I excitedly outlined the whole drama to Ben at the launderette’s, as I loaded the drum with my clothes. Normally, the start of the second year and ‘living out’ would herald having a washing machine. Ours was broken, and the lack of turnaround time between holiday and back-to-uni had left me with a dirty laundry backlog. Ben had volunteered to sit with me during the spin cycle and then go get a coffee. He was house sharing with the lads from the flats, and although he’d filtered out the worst of them, the best of them still wasn’t exactly panning for gold. (For example, even he’d admitted it wasn’t advisable for me to use their Zanussi unless I wanted to return from the coffee to find them all wearing my smalls on their heads.)
‘How did he have a bag packed for you without telling your folks?’ Ben asked, as I boasted about sapphire seas and cultural sightseeing.
‘Oh, it wasn’t my stuff. He went to Boots and bought me a toothbrush and got me a bikini. And some other things.’
Actually, it was a comically stripped down, in more than one sense, male fantasy idea of what a woman might need on a surprise sunshine getaway. The detour to my family home had the benefit I could get the things I needed without hurting his feelings.
‘Right.’ Ben glanced down at what was in my hand and with some horror I realised it was a school-girlish broderie anglaise bra that was a good few shades away from Daz bright. I hastily bundled it into the machine, slammed the door and fed it with coins.
We sat down together on the slatted wooden bench.
‘The look on the warlock of a landlord’s face when I left,’ I crowed. ‘It was great.’
‘Sounds it. Greece with Rhys,’ Ben said.
‘It was amazing!’
‘Sure. Lots of sun and … swimming and stuff?’ Ben rubbed his chin.
‘Yeah.’ I sighed. I knew I was being insufferable. I was in that vile realm of ‘all broadcast, no reception’ smug coupledom where I couldn’t stop.
The bell on the launderette door jingled and a girl entered. A girl in the same way an Aston Martin Vanquish is a car: it was Georgina Race. This was a name that any male of the undergraduate population was incapable of uttering without the accompanying exhalation. She was instantly identifiable by her sheet of incredible shiny copper hair, a colour so intense it was as if she walked the planet with a Royal Albert Hall follow-spot on her. It was impossible for your eyes to slide past her – and once they were on her, there wasn’t much to quibble with, as my dad would’ve said. She had a porcelain, doll-like face that looked as if it had been sketched for the cover of a Mills & Boon paperback. You could absolutely imagine her in a ragged blouse, wilting in the bulky arms of the arrogant Prince Xaviero.
Georgina was on my course. She had perfected the art of the lecture hall entrance, standing at the front of the room and scanning the half-empty rows for a spare seat, knowing every male in the place was trying to will her near. Ben would usually nudge me, clasping his hands in a ‘prayer’ gesture under the desk, to which I’d make a hand-shaking ‘wanker’ gesture in return. They were all shit out of luck, though: rumour had it she was dating some soap actor in London.
This crisp September morning, Georgina was looking equally crisp: she had an apple-green scarf knotted at her white swan throat and a short swingy patterned dress that served to highlight her long long legs that didn’t appear to get any wider as they went up. Over the top she was wearing a navy frock coat that clung to her waist and flared out in folds around her violin-shaped hips. All in all, she looked like she should be striding down Carnaby Street a few decades ago with men who looked like a young Michael Caine lowering their spectacles and wolf-whistling.
She was clearly a bitch. I just had to find hard evidence.
‘Hey Ben!’ she trilled, spotting him and breezing over. ‘What’re you doing here?’
She knows Ben? And what the hell do you think he’s doing here, I thought. Ordering a frittata, getting a slippy gearbox checked out, waiting for the results of a splenic biopsy?
‘Waiting with Ron here. Her washing machine’s knackered.’
Georgina’s eyes moved reluctantly to me, only for a moment. ‘Ahhh. Nightmare, right?’
I nodded. Annoyingly, I felt a little of that beautiful person dazzle, as if a celebrity had acknowledged me, and couldn’t speak.
‘What’re you doing here?’ he asked. ‘Getting clothes washed, I guess?’
‘Dropping some stuff for the dry-cleaning service,’ she said, unlatching some probably-incredibly-expensive slinky things in monogrammed garment bags from her shoulder, by way of demonstration. ‘Cashmere, etcetera.’
I couldn’t help but notice she had slender arms like carved willow and tiny, fluttery-butterfly, delicate hands, screws of translucent tissue paper. In the genetic lottery, she’d won a triple rollover.
‘Listen, we should totally do that thing we talked about? The dinner?’ she said.
‘Sure. Let me know when?’
‘Certainly will,’ she said, with a little feline moue, and a flirtily-eyelinered wink. ‘See you around, yeah?’
She left her dry cleaning, breezed out and did a tips-of-the-fingers coy wave to Ben as she went. I said, trying very hard not to sound like a bitter nosy nag and failing: ‘Uhm. What thing you talked about?’
I fully expected Ben to dissemble about some vague plan to hit up the Pizza Hut all-you-can-eat buffet for a gorge-til-you-gag.
‘A date.’
‘A date?’ I repeated, as if he’d said ‘bumming otters, hanging on to their whiskers like they’re handlebars’.
‘Yeah. Is it that amazing?’
‘I didn’t think she went out with students, that’s all. Thought it was strictly cool successful older guys in other cities.’
‘Like you, you mean?’ Ben smirked. Touché. And before I could retort, Ben continued: ‘Everyone was second guessing so I thought I’d ask her. He who dares wins.’
This got worse. He’d asked her? I couldn’t deny that in some ways, it was a match ordained by heaven: the prom king and queen of English Literature & Language.
‘Cashmere, etcetera,’ I mimicked.
Ben didn’t rise to it. I had a sense that karmically, I’d pushed hard on a swing door.
24
Pete Gretton and I share the press bench in the later half of the week for the opening of a medical negligence trial. It concerns the very untimely death of a twenty-nine-year-old woman in a liposuction procedure, and two NHS doctors and a nurse at a private practice being prosecuted for negligence and manslaughter. There are several stringers from the agencies – a more geographically mobile, less seedy strain of freelancer than Gretton. He’s here because we’ve heard there’ll be some fairly gory details of operative complications and dislodged fat particles. Gretton is a rogue collection of cells himself, travelling around the arteries of the building and causing dangerously high blood pressure whenever he comes to a halt.
‘They can’t all be to blame,’ he mutters, before the court’s in session. ‘How many people does it take to stick a drip in an arm? CPS are simply chucking a handful of mud and hoping something sticks. Chewit?’
I shake my head at the proffered packet. ‘No thanks.’
‘On a diet?’
‘Get lost.’
Gretton bares yellow incisors. ‘Not to worry, most men like some meat on the bones. Hey, mind you, sounds like this ’un was taking it too far. Pushing twenty stone, I heard. Spherical.’
He chews noisily, giving me a view of his half-masticated sweet.
‘Shut up,’ I hiss, glancing at the heavy-set family in the public gallery, and twist my body as far away from him as possible. I need an I’m Not With Stupid t-shirt.
Solicitors are in hushed conference with barristers, papers are shuffled, people in the public gallery cough and shift in their seats.
A couple of the wigged-and-gowned fraternity are having a quiet chuckle about something that’s probably hilarious if you’re familiar with the intricacies of malpractice, and I se
e the family peering at them in irritated disbelief. I sympathise. It’s hard to believe that your earth-shattering calamity is merely another day at the office for people who do this kind of thing for a living.
Most of the time, journalists are rubber-necking tourists who can grasp the basic concepts involved. Dog bites man, man bites dog, man bites man because his dog looked at him funny, and so on. With a case like this, you have to become a short-term expert in a specific area of a highly skilled profession. Whenever a judge tetchily instructs a barrister or witness to simplify the terminology for the sake of the jury, the press bench heaves a near-audible sigh of relief.
As I leave the courtroom at lunchtime, I see Zoe in conversation with a woman I recognise from the public gallery.
Gretton’s seconds behind me, as ever.
‘What the fuck is she up to?’
‘Talking,’ I say.
Zoe and the woman look over at us; Zoe bends her head conspiratorially.
‘You want to grow some fuzz on your balls,’ Gretton says. ‘She’s talking to someone involved in this case. Don’t you care?’
‘Not really. She might be asking the time, for all we know.’
‘You’re bloody naïve, you are.’
‘It’s called trust.’
‘Trust? That girl doesn’t lie straight in bed.’
‘You didn’t like Zoe from the start, did you?’
‘I’ve got her number.’
I smile. ‘Takes one to know one, perhaps.’
Gretton trousers his Chewits and marches off, nostrils flaring.
Zoe walks up to me. ‘Pub o’clock?’
I nod. Since I took Zoe to The Castle, she’s assumed it as a weekly routine, and I surprised myself by not only acquiescing but actually enjoying it. Normally my lunchtimes are spent in jealously guarded semi-seclusion in the press room. I didn’t expect to make a friend.
Outside, I say: ‘Gretton got all unwound about you speaking to that woman. Who was she?’
‘Guess!’
‘Sister of my lipo victim?’
‘Mum. I saw them milling around earlier and I could tell she was going to appoint herself the gobby spokesperson so I got in early. I told her what Gretton said about how her daughter would be still be alive if she’d had her spoon surgically removed from the Häagen-Dazs.’
I stop in my tracks. ‘You didn’t?’
‘I did, and I said if she wants to talk afterwards, she should talk to you.’
‘But … Gretton said that in the press room.’
‘So?’
‘I know that was Gretton at his worst but we all say off-colour things about the cases in there from time to time. You shouldn’t share them round.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s just not done.’
Zoe bites her lip. ‘I went too far, didn’t I?’
We start walking again, I shift the weight of my bag to the other shoulder. ‘It’s definitely playing dirty. If Gretton finds out, he’ll go ape.’
‘Sorry. He was so nasty about her I thought it served him right.’
‘I know. Bear in mind you could’ve messed it up for all of us. The public don’t tend to make much distinction between good journalists and Grettons. A lot of them don’t even understand about open court. They’re amazed they can’t have us thrown out.’
‘I’m really sorry.’
‘Ah well … sensitive “our pain” interviews aren’t his forte, I can’t see him cosying up to the mum, so it probably won’t become an issue anyway. And he’ll hack them off by doing lots of gratuitous exploding arse stories during the trial.’
Conversation’s interrupted while we negotiate road crossing. When we resume progress, Zoe says: ‘My mum’s large.’
‘Really?’ I glance doubtfully at her sapling limbs.
‘I got my dad’s metabolism,’ she says. ‘Yeah, she looked into gastric banding at one point. But she was too big.’
‘Why would they …’ I start again. ‘Isn’t that the point?’
Zoe mutters something about surgery and anaesthesia risk.
‘Then she finally lost the weight and got the band, and started drinking those chocolate-flavoured protein shakes for body builders.’
‘Right. Liquids are probably best, at first. What with the smaller space.’
‘Not if you chug them all day and end up the size you were when you were turned down for surgery.’
‘Ah,’ I say. Poor Zoe – her jet-propelled ambition is probably a result of wanting to get a long way from problems at home.
‘Gretton hit a nerve,’ she concludes.
I feel bad for telling her off. I squeeze her arm.
‘Gretton hits all our nerves. Don’t dwell on it.’
‘Should I take back what I said? Tell the mum I misheard or something?’
‘I doubt she’d forget the ice-cream gag. Nah, leave it. Thanks for pointing her my way, too,’ I add, not wanting to sound ungrateful.
‘Any time,’ Zoe says. ‘We’re a team. Lunch is on me today. I’m going to try a Piscine Ploughman.’
‘A pissing ploughman?’
‘Smoked salmon sandwich.’
‘Oh.’
‘I made that up.’
‘Thank goodness.’
‘They call it Fishy on a Dishy.’
‘You’re ordering,’ I say, opening the pub door and ushering Zoe through. ‘I suffer enough humiliation without going looking for more.’
25
‘Oi!’ Caroline shouted, over the aircraft-like noise of my travel hairdryer. I clicked it off. ‘Ben for you!’
I galloped down the stairs of our student house to the hallway. We rarely made outgoing calls – our landlord had installed a payphone at his own rate that gobbled up coins like a sweating diabetic with Giant Smarties.
‘Ron! Culinary SOS!’ Ben said. ‘I’m making dinner for Georgina and it has TURNED TO SHIT.’
‘You’re cooking?’ I said, laughing and simultaneously envying Georgina for being the kind of woman men sweat over a flambée to impress. ‘Why not go out?’
‘She got the wrong end of the stick and I didn’t know how to set her straight. She was all …’ Ben affected the breathy, 1950s starlet voice she used with men rather well ‘… I can’t wait to try your cooking, Ben.’
‘Haha, this is going to be great! You best call on the little hombre from Homepride.’
‘She’s not the kind of girl who’s going to find it funny to be served a Findus Crispy Pancake sandwich, is she?’
Ben lived with boys who re-used dirty plates by putting clingfilm over them instead of washing up. Georgina was going to need a robust constitution and all her vaccinations, I thought.
‘I can’t vouch for her sense of humour but I’ve never seen her crack a smile. Even in those laugh-a-minute linguistics lectures.’
‘Help! What do I do?’
I gave an exaggerated sigh.
‘How long have you got until she comes round?’
‘Three hours … no, wait, two hours forty-five minutes!’
‘And what’s my budget if I go to the supermarket on the way to yours?’
‘Whatever it takes! You’re my angel.’
‘Yeah yeah.’
I turned up at Ben’s house in my knitted woolly hat carrying misshapen supermarket bags with steadily lengthening handles in each hand.
‘Lemme in, these are going to break,’ I said, barging through the porch and plopping them unceremoniously on the hallway floor.
‘Ah Ron, bless you.’ Ben rescued a tub of crème fraîche as it rolled towards the coat-stand.
‘I’ve bought you flowers too,’ I said, producing a cellophane cornet of white hothouse roses from one of the bags. ‘I feel as if I’m seducing someone by proxy, like Cyrano de Bergerac.’
‘Superb!’
I knew I must’ve been fond of Ben, ’cos I sure as hell didn’t want to be seducing Georgina Race with anything more than a bouquet of stinging nettles, severed rat tails
and tampon strings. And yet, apparently, I was.
With the help of supermarket recipe idea cards, we assembled something fairly respectable: asparagus starters, stuffed chicken breasts, potato gratin, white chocolate mousse with raspberries. I delegated tasks to Ben and he put music on while we worked. He actually proved quite an able deputy. The fridge gradually filled up with foil-wrapped dishes.
‘I didn’t know you could cook,’ he said.
‘I can’t, really. I’m making it up as I go along.’
‘Now she tells me.’
‘Here are the timings.’ I jotted down oven temperatures on a scrap of paper and tucked them behind the kettle. ‘Follow them in that order and give her the bubbly as soon as she arrives. You can get away with much imperfection when people are pissed. What are you wearing?’
‘A shirt?’ said Ben, uncertain. He was in a red ’66 World Cup top. It directly contravened Article 7.1 of Rhys’s Wanker Law that stated you didn’t advertise any event you hadn’t attended, any place you’d never been, or any band you didn’t really listen to.
‘Think smart. No sports-related casual wear.’
‘Got it.’
‘I’ll leave you to get ready.’
I pulled my coat on, picked my hat up. ‘Good luck,’ I said.
‘You are my angel and your reward is in heaven,’ Ben said.
‘It’s certainly not on earth,’ I grumbled.
As I walked back to my house, something niggled, and it wasn’t the fact I’d cooked a meal I wasn’t going to eat.
Knocking round with Ben platonically – catching the odd envious look from girls who misconstrued the situation – obscured something that could be decreed by any efficient eugenics programme: boys like him dated and procreated with girls like Georgina Race. I didn’t want to date, much less procreate with, either of them, but there was something diminishing in having it confirmed.
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