by Jessie Jones
Archie was doing OK financially, but he didn’t let money rule his life. He had other things that made him happy. Like me, for one. Yes, I decided, I knew which guy I’d pick any day. Definitely not the future billionaire sitting one seat away from me, but the guy who wasn’t there because he was playing in some stupid football match.
‘Are you listening to me, Dayna?’ Max asked.
‘No,’ I said truthfully. ‘What were you saying?’
‘I’ve had an idea. Something for you and Emily to think about. Something that will get you off your lazy backsides and make us all some money while you’re at it.’
‘We are not lazy!’ Emily yelped, hitting him again. ‘We’re just taking time out while we decide what to do next.’
‘What’s it got to do with you, anyway?’ I sniffed.
Who did he think he was? My dad? (Who, incidentally, was looking decidedly squiffy at this point and had shuffled round the table to sit next to Brenda’s best friend, Diane, who, of all the glammed-up women at our table, just happened to be showing the most amount of cleavage.)
‘I told you,’ he said, like he was repeating himself for the fifth time, which he probably was, ‘I’ve got money to invest and I’ve got a proposition for the two of –’
He shut up as a spoon was bashed hard on the table. Bill was standing up. It was speech time.
‘Time to toast the birthday boy,’ he announced. ‘Suzie, would you like to do the honours or shall I?’
‘Go ahead, Bill,’ she said, forcing her face to smile again. ‘I’m far too tipsy to string two words together.’
Too pissed or too pissed off? I wondered.
‘OK, but I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ Bill began. ‘I mean, I made the best man’s speech at your first wedding, Mikey, the best man’s speech at your second and now I’m up on my feet at your fiftieth. You could get sick of the sight of me.’ Pause for a laugh – which he got. ‘Anyway, I reckon your fiftieth year must be your best. Just when you thought it was all over, you scored yourself a cracking new wife. Here’s to you, Suzie. You’ve taken years off the old boy.’ He paused again to look at Suzie, who wasn’t smiling any more. She was too busy looking at Dad’s arm, which had somehow draped itself across the back of Diane’s chair. ‘Anyway, Mikey, don’t go getting too pleased with yourself. Just remember, it’s all downhill from here.’ Pause for more laughter, then the finale. ‘Here’s to the best mate a bloke could ask for. Mike Harris, everyone!’
We all raised our glasses. I raised my eyebrows as well, but Dad wasn’t looking. He only had eyes for Diane’s boobs.
As Bill sat down, Suzie got up in a hurry and Brenda rose with her. Was another speech coming? No, they turned and headed for the loo. From the wobble of Suzie’s chin, I suspected that my painstaking make-up job was about to be ruined.
Max, true to form, noticed none of this. He attempted to pick up where he’d left off. His lecture would have to wait, though, because I had a marriage to save. I stood up and marched to Dad’s end of the table. I grabbed him by the arm and hauled him over to the little cubby of a cloakroom at the side of the restaurant.
‘What’s this, Dayna?’ he slurred, trying to focus on my face. ‘Come to give your old man a birthday cuddle?’
‘Shut up, Dad,’ I snapped. ‘What the hell are you playing at? Suzie’s in the loo crying because of you.’
‘Is she? Why?’
‘Because you’re behaving like a pig. Watching you come on to that low-cut blouse on legs, it’s disgusting. Who do you think you are?’
‘What’s your problem?’ he giggled. ‘You don’t even like Mitzy.’
‘It’s Suzie, and for your information, yes I do. Anyway, that’s not the point. She’s your wife. Show her some bloody respect. Go out there and be nice to her.’
He nodded.
‘And keep your hands off Diane.’
He nodded again. I think speech was beyond him at this point.
I shoved him back into the restaurant and watched him stumble to the table.
I must have made an impression on him because ten minutes later he and Suzie were kissing and making up at the bar. I thought it best I left them to it, but I decided that as soon as he’d sobered up I was going to have a serious chat with him.
I was going to have that chat, I really was, but it proved impossible given that Dad was now in Dubai. He was offered a job there and took off a week after the party. Dubai, apparently, was the new Marbella and five-star hotels were springing up like weeds. The job was a three-month contract to work on the electrics in some giant resort.
‘But Dad, Dubai. You’ll be so far away,’ I’d worried when he phoned to say goodbye.
‘Yes, but it’s silly money, tax-free as well. I’d be mad to turn it down.’
I was relieved he was going in a way. I knew we had to talk, but I wasn’t looking forward to it. I told myself that I’d have three months in which to get Suzie’s side of things before I laid into Dad.
Dad might have disappeared, but Simon kept popping up like a bad penny. About a week after Dad left he knocked on my door, unannounced as usual.
‘What are you doing at home, you lazy tart?’ he said, leaning on the doorframe. ‘Still unemployed?’
‘Gardening leave,’ I told him.
‘You haven’t got a garden.’
‘God, don’t you know anything, Simon?’
‘Not a lot. You gonna stick the kettle on, then?’
He pushed past me and plonked himself on my sofa. He had a pile of magazines on his lap. The top one had a woman in a very skimpy leotard on the cover, but it wasn’t what you’re thinking. It was a fitness mag.
‘What are you up to?’ I asked. ‘You going to be the next Mr Universe? Shouldn’t you be a Marine by now?’
‘Nah, the Green Berets are poofs. I’ve had a better idea.’
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Simon changed careers more times than most people change their underwear. But I was still amazed that he was throwing away all the hard work he’d put in. And what about me? The endless form-filling, the help with his bloody Q&As, the hand-holding. I was annoyed now.
‘You are so bloody fickle, Simon,’ I snapped. ‘You can’t stick at anything, can you?’ Which was rich coming from the girl who couldn’t hold down a job for more than ten minutes.
But he didn’t pick up on that. Instead he said, ‘Listen, I figured that if I’m going to get fit, I might as well earn a decent wedge for it. I am going to be a personal trainer.’ He announced this with the absolute certainty he’d had when he told me he was going to be a top mechanic, a hotel manager, a security consultant, a Royal Marine …
I sighed, wondering what next? Heart surgeon? Prime Minister? Dalai Lama?
‘Seriously, Dayna, they can earn more in an hour than I get in a night working the door on some scummy club. And it’s a lot safer because the clients don’t get tooled up. Not usually.’
He had a point, but I had no faith in his ability to see it through.
‘You can earn a mint. And you can double that if you train up celebs,’ he went on enthusiastically.
‘Amazing,’ I said. ‘You’re bound to get a few of those, what with all your celebrity connections.’
Simon wasn’t humourless. He got knock-knock and Irish jokes. But he wasn’t good with irony. ‘Yeah, anyway, I’m not exactly sure what the top rate is,’ he said, ‘but whatever they can get away with charging, I’m the man.’
‘What gave you this idea?’ I asked.
‘Well, Hazel, this girl I know from the gym, she’s friends with the manager and he said that with my physique I could easily get work as a personal trainer.’
‘Hazel, as in the girl you’re screwing?’
‘Oh yeah,’ he laughed, ‘I told you about her, didn’t I? God, don’t go there. The girl’s a fruitcake. She nearly broke my jaw last night with that left hook of hers.’
‘What did you do to her to make her punch you?’ I exclaimed.
&nb
sp; ‘What did I do? Jesus, why do you automatically think it’s something I did?’
‘Just a hunch. Go on, tell me.’
He laughed. ‘It was one night. With Sally. She’s a lifeguard at the gym. How was I to know they were mates?’
Absolutely nothing he’d done, then.
‘So you’re well in there with the staff at the gym, are you?’
‘Yeah, I know a few of them pretty well.’ Pause for a smirk. ‘Anyway, the manager says I should do this YMCA personal trainer course thing, so I signed up last week.’
‘Lovely, good luck,’ I said, with an air of what I hoped was closure. Because if he thought he was going to drag me along on another pointless journey down a path to absolutely nowhere, he was sorely mistaken.
‘Thanks,’ he said, totally missing the vibe. ‘I was wondering if you could help me with some of the stuff I need to know for my exams. There’s all this really complicated stuff about bodies … You know, muscle groups and lactic acid and … You had to learn all that to pass your exams, didn’t you?’
Simon was so self-absorbed that I couldn’t believe
he even remembered what I did for a living, let alone what I’d had to study for my exams. I was so stunned that I found myself sitting down and getting sucked in.
‘What do you need to know?’ I asked.
‘Well, you know the heart whatsit has, like, ten chambers or whatever …’
This was going to take a while.
I saw plenty of Simon over the next few weeks. As I’d thought he might, he … er … struggled to get to grips with his studies. In our first session I drew an outline of a body and asked him to mark the main muscle groups. I sat back and watched him write ‘arm’, ‘leg’ and ‘body’ next to the arrows. Oh, and ‘arse’.
But he was keen and he worked hard and pretty soon he knew his bicep from his tricep and one or two other things as well. And I didn’t mind helping him. I liked showing off my knowledge of the one subject I felt expert in and I had plenty of time on my hands.
With all that spare time, I should have been seeing plenty of Archie, shouldn’t I? But, no. Our relationship seemed to have stalled. I didn’t really want to bring it up with him because I didn’t want to sound clingy and desperate, which I wasn’t, I just liked him so much I wanted to spend every waking moment with him, that’s all.
‘Sorry, Dayna, but I think he might have another woman,’ Emily told me one morning when we were going through our career options, not watching Trisha as our slumped positions on the sofa might have suggested.
‘Huh?’ I exclaimed. ‘How do you know? Have you seen him with someone?’
‘No, but you’ve got to admit that all this “Sorry, love, got a council meeting, football practice, blah, blah, blah”, it doesn’t look good, does it?’
‘Oh my God, he can’t be seeing someone else,’ I wailed. ‘I’d be devastated.’
‘That is so you,’ Emily said. ‘It’s a replay of what happened with Chris, but in reverse.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Chris wanted you so you decided you didn’t want him. Archie isn’t gagging to see you, so you are. You always want what you can’t have,’ she explained. ‘I don’t know what you see in him, anyway.’
‘That’s not fair. You don’t even know him.’
‘Well, he wasn’t exactly friendly the one time I did meet him, was he? Why have we never been out together?’
‘No reason,’ I lied. ‘He’s just busy, that’s all. Or seeing another woman. Whatever.’
‘Why don’t you go round to his and surprise him one night? Then, when he’s making coffee or something, you can have a bit of a snoop around, see if you can find anything out.’
‘I’d never do that!’ I protested, and very convincingly too. Missing out completely that I had done exactly that a couple of nights before, but he hadn’t been in. She didn’t need to know that, did she? ‘Maybe I should just face facts,’ I said. ‘Maybe I’m just too dull for him. Look at me, I can’t even get another job, never mind hang on to the best bloke I’ve ever been out with.’
‘That’s not true. You haven’t even tried to get another job. Come on, what’s wrong with you? Why aren’t you out there, knocking on doors, being proactive?’
‘Because my best friend, the lady of leisure, is always round here watching daytime TV, that’s why.’
‘Well, I’m here for a reason today. There’s an idea I want to talk about. Actually, it’s Max’s idea. He tried to bring it up at your dad’s party, remember? He thinks that you and me should set up in business together.’
‘Great!’ I whooped. ‘What are you waiting for? You go get your fishnets on and I’ll drag some men in off the street. But I want to make it clear upfront, I’m not doing anal.’
‘God, stop it with the sarcasm, will you?’
‘Well, what sort of business are you talking about? What on earth could you and I possibly –’
‘You’re a qualified beauty therapist, aren’t you?’
I’d forgotten about that. It had been a while.
‘Ye-es,’ I said hesitantly.
‘OK, well, I know I dropped out of college, but I did pick up a few things. And I did this reflexology course in Japan and a nail course, which was absolutely brilliant. And I did massage – you know, the Japanese thing, Reiki. And Shiatsu.’
‘You did all that? I thought you were bored out of your mind over there.’
‘I was. Totally. Just because I did a couple of courses doesn’t mean I had anything to do.’
‘OK, so what’s the idea then?’
‘We open up a beauty place together. High-class, five-star, wall-to-wall luxury. When I was in Tokyo I visited loads of spas and salons. They were amazing, like nothing you’ve ever seen. Just the sort of thing London is crying out for and –’
‘And are you completely mad?’ I had to stop her before she completely lost the plot. ‘Where are we going to set up a place like that? In a tent in the garden? Oh, silly me, we haven’t got a garden. Or a tent. Be serious, Emily, where are we going to find the money for –’
‘From Max, of course. He’s dying to invest. He’s really thought this through.’
‘I’m glad someone has,’ I mumbled.
‘He really wants to help us and I don’t think your attitude is very nice. You’re being really negative and obstructive. I was so excited about telling you as well.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘But don’t you think this shows why friends should never go into business together? We haven’t even opened up yet and we’re already arguing.’
‘Yes, but we’ll have all the arguments now. By the time we do open up there’ll be nothing left to row about. What do you think?’
‘You want me to give you an answer now? OK, how about forget it. It’s mad. You and me don’t know the first thing about running a business. It won’t work, never in a million years.’
‘I knew you’d come round. I’ll tell Max to start scouting for properties.’
‘Don’t be stupid. It’s our beauty empire. If anyone’s going to look for properties, it should be you and me.’
‘Excellent. See what I did there?’
I saw all right. It seemed I was in.
‘You are so ready for this, Simon. You’ll do brilliantly, I’m sure of it.’
As the words were coming out of my mouth I felt like a scratched record. Hadn’t I made this speech before? Yes, it was the same pep talk I’d given him before his failed attempts to join the Marines. And here I was again, bigging him up on the eve of his personal trainer exam.
‘Yeah, I do feel good about this,’ he said unconvincingly. ‘It’s all thanks to you, you know.’
‘Don’t be daft. You’re the one that’s done all the swotting.’
‘Nah, I couldn’t have done it without you. You’ve been brilliant.’
I felt a warm glow. It wasn’t often that Simon dished out a compliment.
‘You’ve had loads of
… er … other stuff on your mind, as well,’ he mumbled. ‘I think.’
‘What are you on about, Simon?’
He looked up at me. ‘Well, you know, your hair’s a bit of a mess and all that and I just thought you might have things on your mind.’
Well, thanks very much, I thought. My hair was a mess because I’d spent so much time helping him out that I hadn’t had a chance to wash it for days. ‘What things might I have on my mind?’ I asked coldly.
He shrugged and blushed. ‘I dunno … You never talk about it, but it can’t be easy for you … You know, your mum being dead and all that.’
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He never asked after my welfare, but now he was bringing up my mum. What a jerk/sensitive bloke – I really wasn’t sure which.
He shifted awkwardly on the sofa and muttered, ‘I thought maybe you … er … might … you know, want to talk about it …’
I melted a little then.
‘… Because you really do look a bit rough,’ he added.
Big mistake.
‘Thanks very much, Simon. And actually, no, there’s nothing I want to talk about. Not to you, anyway.’
‘OK, keep your knickers on. My mum just told me I should ask you, that’s all. No big deal.’
‘Well, like I said, I don’t want to talk about anything,’ I snapped.
‘Jesus, you women. You’re always on at us to talk more, then, when we do, you kill us for trying. Can’t win, can we?’
Blokes just don’t get a girl’s need to talk about her feelings, but sensitively and at a time of her choosing, and, failing that, her right to tell the person who asked to fuck off and die, do they?
‘Have you missed him, then, Suzie?’ I asked, putting my feet up on the plush new footstool.
God, Suzie had done wonders with the place. It crossed my mind that I should move back in instead of wasting all my money on rent. She’d brought my lunch through – a BLT and a cup of tea – and she’d even put little bowls of crisps and olives on the tray. This was bliss. Honestly, who needed freedom and independence when the old dump you couldn’t wait to move out of had been transformed into a palace with waitress service?