‘I did,’ I say. ‘And now I have found it, just try keeping me away. I’m moving into that spare room on Monday.’
Ian glances up at me, I think to reassure himself that I am joking.
‘Incredible house though,’ I say.
‘I know,’ he laughs, concentrating on his hors d’oeuvres again. ‘It’s almost embarrassing, isn’t it? But a friend of mine did some work on the place, pre-sale – those glass bricks, did you see them? And I saw it and fell in love with it. And then when Mum died Gran wanted to give me some money – some tax avoidance scam thing – so . . .’
‘Well, I finally understand why you moved out anyway,’ I tell Mark. ‘You are officially forgiven.’
A slight woman with a bob haircut and a big smile pokes her head around the door. ‘The guys who just arrived say it’s horribly loud out front,’ she says. ‘Should I close the doors to the courtyard, do you think?’
‘CC, Simone. She’s our resident DJ tonight.’
We nod at each other. ‘The cross,’ I say, nodding at her crucifix. ‘I wish I’d thought of that. I still have one somewhere from my Catholic days. Very eighties.’
‘Yes, this is from my Madonna days,’ she laughs. ‘And . . .’ she says, wiggling her fingers at me to show off her lace gloves.
‘Very Material Girl,’ I laugh.
She winks at me. ‘Exactly.’
‘Though I’m struggling to see what you’ve done,’ I say, turning to Mark.
‘I haven’t changed yet,’ he replies. ‘He has though.’
I frown at Ian who is wearing jeans and a T-shirt.
‘Hey, these are snow-wash,’ he says. ‘What more do you want?’
‘And he’s tucked his T-shirt in,’ Mark laughs. ‘It’s all in the detail. Anyway, I’m gonna go and change, so . . .’
‘And the windows?’ Simone asks.
Ian checks the kitchen clock. ‘Well, I suppose it’s getting on. Probably better close ’em.’
Abandoned by Mark, I offer to help with the food, and then, the offer refused, I ladle a refill of punch and return to the lounge to join Jude.
‘So, any straight men here?’ I ask him.
‘I doubt it,’ he says. ‘Oh, actually, yeah. That old bloke outside in the shell suit could be.’
‘And what about Darren?’ I ask.
‘No, he’s definitely gay,’ Jude laughs.
‘Very good. I mean, where is he? I hope he’s coming. I’ve got his present out there.’
‘What did you get?’
‘Oh, it’s a surprise,’ I laugh, wondering, for the umpteenth time if the chrome dog bowl, studded collar, and Supertramp box-set was such a good idea after all. It’s very much kill-or-cure to our friendship.
‘You want some of this?’ Jude asks, proffering a joint.
‘Nah, I’m just on punch tonight,’ I say.
‘Just say “no”,’ Jude says.
‘Exactly.’
The room continues to fill and when Simone puts ‘Pump Up The Jam’ on her turntable, people really start to dance. I down my glass of punch and without really thinking about it move from grooving my hips to dancing myself.
‘In fact, you look more like Olivia Newton-John,’ Jude comments, prompting me to integrate some workout movements into my routine.
Mark reappears with red braces, red tie and a stripy shirt.
‘That’s such a good look,’ I shout. ‘You look gorgeous!’
He laughs. ‘I have the whole suit. Got it from Oxfam. Big lapels and everything. It’s too hot though.’
And it is getting hot. As the number of people in the room rises, so does the temperature, and by one a.m. there are so many people, whooping, grooving, wheeling, that I can feel the floorboards bouncing beneath our combined weight.
Ian appears behind Mark and slips his arms around his waist. Looking at the Cheshire grin of contentment that spreads across Mark’s face as he arches his back and pushes his neck against Ian’s chin, I’m overcome by a surge of joy that Mark has finally found what he was looking for. For if truth be told, I would have been no more optimistic about his chances of meeting Mr Right than I am about my own predicament. His success somehow gives us all hope.
‘Jennifer will be here soon,’ Ian says. ‘She just texted me.’ ‘His sister,’ Mark shouts. ‘They’re driving from Cardiff.’
‘They got held up because the babysitter cancelled,’ Ian explains.
‘Cardiff!’ I say. ‘They’ll be knackered.’
‘I’m sure I can find something to pep them up,’ Ian laughs. ‘Anyway, better get some more food out.’
‘The host with the most,’ I say, as he slips away.
‘Isn’t he lovely?’ Mark says.
‘He is,’ I agree. Perhaps because of the heat, or maybe because of too much punch, I’m feeling a little flushed, so I push through the dancers and out between the sliding doors to join a small group of smokers in the garden. It’s icy cold, but thankfully dry.
A guy in his mid fifties wearing shell-suit trousers and an Amy Says Relapse T-shirt looks up from his conversation and smiles at me, and I realise that he must be that old bloke, that Jude mentioned.
‘Very good,’ I laugh, nodding at the wording across his chest.
‘I looked everywhere for a Frankie Says Relax one, but this was the closest I could find,’ he says.
He’s talking to a young woman with black trousers and sweatshirt and short orange hair. I’m not sure if she’s disguised in eighties’ Goth or if she’s just a noughties’ lesbian.
‘It was all just about money anyway,’ she says, apparently continuing their previous conversation. ‘Nothing happened in the eighties except greed.’
I nod back at the lounge and say, ‘The music was pretty good.’
‘But even that was all flash and no substance,’ she says.
‘I don’t think that’s fair,’ I say.
‘What about all those left-wing comics?’ the guy in the T-shirt says.
‘Yeah, there was quite a counter-culture. Ben Elton, Rick Mayall . . .’
She wrinkles her nose. ‘Rick Mayall?’
‘Yeah, from the Young Ones? Swore a lot.’
‘I suppose,’ she says, pulling cigarettes from her pocket and then offering me one.
For old-times’ sake and eighties’ authenticity, I accept.
‘But isn’t the vehemence of the counter-culture just a symptom of the oppressive nature of the actual regime?’ she says.
And I think, OK. Lesbian, then. The first puff of the cigarette makes my head turn. I’m already fairly drunk and the cigarette sends me over the edge.
‘Sure,’ shell-suit says. ‘But a counter-culture still existed. Not everyone was a twat in the eighties. It wasn’t a requirement. I was blockading Cruise missile convoys myself.’
‘Were you?’ she says. ‘How cool! I would have loved to go to Greenham Common but I was too young.’
‘I went,’ I say. ‘I got arrested for it and held in a cell overnight.’
Orange-hair turns and looks at me, then scans me from head to foot, and raises an eyebrow. ‘Really?’ she says, incredulous.
I nod. ‘My parents were furious. They had to come and get me from the police station the next day.’
‘I didn’t mean . . . I mean, you just don’t look the type,’ she says.
‘Well . . . I am in fancy dress,’ I say, gesturing at my outfit. And then, before she can ask me what I do for a living, before I have to admit the horror of just how much some of us have sold out, I stub out the horrible cigarette, spin on the heel of a pink trainer, and head back in to the party.
Greenham Common to London advertising exec! There are moments when you suddenly remember who you used to be and there doesn’t seem to be any possible way to get from there to here . . . to link that person to this one. Was that me? Or is this me? Or both? Or neither? I grab a fresh glass of punch from the kitchen, down it in one and try to blank out that thought.
As I head ba
ck through to the lounge, Grace Jones’ ‘Slave to the Rhythm’ comes on. How I loved that song! Suddenly, from this huge sound system, it sounds so sumptuous I can barely believe it. It’s as if someone has just patched the music straight into my brain.
I grin. My spine tingles. I push through the dancers to Simone’s side and grin at her and start to copy her wiggle. ‘I love this!’ I shout grinning wildly.
And then I’m in the middle of the floor experiencing a full eighties flashback. Sister Sledge are singing ‘We Are Family’, and I’m convinced that it’s the best record ever made. And then Lloyd Cole and the Commotions comes on, and I remember how to do the student chicken-wing shuffle and I can’t decide whether maybe ‘Perfect Skin’ wasn’t better still.
Jude is dancing beside me. ‘Go easy on the punch, apparently someone slipped some MDMA in it,’ he says.
I ask him what MDMA is and he says it’s ‘basically Ecstasy,’ and I’m momentarily shocked – briefly outraged – and then I think, well that explains this, or this explains that, or whichever way around it is, but it feels great, it really does feel too good to care, and of course it’s too late now anyway.
I hug him anyway for being lovely enough to warn me, and then I’m dancing with Mark and Jude and Ian and his sister, and Ian and his sister look like twins and dance the same way too which strikes me as a profoundly beautiful thing and I wish I could dance with my own brother and my eyes water as I think how beautiful that would be, how beautiful all the things we would do together would be and how much he would enjoy being at this party. And then someone is sliding an arm around my waist and it’s Victor who I don’t want to dance with because he’s my bloody gynaecologist, and he has had his hands up my fanny, but he insists on dancing with me and then I do want to dance with him because he’s beautiful and gentle and a kindred spirit who, like me wants to get back to nature, and he’s an amazing dancer, and his groin is crushing against mine as we amazingly manage to salsa to ‘Disco Inferno’, and then I want to kiss him, and despite being gay, he lets me do this and laughs, and I see Mark laughing at us, and wonder if Victor has told Mark that I want a baby, and wonder if Mark has worked out that I want his sperm as well, and then Donna Summer comes on and I spin out of Victor’s arms and dance with the orange-haired lesbian to ‘I Feel Love’, and she touches my breasts and I don’t care at all, and then someone puts some electro on and I close my eyes and dance on my own, and then the record jumps and I’m somehow in a taxi going home and my phone is ringing, and though I can barely focus on the screen I see that it’s Darren calling, Darren who will no doubt want me to go back to the party but I can’t, I’m too out of it, and I feel a bit sick, so I drop the Blackberry back into my bag and sit and stare at London blurring by, and think how much I love Darren and regret not taking the call, but before I can dig the phone back out of my bag, I’m home and struggling to pay the cabby, and fiddling with locks, locks, bloody locks everywhere: locks on the cab door, and locks on the gate and locks on the front door.
And then the record skips again and I’m trying unsuccessfully to balance so that I can pull off my leg-warmers, and then lying in my bed with the leg-warmers on, and it doesn’t matter because they feel nice anyway – they feel like being young again, and I’m looking at the ceiling and grinning and thinking how much I love Mark, and how much I love Victor, and how much I love Darren, and how much I loved Waiine, and even that, even the memory of Waiine tonight feels lovely, like a big woolly jumper I can wrap myself up in. And I think how much I love my life just as it is, and realise that this must be why they call the damned stuff Ecstasy.
Soup and Sympathy
It’s just after midday when I wake up. I’m naked which means that at some point I have managed to remove the leg-warmers which I recall proved to be so problematic last night.
Dragging myself a little dizzily from the bed, I find one in the bathroom and one in the kitchen, prompting the vaguest of memories of a sleepy trip for rehydration.
I’m feeling pretty weird. My brain feels fuzzy, my eyesight a bit under-par as if someone has maybe attached a soft-focus lens to my head, and my balance is definitely out of kilter. I can only presume that these are the after-effects of the drug and wonder who was responsible for slipping it into the punch – surely not Mark or Ian?
I wouldn’t deny for a second that I enjoyed myself last night, that it was, in fact, one of the best nights out I have spent in years, but that doesn’t temper my feeling of outrage. For what if I had had five glasses of punch instead of three? What if I had suffered a reaction to the drug and keeled over in the middle of the dance- floor? Would anyone even have known that I had taken it?
Still, I finally got to try E – a suppressed desire since my twenties – and clearly, feeling outrage is preferable to suffering the guilt of knowingly having partaken.
As I cook breakfast and stare out at the dark shadows of my garden, I take stock of my hangover and decide that, all things considered, it doesn’t feel too bad.
I cook and eat bangers, grilled tomatoes and fried eggs, and round upon round of toast – a crazy number of calories, but well, tough! I sit and sip cup upon cup of tea and review the party, remembering dancing (again) with the lovely Victor, letting orange-haired Carol fondle my breasts (albeit briefly) and hugging Mark and Ian in an attempt at absorbing a little of their new-found domestic bliss.
If only I could find that for myself . . . for how nice would it be to be sitting talking about last night instead of just remembering it? A reasonable-looking guy with a sense of humour to go to parties with: surely that’s not too much to ask, is it? I mean, if Mark can find it, and Ian can find it, then shouldn’t I be able to? Surely it should be easier for me if anything, as according to Mark, nine out of ten men are straight . . . But where are they? Where is he?
And then there’s Victor. Beautiful Victor. Clever Victor. Dancing Victor. Kissing Victor. Victor who spent half an hour telling me about the bloody goat-farm he wants to buy in France. Victor who seemingly has been put on this earth to taunt me: So you think having gay friends is frustrating? Try this one! The perfect man. Except.
And how on Earth can Victor be single? What secret fault-line can Victor possibly be hiding that keeps all the guys around him at arm’s length? For were I a bloke of the poofy persuasion I would snap him up. A weird fetish, perhaps? A tiny dick? Honestly, he could have a dick the size of a peanut and I’d manage to get over it. Perhaps Darren snapped him up last night. That would be sweet.
But of course, that wouldn’t last either . . . Victor’s dreams of muddy goat farms make him about as compatible with Darren as he is with me. And I suppose, in the end, that must be part of Victor’s problem. Gay guys probably don’t go for muddy farms in a big way. They probably aren’t that turned on by the gynaecologist thing that much either, thinking about it. But it’s a shame, and a waste . . . for looking at Darren from afar, he clearly needs a change – his life clearly isn’t making him happy any more than mine is satisfying me. I wonder if he feels as stuck as I do?
Remembering his phone call, I hunt my BlackBerry from my bag and check my voicemail. His call was at three-forty a.m. but he hasn’t left a message – I had no idea that it was so late! I wonder if he found his birthday gift and I toy with the idea of phoning him. But realising that he’ll almost certainly be out cold, I shrug and put the phone on to charge and carry Guinness through to the marginally less dingy lounge.
The day outside is suitably lacklustre that I don’t have to feel any guilt about slobbing in front of the TV all day. I check the Sky guide and switch to Film Four and wait for Speed II to finish, and Jane Eyre to begin.
I wonder what Mark and Ian are doing, and feel another little wave of jealousy. I remember my brief snog with Victor. Honestly! I snogged my gay gynaecologist. What’s that all about? And then I wonder if orange-haired Carol is sitting somewhere nursing a cup of tea and thinking the same thing about me. What it’s about of course, is Ecstasy!
And then I flick the sound back on and pull a blanket over Guinness and me, and start to watch – and then doze in front of – Jane Eyre.
I’m awakened just after three by the chirrup of the landline. I peer blearily at the display and then at the titles rolling up the screen and then back at the handset, as I debate whether I have the energy to speak to Mark right now. My eyesight seems even more fuzzy than before, and I wonder if this is a side effect of the drug, and, thinking that I can ask Mark about this, I swipe the phone from the base.
‘God, you weren’t asleep, were you?’ he asks. His voice sounds like ground-glass.
‘No, well . . . sort of,’ I say. ‘Dozing in front of the TV.’
‘OK, sorry,’ he says. ‘I was just about to give up, only . . .’
‘Your voice!’ I say. ‘You don’t sound like you at all. You sound like Marianne Faithful. You sound like I feel.’
‘Yeah,’ Mark says, quietly. ‘CC, it’s, um . . . I have some bad news.’
‘Oh? Go on . . .’
‘It’s Darren.’
I shiver then, because I know exactly what Mark is going to say. I know it like I read it in yesterday’s newspaper. And how can that be? My mouth fills with saliva. I swallow hard. ‘Right,’ I say.
‘The police phoned . . . they, um, found his number in my . . . I mean my number in his mobile. I thought they might have called you too?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘He’s . . . is he . . .’ And then, for a second, I decide that I’m being ridiculous; that I don’t in fact know anything; that I’m in a drug-induced E-hole or something and that I’m assuming the worst when . . . ‘Is he OK?’ I ask.
‘Well no. He’s . . . Well, he’s dead,’ Mark says.
My vision glazes over entirely now. My mouth fills with an acidic taste. I raise a hand to my mouth and gasp, almost silently, ‘God.’
‘I know,’ he says.
‘And I knew it. Somehow, I knew it.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Mark says. ‘I . . . I thought you should know.’
Guinness chooses this moment to squeeze from my grasp and I hate him for it.
‘CC?’ Mark prompts.
The Case of the Missing Boyfriend Page 29