“Boy!” he shouted at me as he started off down Portobello. “That was something. Won’t wash for a week!”
I hadn’t told him Angel worked at Tesco. I didn’t want him offering to do the shopping and then going around and ogling her over the bar codes. But I did make a trip to Tesco myself a few days later. I believed her. I trusted her. But I just wanted to check out for myself that at least her Tesco story was true.
I saw her sitting there on aisle 4 as I went in and she saw me so I had to go around and pretend to do a shop. I grabbed a cart and began to fill it at random, not really concentrating on what I was doing. As a result I found I had selected items I didn’t even like. Celery. I hate celery. It would sit in the fridge and go bad. Bananas. They’d go brown but maybe I could make banana bread. Pasta sauce in a jar. Horseradish. Horseradish! A carton of vichyssoise. Some sweaty packed ham. A carton of Bio yogurt. I left my cart by the cheese and wandered off down the aisles to search for something I really might need. When I returned, loaded with paper towels (you can never have enough), Kleenex, fabric conditioner, heavy bulky items, the cart wasn’t where I’d left it.
I’d lost my cart. It had come to this.
“Shall I take those from you? You look like you’re going to drop them any second.”
I glanced over my shoulder. Straight into Buzz’s eyes. They were, I registered to my surprise, dead eyes—flat, staring—but somehow their sleepy expression made them sexy. He was standing very close behind me. He maintained constant eye contact as he took each of the items out of my arms. Then he turned around.
“Follow me. I’ve got your cart over here.”
“You hijacked my cart?” I accused him. “That’s a violation of some kind. Has to be.”
“Not the kind I have in mind.”
When we got to the checkout I made sure I went to Angel’s and she chattered away while she rang up my purchases.
“I’ll call you soon. Honest. I’ve just been so busy. I really really have. Oh, d’you use Pantene shampoo? I do too. Dead creamy. We’ll be able to share.”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Buzz standing at another cash register, his gaze fixated on Angel’s large breasts.
Of course I’d bought so much stuff I couldn’t carry it all home by myself and he had to help me. Why hadn’t he bought anything himself? Had he been stalking me? Lying in wait outside my house and following me to Tesco?
You wish, said a voice I tried not to hear.
“What did she mean, ‘we’ll be able to share’?” he asked. “I couldn’t help overhearing.”
“I’m renting out my summerhouse to her.”
“For sunbathing?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got time.”
I suppose it was as good an excuse as any for him to get his foot through my door. Or at least through my front door. Twenty minutes later he’d made it through my bedroom door. They call it carnal knowledge and I know why. There’s absolutely nothing spiritual or cerebral about it. Tommy never even crossed my mind for the simple reason that my mind wasn’t functioning—only my body.
Buzz unbuttoned my shirt and ran his hands around my back to unhook my bra while I tried not to shake. I hadn’t had new sex with someone in eight years and I was nervous and shy at exposing my body.
I was tense and he sensed this and he was gentle with me. As our kisses became more urgent my brain slowly began to register how desperately attracted I was to this man. His skin was light brown and the hairs on it silky. He was long limbed and he moved with extraordinary grace above me. I could feel his passion but he had it under control. He whispered to me every now and then, words I couldn’t make out but I understood nevertheless. Was I okay? Was I ready? Now? Yes? I heard myself moan, felt myself smothered by his embrace.
I’ve heard it said that you should always listen carefully to what men say when they’ve just had sex because their defenses are down and they tell you the truth. Buzz was holding me close and muttering away into the hair on the top of my head but although I heard Selma’s name a couple of times, my left ear was pressed to his chest and I couldn’t really make out what he was saying.
People always seemed to be going on nowadays about whether they had feelings for someone. I didn’t know what to make of what I had just experienced with Buzz. The only feeling I had at that second was that after such good sex, I was so hungry I wanted to go straight down to the kitchen and make myself a peanut butter sandwich.
And if he wanted to lie in my bed muttering something about Selma Walker, the only feeling I had about that was that it was just as well I hadn’t heard anything more on that score because by now I had almost certainly burned my boats. To the best of my knowledge ghostwriters were not in the habit of securing jobs on the casting couch.
CHAPTER 6
GUILT ABOUT BUZZ MADE ME DO THE UNTHINKABLE. Chelsea were playing at home and I invited Tommy round to watch. Wednesday night. Live on TV. 7:45 kickoff.
Tommy was understandably confused. I had long since established that there were two definite no-go areas in my house: live football on the box and country music. Recently I had begun to relax the country music rule a little because actually I quite liked it. The old stuff. Tammy Wynette. Waylon Jennings. Willie Nelson. Hank Williams. Dolly Parton. The late lamented Johnny Cash. And Don Gibson’s “Sea of Heartbreak” was one of my all-time favorites. It was these new people I couldn’t be doing with. Garth Brooks. Faith Hill. George Straight. Shania Twain. And Tommy’s new discovery, the Dixie Chicks, although ever since one of them had declared herself ashamed that George W. Bush was from Texas—presumably because she was too—I’d begun to view them in a different light.
But I definitely didn’t like any kind of football.
I think the thing that really bugs me about Tommy and Chelsea is that it always seems to make him revert to the little boy he used to be in the playground. He even admitted it once.
“When I was at school, in the playground they asked me who did I support so I went home and asked my dad and he said Chelsea. It was the sixties and loads of celebrities supported them so I just went along with it.”
Now he has the same boring routine for every match. He always goes with the same four guys whom he’s been going with since he was seventeen, eighteen—I think they were at school with him. They always sit in the West Stand. They always meet outside the betting shop opposite Stamford Bridge at a quarter to three every other Saturday when Chelsea plays at home. One of them will have already bought the programs. After the game they always go to the same Italian café for baked beans on toast. Only Tommy could order baked beans in an Italian restaurant. Then they always move on to the same pub from which I usually receive a drunken phone call with some excuse as to why he can’t make dinner.
The enormity of what I’d done with Buzz hit me full force when Tommy called to remind me he wouldn’t be seeing me on Wednesday because Chelsea were playing an evening game at Stamford Bridge. It wasn’t just that I had slept with Buzz and betrayed Tommy that made me berate myself. It was the fact that I knew with absolute certainty that I planned to go on betraying him. If Buzz made contact with me I knew without a doubt that I would see him however shocked I would be at my own behavior. I could not remember when I had been so motivated to do anything. I’d had an unsolicited shot of adrenaline in the form of Buzz Kempinski and I could already tell it was going to be addictive.
But did this mean the end for Tommy and me? I had betrayed Tommy but did this mean that I no longer wanted him, that I wanted to move on? I had slept with another man and if I did so again, that man would have to become the only one in my life.
In the meantime I was doing my utmost to accommodate Tommy in an effort to assuage my guilt and hating myself at every second. When he had said he was going around to his mates to watch the match on the box I heard myself say:
“Why don’t you come round and watch it here?”
There was a silence. He was probably wonde
ring what kind of penance I’d extract in return for this extraordinary offer.
“What’s the deal?” he asked suspiciously.
“There’s no deal,” I replied. “I could make us some supper.”
“But I’d want beans on toast.” Now he was beginning to sound incredulous.
“How hard can that be?” I said reasonably. “Although I might make myself some pasta and salad if that’s okay with you?”
Of course what really threw him was when he arrived I suggested we go upstairs and watch the match on the TV in my bedroom.
“In bed? You sick or something? It’s only six thirty.”
Yes, I’m sick with an insane lust for another man and I want you to seduce me with the same intensity he did so I never want to see him again, so I know I’ve made a terrible mistake and will never again succumb to temptation. I want you to have carnal knowledge of me, Tommy, in a way that will reignite our relationship because I know that’s what it will take to stop me being seduced again.
“I’m fine,” I said. “You’ve got time for a shower before kickoff. Up you go.”
Tommy kept things like clean boxers, T-shirts, shaving stuff at my house. Actual space in my wardrobe was banned because he was so messy. I knew he’d take over my bedroom if I gave him half a chance, but I’d given him a couple of drawers and he appeared to have sneaked in a pair of pajamas when I wasn’t looking. He was sitting up in bed in them when I brought up his baked beans.
Pajamas! How big a turnoff was that?
“Where’s the ale?” he wanted to know.
“We’re not having beer in the bedroom. I don’t want to go to sleep in a pub.”
He started looking grumpy so I compromised by offering to open a bottle of champagne. Tommy perked up. He doesn’t actually like champagne very much but like most people he equates it with some kind of celebration, so maybe he thought opening a bottle would bring Chelsea luck.
So there we were, halfway through the first half, sitting up in bed clutching champagne flutes with Tommy bouncing up and down beside me and spilling his fizzy all over my Egyptian cotton.
I didn’t say a word. I sat bolt upright because every time I lay down I saw Buzz’s face hovering above mine and my body turned to jelly. Instead I tried to concentrate on the game. I had long since given up thinking I might have the kind of sex with Tommy that would enable me to dismiss Buzz from my mind, mainly because Tommy was yelling “crazy!” whenever a Chelsea player moved a muscle. It was his new word. “Crazy!” It had replaced “cool!” in what he imagined was his hip vocabulary. “Cool” had replaced “wicked” and so on. I wondered what Buzz said. A buzz word, naturally. I giggled at my own stupid joke and Tommy hugged me thinking I was joining in the spirit of things.
Dear Tommy. I might loathe football but it touched me to see him enjoying himself so much. He was happy sharing this with me. He had no idea what was running through my head and I had no idea how to broach it with him.
I was wondering what sport Buzz liked, if any, when Tommy yelled “CRAZY!” with such force that I looked at the screen. Chelsea had scored just before halftime. The phone rang on Tommy’s side of the bed.
Would it be Buzz? Who hadn’t called me since the day he’d been lying exactly where Tommy was now.
“I’ll get it. That’ll be Shagger about the score. I told him I’d be here.”
Shagger Watkins. One of the trusty group who accompanied Tommy to Stamford Bridge. I assumed Shagger’s parents had given him another name at birth but if they had I’d never heard it.
“Hey, Shagger? What about it, mate?”
There was a short silence after which Tommy began apologizing profusely.
“Genevieve, I’m really sorry. No. No. Don’t be like that. I thought it was going to be someone else. Yeah, hold on. She’s right here. I’ll pass you over. It’s Genevieve for you,” he said unnecessarily. “She’s a bit pissed I called her Shagger.”
“And you’re surprised? Genevieve?”
“It’s a go,” she informed me triumphantly.
“What is?” I asked stupidly, wondering if she’d kept it a dark secret from me all these years that she too was a Chelsea supporter.
“Selma Walker. She wants you to do it.”
“Buzz called you?” I held my breath.
“No, she called herself. From Manchester where she’s filming in the studio. She wanted to know why I hadn’t called her! She was furious when I told her you’d actually already met with Buzz. Anyway, she’s flying back tonight and she most certainly does want to meet with you herself. She’s talking about a breakfast meeting tomorrow morning since you live around the corner from her.”
I’d never had a breakfast meeting in my life.
“What time?” I asked nervously.
“Oh, ten-ish. Actually we agreed ten and I just said I’d call her back if you couldn’t make it. But you can, can’t you?”
“Yes,” I said feeling weak. Would Buzz be there?
“Lee, there’s something else.” Genevieve sounded nervous which was highly unusual for her. “Now she’s decided to do a book she’s in a hurry. I don’t understand why but when I explained to her about how you’d have to do a proposal for us to sell before you started the book, she nearly threw a fit. She wants you to start straight into the book, to write it on spec.”
“But how are you going to sell it?”
“I guess we’re going to have to wait until you’ve done a chunk of it, then I’ll sell it on that.”
“And you’ll go along with that?”
“I don’t see what choice we have unless you drop out altogether. Of course if her story’s crap you can pull out in twenty seconds. You’ll have to assess it as early as you can.”
I didn’t know what to say. It all sounded a bit irregular.
“Well, I’d better let you go and get your beauty sleep,” said Genevieve. “Don’t let Tommy keep you up too late. Call me when you’ve seen her.”
Chelsea won 3-1 and Tommy appeared to have downed most of the champagne. His euphoria manifested itself in some rather drunken groping of my breasts before he fell asleep. Champagne gives most people a lift but then I’ve long since given up hoping that Tommy will behave like most people.
Except in many ways he does. I was the oddball. Tommy wanted a normal life. He liked us doing things as a couple. He was always on at me to go to Sainsbury’s and Tesco with him on Saturdays to get the weekend shopping. He’d be in his element if we were pushing a pram in front of us and he had a toddler perched high on his shoulders, a miniature Chelsea supporter. He yearned to go to places like Homebase except he didn’t have his own home to shop for. I’d tried to indulge him in his fantasies by letting him do as much do-it-yourself around my house as I could find but he was so hopeless at it, it wasn’t worth the effort.
I fell asleep after an hour of lying awake feeling unbelievably sad. I was deceiving Tommy, not only sexually but because I hadn’t told him why I had invited him around this evening. I had expected him to behave in the same wildly uncharacteristic manner I had suddenly adopted for no reason whatsoever and that was totally unfair of me. And yet I had a strangely fatalistic attitude toward my infidelity with Buzz. I knew that what I was really doing was putting my own feelings for Tommy to the ultimate test. I had fully anticipated that when I spent time with Tommy again, when I climbed into bed with him, I’d be instantly cured of Buzz’s hold over me.
But that hadn’t happened. If anything I felt an even stronger pull toward Buzz and a split-second moment of unease filtered through my mind. Was I spending my last night with Tommy?
The next morning I awoke in a state of exhaustion. I made Tommy some sandwiches in a daze. God knows what I put in them. After I’d packed him off to work, before walking over to Selma Walker’s, I went around the corner to one of the plethora of newly installed coffee shops that had sprung up all over Notting Hill. I needed a shot of espresso and a rush of sugar in the form of a couple of chocolate croissants. It
occurred to me as I was munching that I was consuming the breakfast I was supposed to be having with Selma. On my way through the market, where the merchants were bundled up in an assortment of woolly hats, scarves, and mittens against the December cold, I bought a Daily Mail and read the story entitled “My Friend Astrid.” A woman who had once shared a flat with her in her more impoverished days had come forward to announce that Astrid McKenzie was nothing like the portrait that had been painted of her in the press since her death. She described Astrid as a hard-drinking, good-time girl who used foul language and was frequently involved with disreputable characters. I didn’t recognize the names of any of the men mentioned. They were probably well-known hoodlums for all I knew. But one thing was clear: The tide had turned. The press had gone to town building up a picture of Astrid the Saint but now they were ready to shoot her down.
The low-key early-morning rhythm of the market was something I treasured about living in Notting Hill. I loved to wander along as the merchants set up their stalls. Apart from the odd truck delivering produce, the street was devoid of vehicles. Sleepy pedestrians on their way to work roamed all over the street. I stopped to buy an apple at Chris’s stall.
“See you’ve been reading about her,” he said, tapping Astrid’s picture in the paper over my shoulder. “See that geyser over there”—he pointed to a burly creature arranging a display of cauliflower across the road—“she had a bit of a thing with him.”
“She did?”
“Oh yes! It was all a bit brazen. She started buying veg from him, never went near anyone else, then one day he starts bragging about how he’s had her in her little mews house. And not just the once by the sound of it. He’s a nasty piece of work, beats his wife black and blue. The police know him of old, the number of times they’ve been called round to the house, but there’s not much they can do when it comes to domestic violence. His wife calls them in a panic and then she denies everything when they get there.”
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