Behaving Like Adults

by Anna Maxted

  Both Monday and Tuesday would be sucked up by planning meetings for the wretched thing. I was forced to postpone my self-defence class to Wednesday. I did do one thing for myself though. I rang Stuart’s PA, Camille, and I told her never to stay late with Stuart in the office. Judging from her cool response, she thought I’d spoken out of turn. I didn’t think so. She’d been at my party, so we’d met each other socially. It was my duty to warn her. Rage simmered and spat and it was either a nuisance call to Camille, or the purchase of a sledgehammer from Sainsbury’s Homebase, the smashing of Stuart’s skull to a red and yellow fragmented pulp and the ruin of the carpet in his lobby.

  I tell a lie. Not all of Monday and Tuesday were sucked up by planning meetings. A good third was sucked up by Nige and Claw feasting on the gossip of Friday night.

  Camille. Nige worried about the name Camille. It sounded like camel. Claudia disagreed. It was an elegant name, the name of a French film star. What French film star? I meant generically, Nige, you idiot. Nige wanted to know if anyone had noticed that Rachel’s number plate was E103 POO. Claw giggled. The fear of buying a car with the number plate POO – or come to that, CAK, or indeed, BUM – had dogged her since childhood. I’d fretted about it too, until I’d actually bought a car and found that, unless you annoy them, they give you a choice.

  Ooh, said Nige, and wasn’t Bo a sight with a face as long as a horse? Oh, said Claudia, that was normal. Bo was always in a grouch. ‘She was in a mood with Manjit,’ I offered, having some inside information on this, ‘because on Thursday night she dreamed he cheated on her.’ We all – even me – honked with laughter. Then, inevitably, talk turned to Nige’s career. The ad was being shot on Thursday. Claw wanted to know if, when Nige had a love scene with a lady, he ever got ‘visibly excited’ and if he did get a monster stiffy, what happened? Nige smirked. This was plainly a question he’d been asked a few times and therefore had a neat answer to. ‘Before we even kiss, I say to her, “I apologise if I do, and I apologise if I don’t!”’

  Then Issy arrived and put an end to merriment. Tuesday night did need a lot of organising. We had to remind everyone who’d wanted to participate, and triple check that they were coming. ‘Elisabeth was well keen, when I last spoke to her,’ said Nige. ‘She’d sell her soul to Chris Tarrant to get on cable.’

  ‘Hark at you,’ remarked Claw.

  Nige stuck his nose in the air. ‘Terrestrial. There’s a world of difference. You were dealing with her though, Hol, weren’t you? Didn’t you have someone for her?’

  I looked at my feet, ruffled my notebook. Plan B, find a man for Elisabeth who was so lip-smacking, Nick would be fish and chip paper. ‘Well,’ I said reluctantly, ‘I’d prefer it if you rang her. But I have been thinking about Samson.’

  Nige laughed a dirty laugh. ‘I’ll bet you have, darlin’! No, nice one. I’m happy to deal with her. And what about cute liddle Xak as her finale?’

  He wrote down Samson as Elisabeth’s first date and Xak as her last, and I felt peeved.

  ‘What are we going to do about Sam and Bernard, they’re booked in for this week,’ said Claudia.

  ‘We’ll do a Wednesday nighter,’ said Nige quickly, glancing at me.

  I frowned. If there was an overlap, we’d have two date evenings, but it happened rarely. And it wasn’t as if the filmed night was oversubscribed. ‘I don’t see why—’

  Nige interrupted. ‘Well, dearest, you must be blind because we can all see why. Sam and Bernard are uggers, and that’s the plain, pimpley old truth. This agency is for beautiful people, that’s our yoo ess pee. It’s alright to make the odd exception, and I mean, odd, but not when we are being filmed. TV adds ten pounds to your weight – why else do you think I’m down to one doughnut a day – and Bernard is fat. Put him on TV, and he’ll look like Marlon Brando. We can’t have it, we’ll get all sorts of mutants ringing up, and none of the sort of people we want to attract.’

  This silenced me, and I remained quiet for the next twenty minutes as they plotted their showcase matches. Two of the pairs from last week wanted to see each other again, said Claw, so that was easy – guaranteed good publicity. They were all high on sugar and the scent of fame, it felt to me as if the room was one big grin. I wrote down whatever they said, so as to look studious and give myself a valid excuse for not talking. Only I knew we were playing Russian roulette with people’s lives. This bloody film night was going to be a glorious success, and I just felt sick at the thought of it.

  We arrived early at Seb’s, as Gwen and her cameraman wanted to do a ‘recce’, which I believe is a term people use when they want to nose about and seem important.

  Nige and Claw were done up like P Diddy and Hyacinth Bucket off to the Proms. Even Issy had made an effort, in a black Joseph trouser suit. I was reminded of an applicant we’d rejected because he’d written: ‘My ambition is to take a woman to Joseph and dress her from head to foot!’ Weird. And the week before, I’d turned down a guy who’d scrawled on his form that he loved kittens but hated cats. What a nut. I hadn’t told the others about him. I’d had quite enough of their liberalism.

  I could tell Gwen disapproved of what I was wearing. Baggy jeans and a sweatshirt and trainers. You could tell she’d been gearing up for ten million viewers since the age of twelve. She was celebrity thin (I wanted to say ‘please eat’ but knew she’d despise me for it), with a pixie haircut, well-toned calves (I guessed she ran four miles a day before her yoga class), thick expert make-up that would look immaculate on screen, and a mint-green gypsy top, perfect for TV with its simple neckline, medium hue and lack of fussiness, cute, not too serious, considering the fluffiness of the feature.

  ‘Have you got something smarter to wear for camera?’ she said bluntly.

  ‘Yes!’ cried Claudia, before I could say no. ‘You’re so busy, Hol, I knew you’d forget. I brought this along for you, just in case.’ She displayed a crisply ironed, bubblegum-pink shirt between red varnished fingernails. My bubblegum-pink shirt, pinched over the weekend from the back of my wardrobe.

  Gwen smiled, a credit to her orthodontist. ‘Fabby. We’ll shoot you above the waist.’

  I took the shirt from a gloating Claudia and thought, Please do. Preferably in the head.

  The cameraman mooched from corner to corner with several tonnes of black bags and silver cases and spidery tripods, muttering about light. Gwen ran through her interview questions, all of which were predictable. She suggested I apply foundation and blusher, otherwise I’d look ‘ill’.

  Meantime, Nige hovered, eventually blurting, ‘Sweets, if you don’t feel up to it, Gwen is welcome to interview one of us. Me, for example. I am a company executive,’ he added in his finest RP.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said.

  As my Girl Meets Boyites started to arrive, I felt a tweak of pride, despite everything. We did have some lovely people. They deserved to find love. I caught Nige nudging Claw as Sam crept in, and Claw glared at me when she spotted Bernard. I didn’t know what they were so bothered about. Xak had arrived, a dead ringer for a baby angel, and there was Samson, as fresh faced and wholesome as a week in Devon. Martyn lowered the beauty count some, but his ordinariness was offset by the trendy shaven head and black arthouse specs.

  Elisabeth swept in, and the room seemed to hold its breath. She was the kind of woman that men bought champagne for. I couldn’t look her in the eye, and she was more than willing to avoid mine. I guessed Nick had told her about us. Still, she plainly didn’t like him enough to miss her chance to get on telly. Jesus, the girl was wearing a catsuit. It exposed parts of the body that I would only ever show to another person by accident. Poor Nick.

  Georgie strode in, fiercely glam but, as Nige sighed, ‘a bit Marbella’. He wasn’t wrong. For a start, she’d parked her mobile phone in her cleavage. Millie followed, furtive, anxious – she had the air of a small squirrel that’s just hidden its nuts and is paranoid a big squirrel will find them.

  ‘This is fabby,’ said Gwen
, smiling. I smiled back. Fabby was definitely her word. She was alright. I admire people who work hard, on principle, so I had to admire Gwen whether I wanted to or not.

  ‘I’ll speak to you at the end of the night, Holly, and I’ll speak to a few of your clients now, and then again later, after their dates.’

  Her word arrangement made it clear she wasn’t asking permission. ‘Fine,’ I said. I couldn’t be bothered to argue. ‘We’ll just do our thing and let you do yours.’

  I watched her beeline for Elisabeth.

  ‘You will be careful what you say to her,’ said Nige, suddenly at my side.

  I tutted. ‘Of course I will, I’m not a berk.’

  Nige grinned. ‘Looking good so far. I’ll bet the camera loves Stanton-Browne. She’ll be presenting Blue Peter before we know it.’ He nodded towards Sam and Bernard, who were propped against the bar, chatting. ‘Let’s only hope she steers clear of Dastardly and Muttley.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Time to rock ’n’ roll.’ He squeezed my hand before trotting off to place everyone with their first dates. ‘Know what, Hol? We couldn’t pay for advertising like this. I’m serious, that Gwen is worth her weight in gold.’

  ‘What, an ankle chain from Woolworths?’

  ‘I’m serious. When’s this airing? Because we are going to be up to our necks in a lake of gorgeous singles. Gwen over there might look like a sniffy cow but she’s going to double the size of our company.’ He winked, like a pantomine dame, and said, ‘Brace yourself. Size matters – and we are on the brink of big.’

  Chapter 18

  DID I TELL you my mother’s sister died of a heart attack aged forty-three? Aunt Rose’s death shocked everyone – more so than normal, if there is a normal – and I think it was because she was such a vibrant person. Nick put it best. ‘She was right in the middle of life,’ he said. Aunt Rose, a translator for the UN, was the opposite of my mother in many ways, loud, enthusiastic, energetic, fearless. But they were similar in their kindness and generosity. Aunt Rose cared, and the world could ill afford to lose her.

  This was only two years ago, and a few months after the funeral, my mother rang to talk about Girl Meets Boy. She’d seen a little advert in her local paper and was terribly excited. We had a jolly chat about how well I was doing and she didn’t mention her sister once. ‘Mum,’ I said, because I couldn’t put down the phone on silence. ‘You know, Nick and I think of Aunt Rose so often.’

  Her response stunned me. ‘Of course, dear. It’s very sad. She was a great sort of girl. But life is hard, and there’s no use going around with a long face. That doesn’t do anyone any good. We had her for forty-three happy years, and I’m thankful for that. Yes, it’s hard for me, I’m her sister, but it’s far harder for Uncle Barry, he’s had to reconstruct his whole life. And we do have our memories. Uncle Barry showed me a poem he wrote which described Rosy to a T – why, it was as good as having her stand in front of you!’

  Sometimes, my mother makes me feel so humble I want to cry. I thought about her attitude for a long time afterwards. I thought it was an admirable lesson in being stoic and bearing your woes with a zipped mouth. I believed this for a while before I realised that there’s a huge difference between acceptance and repression. Plainly, Claudia and Nige never thought any of this. Their whining after the London Local News night went gloriously wrong was apocalyptic.

  Everything seemed to be going smoothly (a sign of impending disaster if there ever was one) until, oops, one of our new recruits turned out to be an angry ex-girlfriend of Samson and vented her rage at being paired with the rat, on camera. They’d dated for two years, she’d had a miscarriage, and he’d blamed her because she’d been drinking tea (two whole cups a day). When she’d cried about it, he’d hummed to himself, to block out the sound. Also on camera, Samson joked about this and called her a ‘bit of a sad cow’.

  ‘But he seemed so nice,’ moaned Claudia.

  Don’t they all, I thought. Issy, who’d vetted him, inspected her Russell & Bromley leather uppers.

  That was merely the prelude. The real humdinger occurred when Gwen interviewed Elisabeth at the end of the night. It was supposed to be private, but Nige eavesdropped from behind an armchair. He came away, ashen-faced. ‘She . . . she . . . she destroyed us!’

  At first, I thought we’d just underestimated the stigma of paying to get a date. It was one thing, advertising ourselves as cool and hip, bursting at the seams with gorgeous and clever people – it allowed beautiful women like Elisabeth to kid themselves that they were joining just another elite club, in addition to the Met Bar and Holmes Place. Girl Meets Boy had far more credibility than the traditional agencies, with their humdrum promises of marriage and air brushed photos of two plain people smiling dumbly in a rapeseed field. But, bottom line, we were still a dating agency, and however much Elisabeth wanted her five minutes of fame, she probably didn’t want it on the basis that she’d paid a firm £200 to find her love.

  ‘It was the first time she’d ever done anything like this . . . it wasn’t her sort of thing at all . . . in fact, she had a boyfriend . . . this was more the kind of thing you did for a laugh, with a group of girlfriends . . . to be honest, the men weren’t up to much . . . the women were much prettier . . . the men were nerds . . . this kind of agency was for sad people . . . she’d never do it again . . . it was not a great experience . . . none of the men she’d been matched with were her type . . . nothing in common . . . didn’t seem terribly professional . . . didn’t seem to think about who they put you with . . . the owner Holly once shouted at her when she complained . . . no different from Dateline except probably less efficient . . .’

  Nige drew breath, sat back. His incredulous expression was tinged with the guilty pleasure of a messenger important enough to deliver fatal news.

  ‘What, she actually said all that?’ croaked Claw.

  Nige pursed his lips. ‘Every word. And she’s still at it, the silly tart!’

  We all craned our necks and saw Gwen leaning forward on the edge of her seat, nodding sagely and smiling pixie encouragement. Elisabeth’s prim little mouth was moving so fast it was a blur.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ‘The two-faced cow. She ought to be horsewhipped!’

  ‘Why would she do this?’

  ‘You tell us, you’re the blimmin’ psychologist.’

  ‘Holly sweets, you’re going to have to give a blinding interview. This is what you do. Ignore her questions, have certain points that you want to make and make them. This agency is about people having fun, not about finding husbands and wives. Our clients are beautiful people inside and out – and occasionally their insides are more beautiful than their outs, because while we accept that looks are something, they aren’t everything. We offer people four dates a night, and while we do take great care to ensure that each pair is compatible, it’s not reasonable to expect every one to be a soul mate. Comprends?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  Claw and Nige and Issy exchanged worried glances. As well they might. Gwen was like a shark mistaking a fatty in a wetsuit for a baby seal and thinking, well, this one tastes rubbery but a meal’s a meal. Elisabeth had given her a sniff of a juicy story, and she no longer cared about the truth, the lure of a scandalette was irresistible. And maybe I no longer had the energy to defend myself.

  Gwen fired accusations at me at the speed of TV lite and my brain scrambled. I bumbled, stammered, said ‘you know’ a lot. Her questions were so sharp and twisty that I heard myself bleat, ‘No, we can’t be a hundred per cent sure we’ve weeded out every criminal but my sister’ – my thister! – ‘is a psychologist and she helps with our sorting process.’ I had a nasty feeling that Gwen might edit out half of this sentence, starting from ‘but’.

  Nige didn’t cry, but only because he was filming for Courts the following day and couldn’t risk blighting his moment of glory with puffy eyes. He cared deeply about Girl Meets Boy but Nige’s deep is most people’s shallow, no offence. By the time he
’d made himself a hot chocolate and completed his beauty routine (Anthony logistics for men from Space NK, no less – I once asked if he used Clinique like every other modern man and he spat, ‘Clinique? That stuff is like paint stripper!’), the day’s calamitous events would have seeped from his consciousness to make way for the serious business of Getting into Character.

  Claw was pale with fury and Issy and I had to physically restrain her from punching Elisabeth in the face. My baby sister is unlike most women I know in that she doesn’t shirk from a fist fight. ‘And please don’t say anything, you’ll only make us look worse,’ said Issy. True. Claw has a filthy mouth and when the occasion demands it, even ordinary everyday objects are c***ing. This alone has led to a bust-up in which Claw yanked out a great clod of a woman’s hair and nearly got sued for it.

  I almost enjoyed recounting the tale to Manjit on Wednesday morning.

  ‘You seem chilled about it though,’ he said. ‘Tip your neck from side to side.’

  Of course I did, I had bigger fish to fry. For instance, the mysterious case of Elisabeth’s boyfriend.

  ‘I reckon I know why she did it,’ announced Manjit, reading my mind. ‘Oh?’ I said, ‘oh’ being a very plain version of the sound I made which had more peaks and troughs than the Lake District.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Manjit. ‘Turn to your right, bend your right leg, keep the knee about the ankle, stretch your left leg, press gently on that inner thigh. She tried to get heavy with Nick and he wasn’t having none of it. Told her exactly what the score was, and she was not happy.’

  My balance is poor at the best of times, I nearly toppled over. ‘Really? And what was the score?’

  ‘You know. One arm across your chest, press the upper arm with the other hand, stretch the muscle. They go out to eat, she snogs the face off him, the second time she sees him she’s already telling him he’d look more respectable if he cut his hair’ –