by Jemma Harvey
‘We – we’d better give it a break,’ I stammered, reverting to normal behaviour. ‘We’ve got a month to sort out any changes . . .’
‘A month? And you want rewrites?’
‘You’re in the catalogue for publication in the autumn,’ I whispered. ‘Sorry.’ Alistair, a slow reader, had been sitting on the manuscript for some time. ‘Anyway, not exactly rewrites. Just . . .’
‘Another body. A corpse too far. Forget it. There’s no way I’m going to fuck this up with an overdose of blood.’
‘I thought that was the whole point,’ Helen said with a careless smile. She had left the room to remove her coat and now wandered back in, flicking the sweep of blow-dried hair off her face. ‘Darling, if you’ve finished—?’ Her indifference daunted me. I got to my feet, gathering up my koala. Oddly, I felt a sudden rush of indignation at her dismissal of Todd’s work. He might not be saving persecuted heroes, but his books entertained people, diverting them from the trouble and trauma of everyday life. That had to be a good thing. A friend of mine once declared that he was saved from suicide by the latest P. D. James. Todd Jarman’s stories were quite capable of distracting any number of suicides.
‘I’ll call you next week,’ I suggested.
‘Whatever.’
He showed me to the door. As it closed behind me, I heard Helen’s voice. ‘Is that your latest editor? Poor thing. What a lump . . .’
Somewhere, according to modern scientific thinking, there was a universe where a reconstituted Tyrannosaurus Rex would smash through the window and devour her on the spot, tearing up the minimalist sofa in the process. Somewhere there was a universe where her corpse – dressed as a nun – would be found spread-eagled on the pale grey rug, rigor mortis completing the work Botox had begun. The main problem with the theory of parallel universes is that the one where all the good stuff is happening is never the one you’re in. Have you noticed that?
It wasn’t until I got back to my flat – my empty, Nigel-haunted flat – that it occurred to me that despite Todd’s scorn and fury, for the whole afternoon the secret agony of rejection and humiliation had disappeared altogether. (At least until Helen came in.) It was as if Todd Jarman, of all people, had given me back something of myself. Maybe it was the job, restoring my sense of status. Or something. I ate an unhealthy supper consisting of a sandwich and a can of soup, watched a video of X-Men, and went to bed determined to dump Russell Crowe for Hugh Jackman.
I was a mutant known as Chameleon, since my skin reflected, or perhaps refracted, light in such a way that I could make myself invisible at will, provided I had no clothes on. (In fantasy novels invisibility spells invariably extend to clothing. I think this is cheating, so I decided to adopt the scientific approach.) Embittered by the cruelty of non-mutants – like Helen Aucham – I was working for supervillain Ian McKellen, and had been ordered to sneak into Patrick Stewart’s college and spy on the so-called students. Caught short in his room by the entry of Wolverine (Jackman), I froze, fearful that a ripple in the air might betray my presence. He stripped and went into the shower, muscles flexing in his lean, pantheresque body, while I waited, motionless, knowing myself trapped. To open the door and slip out unnoticed would be impossible. When he re-emerged, water-droplets beading his bare torso, I found myself terrifyingly conscious of his maleness, of the fact that we were both naked, in close proximity, in his bedroom, though he was still unaware of me. Then he moved in my direction, and involuntarily I shrank back. He sensed something, his hand reached out – and touched my nipple. I stood rooted to the spot, half in fear, half in fascination, while he explored my body, discovering me by touch, murmuring my pseudonym: ‘Chameleon. Chameleon.’ His response was obvious: his organ lifted and stiffened into a pole so large and powerful that I flinched at the sight. Then suddenly he slammed me against the wall; I started to fight but knives sprang out of his hand; the tip of one blade pricked my throat. ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘I know who you work for. Reveal yourself!’
‘No!’ I gasped, and then he was inside me, pounding and pounding at me, filling my unseen body, biting and kissing in the battle for my surrender. I struggled but in vain, unable to resist the pleasure, and visibility flooded through me like a giant blush, showing me in all my nakedness and vulnerability, and I came and came and came . . .
Afterwards, I lay panting and sated, relaxing towards sleep. I speculated idly on the mechanics of invisibility, wondering if in the foregoing scene my mutant powers could realistically be extended to cover hair, eyes, and teeth. J. K. Rowling, of course, had used a cloak.
But then, nothing like that had ever happened to Harry Potter.
On Saturday, Lin, Georgie and I had a girls’ night out. We would see each other regularly every lunchtime and often for a quick drink after work, but a full evening together was rare since Lin’s nanny problems meant she hardly ever had a babysitter, and even when she did chronic parental guilt usually sent her running back to assist with homework and listen to outpourings of childhood Angst. And until lately I had been preoccupied with Nigel, while Georgie was busy with Cal in the week and socialised with other friends at weekends. However, it was she who had declared a Saturday night session was long overdue, and Lin had persuaded Sean’s mother to take Meredith as well as the twins. ‘The house feels so empty without them,’ she sighed. ‘So quiet. Like a graveyard . . . It’s heaven. I actually managed to tidy all the guff away this afternoon and hoover round. Bliss.’
‘Life can hold no more,’ Georgie said absently. ‘How are we getting on with our wishes?’
‘I’d forgotten all about that,’ Lin admitted.
‘Do I look like a sex goddess to you?’ I snapped. I wanted to talk about Todd Jarman, and Helen Aucham, and alternate universes. I wanted to avoid talking about Nigel. The wishes were a side issue.
But Georgie was determined to stick with it. ‘It’s what we really want out of life,’ she insisted. ‘We ought to focus on that, instead of being sidetracked by everyday trivia. Achieving your goals is only a matter of determination.’
‘Have you had a row with Cal?’ I asked.
‘N-no. But I have to dump him. Soon. He’s never going to pay my credit-card bill. I’m still attractive enough to pull a millionaire – I think so, anyway – but it’s going to get harder. In ten years’ time I’ll need a millionaire to pay for the plastic surgery so I can pull millionaires. I shouldn’t be frittering away the last of my youth – or whatever – on a married man with no spare cash.’
Youth, I felt, was stretching a point, but I didn’t argue. After all, I was heading for thirty, and the Bridget Jones years.
‘So what have you done about meeting the Man of your Dreams?’ Georgie demanded of Lin.
Lin looked blank. ‘Well – nothing. I mean . . . it’s up to Fate, isn’t it? You just look across a room, and the magic happens. You can’t make your own magic, can you? That’s one you have to leave to the fairy in the Wyshing Well.’
Georgie clearly thought that you could make your own magic and was about to say so, but I interrupted. ‘To meet the Man of your Dreams you must start by meeting men,’ I pointed out. ‘You should have more social life.’
‘I can’t. I have the children to think of. Even if I could find a decent nanny, they need me at home.’
‘We’ll babysit,’ Georgie offered rashly. I mumbled something which might, or might not, have been agreement. Children make me nervous: they’re a lot like animals, only not so well-behaved.
‘Thanks, but . . . where would I go? No one asks me to parties any more. I was only invited as a kind of accessory to Garry, or Sean, never just because I was me.’
‘Andy likes you ’cause you’re you,’ I said.
‘He’s getting married,’ Lin said abruptly. ‘I forgot to tell you. They’re having a big do at the family castle in Scotland. I suppose I could go to that to meet men.’
‘Weddings are great for romantic encounters,’ I averred. ‘All the books say so. Who’s he ma
rrying?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Lin said. ‘I get them all mixed up. There was an environmental campaigner. He rescued her from a tree in the path of a new bypass. Then she went off to the Highlands to save the wildcat. He always goes for the idealistic type. But it might not be her – she was quite a while ago.’ She didn’t sound jealous, but she clearly wasn’t enthusiastic.
What was it about these rampant idealists? I wondered. Andy Pearmain’s fiancée, Helen Aucham . . . Nigel. In the twenty-first century principles are obviously sexy – but why do I always resent people who flaunt them in public?
‘Pity it’s too late to pair her off with Nigel,’ I remarked.
‘And what of Nigel?’ asked Georgie. ‘You haven’t mentioned him for weeks. Well, days, anyway.’
‘I haven’t thought of him for weeks,’ I lied. ‘Or days.’ But my face must have given me away.
‘What have you done?’ Georgie’s voice was accusing. ‘You’d better confess. You finished it on a high. Don’t tell me you went crawling back.’
‘Okay, I won’t tell you,’ I said obligingly. ‘Happy now?’
So I told them. I couldn’t look at them, even though they were my friends. The humiliation rushed over me tenfold, twentyfold, shrinking me inside myself, turning me to dust. I thought Georgie would rail at me but she didn’t. She jumped up and came round the table, knocking over a glass, and hugged me, and Lin came and hugged me too, so we were all tangled up in one big hug, and suddenly I wanted to cry for all the right reasons. ‘We’ll get him,’ Georgie said. ‘He’ll eat his words. We’re going to turn you into the hottest sex goddess since Monroe’s skirt blew up around her ears. We can do it, I promise. You can do it. Let’s have some more wine.’
We ordered another bottle, and another, and the evening began to unravel comfortably like a roll of Andrex with a puppy on one end. I offloaded my feelings about Todd Jarman, and Horrible Helen, and designer sofas, and Georgie vowed repeatedly that she was going to drop Cal for an unmarried millionaire, and Lin, who had no head for drink, started rather unexpectedly to bemoan the fact that Andy Pearmain wasn’t gay. ‘Wives always get in the way,’ she declared. ‘He won’t be there for me any more, and he’s always been there for me. My best friend.’Xcept you two, but that’s different. Andy’s a man – solid, strong—’
‘Bearded,’ Georgie interjected.
‘Solid, strong, bearded . . . reliable. Someone to lean on. Why couldn’t he have a boyfriend? He said ages ago he was going to be gay. He’s so bad at women. He keeps falling for these earnest types who eat vegan food and spend his money on lost causes and . . . and take advantage of his kindness and solidity.’
‘You mean – they lean on him?’ I hazarded.
‘Exactly! But not in a good way. They lean too – too heavily, they put pressure on him, they drain him. He never gets to laugh or make jokes. He needs to be leaned on gently, by someone who makes him feel good about it. These women, they blame him for being a rich capitalist and then when he feels guilty they suck him dry.’ (‘Does she mean a blow job?’ whispered Georgie, who was becoming confused.) ‘He needs a nice boyfriend who adores him, someone young and shy, with big eyes and long eyelashes.’
‘Sounds like Bambi,’ I said.
‘If he had a nice boyfriend, I bet I’d get along with him really well. I shan’t get on with his wife, I know it. His girlfriends never like me. They despise my dress sense.’
‘You haven’t any,’ Georgie said, shocked into bluntness. ‘Not that it matters, of course. You’re the only person I know who can make hippy-retro-cum-fashion-accident look like style.’
Fortunately – since that could have been more happily phrased – Lin wasn’t attending. She had sunk into a state of rather wistful gloom, contemplating the fun she might have had with Andy and Bambi as they gave guilt-free, non-vegan dinner parties in the ancestral Scottish castle (which had only passed into Andy’s family since his uncle bought it from its original set of ancestors). ‘She definitely needs a man,’ said Georgie.
‘Food might be good,’ I suggested.
‘We’ll go and have chips at the Soho House,’ Georgie said. ‘They do good chips there. But, mind, tomorrow you start the diet.’
‘You mean the miracle diet that’s going to turn me into a size eight sylph?’ I said sceptically.
‘No, I mean the realistic diet that’s going to convert mere flesh into the voluptuous curves of a sex goddess,’ Georgie retorted. ‘Mae West wasn’t thin. Monroe wasn’t thin. Jean Harlow—’
‘Bette Midler isn’t thin,’ I said, ‘and guess what? I don’t want to look like her.’
‘Shut up,’ said Georgie. ‘All you need is a waist. Then we can get you some decent clothes.’
‘I don’t have a credit-card debt—’
‘That’s nothing to be proud of. It’s because of people like you that I’m in my present financial mess.’
‘How do you work that out?’
‘I’ve got your share.’
At the Soho House they refused to admit us on Cal’s membership, pointing out, with some justification, that he wasn’t there. We were saved from an ignominious exit by the arrival of a friend from Georgie’s pre-Roman era, an elderly producer escorting a Young Thing who looked as dewily untouched as Lin ten years earlier. He agreed to sign us in and Georgie bought a drink for him and the Young Thing (‘Milk?’ I suggested) and champagne and chips for us.
‘Are we celebrating?’ Lin inquired.
‘Yes,’ said Georgie. ‘We’re going to make our wishes come true. We’re going to have a solemn pact that all of us will do whatever it takes – whatever it takes, mind – to realise every single wish in full. No excuses, no get-out clauses, no small print. It’s all for one, and one for all.’ She thumped her fist on the small table we had appropriated, making the glasses rock perilously.
‘The Three Musketeers!’ Lin said, brightening at an allusion she recognised. She had been losing track of the conversation for some time. She slapped a wayward hand on top of Georgie’s fist.
‘Yup,’ said Georgie. ‘I’m obviously Athos, you’d better be Aramis, so Cookie—’
‘Is Porthos.’ I kept my hand to myself. ‘Funny how I’m always the fat girl even when it’s a guy.’
‘Porthos had a good time,’ Georgie protested. ‘He pulled lots of birds.’
‘I don’t want to pull birds!’
‘Look, are you going to do this pact or not?’
‘Okay.’ I put my hand on top of Lin’s. ‘But I refuse to be Porthos. It’s against the spirit of the wishes.’
Georgie repeated her vow, added another ‘All for one, and one for all’ just for good measure, and we toasted ourselves in champagne. It was that kind of evening. Presently, the chips arrived.
‘We don’t have to be the Three Musketeers,’ Lin said after deep and alcoholic thought. ‘I’ve got a better idea. We all begin with C – Cavari, Corrigan, Cook. We’re . . . the Three Cs!’
‘That’s wet.’ Georgie was scornful.
‘We’re Charlie’s Angels,’ I declared. ‘And before anyone says anything, I’m Drew Barrymore.’
‘Okay, but why was she the best?’ Georgie demanded.
‘Because she was. She defeated ten men – or maybe twelve – when she was tied to a chair. Cap that.’
‘I think I should be Drew Barrymore. You can be Cameron Diaz.’
‘No way. You’re the blonde bimbo – in an older sort of way. I’m Drew Barrymore and that’s that. She’s sultry. That’s what I’m going to be. I’m going to pout, and smoulder.’
‘I’ll get a fire extinguisher,’ Georgie said tartly. Possibly she didn’t like the reminder that she was older.
Lin – who only went to the cinema to see children’s films and spent too much time stuck at home with the television – piped up suddenly: ‘Can I be Farrah Fawcett?’
The level in the champagne bottle plummeted, to be followed by the level in another. Georgie turned down a proposition f
rom a youthful would-be actor, Lin had a rather one-sided conversation (though no one knew which side) with a coked-up comic who used to know Garry, and I attempted to kick in the balls a drunken suit who tried to fondle my tits. (I was trying to emulate Drew Barrymore.) I missed, kneecapping him instead, but it made me feel good. We headed home in the small hours, quite how I’m not sure, but I must have been going the right way because when I woke up, much later in the day, I was in my own bed. I had a shattering headache and a vague feeling of a milestone passed, of my feet set upon a new path, though initially I couldn’t recall why. I got up, made some coffee, and opened the fridge in search of restorative nourishment. Then the phone rang.
‘Get out of that fridge!’ Georgie.
‘I’m hungry.’
‘No, you’re not. Famine victims in the Third World are hungry. You’re overweight. Your body doesn’t require food: it’s just your mind leading you on.’
In future, she informed me, I would have to give her and Lin a complete list of everything I ate every day, ‘and no cheating. It won’t be for long. We’re aiming for sex goddess, not supermodel. You want to do this, don’t you?’ I grunted, possibly in agreement. ‘Think Nigel. Think stunning clothes. Think loving yourself.’
‘Do you love yourself?’ I inquired curiously.
‘Only when there’s no one else around to do it for me.’
That said it all, of course. Did I want to spend the rest of my life having invisible sex with the likes of Hugh Jackman, or did I want a Real Man?
To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure.
It is likely that practically everyone reading this book has, at some time or other, been on a diet. According to one theory the entire female sex is always just about to diet, or just starting a diet – on the first day, or the second day, although, mysteriously, you hardly ever meet anybody who tells you they’re on the sixth day, or in the third week. The beginning is easy: pounds drop off as your system clears itself, and major starvation pangs take a while to kick in. But by Day Four your weight stops going down – it may even creep up again – and it all seems pointless, and a packet of Hobnobs holds more allure than all the littleness of a little black dress. ‘I diet regularly,’ said Georgie surprisingly. ‘It’s the only way I can keep down to this size. The knack is to get your weight where you want it and then deal with any increase before it goes off the scale. Or scales. Don’t worry, you won’t crave chocolate indefinitely. It’s like giving up cigarettes: after a bit, the mere taste nauseates you.’