by Anna Maxted
‘It’s Michelle, honey!’
Oh, I say in my head. Would that be the same Michelle who professes to be a close friend yet doesn’t turn up to my father’s funeral, explain her absence, or bother to send her condolences? Sadly I am the Terminator in theory and Stan Laurel in practice, as pathetic at confronting friends as I am at confronting spiders. So all I say is an unenthusiastic, ‘Hi.’
Michelle is oblivious. She rushes on, ‘Gotta make it quick. The reason I rang is – and I guess you forgot, but never mind – it’s my birthday tomorrow, and we’re going for drinks and a boogie at the U-Bar in Soho.’
Jesus, she’s got a nerve. I say frostily, ‘Unfortunately, my father died two weeks ago, as you may recall, so I’m not really doing much socialising.’
I have known Michelle for over twenty years and in all that time I’ve never heard her say the word sorry. She doesn’t break with habit now. There is a hammy gasp down the phone, ‘I know that! That’s why I haven’t called – I figured you didn’t want to be disturbed. I thought you’d want to be left alone! That’s why I didn’t mention it! I didn’t want to remind you!’
A likely story. ‘I’m hardly likely to forget, am I?’ I say sharply.
‘I realise that,’ she says, equally sharply, ‘but apart from anything else, it’s a tradition in my family. Women don’t go to funerals.’ Really, I think. That will cause a dilemma when one of them snuffs it. I break a tradition of my own and am pointedly silent. Michelle, the mind game queen, bulldozes my attempt to shame her by adding, ‘Helen, I’m thinking of you here. It would do you good to get out instead of moping around your apartment. Life goes on. And’ – here, a slight whine – ‘I’m going through a rocky patch with Sammy. I need your support. Please come.’
Hilarious. She needs my support because her gormless gimp of a man who won’t drink a spritzer or eat a chocolate liqueur without permission from his mummy is in a sissy little huff. Michelle must have asked him to change a light bulb or boil the kettle. She has been going out with Sammy for five years and two months and he has been a milksop namby-pamby bore for about 1,886 days. Michelle’s favourite hobby is griping about him to any friend too gutless to cut short a strident two-hour telephone diatribe but she takes outlandish offence at my free therapy sessions and considered attempts at constructive criticism (‘Michelle, why don’t you bin him?’).
‘So will you?’ she demands. I give in. There is little point making a principled stand because as well as being as thick-skinned as an elderly rhino, Michelle is a hardcore grooming addict and will actually believe me if I say I’m devoting all of tomorrow night to washing my hair.
‘Yes, okay,’ I sigh, ‘I’ll be there.’
‘Honey, you’re the best!’ says Michelle, who has read Jackie Collins’ Hollywood Wives four times and adapted her speech patterns accordingly. I replace the receiver, slump on to the sofa and exhale crossly through my nose. Michelle and I were thrown together aged five because our mothers were determined to share the school run. As my discriminatory powers were yet to kick in, her impressive collection of Walt Disney stickers sealed our friendship. Twenty-one years later, I curse Bambi and Thumper and all their twittering companions.
I call Tina to request backup. She is looking for a reason to avoid staying in tomorrow tonight as she is trying to wean herself off Coronation Street and is delighted to accept.
I expected the U-Bend – sorry – the U-Bar, to be tacky but it way exceeds my expectations. For one thing, there is a purple life-size Cadillac bumper stuck to the wall. I refuse to sit under it in case it falls on my head. Michelle is resplendent in a fake leopardskin crop top and tight white jeans and appears to have modelled her hairstyle on Monica Lewinsky’s.
Tina, meanwhile, is hypnotised by the heavy concentration of proudly flaunted fashion crimes and repeatedly gasps, ‘What is she wearing?’ I am dressed in bog standard black trousers and a crumpled silver shirt I retrieved from the depths of my linen basket. It had been in there for three months on the pretext that I’d take it to the dry cleaners when I had a moment, but I never did and know I’m never going to, so why bother to maintain the pretence? Anyway, silk, crushed silk, who’s to know? That said, when Tina saw it she asked in a carefully neutral tone, ‘Where did you get that?’
I replied, also in a carefully neutral tone, ‘From the linen basket.’
She gave me a reproving look and murmured, ‘I’ll say no more.’
I glared at her and said, ‘Good.’
My mood does not improve when – after ignoring us for an hour in favour of a stocky ginger guy whose back is shaped like a Dairy Lea triangle – Michelle sashays over for a ‘quick chat’. Tina immediately excuses herself and speeds to the Ladies. I clink the ice in my Coke. Michelle glances sharply at my drink. ‘Jack Daniels and diet Coke?’ she says.
‘No,’ I say evenly, ‘just Coke.’ I know what’s coming.
‘Aren’t you dieting?’
I slam the Coke on the table and squeak, ‘No I am not dieting! Are you?’
Michelle laughs and pats her pancake-flat stomach, ‘Sweetheart, are you kidding! Born lucky I guess.’
Born going to the gym seven days a week and eating one meal a day like a Weimaraner, more like. But, it is her birthday. Let’s be charitable. ‘So how’s your sister?’ I say.
Michelle flares her nostrils. ‘Nightmare! On and on and on about that freakin’ baby! You’d think she was the first person in the world to give birth, my God! Say what though, her tits are fantastic! Normally, she’s got nothing! She’s like you! Now all of a sudden, she’s Dolly Parton!’ I am speechless with indignation, which gives Michelle enough time to summon an oily faced man with a concave chest, press him down beside me, say, ‘Helen, sweetheart, this is my cousin Alan, I know you’ll just mesh,’ and swan off.
Heart pounding, I scan the room for Tina and, to my dismay, spot her propped against the bar practically rubbing noses with a handsome blond man in a dark suit. She flicks back her hair and cups his hand as he gallantly strikes a match to light her cigarette. The brazen hussy. I’ll get her for this. If Alan doesn’t get me first. A few more hearty blasts of death breath and he might.
I’m cornered. He asks me a question about me – as all the self-help books for social lepers recommend – but as soon as I’ve rapped out a sentence he – as I very much doubt the self-help books recommend – ricochets it back to the glorious subject of him. For instance, where did I last go on holiday? I went to Spain. What a coincidence! He went to Spain when he was three, yes, he went to Madrid and saw a bullfight and decided he wanted to be a matador but, ha ha, he’s settled for being an intellectual property lawyer, and he travels all over Europe, and only last week the senior partner was remarking on his singular dedication to the firm and how the drone drone drone.
I’ve sunk into a trance which I snap out of when Alan’s woolly-jumper-clad arm snakes around my shoulder. I shake it off and snarl, ‘I’ve got a boyfriend.’
Although this is a lie he looks greasily insulted. ‘And I’ve got a girlfriend!’ he says preeningly, ‘but I presume we can still be friends.’
I shoot him a killer look and hope he dies – or at least goes away, but no. Alan’s type never do. He prates on about himself for approximately eternity. Then, praise the lord, a swig of his lager and lime goes down the wrong way and he stops bragging to choke for a minute. I take this fortuitous opportunity to stand up and say, ‘Bye, I’m going now.’
But, but! he sweatily grabs my hand and croaks, ‘Can I have your phone number?’ The bumptious, conceited oaf.
‘I thought you had a girlfriend,’ I say.
‘I do, but, you know, if things start going badly in either of our relationships—’
I interrupt, ‘I’m happy with mine.’
He scratches his oily nose, ‘Yeah, me too, but you know, say in a month’s time, I could ring you up and we could get together.’ As if.
‘For what purpose?’ I say icily.
Alan assumes a slow nasal drone as if he were talking to, I imagine, his secretary. ‘Helen,’ he says, ‘how old are you?’
Like a bleating fool I reply obediently, ‘Twenty-six.’
He smiles loftily and – before I realise what he’s doing – slides a slick paw on to my left buttock and squeezes. ‘When people of our age get together, I’m sure you know for what purpose,’ he leers, as I furiously knock away his hand. A frizz-haired groper and patronising to boot!
‘I’m sorry,’ I say in a sweetly vicious lilt, ‘I don’t think I will give you my phone number. But’ – consolingly – ‘thanks for trying.’ Then I angrily elbow my way through the U-Bar’s brightly attired clientele – heaven knows where Tina got to – and leg it to the tube.
Even the train journey is incensing. I don’t mind the hordes of raucous, rowdy, shouty, drunken louts – after all, any other Friday night they’re me and Tina. It’s the pair of perniciously canoodling pensioners who sit directly opposite me holding hands and smiling soppily who make me want to scream and scream, strangle them and smash up the train with a sledgehammer.
I hate them. It’s disgusting at their age. Why aren’t you dead, I think. You should be dead. My father’s dead, why aren’t you. By the time the train pulls into Finchley Road tube station I am buzzing with a hatred so vivid I feel physically ill. I stamp home in the dark, daring any mugger, rapist or murderer to attack – just try it, matey, and you’ll wish you hadn’t because I don’t care and by the time I’m finished with you I’ll make you wish you’d never been born.
I arrive home, unscathed, ten minutes later. It’s only 10.50. I quietly shut the door, take a deep, slow breath, glide to the kitchen table and, in a stiff robotic movement, sit down. Then I rest my head in my hands and think, ‘Help me, someone, please help me,’ over and over and over. I don’t know what to do. My life is lurching, hurtling, spinning out of control. I’m going mad. ‘Oh God, please help me.’ I think I say this aloud because suddenly Marcus is beside me stroking my hair and saying softly, ‘Hey, Hellie, my all-time favourite girl, what’s up?’ and I say it again, ‘Oh God, someone, please help me’ and burst into tears.
Ten minutes later, I’m snogging Marcus.
Chapter 9
THE LAST TIME I had a leg wax was after reading a feature in Vogue about French women. French women are strangers to the concept of ratty period knickers, have weekly manicures and pedicures, and don’t clear their plates just for the sake of it. I rang Tina in a flap to see what she thought.
‘It’s beautifully written,’ she said, ‘and very persuasive, but I think the writer is teasing. It’s funny, and yeah, they are like that, but she is having a laugh.’ At that moment it struck me that Tina dresses, acts, and eats like a slightly unhinged Frenchwoman even if she is from Tooting, so she would say that. I booked an emergency appointment at the hairdresser, the beauty clinic, ran round the block, then zoomed to Waitrose and bought a lettuce, five carrots, a box of tomatoes, two tubs of cottage cheese, a loaf of wholemeal bread, three tins of tuna in brine, four potatoes, and a box of peppermint tea. All of it rotted away in the fridge of course, but at least that week, my legs were bald, my bikini line straggle-free, I had no split ends, and my nails were as buff as Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise.
Unfortunately, that week was nine months ago, the Parisian peer pressure since has worn off, and I have reverted to my slovenly English, plate-clearing ways. So, as Marcus licks and puffs and murmurs pretty words in my left ear, my overriding emotion is not swoony molten lust, but jumpy jittery fear. When, for instance, did I last thoroughly clean my ear?
Casually, I twist my head so my ear is out of puffing range and our lips meet in an ungainly clash of teeth. ‘Oops, sorry!’ I giggle. I’m not entirely sure how this happened. One minute I am bawling like a red-faced baby with wind, the next, Marcus has hauled me out of my seat and into his strong (yes!) firm (oh my!) musclebound (bonus point!) arms. I cried and snotted on to his linen shirt leaving a wet, greenish slime mark which, fortunately, escaped his notice. He stroked my hair some more and whispered, ‘Poor Hellie, poor little chicken, hush now, don’t you cry.’ Then he started kissing my head. Marcus J. Bogush! Kissing me. After all these barren years!
Pensioners forgotten, I clamp my mouth to his. He pulls my head back by grabbing my hair which is painful, but I don’t dare ruin the moment by saying ‘ouch’. We kiss long and hard but – horror of horrors – his snogging style isn’t quite as blissful as his reputation with the ladies suggests. To be miserably honest, I’m disappointed. His tongue rolls wetly around my mouth like a large dead salmon in a washing machine. Then he breaks off to say cheekily, ‘Feeling better now?’ and I fall in lust again. He pulls me on to the sofa and, in the heat of passion (except it’s premeditated) I grab at his hair too. He stops groping me for a second to pull away and say, ‘Hellie, sweetest, I adore you but you’re pulling my hair.’
‘Sorry,’ I mumble, and we slobber kiss again. This man produces an inordinate amount of saliva, I’m thinking ungratefully, when the phone rings. It clicks to the answer machine.
‘Hi, Helen, Tom here! Calling to see if you fancied a tequila sometime . . .’
I freeze. Tom’s timing is very, bad, indeed. Marcus lets go of me as if I’m radioactive, the lustful bleariness vanishing from his clean-cut face as if he’s torn off a mask. ‘So I’ve got competition,’ he remarks airily.
‘Not really,’ I stammer.
‘Yes really,’ says Marcus pleasantly. ‘Perhaps I should leave you to it.’ He jumps up and scratches daintily at a strange greenish mark on his shirt.
I say, ‘It’s just that he’s been—’ I stop as I look at Marcus who stares back unblinkingly.
‘Your choice, Helen,’ he says.
I pick up the phone. ‘Hi, Tom?’ I say.
‘Oh!’ he says, ‘screening your calls. And I made it!’
This – despite all my recent protestations to Tina – is going to be difficult. I glance nervously at Marcus, who crosses his arms Gladiator-fashion and yawns. ‘Tom,’ I say sadly, hesitantly.
He interrupts. His voice is somewhat cooller, ‘This isn’t going to be good, is it?’
I bite my lip. ‘Tom,’ I sigh, ‘I like you and everything but I’m really busy right now, at work and stuff, but I’ll, why don’t I give you a ring sometime.’ I glance again at Marcus. He looks unimpressed. So I add, ‘But, huh, don’t hold your breath.’
There is a short pause. Then, in a cold, contemptuous voice, Tom says, ‘Message received and understood.’ The line goes dead.
‘Ker-bam!’ says Marcus loudly as he smoothly removes the receiver from my hand and spins me round to face him, ‘You tell him!’ Then he grins and murmurs, ‘You’re a force, Hellie, you know that, don’t you?’ I smile and nod, although I didn’t know it. ‘So,’ he continues – kiss kiss on my neck – ‘what’ – kiss kiss on my throat – ‘shall’ – unbutton nibble – ‘we’ – unbutton kiss – ‘do’ – unbutton slurp – ‘now?’
I cling on to Marcus’s broad shoulders and close my eyes in a parody of desire, but inwardly I feel weak and wicked and about as turned on as a dead bunny rabbit. I have humiliated Tom, but I feel humiliated. Those four words – message received and understood – fill my head and shame me again and again.
I am roused from my non-lecherous thoughts by the unwelcome realisation that Marcus is giving me a love bite. He appears to be trying to suck all the blood out of my body through the skin. Pardon me but I grew out of teenage territorial marking behaviour at least three months ago. My lack of enthusiasm is maybe obvious because Marcus abruptly ceases his suction pump impression and says in a solemn tone, ‘Hellie, we can stop right now or we can take this further.’
I snap out of it. This is Marcus, my nine-year lust object, for heaven’s sake! ‘Let’s rock!’ I say in what I hope is a sex kittenish growl.
He smiles a triumphant smile, says, ‘That’s my girl!’ then picks me up, grunting slightly with the effort, a
nd lugs me into his bedroom.
‘I’m quite heavy,’ I murmur coquettishly, in smug expectation of the obligatory denial.
Incredibly, Marcus doesn’t take the bait. Instead, he dumps me plonkily on his bed and mutters, ‘You said it, darlin’!’
Six and a half unerotic minutes later, Marcus and I are lying side by side under his white duvet and I am trying to think of something to say. ‘That was nice,’ I lie. Amazingly, considering his cut-price performance, he believes me. He props himself on one elbow and idly twiddles a finger – I never noticed before how little his hands are – around my right breast. I glance up and, with a shock, see he has what can only be described as an amused expression on his face. ‘What?’ I say suspiciously.
Marcus wrinkles his nose. ‘Nothing,’ he grins, ‘they’re cute.’
The impudence! For the record, my bosoms happen to be size 36A, and for the record again – seeing as we’re being so free and easy and judgemental about other people’s body parts – Marcus’s dick happens to be size AA, as in pocket camera battery size. Only it doesn’t last as long. I am bristling with pique, when Marcus throws aside the duvet, announces, ‘I’m going to shower,’ and springs out of bed.
‘Fine by me,’ I murmur, snuggling down and drawing the duvet up to my chin.
‘So,’ he continues, a little brusquely, ‘aren’t you going to shower?’
I prop myself on my elbows and purr, ‘Is that an invitation?’
Marcus looks embarrassed. He scratches the back of his left calf with his right foot and says, ‘Hellie, I have this thing about showering? It’s kooky but I like to shower alone. But you can go and use your shower, I don’t mind.’
At first I don’t understand. I blurt, ‘What, and come back here afterwards?’
Marcus hesitates and says, ‘If you like, although it might be awkward if Luke spots you, that’s the only thing.’
I will the hurt not to show on my face. ‘You’re so right,’ I say slowly. ‘Would you mind passing me my shirt.’