‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Carmen! You mad bridge burner, get a taxi. I can see you for a bit before I have to do the pre-record of the show.’
4
Marcus was riding high on success – both as a stand-up comic and now as a presenter of a Friday-night chat show on Channel 4. He had been one of Carmen’s first discoveries and they had quickly become friends, though Carmen was always aware of the client/agent divide. In a way it was a relief when Marcus left the agency, as it made their friendship uncomplicated. Carmen hoped that Marcus would have some words of wisdom for her as she was shown to his dressing room by an ultra-efficient male PA, complete with headset, walkie-talkie and clipboard. Just once, she thought, she would like to meet an ultra-inefficient TV PA.
Because she had known Marcus pre-fame, it never failed to amuse her watching him being given the star treatment. Right now he was sitting in front of a large mirror while Tara, his make-up artist, blended foundation into his practically perfect skin. Marcus was achingly good-looking, with dark blond hair, brown eyes, and lashes so long that people were forever asking if they were fake. They were not. But under that oh-so-pretty exterior was a sharp mind and an even sharper wit, and you dismissed him as a pretty boy at your peril. Carmen had met Tara many times and always figured that make-up artists had heard it all before and that nothing phased them, so she prepared to launch herself into her tale of woe.
‘Hey,’ she said, moving a pile of newspapers and celeb mags and plonking herself down on the sofa with Basil next to her. ‘Meet the unemployed saddo.’
Marcus arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow in her direction. ‘I suppose you’re waiting for me to give you a lecture so you can justify yourself, but actually I think it’s the best thing you’ve ever done.’
‘I don’t know what happened to me,’ Carmen babbled. She was surfacing from her dive into the deep end and panic had taken hold. ‘I mean, I’ve only got that ten grand I was left by Nana Lesley. I don’t know what I’m going to do next. Nick is having a baby, so that means I’ll probably have to sell the flat. My pension is probably worth all of fifty pence. I’ll have to work at Asda forever when I’m old, and yes, I know they sell lots of organic products, but it’s not Waitrose, is it? And they’ll probably have to bury me in that black and fluorescent green fleece because that’s the only item of clothing I’ll own. And I still haven’t paid for that Alexander McQueen biker jacket that you made me buy because you said it was an investment piece. Gok Wan wouldn’t have made me buy it. He would have sourced something for me from the high street but, oh no, I had to be friends with a high-end-designer fashionista gay. And I bet you’ll drop me now I can’t go out to all those expensive restaurants, or buy designer clothes. And I’m such a fucking cliché having a gay best friend and being single. And last night Will kissed me but today he seems to barely want to know me. And did I tell you that Nick’s having a baby?’
Tara handed Carmen a large handful of tissues. For a second Carmen couldn’t think why, and then she realised that she was crying, huge, fat tears spurting out of her eyes and cascading down her cheeks.
‘I’m going to get a different foundation, I’ll be back in a bit,’ Tara said diplomatically, heading for the door.
‘Oh God, I must sound deranged if I’ve made Tara leave the room. I thought she’d heard it all.’
Marcus came and sat next to Carmen on the sofa and put his arm round her. Now his tone was serious, sympathetic. ‘Stop making light of what’s happened. The Nick news is big, you’re bound to be reeling. I’m so sorry, Carmen.’ He paused to allow Carmen to mop up the tears and blow her nose. ‘You must have known it would happen sometime, though?’
‘Sometime,’ Carmen sniffed. ‘Not so soon. I thought I would be more sorted in my head, in a place where I could accept it. It makes me feel like such a failure.’
‘Don’t be silly, you’re’, – ‘Marcus switched to his American accent – ‘intelligent, talented and gifted.’
‘Just don’t say “go girlfriend”,’ Carmen replied, managing the smallest of smiles in spite of the situation.
‘Well, it was you who said you wished you’d been friends with Gok. Seriously, Carmen, leaving Fox Nicholson is just the best thing you’ve done in ages. You were ossifying there in that horrid little glass cage, and you know it. Give yourself six months and go off and write that drama – you’ll regret it forever if you don’t. As for Will, he probably felt awkward because of work, but by the sounds of things he likes you.’ Marcus paused. ‘As for the baby thing, what can I say? It’s not fair, it’s wretched and cruel and I wish more than anything that it wasn’t so.’
‘I know,’ Carmen said in a small voice. ‘There is nothing more to say.’
Marcus gave her another hug. ‘You can always talk to me, even if we have the same conversation over and over and over, you know that.’ He checked his watch and frowned. ‘Except now. I’m sorry, the show starts recording in ten minutes, I’m going to have to get on. Is Sadie around? I don’t want to think of you on your own.’
‘Actually, I think I just want to be on my own right now.’
‘Alright, Greta Garbo, I’ll call you later. By the way, what’s with the cactus?’
‘This is not just a cactus. This is Basil, he likes Motown.’
That comment received another arch of the eyebrow, ‘You’ve named a plant? Sweetie, you really need to go home and rest. Everything will seem better in the morning and you’ll realise that Basil is just a plant with attitude.’
Back at her North London flat Carmen’s instinct for self-preservation kicked in. She was suddenly exhausted, barely able to put one shoe-booted foot in front of the other. The adrenalin which had been firing her up all day had drained away. There were several messages from Will on her mobile and on her home answerphone asking her to call him urgently, but she really wasn’t up to speaking to him. Instead of hitting the vodka, which was what she had intended as soon as she left Marcus, she made herself a hot chocolate, put on her pyjamas and listened to her all-time favourite Victoria Wood CD, whose comedy always made her feel as if the world was not quite as bad as she feared it was, as she retreated under the duvet. Maybe in the morning her troubles would have melted away like lemon drops.
But in the morning her troubles felt like bloody massive boulders as not one but three bills landed on her doorstep – including the credit card bill with the unpaid jacket. ‘Bloody Marcus!’ she exclaimed to Basil, who had pride of place on the desk in the living room. He did look a little lonely, though. Perhaps she should download that Motown track and get him a little friend? She was all set to google cacti pals when she stepped back. That way madness lay. She also had another new message on her answerphone. It was Nick. ‘Hi again, hope you’re okay. I’m sorry to load this on you as well but when I get back from the tour we really need to talk about the flat. I’m sorry, Carmen. Speak soon.’
When Carmen and Nick had separated it had been agreed that she should have the flat for the time being. Somehow the time being had always felt as if it should be longer than nine months. It wasn’t as if she liked the flat that much, as it overlooked a busy main road and was in a sort of in-between place – on the borders of trendy Crouch End and the not-so-upmarket Hornsey. It was next to a fire station, so evenings were frequently punctuated by the beep-beep-beep of the station doors opening and the whoop-whoop of a siren. Though the location also had its perks as in the summer the firemen would sit outside playing cards and some were really rather lovely. The best features of the flat – a third-floor Victorian conversion – were the fire-places, high ceilings and a roof garden with a great view of the local park and of the aforementioned fire station (not that she was stalking the boys in uniform in any kind of pervy way, but pickings had been thin on the ground since her separation). For all its shortcomings, this was her home and she really didn’t think she was up to dealing with Nick’s baby news, leaving her job and losing her home all at once. That would surely count as stress overload.
Carmen spent the next hour fielding calls from her concerned friends. First was Jess, one of her oldest friends from uni: ‘Carmen, Marcus rang me, how are you?’ Jess was mother of one son, married to Sean, also a friend from uni. She lived in Brighton where she worked as a part-time English teacher at a sixth-form college.
‘Oh, you know, just doing the usual positive things one does at a time like this – not getting dressed, wallowing in a pit of despair, watching daytime TV.’
‘I know things seem bad right now, and I’m really sorry about Nick and the baby. But you will feel better for leaving your job, I’m sure. Why don’t you come down to see us at the weekend? Sean could babysit and I could take you out for dinner. It’s been ages since I saw you.’
Jess was right, it was a good four months. Since she and Sean had moved to Brighton Carmen had seen much less of her friend. ‘Thanks, Jess, but it’s Matthew’s farewell party, and apparently mine. Another time would be great, though.’
The next call came from another good friend, Sadie, an actress. Given the roles were quite thin on the ground and she was yet to land a much-coveted part in Spooks or Waking the Dead, Sadie often worked for BBC Radio 4 as a freelance continuity announcer. She had a deep, sexy voice that conjured up dark chocolate and velvet. The news never sounded quite so bad when she delivered it. People, for that read men, always assumed that with such a voice Sadie was some kind of sex siren; Carmen had been to many a party with Sadie where married men were stopped in their tracks and came over all dreamy when she opened her mouth. And she was forever receiving emails, letters, poems and gifts from her admirers, several of which were treated as suspicious packages by the BBC post room but were subsequently X-rayed and found to contain nothing more dangerous than racy underwired bras. But Sadie was no temptress. If you had to sum her up you’d say she was ditzy, obsessed with fashion and dating comedians. She was pretty, with wild, curly blonde hair, brown eyes and a dimple on her left cheek. ‘Darling Carmen, are you okay? I heard from Marcus. You should have called me last night, I would have come round.’
‘Thanks, Sadie, but I needed to sort it out in my head.’
‘And have you?’
Carmen sighed. ‘Not really, and especially not about Nick and the baby. I keep thinking about him and Marian going off to the first scan and doing all those things that expectant parents do and—’ here her voice caught.
‘And it’s really tough for you,’ Sadie said gently. ‘Which is why we’re all here for you.’ Indeed, Carmen’s friends had been there for her throughout the awful roller-coaster ride of fertility treatment. At times she must have driven them mad by going over the same ground, and she couldn’t bear for that to start up again. She wanted to be there for her friends now, didn’t want to be poor Carmen again, wanted to be the happy, carefree Carmen she had been some five years ago, back in the day, when she imagined her future included a baby.
‘I know you are, and it means a lot. But I need distraction now, so tell me how things are with you and Dom.’
Dom was the latest in a long line of comics Sadie had gone out with. She had a weakness for them and persisted in a naive belief that because they made her laugh when they were performing, they would make her laugh in the relationship. They seldom did. Carmen realised that Nick had been an exception, as he was relatively well balanced, not prone to bouts of depression, and no more egotistical than any other man. But Nick aside, dating a comedian was rarely an amusing experience. As the girlfriend you were expected to go to all their gigs and hear them recite the same routine, massage their egos that were generally the size of a continent and invariably pay for everything because they were broke. Once Sadie had gone out with a comedian who had mined their sex life for source material, and even then it had taken her an entire month to dump him for it. Any other woman would have got rid of him on the spot, or sewn prawns into the hem of his curtains or cut off one leg of each of his suits – not that the comedian in question had any suits or indeed any curtains, and Sadie was allergic to shellfish, but that wasn’t the point. A dramatic act of revenge had been called for, and Sadie had flunked it.
A deep sigh from Sadie. ‘Well, he asked me out for dinner, so I was hoping for somewhere lovely, as I have paid for the last three meals. Guess where he took me?’
‘The Ivy?’ Carmen said hopefully, knowing Sadie loved going there.
‘He took me to KFC because he was doing some research for one of his jokes. K fucking F fucking C!’ Now that was a Sadie the Radio 4 listeners had yet to be treated to.
‘I had chicken in a bucket and I was wearing my brand new Miu Miu red suede platforms.’ Sadie’s velvety tones were turning a tad screechy-meets-estuary; she would end up on Radio 1 if she wasn’t careful.
‘Just tell me you didn’t go back and have sex with him after that?’ Sadie’s compulsion to pick complete and utter tossers as boyfriends never ceased to amaze Carmen. It was almost as if she had been genetically programmed to only ever go for the wanker.
Another sigh. Which Carmen took to mean yes.
‘Well, don’t tell me you did that thing for him again, did you?’
That thing involved Sadie recounting an imaginary shipping forecast, while Dom got down to business. Dom had apparently been fantasising about Sadie long before he met her, having heard her on Radio 4. Apparently he especially loved hearing her read out the shipping forecast and gale warnings issued by the Met Office. Carmen didn’t like to imagine what Dom was doing as he listened but she bet checking the forecast for factual information was not part of it.
Another sigh. But then a giggle. ‘He only got up to Rockall. And I felt like saying, at least you got your rocks off, which is more than I did.’
‘Please tell me you’re not going to see him again,’ Carmen implored, with all the hopelessness of King Canute trying to stop the tide.
‘Oh, he’s quite sweet really.’
Carmen ended the call agreeing to meet up soon but felt that further warnings about Dom were fruitless.
Will called her mobile again but as soon as she saw his number flash up she switched her phone off. Along with her job at Fox Nicholson she might as well kiss goodbye to that little flirtation. She very much doubted Will would be interested in her now she was unemployed, and she wasn’t up to hearing him trying to be nice but inside pitying her.
Flopping down on the sofa, Carmen let out a long sigh. She felt so crushed by Nick’s news, she just wanted to lie down and cry. It brought back so many unwelcome memories of the last two years of her marriage. The whole trying for a baby thing had left her feeling so drained that she supposed she had never really looked to the future and thought about what would happen to Nick. She’d been totally wrapped up in herself. And now as Nick made his way into a baby-filled sunset, there really was no escaping the fact that it had been her fault that she couldn’t get pregnant. She was left behind feeling like a defective being, the reject.
On the second day of unemployment the reject finally got out of her pyjamas. She caught the W7 to Finsbury Park. Carmen always remembered Nick pointing out that backwards Finsbury Park spelt krapy rubsnif – only a man would ever bother to work that one out. She caught the Victoria Line to Oxford Circus to find a suitably stylish leaving present for Matthew. She found it in Liberty’s – always good for calming the soul even if she couldn’t afford anything in there – in the shape of a wonderfully flamboyant tie which was over her budget but which she put on her card, because it was so Matthew. Then she decided to say goodbye to Rico and Mamma Mia.
As soon as Carmen walked in Rico exclaimed, ‘Carmen, is it true you h
ave left your job? I have so missed seeing you!’ His handsome face was indeed quite scrunched up with concern.
‘Yep, so there will be no more croissants and lattes for me, I’m afraid.’
‘Maybe not here, but somewhere else?’ Mamma Mia joined her at the counter.
‘Yes, somewhere else,’ Carmen said and suddenly felt terribly sad that she would no longer see Rico, even though his flirting had got on her nerves at times.
‘So you will sit down with me and have a latte?’ Mamma Mia said. ‘It’ll be on me now you’re un employed. Temporarily, I’m sure.’ She clicked her fingers at Rico. ‘Un espresso e un latte.’
Carmen slid on to the red leatherette bench at one of the white formica tables. Mamma Mia managed to wedge herself in opposite. Her girth was impressive but she carried it well and somehow looked formidable and solid rather than, well, fat. Maybe it was the black dress.
Rico came over with the coffees and two glasses of Strega, hardly Carmen’s first choice of a mid-morning beverage, but she was going to have to knock it back. Mamma Mia would be offended if she didn’t. Rico hovered nearby, clearly expecting to be asked to join them. Mamma Mia shooed him away, with some more orders in Italian.
‘Children!’ She rolled her nut-brown eyes. ‘Not always a blessing, Carmen. I know as an Italian I am not supposed to say that, but sometimes it is true.’
‘I wish I could find that out for myself,’ Carmen replied sadly. The feeling of lethargy and hopelessness was once more settling on her like an unwelcome blanket.
‘Maybe you will one day,’ Mamma Mia said wisely.
‘Not going to happen. Can’t have them. It’s a fact.’ There, she’d said it. Usually she never told anyone, except her very closest friends, but there was something about Mamma Mia that demanded total honesty.
A Funny Thing About Love Page 6