‘Just as all women use men now.’
‘Well, maybe,’ she said, smiling. ‘Maybe not. But I bet it would make Tara jealous, too, if she thought you and I had got together.’ Claire took me by the hand. ‘Let’s use each other, eh?’
So it was that I found myself kissing Claire at Alan’s engagement party – not because I really thought it had anything to do with Tara, who probably couldn’t care less, but because I had, despite myself, fallen completely for Claire. And when, a few days later, Jess and Sam were talking next door while Claire and I banged, screamed and thrashed around in a feigned sexual encounter that would have embarrassed a porn star, I swore to myself that I would not give up, would not let this lie, would not shirk from any tactic – noble, foul or downright illegal – until I was doing this for real with the fully-clad girl currently banging a golf club on my bedroom wall and urging ‘big boy’, whoever and wherever he was, to give it to her a second time.
Chapter Twenty
I’ve heard Alan and Jess having sex enough times to recognise the soft, muted sounds of a couple in the throes of passion. What Ed and Claire were doing next door, on the other hand, sounded distinctly like two friends banging a golf club on the wall while giggling a lot.
‘Of course that’s what they’re doing,’ said Jess, smiling. ‘Claire doesn’t fancy Ed or anything. She’s just trying to make you jealous.’
‘Well, she’s not very good at it.’
‘The fake sex or the jealousy?’
‘The former.’ I thought for a bit. What did that mean, then? ‘Well, mainly the former. But then the two are mutually exclusive, aren’t they, now you’ve told me? It’s impossible to be jealous of fake sex. I don’t particularly want to be there, in Ed’s place, making stupid animal noises while my friend plays with his five wood. But watching her play with my – ’
‘Woah, Sam, don’t even go there.’
I apologised. I’d forgotten that you had to install a filter between your brain and your mouth when talking to girls. Jess and I might have been getting on well, but still, she wasn’t Alan.
Jess was a great deal more persistent, though. She kept on firing questions at me about Claire, forcing me to think long and hard. There was no getting away from it: the idea of Ed and Claire being together definitely did make me jealous. And I don’t mean jealous in a selfish, dog-in-the-manger way. I wasn’t worried about losing another friend. I didn’t mind if everyone ended up happier than me. No, I was concerned about losing the possibility of me and Claire. And if that was the case, where did that leave me?
Well, shit. I swore silently. It left me with a fairly obvious conclusion, didn’t it? Perhaps I did have similar feelings for Claire, whatever you wanted to call them. It wasn’t the first time they’d surfaced, but maybe it was finally time to do something about them. I might not have ‘been in love since the day we met’, but I had certainly always adored Claire. I might not have fancied her as much as I did other girls, but I had always cared for her. I might not have wanted to sleep with her, but I had always wanted to spend time with her. And wasn’t that more important? We got on. We had similar friends, similar interests. She made me happy. I made her laugh. We already knew each other. There were no surprises. We wouldn’t have to go through the tedious cycle of getting to know someone new, followed by the inevitable disappointment after six months when you find out they’re weird and then having to start all over again with someone initially more promising but, in retrospect, even worse.
Claire and I? Well, we didn’t have to wait until thirty-five, did we? We could have an arranged marriage before then. Marrying Claire would mean that I could finally start thinking with my brain. I’d stop putting sex on such a pedestal. I’d stop screwing everything up. We’d grow old gracefully together. Sam and Claire. It had a nice ring to it, didn’t it? I rolled it around my head, played with it, imagined it on artfully embossed dinner invitations. Oh, yes, we must get Sam and Claire round. What a fun couple Sam and Claire are. And it wasn’t as if Ed would mind, was it? He was in on the joke with Claire. Anyway, he was Tara’s for ever. Tara’s and his masculinist forum’s.
‘What are you thinking?’ asked Jess, eventually. The noise next door had stopped – hopefully Claire had more stamina when she wasn’t using a golf club – and I suddenly realised I’d been sitting in contemplative silence for some time. I was on the point of answering when Claire walked in, looking flushed, and kissed Jess and me goodbye. I had just looked at her in a new light, I realised, as we listened to her drive away. She was really very pretty. She had decided to stand by me, despite everything. How right she was to consider me for a potential relationship! Girls were so much wiser than boys.
I turned to Jess. ‘What am I thinking?’ I repeated. ‘I’m thinking this could all have a very happy ending.’
*
Not just yet, though. It was all far too soon after Rosie. Claire could be postponed until later in the year or maybe the year after that. It was nice to have the idea as a back-up. There was no rush. And in any case, I reminded myself, this wasn’t primarily about my happiness any more. There were still mistakes to correct, apologies to make, couples to reunite. Maybe once that was all done, I could think about myself again.
On Monday morning I waited outside Rosie’s office. I hadn’t wanted to stalk her, but I couldn’t see any other way of making proper contact. I had texted, rung, emailed, sent her a message on Facebook… She didn’t want anything to do with me. It was time to resort to old-fashioned methods.
Sadly Rosie’s methods were equally old-fashioned. When she first saw me, loitering with unmistakable intent outside her office, she shot me a brief, piercing look and continued on her way. She looked more magnificent than ever, I thought: that steely flash of wounded anger complementing the softer side I had known. I went after her and tried to put my hand on her shoulder. She shuddered at the touch. Finally, she stopped and faced me, a tear forming in the corner of one eye.
‘Look, I don’t want forgiveness.’ I spoke very quickly.
‘Good. Because you’re not getting it.’
‘I don’t deserve forgiveness,’ I admitted. ‘I just want to apologise. And explain.’ I tried to smile. ‘Oh, and I need your help with something.’
Rosie laughed, despite herself. ‘You need my help with something? After everything you’ve done?’
‘It’s not like that. It’s about Jess.’
We went for breakfast in a greasy spoon opposite, where neither of us ate or even spoke much for the first few minutes; we just sat in silence, a ketchup-flecked table of issues between us. When, eventually, Rosie started to talk, it tumbled out in a single, violent torrent of cathartic abuse. I listened without interrupting. It felt like the least I could do.
Rosie, I learned, hadn’t been after my perceived money, or my relative amusement value in comparison with other, more genuine born-again evangelists. She hadn’t been using me to make a friend she fancied jealous. She hadn’t done anything nearly as base as everyone else seemed to be up to. She had genuinely and absolutely loved me, in all her vulnerable innocence. She had loved me more as myself than as ‘Max’. She’d preferred the unemployed actor to the banker-cum-dreadful-entrepreneur. So I hadn’t just messed up something promising; I’d destroyed something great, something potentially very beautiful indeed.
‘So, really, I owe Jess one,’ she concluded. ‘Were it not for her warning, it’s possible I would have stayed with you for a very long time.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I completely fell for you, you stupid prat. I fell for you, and that was the biggest mistake of my life.’
‘Why?’ I asked again, even though I already knew the answer.
‘Because you’re obviously an utter shit.’
I winced and got up to leave. I didn’t want to hear any more painful truths. I’d reached the door before I stopped. I hadn’t come for me, I reminded myself as I sat down again, I’d come for Jess. And Rosie had said she owed her one. There was a gl
immer of hope. I bit my tongue and gently prompted Rosie as she went on to say how guilty she felt for wrecking Jess’s engagement party. She hadn’t known there would be an engagement party there, of course. She’d had a few days off work recently, so Jess’s email alerting her to the fact that I was an utter shit had been read at an unfortunate time – on the day of the party itself. Rosie had thought she’d find me in that bar with my new Richard II friends. Once there, she hadn’t meant to cause a scene; she was so livid that she couldn’t help herself. She hadn’t meant to interrupt the party. She hadn’t meant to throw her drink over Mary’s head…
‘No, really,’ I said, remembering Stock Market Christian’s Porsche outside the church. ‘That bit was fine. Mary deserved it.’
Rosie laughed, involuntarily, before remembering how cross she was meant to be with me. Her face turned again to its now default expression of withdrawn pain. ‘So, anyway, if there’s anything I can do to make it up to Jess, just tell me and then you’ll never see me again.’
I reminded her how, thanks to Amanda’s insinuations, Alan thought I had slept with his fiancée the evening before his engagement party. If Rosie could just tell Alan that it wasn’t true, everything would be okay. He would believe it if it came from her. Rosie so obviously hated me that she had no incentive to lie. Rosie would be a very believable alibi.
‘Fine,’ she agreed.
‘You’re a wonderful person,’ I said, moving my hand across the table to take one of hers.
‘I’m not doing it for you.’ She withdrew her hand as if it had been stung.
‘I know. You’re doing it despite me. And that’s what makes you wonderful.’
She half-smiled. ‘Oh, Sam, you know the tragedy with you?’
I shook my head. Most of my life felt like a tragedy at that point.
‘It’s that you’re so full of good intentions, and yet it all boils down to complete bullshit.’
I murmured a quiet agreement. It was horrible to be found out like this.
‘But at least you appear to have realised that fact,’ she continued. ‘So I’ll do this for Jess. And for your friend, Alan. He sounds a whole lot nicer than you.’
I agreed that Alan was a whole lot nicer than me.
‘Then he deserves to be happy,’ said Rosie.
I picked up her coat. ‘Shall we go then?’
‘Now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Fine,’ she said, snatching her coat out of my hands. ‘Suits me. I’d like to get this over with as soon as possible. As far as I’m concerned, the moment at which I never have to hear from you again can’t come too soon.’
I started to protest then caught myself and stopped. I’d promised Rosie an explanation, as well as an apology, but there wasn’t really any explanation, was there? Darling Rosie, I’m sorry for pretending I was someone else, but you see, I was scared about getting older and being lonely, and also I had a bet with my friends that I could nab a rich girl and I didn’t have the confidence to do it on my own merits so I thought I’d stick with the name of Max. Plus, I’m sorry about that other girl, the born-again nut-job, Mary, but I was hoping to use her to finance the lifestyle to which you thought I was already accustomed. That’s not to say I didn’t really like you… Well, no, it wouldn’t wash. ‘Each man kills the thing he loves,’ as Oscar Wilde wrote in Reading Gaol. ‘The coward does it with a kiss. The brave man with a sword.’
I was a coward.
We spent the journey to Alan’s office in silence. ‘What now?’ asked Rosie, when we emerged from the underground and stood outside the huge, glass-fronted building.
‘Now?’ I replied, taking a deep breath. ‘Now we sort this out.’
We walked into the atrium, our footsteps echoing across the marble floor, and approached the reception counter. ‘Would you be good enough to tell Alan Muir that his friend Matt Lewis is downstairs to see him?’ I announced, sounding more confident than I felt.
The girl called up his extension while we sat down to wait. ‘How many names do you have exactly?’ hissed Rosie.
I ignored her. I was composing a text message to Jess: ‘Stage one complete.’
Two minutes later, Alan appeared at the security barriers, swiped himself through and looked in vain for our friend.
‘Matt?’
His eyes settled on me in a gaze of pure loathing. They flickered briefly at Rosie, registering an equal amount of confusion.
‘Sorry, mate. I wasn’t sure you’d come down for anyone else.’ I grabbed his security pass and pushed him towards Rosie. ‘Now, finally, I can introduce you: Rosie meet Alan; Alan meet Rosie. She’ll explain.’ And before Alan or anyone else could stop me, I’d swiped myself through the barriers and lunged into the relative safety of the lift. I sent a second text to Jess.
The lift soared upwards. I knew where I was going: the sixth floor. I’d been there before, to screw Amanda sideways. Now I was going there to undo all the awful consequences of screwing Amanda sideways.
I walked down the long corridor, past the rows of head-bowed workers, past the photocopier I had hidden behind with my trousers around my ankles.
The door to Amanda’s office was open. I could see her working through a pile of accounts at high speed with a red pen, another one clenched between her teeth. I took a deep breath and went straight in, closing the door behind me.
‘What are you doing here?’ Amanda registered a brief flicker of fear before reverting to her more usual sardonic drawl. ‘Good engagement party last week, wasn’t it? Sorry we didn’t get a chance to chat.’
I bit my tongue. It was vital I kept my cool.
‘Now, now, Sam,’ she continued. ‘I’m sorry it got a bit out of hand. I didn’t mean it to end like that. But I did warn you last summer not to mess around with me. I warned Alan, too, when he answered back in front of the rest of my team. I warned that fat fiancée of his when she wrote me a threatening letter a few months back. You don’t screw with Amanda. I’ll always win.’
I threw my arms open in a gesture of surrender. ‘Fine, we give up.’
Amanda smiled. I smiled back and decided to take a punt in the dark. ‘You know, Amanda, I really wish I’d seen you again after last summer.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. It was quite an experience. I’m not sure anything has come close since.’
Amanda leant back in her chair and allowed another self-congratulatory smile to play around the corners of her lips. ‘I knew you’d see sense eventually.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘No one ever sleeps with me just once without trying it again.’
‘Even Alan?’
She laughed. ‘Alan? Hell, no. He wouldn’t even sleep with me once, poor lamb. His loss.’
‘Indeed.’ I checked again that no one could see us and moved closer. I had the first confession, but I needed more. ‘Well, Amanda, to the victor, the spoils. I’ll give you what you want, if you promise to stop being nasty to him.’
‘I don’t get it,’ she said.
‘No,’ I said, within touching distance now. ‘But you’re about to.’
She laughed raucously. It was not a nice laugh. ‘Oh, Sam, you ridiculous little man. Do you really think you can just walk into my office in the middle of the day and seduce me?’
I recoiled, blushing a little. It had been going quite well until then.
Amanda continued: ‘You don’t really think I was that bothered about you, do you? It was just a fuck at an office party, for God’s sake. And not a particularly good one, if I’m honest.’
I pretended to look crestfallen. I didn’t have to pretend too hard. It’s not very nice being told you’re a below-average lover by an Amazonian fortysomething with enough experience to know what below-average means.
Amanda softened a little. ‘Oh, Sam, don’t look so sad. It wasn’t that bad. I mean, I’ve had worse.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know when, but I’m sure I have at some point. And if you’d like to give it a
nother go some time, then it might be fun. Maybe don’t drink so much this time… You’re a nice enough boy, and I suppose you did me a favour by getting rid of my ex for me.’
I stammered: ‘So you weren’t punishing Alan at work because I hadn’t got in touch?’
‘Is that what you’ve been torturing yourself about?’ Amanda laughed. ‘God, you’ve got a big ego. And has he really been complaining to you about me being “nasty” to him? Pathetic.’ Her laugh suddenly turned into a frown. ‘Anyway, even if I had been a little harsh on him, why would you want me to stop? Alan hates you, doesn’t he? Thanks to me, he thinks you’ve shagged his fiancée. Why would you want to do something nice for him?’
‘Old time’s sake. Anyway, I imagine you’ve been running rings around him, haven’t you? Give the poor guy a break.’
Amanda chuckled to herself. ‘Well, I admit it has been a lot of fun. And he deserved it. Most of it, anyway. He was getting cocky and needed putting in his place.’
‘I’m sure he did. So what kind of things have you been doing to him?’
‘Oh, just winding him up, really.’
‘Like what?’
She looked at me suspiciously. ‘I don’t know why you’re so interested.’
‘Go on, tell me. I like a good, humiliating story as much as the next person. Especially now that you’ve humiliated me. And it’s not as if there’s much love lost between me and Alan these days. I’d feel guilty if you were punishing him because of me. But now that I know you’re not, it would amuse me to know what you’ve been doing to him. Alan and I have as good as fallen out over that fat fiancée of his. They hate me even more than they hate you.’
Amanda relaxed back in her seat. ‘Well, I suppose there’s no harm in telling you, given that you’re no longer proper friends. I told him he would get sacked if he didn’t sleep with me before his wedding.’
‘Sacked?’
‘I never really meant it, of course, but it’s kept me amused on slow days.’
‘Hilarious.’ I focused hard on keeping the sarcasm out of my voice. ‘It must have been quite a laugh.’
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