by Jessie Jones
I made the effort that night. Well, who knew what soap star I’d find myself standing beside when the paparazzi’s flashes started popping? New hairdo, new outfit, and, because I’d been feeling a bit lardy, I went on a really strict diet – i.e. I didn’t eat all day. Kirsty looked me up and down when I met her outside Leicester Square tube and said, ‘You look sensational,’ which slightly made up for the terrible hunger pangs I was feeling.
‘You look amazing too,’ I told her, linking my arm with hers, proving once and for all how comfortable I was with her, lesbian or not. ‘Thanks for asking me tonight. I’m really looking forward to it.’
‘Me too. Should be a blast. Just one thing, though.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Please don’t come out with any of your weird, friend-to-all-lesbians shit tonight. It’s so not cool.’
Within fifteen minutes of arriving at the party, I’d lost Kirsty. She’d been whisked off by a woman wearing a hat made of chicken wire decorated with plastic flowers – it was that kind of do. I didn’t mind being left alone. I sat myself on a squashy sofa at the side of the club and people watched, only moving to grab champagne (because it was free) and canapés (because I was starving) from passing waiters. A DJ was hunched over his decks on the far side of the room, playing songs I’d never heard, though I nodded along rhythmically as if I had. As I drank and stuffed my face I scanned the room and wondered a) how many of these tiny bloody canapés will it take to fill me up? and b) what do all these people do? They all looked so, well, unemployable. I mean, if you wear a chicken-wire hat or a PVC vest or a pink latex codpiece, you’re not going to get a job behind the counter at Nat West, are you?
Looking at them was making me feel particularly dowdy. I’d thought the dress I’d bought was pretty sharp, but now I just felt as if I’d wandered into the wrong party. I decided I should do something to bring myself up-to-date. Get my nose pierced or a tattoo or maybe some green hair extensions. I decided this as I knocked back my umpteenth glass of champagne and thanked heaven I was sitting down because it was going straight to my legs.
‘Can’t party like I used to,’ a voice announced. ‘Gotta sit down.’
I glanced at the man who’d plonked himself beside me.
Then I glanced again.
Then I stared.
He was stunning. Better looking than anything I could ever have imagined. Dark eyes framed by long, black lashes, cheekbones like chicken wings – don’t know why I thought that, just that they were all sharp angles – a solid pair of shoulders and long legs that stuck out from the sofa and seemed to stretch halfway across the room. He was wearing a beautiful black suit over a tight black T-shirt. He looked utterly, utterly amazing.
I opened my mouth to say something but words didn’t come. I willed them to, then willed some more, but, no, it wasn’t happening. As my mouth was open anyway, I raised my glass and took another sip of champagne – seemed silly not to.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked, shuffling along the sofa towards me.
I couldn’t remember. ‘What’s yours?’ I asked instead.
‘Gabriel. And no jokes about angels, OK?’ His eyes were locked onto mine, but then they moved as he scanned me from top to bottom. ‘Very nice,’ he said after a moment. ‘You’ve gone for the post-post-modern look.’
Had I?
‘This lot,’ he explained, gesturing into the room, ‘they’re only post-modern. You’re one step ahead of them. I guarantee, this time next year they’ll all be dressing like you.’
I smiled because I was reasonably sure it was a compliment.
‘The fashion business, eh? Bunch of wankers,’ he said with a big grin.
Bingo! Now I knew what sort of company I was keeping.
‘You don’t talk much, do you?’ he observed, his eyes twinkling.
I smiled again. He didn’t need to know that I was feeling too woozy to formulate words. Better he thought that the silence was part of my mystique.
‘Reckon it’s time to loosen up a little,’ he said, making to get to his feet.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked, speaking at last and only just managing to mask my disappointment.
‘For a line,’ he said. ‘Coming?’ He stood up and offered me his hand. And of course I took it and allowed him to lead me across the room. Well, if an angel called Gabriel suddenly appeared before you, you’d follow him, wouldn’t you? Where the hell was he taking me? For a line! I’d never done that before. But all I knew was that I wanted to be wherever he was. Coke was dangerous and scary and I was pretty sure I wanted nothing to do with it, but I was even surer that I didn’t want him to disappear from my life. That would have been a tragedy.
We’d crossed the dance floor, walked past the loos and turned down a narrow corridor, reaching a door marked ‘private’. ‘In here,’ he said, pushing it open. He led me through and flicked a light switch, illuminating a small office. There was just a filing cabinet and a small desk with a closed laptop and a phone on it.
‘Are we allowed in here?’ I asked, thinking suddenly that this was the least of my worries. I didn’t even know this guy. He could be about to murder me. He’d shut the door, but the music from the club was still deafening. No one would be able to hear me scream. What was I thinking? Because even if murder wasn’t on his mind, he’d dragged me along to do drugs!
He took a small square of folded paper from his jacket pocket and tipped its contents onto the desk’s glass surface. And there it was. Cocaine! Serious, scary stuff that led to addiction, destitution, senseless gangland shootings …
But it didn’t look dangerous. As he took out a credit card and formed it into two neat little lines, it looked just like sherbet. Or flour. Or washing powder. Or sugar. Or … You get the picture.
I swayed slightly then. I was quite drunk, remember, and I had to lean on the wall to steady myself, but Gabriel didn’t notice. He only had eyes for the white stuff. He rolled a crisp new tenner into a little straw and stooped over the desk. One loudish snort later, one of the lines of powder had disappeared. He straightened up, wiped his nose with the back of his hand and gave me that dazzling smile again. He looked OK. Not at all like he was going to vomit or choke or collapse in a fit or any of the other druggy things I’d been imagining.
‘Your turn,’ he said, offering me the rolled-up note.
I looked at him. Then at the single line of powder that remained on the desk. Then at him again. Then at the tenner.
Then … I did it.
Sorry, but I had to. He didn’t look as if he was going to keel over and die anytime soon and loads of other people were at it and hadn’t I spent the last few weeks telling myself that I had to live a little, expand my horizons, escape from the bubble I’d been living in?
I took the tenner, bent over the desk, pressed one finger against my left nostril and sniffed hard with my right.
Whoosh!
It was gone.
I stood up and felt …
Nothing.
No euphoric rush, no palpitations, not even the urge to collapse into a sneezing fit. What a disappointment. What a waste of time. Well, I told myself, at least I hadn’t paid for it, at least I –
I stopped telling myself anything then because suddenly it hit me. Hard. I felt a surge of confidence that was actually physical. Every nerve in my body was sensitised, tingling with excitement and sexual energy, and I felt like bouncing around the tiny office and ripping off my post-post-modern mini and pulling Gabriel into my arms and …
Jesus! I wasn’t just thinking about removing my clothes and kissing the most gorgeous human being ever to have appeared on the planet. I was actually doing it. What’s more, he was doing it right back.
This was better than anything that had ever happened to me. Maybe it was the drugs or the drink, but surely no one had ever kissed me like this before! He was fantastic, amazing, incredible and suddenly virtually naked. How the hell had that happened? Who cared? His trousers were off. Everyth
ing was going perfectly according to plan.
Except that suddenly it wasn’t.
I wrenched at the waistband of his Calvin Kleins. They were tight, but a burst of pure coke energy had them down to his ankles in a fraction of a second. That was when I saw it: his thingy.
I could only stare. Not because I was impressed, but because it was tiny. Honestly, I didn’t believe a thing could be so small. I mean, there was just nothing there. What the hell were we supposed to do now because sex was surely mechanically impossible?
What I did, actually, was shameful. I burst out laughing. Blame it on the drugs or the drink or simply on the fact that it was just hugely funny. ‘Sorry,’ I spluttered between guffaws, ‘sorry.’ I looked up at the poor bloke then, my hand over my mouth as I tried to stifle the laughter. He looked ashen and he had his hand over his mouth too. Oh, I thought for a moment, he must find it funny as well. I realised I was wrong when he doubled over and spilled his guts across the desk.
That almost stopped me laughing, but not completely. No, I only shut up when the door flew open. I lurched backwards, startled, my hands instinctively going over my boobs even though I was still wearing my bra. A big black guy was framed in the doorway. He didn’t look happy. In fact, he was furious. He took in the scene for a moment: nearly naked me, trouser-less Gabriel flaunting his whatsit – which, come to think of it, most closely resembled an actual Wotsit – and on the desk a pool of fresh vomit. I don’t imagine it looked good.
‘What the fuck’s going on, Brian?’ the new arrival barked.
Brian? Who the hell was Brian?
‘Sorry, Paul,’ Gabriel mumbled, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Must’ve eaten something dodgy. She was just …’ He paused to look at me. ‘She was just helping sort me out.’
‘I can see,’ Paul sneered. He flared his nostrils at me contemptuously and said, ‘Get your clothes back on, Florence fucking Nightingale.’
Florence fucking Nightingale? Of course, that was just the funniest thing ever and it set off another attack of giggles.
New bloke ignored me and turned to Gabriel. ‘Sort your shit out, Brian, and get back outside. You’ve got two minutes. I’ll get one of the girls to clean this mess up.’ Then he was gone, slamming the door behind him.
I made one final, mighty effort to stifle my laughter, which was mostly successful. I stood up and attempted to wriggle back into my dress, but only succeeding in falling flat on my arse. Gabriel ignored me as he pulled his trousers back on. We didn’t exchange a word until I asked him, ‘Who’s Brian?’
‘Gabriel’s my stage name,’ he muttered, turning his eyes away from mine.
Strangely enough, we didn’t exchange phone numbers.
Kirsty called me the next morning to check I’d got home OK.
‘Sorry I disappeared on you,’ she said. ‘Did you manage to have fun with all the poseurs?’
‘God, it was … incredible,’ I told her as the memories appeared through the thick fog of my hangover.
‘Why don’t you pop over for a coffee and I’ll tell you about it?’
‘I’d love to,’ she said, ‘but … er … I’m not at home.’
So Kirsty had scored last night too.
Poor Ruby.
God, didn’t anyone have any morals any more?
8 cm
‘Nnngyyy-aarrrgghhh!’ That’s my new mantra. I scream it every two minutes, which is how far apart the contractions are. I barely have a chance to get my breath back in between the arse-splitting (literally) spasms of pain that have been gripping me since Maureen the midwife broke my waters.
‘Come on, Dayna, keep breathing, just breeeeathe through it,’ Emily says, while doing this stupidly exaggerated breathing thing that she must have gone to drama school to learn.
God, I so want to headbutt her.
Lying down is impossible and I’ve been on my feet, lurching around the room, only stopping to grasp the bed frame whenever another contraction rolls in. Maureen asked me to get back on the bed so she could keep me hooked up to the monitor, but she didn’t persist when I flashed her my most murderous look. Instead, every now and again she places the sensors on me to check the baby’s heartbeat.
The baby is doing fine.
I, on the other hand, am in a total state of panic. What the hell is going on here? Agony like this cannot be natural. Surely this isn’t how it’s supposed to be.
‘Just a little bit longer, Dayna,’ Maureen tells me. ‘Just hang in there.’
‘Urrggh … Aarrrgghhh … No, I’ve got to … get … it out.’
‘Please, don’t push. Baby’s almost at the end of the birth canal. Then you can push. I promise you, I do know what I’m talking about. It won’t be long.’
‘Do you want me to phone Suzie now?’ Emily asks.
‘Nnngyyy-aarrrgghhh,’ I reply.
Definitely No. 5
‘You have got to come and see the place,’ Hannah gushed. ‘I’ll slip you in for a free treatment. I promise you, one visit and you’ll never want to work anywhere else.’
She was talking about her fabulous new job in a fabulous new salon in fabulous Knightsbridge. The Spa Space: ten treatment rooms, a hair salon, a sauna, Jacuzzis, hairdressing, every type of tanning, a cappuccino bar, a rainforest-themed chill-out zone … and on she went.
‘Honestly, you wouldn’t believe the kind of women we get in there. So, so rich. They’ve got nothing better to do all day than get their toenails touched up, drink lattes and have who-can-tip-the-most competitions. I never knew women like them actually existed.’
I thought back to the clientele at The Hotel and it didn’t seem so incredible. I mean, come on, what sort of women did she imagine would hang out in a Knightsbridge salon? Students? Single mums on housing (and pedicure) benefit?
‘Listen, we’re desperate for another therapist,’ she went on. ‘You’d breeze through the interview with your experience.’
‘Sorry, Hannah, but I’m looking for premises with Emily, remember?’
She frowned and chewed on her bottom lip. ‘Doesn’t seem to be happening, though, does it?’
‘How do you mean?’ I asked, knowing full well what she meant.
‘How long have you been looking? Six months?’
More like eight, actually, but I didn’t correct her. ‘I know, I know,’ I said, ‘but you’ve no idea how difficult it is to find the right place. Either the rent’s too high or the location’s crap or … Look, it’s just impossible.’
And, really, that was the truth of it. We’d looked at dozens of places. But everything that was right was unaffordable. And everything we could afford was too run-down. Max was losing patience with us. He claimed we were just looking for excuses not to take the plunge and he was probably right. We were scared. But we were still young. We told him we had years to start our own business. Of course, that just made him madder.
I hadn’t said as much, but I knew that Emily & Dayna PLC wasn’t going to happen. Not yet, anyway. The trouble was that by swanning around London with estate agents and pretending that it might, I was putting off getting a proper job. I’d become too terrified to look at my bank statements. I dreaded to think what was left of my windfall from Dad. It surely couldn’t be a lot.
‘Hey,’ Hannah said, perking up, ‘I saw Simon last week. I didn’t know he had his own flat now. Nice place too.’
‘Yes, he moved in there weeks ago,’ I said, more than slightly bored at talk of Simon the Fully Qualified Personal Trainer. But then I had one of those ping moments. ‘Hang on, how do you know it’s nice?’ I asked. ‘Have you been round there or something?’
‘Last week,’ she said. ‘Don’t look so surprised. When a guy like that calls, a girl gets her skates on. God, he’s fit.’
Blimey, so Hannah was back in the mix. But what did I care? Simon was a total slag. And just because he did things like come round at midnight because I’d seen a mouse and he not only had to catch it, but also stay the night in c
ase there were more, and then he had to go out in the morning to buy traps and poison and stay the next night too, just in case, none of that mitigated the fact that he was a total bastard.
‘Listen, please come for an interview. It would be so great to be working in the same place,’ Hannah pleaded.
But I wasn’t listening. My attention was on the TV mounted high on the wall in the far corner of the bar. I wouldn’t normally be distracted by a video on MTV, but this one was different. A good-looking guy was wandering along a beach, sad and alone, and as the caption ‘Yellow’ came up on the screen, suddenly my jaw was hitting the floor. I was totally and utterly flabbergasted because the guy on the TV was Chris. My ex-boyfriend! Singing! On MTV! He’d only gone and made it. And as I listened, I was sure I recognised the tune. Wasn’t that the song I’d been, ahem, encouraging him to work on when we were going out?
I felt a number of things at that moment. Astonished, obviously – I’d underestimated him big time, hadn’t I? Thrilled too – I knew a pop star! But sad as well because, let’s face it, I didn’t really know him. We’d seen each other a couple of times after we’d finished but it’s hard to stay friends with an ex, especially one whose life is in such a different place. And I was sure I’d been right – we weren’t meant to be together …
But, damn it, he was a pop star now.
‘What’s up, Dayna?’ Hannah asked. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘I know him,’ I told her, nodding at the TV as the song faded out and the Coldplay caption came up.
She spun her head round and gasped. ‘What? You know Eminem?’ she spluttered as the real Slim Shady replaced Chris on the telly.
‘No, of course not. The guy before, he was … Never mind.’
Suddenly I felt deeply depressed. Everyone was moving on with their lives. Hannah was working in a swanky salon. Simon had a new career and a bachelor pad. Chris was on MTV. Even Archie, whom I hadn’t seen for months, was probably leader of the British Nazi Party by then with his eye firmly on Downing Street. And me? Both my career and my love life had stalled.