by Clare Naylor
“I’m going to ask Alex. I’ll make her put on her nipple tassels.”
“Fab. Get her to swing them in my direction when we go past,” said James.
Liv lay on the sand and made angels’ wings with her arms. Little grains had lodged under her fingernails and her hair was gently baking. Life felt good. She wasn’t sitting on a dark commuter train somewhere under Victoria Station and she’d begun to realise that life as a single girl was not too horrible at all. In fact, the future, now she’d managed to eliminate all the male distractions (Tim, she had heard, had been spotted in Sainsbury’s with a new girlfriend, to whom he was so entitled, she told herself; I mean how much further from buying mushroom quiche and cold meats with a marketing executive could she be right now? Will had been consigned to the scrap heap of bad-mannered boys who didn’t return phone calls after they’d slapped your bum during sex, and Ben Parker had a perfectly valid girlfriend and had duly shown that dog handling was clearly a load of rubbish, as he hadn’t even begun to stalk her despite the fact that it was at least a week since she’d told him she didn’t want anything to do with him—and there you had it, the male status quo, not exactly a cause for celebration, but with the sun shining and Mardi Gras hours away who gave a stuff, frankly?) was a promising landscape in which anything could happen. So Liv had just decided to trust in fate and get on with her fabulous career, enjoying her friends, experimenting, and experiencing life as she’d always wanted to do. Nobody to stop her from wearing too-short skirts, sleeping all day, eating pizza for breakfast, going out for morning coffee wearing her pyjamas and stilettos, no one to make her feel guilty for only reading the showbiz section of the newspaper; she could do whatever she wanted.
“Okay, I think it’s time we made a move. Let the beautification begin,” Dave said as he pulled on his shirt and covered up his gloriously smooth chest. His grooming habits put Liv to shame and he seemed to positively enjoy his regular back, sack, and crack waxing sessions, much to Liv’s horror.
“Liv, we’re off, but we’ll wave to you from the float—we’re sixth along, just after Dykes on Bikes, and I’ll be at the helm of the ship, of course,” James reminded her—he was The Little Mermaid and was going to be surrounded by hordes of seamen, or semen, whichever way you wanted to look at it, and they were all going to dance to the throb of “In the Navy.” “And I’m going to leave you a bit of a treat to get your party started. Have fun, angel; we’ll call you to check in tomorrow.”
“Wish us luck!” Dave called back as they headed for their van.
“Break a leg, boys. You’ll be gorgeous!” Liv yelled as Dave and James went off like love’s only slightly raddled dream into the sunset.
Liv sat on the beach a bit longer, finished reading Vanity Fair, and decided that she, too, ought to head home and slap on a bit of war paint. She gathered up her stuff and shook the sand from her towel.
“Rob. I didn’t expect you to be here,” said Liv as she bounded into the kitchen at home. “Is Charlie here, too, then?” She poked her head around the corner and found Alex in her dressing gown on the sofa with her hair in a scruffy ponytail and her nails devoid of polish.
“Oh my god, you’re practically naked!” Liv squealed, realising that Charlie absolutely couldn’t be here if Alex was looking so dishabillé.
“Charlie’s away playing polo.” Rob came in behind Liv and handed her a large goldfish bowl–sized glass of wine.
“Yeah, so Rob’s keeping me company. Isn’t that sweet?” Alex tucked her feet under her and took the proffered glass of wine. “It’s an amazing Sancerre—try it.”
Liv sank back into one of the beanbags on the floor and decided that despite appearances to the contrary and guilty-sounding protests, there was no way that Alex and Rob were having an affair, because Alex had made sod all effort to look attractive. Unless it was a Frumpy Housewife theme party. It wasn’t that Liv was opposed to anyone being an un-made-up slouch, just that for Alex the groomed thing was an occupational hazard and she’d never been seen in public before without her Laura Mercier primer and foundation.
“Now do you guys want to come to Mardi Gras with me tonight? I’ve got the hottest tickets in town,” said Liv.
“Actually, we’ve just got back from a bit of a day trip to the Hunter Valley, so we’re a bit knackered. Sorry, Liv.” Alex did actually look a bit whacked, but that could be the lack of primer.
“The Hunter Valley. Isn’t that the wine region?”
“Yeah. We thought that another Saturday in Sydney was a bit pathetic. I was going to ask you, but Laura said you were at the beach with the boys,” Alex assured Liv. “She said she’d been waiting to speak to you. Sounded a bit desperate, actually.”
“Do you think I should go and see her now?” Liv wondered aloud.
“Oh, she went out about ten minutes ago. To some theatre thing. Anyway, she’s always desperate. I wouldn’t worry.”
“Yeah. I’ll catch her later. So how was the Hunter Valley?”
“So beautiful, Liv, you can’t imagine. We had this amazing lunch in a vineyard and got a bit sozzled. We really shouldn’t have driven back, but . . .” Alex and Rob looked at each other and smiled at the memory. “Rob’s parents have a place there, don’t they, Rob?” said Alex. “But he wouldn’t take me. I told him not to worry; my parents lived in a really small house when they were alive. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. I just wanted to meet his mum and dad. They sound so nice.”
“Yeah, well, another time, hey, doll,” said Rob. “And, Liv, you’ll come with us, right?”
“Sure. But right now I need a date for tonight, and as neither of you look fit for anything other than bed I should go and get ready. Guess I’ll just have to go alone,” said Liv.
“Alone? Are you sure? Liv, you hate going to places on your own.” Alex was feeling a bit guilty. “I can always pull on some clothes and come with you if you like.”
“Nah, it’s fine. It’s weird and I must be growing up or something, but I actually quite like it. Not knowing who’s going to be there, who I’ll meet, and there’s the distraction of the parade anyway. I’ll take some photos of the boys,” Liv assured Alex. Actually, she was quite looking forward to an evening alone on the prowl: she could dance as badly as she wanted without anyone she knew being emotionally scarred by the experience. “Hey, I’d better get ready. You’ve got plenty of glitter I can borrow, haven’t you?”
“Sure thing, babe—on my dressing table. Help yourself.”
Thankfully as Liv raided Alex’s wardrobe and lamented the loss of her waist since she’d arrived in Sydney she discovered a great Fat-Day sheath dress that performed all the necessary tricks demanded by a girl whose gym membership was less lapsed than never opened. In fact, so hypereffective were all Alex’s wildly expensive lotions and expensive glittery bits in making Liv look like a girl, not a bushpig, that she was ready in twenty minutes. She decided that her dancing needed a bit of a helping hand, so as Rob and Alex roared with laughter over some inane dating show on television she put on a CD and practised a few moves—full dress rehearsal in high mules to Techno beat.
“I am happiness on toast. I am sex in a sheath dress. I am J-Lo in silver trainers.” (The high mules had caused her to dance in a jerky parent-at-a-wedding fashion.) And after a few bounces around the room and mouthfuls of wine she started to feel distinctly nifty on her feet. Of course there was no mirror handy, but, well, the furniture was still standing and she hadn’t any visible lacerations or bruises yet, which was novel. She let out a little squeal of delight and shimmied her hips to celebrate.
“You okay, Livvy?” Alex turned round from her place on the sofa and looked puzzled.
“Really well. Actually, I’m fantastic. Feeling wonderful.”
“Good.”
Alex and Rob looked at her with curiosity.
“Hmmm. So I’ll be off then.” She smiled like a very happy Osmond child and made her way to the front door. “Ciao.”
Liv arri
ved at the party and as she climbed the stairs to the roof terrace was longing for the Mardi Gras parade to begin. All up and down Oxford Street people were lining the route, standing on milk crates, wearing fabulous costumes: men in glitter hot pants, stray Chers, lots of moustachioed hard men in leather chaps, but also lots of children and teenagers and accents and real policemen mingling cheerfully with those with the buttocks of their trousers cut out. The fun was infectious and everyone was waiting for eight o’clock and the start of the parade.
“Cocksucking Cowboy?” A voice next to Liv’s ear asked as she leaned over the edge of the roof and watched the crowds and strobe lights sparkle below.
“Love one.” She smiled at the Cruella De Vil waiter.
“Coming right up.” Cruella winked and vanished.
“You don’t call; you don’t write; you don’t phone. How am I supposed to know if you’re dead or alive, eh?” another voice behind her said over her shoulder and kissed the back of her neck.
Liv swung round to be confronted by Ben Parker, for heaven’s sake. “You?” She scowled as though screwing up her face would make him vanish like a mirage.
“Me. This is the hottest ticket in town—did you think me and my prestigious girlfriend would go anywhere else?” He smiled sweetly. “There’s a crowd of us over there. Come join us?”
“Where?” Liv stood on tiptoes in her silver trainers and didn’t have to look for very long before she spied Amelia and her reams of beauteous friends shimmering in slinky fabrics and dazzling the waiters with their sparkly eyelashes.
“You know what, I’m fine just where I am, thanks,” Liv told Ben. Despite the little kiss he’d just bestowed on her neck (which may have been a trick of her disco-dazzled brain), she felt comfortable with him for the first time since she’d arrived. Clearly they’d dispelled any misleading sexual tension by having a bit of a snog, she’d then set him straight about her intentions, and he hadn’t called her. So no weirdness—just friends. “But it’s sweet of you to offer. I’m so glad we can be friends, you know. I do think you’re nice.”
“Well, I’m glad. I think you’re nice, too.” He laughed and Cruella brought over Liv’s drink. Just then the lights went down and the music began as the MC announced that the parade had just begun. “Well, I’d better be getting back over there or I’m likely to be missed. See ya later,” Ben said, and patted Liv’s arm in what could only be described as an avuncular way. Worst luck but definitely for the best, Liv thought as she craned her neck to see the Dykes on Bikes on the street below roaring into gear with their boobs wobbling proudly. And as the music struck up, as the lights flashed up from the street and from the ceiling above her, Liv began to experiment with her hips a bit. She jutted one in one direction. Then the other. She shifted her feet on the floor and shot a glance shyly around the room to see if anyone had noticed. If they had, then they seemed unfazed and not especially terrifed. The police may have been alerted, but she didn’t think so. So Liv got a bit more flash with her moves. She jiggled her arm like she was pulling a fruit machine and then caught sight of herself in a nearby window. She was dancing. Not reinventing the boogie or anything but definitely dancing. Which set her off all over again. I can dance! I can dance! she cheered in her head as years of miserable school discos and sitting out the Scottish dancing at weddings melted into happy oblivion.
As the parade continued, as float after float of overt sexiness was paraded before her, as she watched the guests on the dance floor behind her, the teenagers snogging in the street below, Liv began to feel a bit hot under the collar. She had exhausted her hips and was suddenly seeing the point of a dance partner. She shot a few glances over her shoulder and noticed Ben dancing—not wave-your-arms-in-the-air-and-let-rip stuff but just a bit of hip swaying, a foot here, a hand on someone’s waist there. He was laughing and looked all ease. Alex was right: he was sexier than any man had a right to be. So sexy it was wrong. Especially tonight in his linen trousers and his trademark T-shirt and trainers. Amelia was really getting it together on the dance floor with her modelly mates, but he was unperturbed and seemed happy to just ease around the edges, one eye on the floats and music outside, one on the party. Liv was beginning to feel a bit left out, wishing it were last week again and she had Ben panting at her heels like a dog. I mean here she was totally ignoring him (apart from the sly staring) and she wasn’t having a bit of luck. She looked forward to reminding Dave how wide of the mark he’d been on his dog-handling theories.
She took herself and her drink off to the loo so she could come back in five minutes and reinvent herself in another spot in the room—where nobody had seen her before and she would look like somebody who’d just stepped away from the fray to be alone for a second or two rather than a sad bint who’d been on her own all night. She was about to lock herself in a cubicle in the ladies’ when she heard the door shut behind her.
“Why didn’t you call me back?” She looked around and saw Ben standing there, his back against the door holding off the rest of the party. A tap dripped and Liv clutched her bag and took a hasty look around the loos to see if anyone else was there. They were alone.
“If you don’t ring I can’t call you back.” Liv took a step or two back towards the cubicle. Subtly, but putting the distance between them nonetheless.
Ben was looking closely at her to discern whether she was telling the truth. “I called you on Sunday. I left a message on your machine.”
“Oh. God, well, I’m sorry. I really had no idea.”
“I can’t stop thinking about you.” He didn’t move from behind the door, but she knew that he was about to get much closer than ever before. She could feel her resolve rinsing away, and though she tried to remember what her objections to kissing him were meant to be they, too, seemed to have evaporated. Ah yes. She knew.
“You have a girlfriend,” she said. Almost firmly.
“You’re very busy,” he reminded her while looking at her lips.
“You’re a player and only after one thing and when you’ve got it I won’t see you for dust.” She moved another pace away.
“You don’t want a boyfriend right now.” He moved a pace closer.
“My heart was broken and I don’t want it to happen again.”
“I want you, Liv.”
“Of course you do, because you can’t have me.”
“Can’t I?”
There was a tap on the door behind him and they both froze for a second. Liv opened the door of the loo behind her and motioned for him to go inside quickly. They could swap places.
“What’s going on in there? Open the door,” a woman’s called out shrilly. Liv took over holding the door shut where he’d been standing. Before he moved into the cubicle he touched her cheek. Liv closed her eyes for a moment and then, after he was securely locked in the loo, she moved away from the door and let the woman outside in.
“What the bloody hell were you doing in here? I’m standing out there dying for a pee.” A shimmery girl whom Liv recognised as one of Amelia’s cosy posse burst through the door.
“Sorry. I was just hitching up my tights and didn’t want anyone to come in.” Liv grinned inanely.
“Yeah, well.” The girl looked Liv up and down as though she were just a weirdo and then shut herself away in the next cubicle for a very long and loud pee like a horse. Liv tapped lightly on Ben’s door and he opened it. She joined him and they smiled conspiratorially at each other and locked themselves in.
“Hey, you got any dunny roll in there?” The horse pee girl rapped on the door.
Liv leapt a foot in the air and Ben sent a roll sailing under the partition.
“Here you go.” Liv giggled.
“Ta very much.”
Liv and Ben were now only a foot apart with nowhere to step back to. Liv looked at her feet and then her handbag and Ben’s feet and everywhere except his face. His trousers, she noticed, were made of a particularly lovely rough-hewn linen, probably Italian but then again, maybe Egyptia
n cotton. And beautifully hemmed.
Meanwhile there was a flush next door. A great deal of primping sounds and teasing of hair into place in front of the mirror and then the banging of the door and silence.
“Thank god for that. I thought she’d never go.” Liv laughed.
“So where were we?” He put his hands on her arms and she did feel stupidly small and pathetically lacking in willpower.
“It was never going to happen,” she said quietly.
“Exactly.” Ben nodded and then leaned down to kiss her, his hands tightening around her arms and his body moving next to hers. “Let’s go outside.” He had been kissing her hard and she, this time, had not been resisting.
“Outside?”
“In the street. It’s buzzing out there. And it’s pretty rank in here.” He took her hand and kissed her one more time for the road. “Come on.”
Liv was glad she hadn’t revealed to him that having sex in a loo was actually one of the things on her list of Experiences I Must Have in Life. Along with dancing in public and Ben Parker. So she figured it didn’t matter too much if she skipped just one of her things to tick off just for tonight. Didn’t want him to think she enjoyed doing rank.
Ben laced his fingers through hers and led her out of the fire escape down some back stairs onto the street. They’d totally bypassed the party and Amelia and, thankfully, hadn’t crashed into anyone on the way.
“Aren’t you afraid we’ll get caught?” Liv asked rather naively. The look he gave her told her that this might be precisely the thrill he was looking for. Instantly Liv knew that this was probably not the path marked “Love and Romance 13⁄4 miles.” This was the hot, sticky, slippery slope to momentary thrills and feeling like shit tomorrow. But whereas unbaked Liv would have hesitated on the street corner, thought of Dave’s wise words, and said thanks, but no thanks, the half-baked version of herself felt the balmy evening envelop her, took one look at Ben’s face, thought screw tomorrow, and followed him through the crowds.