the customers!’
‘It means you can get your hair done and moan about whatever you want. Chatty. Offload!’
‘Jo, really, no. It’s like a sausage shop calling itself Pork Swords or something.’
‘No it isn’t because that means penis, doesn’t it. This is clean.’
I face-palmed. She was resolute.
Seven years later, and The Cut And Snark is consistently booked to the rafters. Students stop to snap the signage, it gets posted online every time there’s a new wave of autumn term arrivals.
I won’t concede the name was a smart idea, per se, but the truth is Jo is so welcoming and talented at what she does, no one cares. She does a mix of shampoo and sets and lopping the long locks from undergraduates who’ve decided to reinvent themselves, shear it off and go unicorn blue and pink.
‘It’s like the Pet Shop Boys, or corn dogs,’ Rav said, when Jo had bought a house, and it was clear that predictions of commercial suicide had been exaggerated. ‘If the product is good you forget the name. It’s just a gateway. A portal to pleasure.’
‘Corn dogs aren’t a portal to pleasure,’ Clem said.
‘You have lived but half a life,’ Rav says.
I tell both Clem and Jo what Geoffrey said to me, doing the same sidestep of the detail about Dad I did with Esther.
‘You are kidding?’ Jo says, pausing with mouth full of Kirby grips. The way she’s winding the hair back in on itself and pinning it is masterful. ‘He said your life is a mess?’
‘Oh yeah. But if I “look lively” and take a job from him, I might just turn it around. I also “roar” around town like a “teenager” and lack a “pot to piss in”. Why do parents think they can attack you for hugely personal things? Imagine if you said to anyone else, who wasn’t your offspring: “You are single and poor and have no status. Oh and surely you’ve put on some timber there?” I
t’s savage.’
‘That is a fucking good point,’ Clem says, using her vape stick to prod the air for emphasis. ‘If you went round saying the stuff parents say to their adult kids, you’d be pegged as a sociopath. Like, just because they had unprotected sex thirty years ago, it doesn’t give them the right.’
‘And I’m not even Geoffrey’s kid! He loves step-parenthood in the most malign way imaginable – getting to order people around he didn’t have the bother of raising.’
Ranting when looking at yourself in a reflective surface isn’t entirely comfortable. I have the hair of Daisy Buchanan and the face of Ena Sharples.
‘I tell you something for free as well, if you took the job, then it’d be “why no partner”. If you got a boyfriend it’d be why not married, why haven’t you bought a house, then kid, then second kid. They’re never satisfied,’ Clem says. ‘My aunt’s like this, with her daughters versus me. She’s pitted us in an egg and spoon race ever since it was walking and reading ages, Mum says. Best thing to do is ignore them.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Jo says to me.
‘I don’t know. Unless he apologises, which I can’t see Geoffrey ever doing, I don’t know how I’m meant to stand being around him. Esther thinks I should play nice with him to support Mum.’
‘What does your mum see in him?’ Jo says.
‘One word, his money. OK, that’s two words. Ugh. I was about to say – never let me date anyone rich but lol, hardly likely.’
‘To be fair, Robin wasn’t exactly busking for coins,’ Clem says.
‘I’m not including Robin as we were never going to be in it for long haul and I’d have been better off putting my money in a Ponzi scheme as expecting any reliability from him.’
‘You need to avoid him at all costs. George,’ Jo says.
‘No, she should meet him for this drink and tell him to leave her alone. And take someone threatening with you,’ Clem says.
‘Like you?’
‘I was thinking someone who looks like they could break his arm off and feed it to him.’
‘Still you.’
‘Full-scale crisis, coven!’ Rav says, when we pile out of a taxi and through the doorway of our meeting place. Coven is his pet name for us. ‘I’ve seen some bell end dressed like a member of Kasabian buying a round of drinks with his fucking watch. We need to find another pub, and fast.’
We’ve made that error of going to a new bar in town for a special occasion, because new = special, forgetting that new also = untested. And in this case, disappointing. There’s an inhospitable lack of seats and the music volume is necessitating shouting.
‘Fucking hipsters,’ Clem says, surveying the diner-style stools and squirrel cage lightbulb candelabra, blowing steam out of the side of her mouth, the tampon-holder of her vape stick caught between two slender fingers with blood-red nails, like a modern day Bette Davis.
To be fair, it’s not as if Clem looks unhipsterish herself.
‘We need somewhere we can hear ourselves drink, but where we’re not going to feel total arseholes for being dressy. Think homely but with some style,’ Rav says.
Rav is in his amethyst wool trousers and I agree we can’t go to a Bull & Badger type place where they’re going to shout PONCE.
‘Hang on …’ Jo says, looking at me, ‘What about The Wicker?’
‘Oh bloody hell, it’s my night off!’ I say. As the words leave my mouth, I think: I’d get to see Lucas. When I’m dolled up. Sparks in my stomach. You can tell yourself all kinds of longform lies, but split second reactions reveal the truth.
‘Waaaait, that is actually a very strong notion,’ Clem says. ‘It’s nice there and we’d be treated VIP, because Georgina.’
Rav clasps the lapels of my coat. ‘Two rounds, maximum, George. Just to achieve lift-off.’
I roll my eyes, make a performance of conceding, and Clem starts tapping at her phone for a taxi. Ten minutes later, we’re at my place of work.
‘I’ll get the drinks, go sit down,’ I say, as they clatter off.
‘I thought you weren’t working tonight?’ Lucas says, frowning, taking in my extravagant hair and make-up.
‘My mates wanted to come here,’ I say, pulling a ‘yuck, sigh’ face. I’m rewarded with an actual Lucas laugh. ‘It’s my friend Rav’s birthday, we’re going on to the Leadmill.’
‘Alright. I’ll bring your drinks over. You can have table service, unless we get a rush on.’
‘Thank you!’
I smile. Lucas smiles back. And for the merest second, his eyes flicker from my face down to my outfit. It’s a claret lace prom shape gown with a deep V at the back, the zip starting so low it almost hits the knicker line and made underwear a headache. I’m wearing a strapless boned corset that’s so constrictive it feels like it’ll have reshaped me for good.
When I shoehorned myself into this, I didn’t for a second think I’d have to parade the results in front of Lucas. It makes me self-conscious in front of him in a new way.
It reminds me of another night, another red dress.
Kitty zooms over, squealing: ‘Oh my God, Georgina, you look like a film star! Doesn’t she, Lucas?’
I writhe.
‘You looked so fit I didn’t even think it was you at first,’ Kitty concludes.
I burst out laughing. ‘Uhhhh … thanks.’
‘Nice hair,’ Lucas says, mildly, as he starts pouring Rav’s lager and I mutter that my friend is a hairdresser. Is your hair real … real colour, that’s what I meant …
‘Where are you going? Leadmill? The men are going to be on you like pigeons on chips,’ Kitty says.
Lucas and I automatically meet each other’s gaze, and I don’t know if we’re saying anything to each other with this look.
I pick my way to the table, conscious of the air, and possibly eyes, on my bare skin, sweeping from neckline down my spine, leaving a trail of tingling skin in its wake. Am I imagining it?
Jo’s phone is on the table, it goes brrrrrrrrp with WhatsApp messages from Phil.
She flips her phone over and says: ‘Don’t let me reply.’
Then adds: ‘I’m doing the right thing, right? I am ninety-nine per cent sure and then I think, “You chucked him for inviting you to a wedding.”’
‘No, you chucked him for wanting the rights and time and emotional space of a boyfriend while insisting he wasn’t ready to be a boyfriend, wasting your energy and stopping you finding someone who does want to play that role in your life,’ I say.
‘You are very articulate for one so party ready,’ Clem says.
‘That’s true,’ Jo says. ‘But … do you think someone can change?’
Clem meets my eyes with a ‘uh oh’ expression.
‘Rav, you know the answer to this sort of thing,’ Jo says.
‘Hmm, well. Professionally my answer is yes, people can address behaviours, and choose not to repeat them, if they’re willing. I’d be out of a job if they couldn’t. Personally, I’d say no one ever changes in essentials. Your character is your character.’
‘So I have to figure out if Phil’s problem is behaviour or character.’
‘You have to pull someone else and move on,’ Clem says.
‘Hi. Whose is whose?’ Lucas counts out the drinks, as everyone looks up at him with interest.
‘Clem,’ Clem says, shooting a hand out to shake his, after the last drink is set down. ‘I don’t think we met at G’s stand-up night. What do you think, Lucas? Join our philosophical conversation. Can anyone ever change?’
‘Can anyone ever change?’
‘Yeah,’ Clem says.
I bury my face in my drink.
‘My view is no, definitely not. How’s that? Too nihilistic?’
‘My kind of boy,’ Clem says, and I widen my eyes at her.
‘And why do you think that?’ Rav says.
‘In my experience, whatever you call “change” is finding more out about someone’s nature. But it was always there.
’
My exposed skin prickles.
‘Having a real laugh for your birthday, then?’ Lucas adds, and Rav guffaws.
‘How much is that?’ I say hurriedly to Lucas, pointing at the drinks.
‘I’ll stick it on a tab, make it right tomorrow.’
I have a premonition that this tab won’t materialise, and Lucas is looking after me. ‘Enjoy. Oh, and happy birthday,’ he says to a gratified Rav.
‘Good lord,’ Clem hisses as he retreats, and Jo says: ‘Wow, he is so good looking it’s quite nonsensical.’
‘Telling me. I think my cervix just dilated,’ Clem says, and I hiss: ‘SSHHHHHH SHUT UP OH MY GOD.’
Why didn’t I consider this could happen? They’d not noticed Lucas on the Share Your Shame night, so I’d forgotten, become complacent.
I have to find a way to say: I am not interested in this man and yet he is completely off limits to you forever, no questions allowed.
‘Oh my God, why did you never mention him?’ Clem says, as her eyes track him back round the bar.
‘Actually, I did,’ I say, in a low voice. ‘Guy from school?’
‘Waaaait. He was in our English class?’ Jo says. ‘How do I not remember him?’
‘This is the one who can’t remember you?’ Rav asks.
I nod.
‘He doesn’t strike me as the forgetful type.’
‘Well,’ I draw breath, gird my loins, and say, in a ‘subject closed’ sort of airy tone: ‘What possible reason could he have for pretending to forget me?’
As I know from the discussion in Rajput’s, the view is he could have plenty reason, but I take a leaf from Lucas’s playbook and sound decisively certain.
Incredibly, combined with the free shots that Kitty suddenly materialises with, it works.
27
‘I don’t wish to be melancholy, but at thirty-one, I wonder how many more years I have left until the pursuit becomes undignified,’ Rav shouts in my ear, as we suck on our drinks and survey the dancefloor.
‘Don’t be downhearted. It was always undignified.’
Four has become two: Clem’s being chatted up by a Jarvis Cocker lookalike. Jo’s gone outside to field a lengthy phone call from Phil. We suspect a reunion pends.
Don't You Forget About Me Page 20