by Jessie Jones
Four months in and he hadn’t let me down in any respect. God knows, I’d been looking for a catch. But no sign of anything. No prejudices, bigotry or membership of any dodgy political parties. No undeclared medical conditions such as, just for example, sex addiction. No signs that he was thinking of starting a band anytime soon or reading, say, classics at university. And if he believed in God, it was in a normal, healthy, it’s-none-of-anyone’s-business sort of way. So, he was perfect then.
Cristian was my trophy boyfriend. Male eye-candy. And the way he dressed … He had the kind of look that the untrained observer might think was achieved by casually throwing together the first couple of items he’d trodden on that morning, but that actually took hours of thought and preparation. And although his clothes looked like they needed a needle and thread taken to them or perhaps just a good old iron, it had actually taken the skill and dedication of highly talented Italian designers to make them look like worn-out, crumpled old shit. Very expensive shit at that.
Cristian could afford to look good. He was Mila’s son and clearly Mila was loaded. All that from the beauty biz. And I’d always thought Romanians got their money from washing windscreens at traffic lights. Well, let me tell you that was shameful racist thinking worthy only of Archie. Cristian didn’t just live off Mila’s handouts. He had money of his own coming in and fingers in various pies, none of them dodgy as far as I could tell.
None of my previous boyfriends had shown me the good time Cristian did. None of them had been as loaded as him, of course, but none of them had been as connected as he was either. His friends were web entrepreneurs, DJs, nightclub promoters and big-time publicists. And when they hung out in their exclusive, members-only hangouts, they didn’t drone on about work like the only other successful person I knew. (Max. Who else?) They talked about fundraisers and ‘empowering the third world by emancipating it from debt’ and other stuff that filled me with admiration. These were rich people with social consciences! It was like hobnobbing with a whole bunch of Bonos with a couple of Sir Bobs thrown in. It doesn’t get much better than that, does it?
Emily couldn’t believe my luck. ‘You are so jammy,’ she told me, tingeing green. ‘How come you get the delicious boyfriend with the perfect manners and the groovy social circle?’
‘But you’ve got Max. Come on, the guy’s just asked you to marry him.’
That’s right, they’d got engaged. The diamond on Emily’s finger was big enough to pay off the national debt.
‘Mmm,’ she said. ‘He still hasn’t forgiven me for not convincing you about the Two Step Plan.’
‘What’s that? Sounds like some sort of new diet fad.’
‘Step one: sign up to Max’s business plan. Step two: make Max both very rich and Businessman of the Year, thus enabling Max to be made partner well ahead of schedule, thereby making Max even bloody richer.’
Even in Japan she hadn’t sounded that cynical about him. I kind of agreed with her, but I felt I should make her see the positive about her fiancé. ‘Come on, Emily, you wouldn’t love him half as much if he wasn’t successful.’
She didn’t say anything so I changed the subject. ‘How’s the course going?’ I asked.
‘I hate it. I feel like Carol Smillie minus the smile and, given she’s a talentless no-brain, that doesn’t leave an awful lot to brag about.’
She was doing an interior design course. One of those things that middle-aged women with no visual flair whatsoever decide to do in a last-ditch attempt to find something to stick on a business card before they die. Poor Emily was only twenty-four so I could see where she was coming from.
‘I’m sick of talking about me,’ she said. ‘Tell me about Cristian.’
‘Well, he’s just managed to get us tickets for that Fatboy Slim thing –’
‘I don’t mean all that. I mean the dirt.’
‘There isn’t any.’
‘There must be. No one can be that great.’
‘You’ve met him. You know he is,’ I told her confidently.
‘Nope, I don’t buy it. He must have at least one vice.’
But he didn’t. He was vice-less. He was goddamn bloody perfect. Just one example: one Sunday I blew him out for lunch at the last minute because I had to, er, go round my dad’s (i.e. go for a quick drink with Mark, who, being the forgiving Christian type, had forgiven me for dumping him and who I was happy to stay friends with so long as we didn’t talk about God). Cristian missed me so much that he cancelled his thing in the evening with his mates to take me to the hottest new restaurant in town, and it hadn’t even officially opened yet.
Cristian was the guy who booked a box – a whole box just for me and him! – for Mamma Mia just because I told him ‘Dancing Queen’ was a good song for dancing to. He was the guy who sent me roses every day for a week because I told him nobody had ever sent me flowers before. He took me to dinner at the Ivy four Saturdays on the trot because I’d moaned that I’d never seen a famous person (apart from Chris, who didn’t count because he wasn’t famous when I used to see him). We saw Davina, that Indian bloke who reads the news on Channel Four, Simon Cowell and Parky on our first two visits! I stopped looking after that. By then it was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, what are you having for starters?’
I could go on … But what a great guy!
OK, so that whole flowers-every-day thing did get a bit like the famous faces at the Ivy in the end. You know how it is. The first day the doorbell goes and it’s the Interflora bloke hidden behind Kew Gardens and you go, ‘Oh my God! How gorgeous!’ and you spend an hour arranging the flowers into various pots and pans because you’ve only got one tiny vase. Then on day two you go, ‘Aah, flowers, again,’ and sort of smile inwardly rather than outwardly and you wonder where the hell you’re going to put them this time. After that it’s kind of, ‘Just leave them there, gotta go, my toast’s burning,’ and they end up dying on the doorstep because a) you’ve got nowhere to put them and b) you’re sick of the sight of bloody roses.
I wasn’t going to tell you that because it sounds mean, but you can kind of see my point, can’t you? Kirsty certainly did. ‘Will you please tell that fuckwit to stop with the flowers?’ she grouched one morning. ‘Your doorstep’s like a fucking shrine. Seriously, I keep thinking you must have died.’
But forget that. It was a tiny, totally insignificant grumble. No, Cristian was an absolute diamond. And he adored me right back! Even Mila seemed to think I was OK. ‘I’m so pleased for both of you,’ she told me one day. ‘He is very fond of you, you know.’
‘I’m very fond of him too,’ I gushed.
‘You stay fond, darlink. I hate to see him upset.’ She said this with a warm smile, but Tony Soprano did warm smiles too. Did I detect a mafia-type undercurrent?
‘Never!’ I told her and I meant it. Why would I upset him? He was the best thing that had ever happened to me.
OK, I’d seen Mark a few times and hadn’t mentioned it to Cristian, but it didn’t mean anything, so why would I? I’d also been out with Archie once or twice, but that was only because I thought I was finally making headway on reforming him. I’d put on a Blue CD and mentioned that one of them was black and he didn’t chuck the CD or me out of the car. No, he turned up the volume.
Seeing my exes occasionally definitely wasn’t a reflection of any negative feelings for Cristian. On the contrary. I only did it because I felt so happy and loved-up that seeing them posed no risk whatsoever.
There was only one downside to going out with Cristian. Going out with the boss’s son meant I got certain concessions. I could leave early whenever he wanted me to. Or I could stroll in at ten thirty if we’d had a late one the night before. And I could have the odd day off if he’d planned to take me somewhere. Just one phone call to his mum and I was a free agent. It didn’t seem like a downside at all, actually, until I realised the other girls weren’t too thrilled about it. Call me insensitive, but it took me a while to get the message.
‘Shall we
get our nails done tonight, Hannah?’ I asked her as we tidied up in preparation for a chill-out Monday. ‘Mila’s got this rep coming in with these new samples and they sound brilliant.’
‘What’s going on?’ she replied. ‘Cristian not whisking you off to Hollywood tonight? You’re actually putting in a whole day?’
I let it hang there for a moment while I emptied a bin of crumpled tissues.
Hannah didn’t say anything either.
Whoever said silence was golden must have been deaf.
‘Look, Hannah,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry if I’ve been a bit slack lately, but, you know, I’ve just been sort of carried away with it all and …’ I trailed off. I didn’t really have much of a case and I knew it. If I’d been Hannah, I’d have resented me too.
‘Oh, don’t worry about it. You just carry on. Why should you put in as much work as the rest of us, eh?’
‘But I just thought that if Mila doesn’t mind, well, you know … And I am going to make up the hours … eventually.’ God, I sounded pathetic even to myself.
‘Why should you?’ she said. ‘Hey, you’re practically Romanian, Dayna, you’re practically family. Pretty soon it’ll be your mum and his mum who’re best buddies and you’ll be a partner in the business. Can’t wait to have you as my boss. I wonder if you’ll remember that I was the one who got you the job here.’
I wondered what she was talking about for a moment, and then it clicked. She didn’t know my mum was dead. She must have been talking about Suzie. I always booked her in as Suzie Harris so I suppose it was an easy assumption to make.
‘I haven’t got a mum,’ I told her. I didn’t want her sympathy. I just didn’t want her confusing the facts of my life. ‘My mum died when I was four.’
‘Oh, but I thought …’ She sounded as awkward as I’d ever heard her.
‘Suzie’s my dad’s new wife – my stepmum, I suppose.’
She couldn’t look at me any more and just fiddled about with a box of cotton-wool balls. A part of me thought, serves her right, but another bit thought I should say something to put her out of her misery. But I didn’t.
I felt terrible. All the girls must have spent the past few months slagging me off and now all I’d done was give them something else to talk about. I was Little Miss No Mum. I felt empty and cold and the last thing I needed was to chill out any more. I picked up my bag and left.
I didn’t fancy the idea of being home alone, so I went straight round to Dad’s. I hadn’t been for a while and I figured that a warm ‘Hello, stranger’ welcome would lift me out of my mood. I found Dad and Suzie sitting beside the smoking remains of the barbecue, a half-finished bottle of white between them. Looked like spirits were high. Just what I need, I thought. Maybe Dad and I would have a heart-to-heart. Or maybe we could just sit there and feel close.
Not a chance.
‘You’ve got a face like a slapped arse,’ he said by way of a greeting. ‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing much. Just tired,’ I said wearily. ‘Work was a bit crap today.’
So much for getting my feelings out. But who had I been trying to kid? When did Dad and I ever talk?
‘Blimey, we don’t see you for weeks, then, just because the hot tap’s not working, or whatever your problem is, you come here for a moan,’ he snapped. ‘Honestly, Dayna, you’re so selfish.’
Suzie jumped in then. ‘Michael, don’t be like that. You heard her, she’s had a bad day. You’ve got no idea how hard she works at that place.’
‘Do me a favour. She wouldn’t know a hard day’s work if it bit her on the backside.’
‘That’s not fair,’ Suzie said.
‘Oh, and you’re the expert on graft, are you?’ he said, turning his spite on his wife. ‘When was the last time you went out and earned?’
She responded by getting up and noisily clearing away the dinner plates.
When she’d gone inside I turned to him and said, ‘You’re unbelievable, you are. It’s all right for you to have a face on whenever you can’t be bothered, but anyone else gets the tiniest bit down and you’re all over them. And why did you turn on Suzie? What’s she done to deserve it?’
‘I knew it,’ he said, giving me a thin, cold smile. ‘I knew you’d come round here for a fight.’
‘I did not!’ I shrieked indignantly.
‘Don’t give me that. I know how you operate. I know you better than anyone.’
‘That’s rubbish,’ I shouted. ‘You don’t know me at all.’
‘Oh, I know you’re selfish, you’re spoilt, you’re –’
‘Stop it! Both of you, stop it!’ Suzie had reappeared in the kitchen doorway, clutching a tea towel in her white-knuckled fists. ‘This is just so ridiculous.’
‘No, Suzie, let him finish,’ I said. ‘Go on, Dad, what else am I?’
‘Forget it,’ he said, shutting down suddenly. ‘Just bloody forget it.’
He turned away from us both then, choosing instead to glower angrily at the sunset. I’d seen this before. No one would get another word out of him for the rest of the night. I picked up my jacket and walked back through the house. Suzie followed me and as I opened the front door she said, ‘I’m sorry about that. He’s been really grouchy lately. It’s this job he’s been on. Fitting out some shop in Queensway. It’s all been going wrong, apparently. He’s been getting home like this every night.’
‘Don’t make excuses for him,’ I said. ‘This is just him.’
‘I’m sorry, Dayna.’
‘No, Suzie, I’m sorry. For you.’
I ignored the messages on my machine over the next couple of weeks. They were only from Suzie anyway. Dad was characteristically silent. Who cared? I didn’t want to talk to him anyway. Hannah wasn’t talking to me much either. I’m not sure if it was out of embarrassment at having put her foot in it or because she was still pissed off with me for taking liberties at work. Again, I didn’t care. Simon, who usually called at least once a week with some request or another, was also silent. Probably not talking to me because I let him down with his stupid audition. Good. I didn’t need him hassling me every five minutes anyway. Apart from Suzie’s, the only other call I had was from Mark. He wanted to know if I fancied joining his hospital volunteer programme. Ordinarily, being the totally selfless person that I was, I would have said yes, but someone was knocking at the door so I had to go.
Cristian was the only good thing in my life and I was going to enjoy him for as long as I damn well wanted and sod everyone else. I’d show Dad what being selfish really was. He hadn’t seen anything yet.
I knew it would take something special to lift me out of my depression, and Emily’s engagement party was pretty bloody special.
Emily seemed to have got over her recent moodiness and, if you forgot that Max was slightly money-obsessed and a tiny bit possessive and controlling, they really did make a gorgeous couple. If you’d spent the evening gazing at them – preferably through some sort of soft-focus lens with a pinkish tint – all you would have seen was sweetness. Max fussed over Emily lovingly, placing his arm protectively around her shoulder, topping up her champagne glass and planting soft little kisses on her cheek. OK, you could have said it was all just a bit controlling and possessive, but that night I chose not to be cynical.
They’d been through a lot and they were still acting like a pair of lovebirds. In fact, in the time that I’d got through several serious boyfriends and was hard at work on my next, Emily had only ever been with Max. So I had a good feeling: they were going to beat the odds; it really would be till death did them part.
I had a good feeling about Cristian and me too. Cristian was the first boyfriend I’d had that was on the same planet financially as Max, and we did lots of foursome stuff. I loved the fact that my best friend and I had gorgeous boyfriends, both with excellent taste and both with the credit cards to support it. Actually, whenever I thought about it, I couldn’t believe our luck.
There was one tiny niggle that I shoved to the b
ack of my mind. It was so insignificant that I don’t know why I’m even mentioning it. Actually, forget it, back to the party …
OK, then, it was this. Once in a while, it would have been nice if Cristian had let me pay for something. It didn’t seem to bother Emily in the slightest that her entire life was funded by the Bank of Max, but it nagged away at me and I didn’t like it. I felt like I was on the scrounge the whole time. It got so bad that I had to guard what I was saying. I’d make an innocent remark about liking a watch in a magazine and the next day it would be on my wrist. One time an idle comment about a coat in a shop window being ‘quite nice’ led to the appearance of a UPS man on my doorstep, a package from Joseph in his arms. Yes, Joseph. It cost £600 or something and I only quite liked it. But what could I say without seeming horribly ungrateful?
It was amazing to begin with. His generosity took my breath away. But I didn’t want to feel indebted the whole time and I did try to get my purse out more than once. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he would say. ‘I love buying you things and I don’t want you wasting your money on me. Anyway, I’ve got everything I want. I’ve got you.’ How gorgeous was that? I just had to give in and learn to live with it. After all, Emily seemed to have managed it somehow.
Max, of course, had paid for the party and Emily hadn’t batted an eyelid. They were holding it in San Carlo, a flashy North London Italian, so good that famous people went there. Who needed the Ivy, then? There were no celebs on party night, though, because Max had taken over the whole restaurant. It was a Saturday night, so God knew what it was costing him.
Cristian and I sat at our table watching Max hold court and Emily’s eyes out-sparkle the diamond on her finger. I felt a blissful glow well up inside me – part champagne, part happiness for my friend.
‘It could be us next,’ Cristian said as the happy couple mingled.
‘What do you mean?’ I gasped, wishing he’d take his arm off my shoulders. Not that I wanted him to get off me because he was suffocating me; just that it was hot in there and I was suffocating with his arm round me. There’s a subtle difference.