The Vintage Guide to Love and Romance

by Kirsty Greenwood

  ‘That kissing bit sounds rather nice,’ he says, taking hold of my hand.

  ‘Yeah,’ I shrug. ‘It usually is.’

  And so we do the kissing bit.

  Doctor Jamie is standing in front of me while I’m sitting on his desk. We’re snogging. Like, really full-on snogging. He’s pawing every inch of my body as if he’s never had a woman before. He pulls back and looks at me with a serious expression. I don’t know, maybe he never has had a woman before. He is pretty awkward. Maybe I’m his virgin voyage. Gad. Maybe he’ll want to cuddle afterwards. Must find a way to escape before that happens.

  Either way, I can’t deny that having sexy times is, as I expected, the most excellent distraction from the whole failing-at-life thing.

  Jamie runs his hands down my back and pulls me off the desk so that I’m on my feet. Grabbing my bum, he draws me closer to him. I feel his hard-on press against me and get a flutter of excitement. He runs a hand through my hair and tugs a little on my ponytail.

  Oooh, OK. Definitely not his first time. Though I hope he doesn’t tug much harder, else he’ll pull out my hair extensions and that would really ruin the moment. Wait, stop, give me my hair back.

  ‘I’ve never done anything like this,’ he murmurs, panting and pink of cheek.

  ‘Like what?’ I breathe, kissing his neck.

  ‘Not knowing a person before . . . but you . . . I can’t believe this is happening. How the hell did we . . . ? At work, of all places . . . I can’t believe what is happening right now . . . ’

  He trails off and steps back to unbutton his shirt, eyes glassy with le horn.

  ‘How are you finding it?’ I say, using his shirt collar to yank him back towards me.

  ‘Super.’ He nods decisively. ‘Excellent, actually.’

  We start kissing again and things move at speed. It feels so great to let loose, to not feel worried and guilty about things, to feel the comfort of surprisingly strong arms around me. Isn’t sex fucking brilliant?

  We stumble into another room connected to Jamie’s office, some kind of examination/storage room with a high single bed covered in blue paper and tons of boxes and metal trolleys.

  I unbuckle Jamie’s belt and he tugs off my blue lacy top and my bra. He presses his palm against my boob and lets out a groan. Pulling down his trousers, he steps out of one leg, still kissing me with an eagerness the level of which I have not encountered on my sexual adventures thus far. The other trouser legs seems to be stuck. He hops around a bit trying to get it off.

  I laugh. ‘Hurry up, Doc.’

  ‘I’m trying. Trust me.’

  Leaning forward at the waist, he clutches the bottom of the trouser leg, but then somehow bends too far and topples over into a metal trolley.

  ‘Owww!’ He falls to the floor and a bedpan boinks him on the ear.

  ‘Holy shit, are you OK?’ I hurry over and try not to laugh. What a twit.

  ‘Ouch,’ he says, rubbing his elbow and then his ear.

  ‘I hope you’re more coordinated than this in the operating theatre.’

  ‘Ouch!’ he says again, pouting up at me pointedly and grumpily clutching his arm.

  ‘Show me the damage.’

  He rolls up his shirtsleeve to reveal an emerging bruise on his elbow. His eyes are watering.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ he groans.

  ‘You can’t say fucking hell in here,’ I say in a ropey Scottish accent.

  He gives me a wry smile.

  ‘Shall we stop?’ I indicate our state of undress.

  ‘No. No,’ he says valiantly. ‘I think I’ll make it.’

  ‘So brave.’

  Then, without another word, he scrambles back up and kisses me as if his life depends on it.

  It’s just after 9.30 the following morning and Doctor Jamie and I are frantically trying to get dressed and cleaned-up before Jamie’s boss arrives and the clinic opens up at ten. We pretty much did sex the entire night through. Well, until about five this morning, when we slumped onto one of the clinic beds, exhausted and dazed. It was good, too, in a surprising kind of way. Doctor Jamie had sex the way I expect he does most things, with deep concentration, a touch of awkward politeness and lots of enthusiasm.

  ‘I can’t find my bra!’ I mutter, wriggling into my top in a panic. ‘Dammit. I love that bra.’

  ‘It’s here.’ Jamie grabs it from beneath the sheet of the clinic bed and flings it my way. ‘I used it as a pillow.’

  I don’t have time to take my top back off and put the bra on, so instead I just wrap the strap around my wrist.

  ‘I have to go. I think breakfast was, like, two hours ago,’ I say, dragging my skinny jeans up my legs as quickly as it’s possible to drag skinny jeans up legs, which isn’t very.

  Jamie nods and runs his hands through his wet curls. ‘OK, yeah. Uh . . . are you around for the rest of the week?’

  I think about explaining to him that I’ll be leaving tomorrow and that I’ll probably never see him again because my life is in turmoil and I have zero friends in the world and what does all that say about me? But the mood is light and I don’t want – let alone have the time – to explain my shitty situation to a one-night stand.

  ‘Sure, sure. I’ll be around.’

  ‘Good. Right. I’ll, er, call for you, shall I?’

  ‘Call for me?’ I grin. ‘OK, I’ll ask my nan if I’m allowed to play out.’

  He goes pink at the ears again. I chuckle. ‘See you later,’ I say more kindly. ‘I enjoyed us doing “it”.’

  He waves me off with a very big I’ve just had a great deal of sex grin on his sleep-crumpled face.

  Bless.

  I hurry back into the lobby and up the stairs. Why are there so many stairs? The muscles in my thighs burn with each step.

  ‘Ow. Ow. Ow . . . Ow,’ I hiss to myself as I make my way up. Must do a warm-up next time I intend to make lurve for an entire night.

  Ow.

  God, I’m so late.

  At the sound of the door opening, Peach comes running out of the kitchen and into the hallway of doom, a pretty floral saucer in her hand. ‘Where have you been?’ she whispers, sidestepping an old KitchenAid, her eyes wide with apprehension. ‘We thought you’d left! Mrs Beam’s been very upset.’

  ‘Oh sorry. I, er, I just went for a . . . early morning run.’

  ‘A three-hour run?’

  ‘I like to run.’ I shrug a shoulder casually. ‘Anyway, Mr Belding is still here, and all of my stuff. I wouldn’t have left them behind!’ I hop over a cardboard box full of brightly coloured poster paints.

  Peach purses her plump lips, a small frown gathering at the top of her freckle-covered nose. ‘Be careful not to trip over again coming through here. Mrs Beam is having her meeting in the drawing room with the lady from the publishers. I don’t think it’s going well at all and disturbing them might make it worse.’

  Drawing room? What is this, the olden times?

  ‘Why isn’t it going well?’

  Peach’s eyes flicker towards the ‘drawing-room’ door. ‘I’ve only popped in and out with tea a few times but, from what I gather, the publishers aren’t here to make an offer to reprint Matilda’s books at all, they’re here to tell her that they’re absolutely not interested in republishing her books and that she should stop sending them letters about it. It seems they only sent someone in person out of respect for their history with her.’

  ‘Oh, that sucks.’ I feel a spike of sympathy. Publisher rejection. Grandma and I have that in common.

  ‘It is an awful shame,’ Peachy squeaks, fiddling with the end of her plait. ‘Lord knows what we’re gonna do now.’

  ‘Something will come up, I’m sure. It always does.’ I pat Peachy’s arm briskly. ‘As for disturbing them, don’t worry about that. I’m a pro at this hallway now. Check it out.’ I twist sideways in order to angle myself past a dismantled pewter bedstead and before I’ve even taken one step, some sticky-out part of my body nudges a wonky table, of
f the top of which a bowling ball comes rolling, dropping onto the floor with an almighty thud.

  ‘Fuuuck,’ I hiss.

  Peach puts a palm to her cheek. ‘Oh mah goodness.’

  The drawing-room door immediately swings open and out glides Grandma, wearing a sage-green twinset and pale gold scarf-slash-shawl. She looks so relieved to see me, overwhelmingly so, until her eyes drop downwards and she spots the hot pink bra dangling from my wrist. Then her gaze travels slowly back upwards to what I suspect is the hairstyle of someone who has blatantly just been megashagged. She presses the back of her hand to her forehead.

  ‘Where on earth have you been?’ she says beseechingly. ‘I thought . . . I thought—’

  ‘Sorry! I was just out, you know, running.’

  ‘Running? Running away? Running where?’

  ‘Just . . . around. I like to run.’

  She gives me the same worried look she was giving me yesterday. I cross my arms with a prickle of annoyance. And then, as if things couldn’t get any more ridiculous, a head pops up from behind Grandma’s shoulder. It’s a familiar head with beautifully highlighted hair and a hugely impressed, dazzling grin.

  ‘Jessica Beam? How wonderful! What a fabulous, abstract idea to use a bra as a bracelet. You’re so creative!’

  What the hell is Valentina Smith doing at Grandma’s house?

  Chapter Twelve

  A Good Woman is always poised. She must display a calm and graceful temperament, even when her temper is ruffled.

  Matilda Beam’s Good Woman Guide, 1959

  ‘I cannot believe it. I just cannot believe it,’ Valentina is saying. ‘I heard that beautiful voice and thought, could it be? Could sweet Jessica Beam of all people be here? And it is you!’

  We’ve drifted into the drawing room and are now sitting round Grandma’s teal silk ottoman, which holds a pewter tray full of fancy tea-making paraphernalia. Valentina confidently pours out tea into cups, as if this is her house and we are her guests. It occurs to me that Valentina Smith is the publishing big gun Peach mentioned was coming to visit Grandma today about her guides. The Southbank Press. Of course. Like Summer said, they publish everyone.

  Except bloody me.

  I nod my hello politely but don’t return Valentina’s smile. This woman made out like Summer and I were going to get a book deal and then backed out because I insulted her ex. All right, accidentally threw champagne over her ex. But still. She was so into the whole idea, and to just drop it because of the party, well, I think that’s quite fickle.

  ‘I’m afraid I do not understand,’ Grandma sniffs, her liquid blue eyes flicking from me to Valentina and back again. ‘You are acquaintances?’

  ‘Oh, Matil, Jess and I are old friends.’ Valentina tosses her perfectly tinted locks back with a warm laugh. ‘Such a shame I can’t stay much longer, because this – ’ she points one finger at me and one at Grandma – ‘really is just the most amazing moment. Grandmother and granddaughter! Jessica, you dark horse. You never mentioned your esteemed bookish heritage. Beam. Of course. I should have known! Both writers, both extraordinarily talented. Matil, can you believe that Jessica turned the Southbank Press down? I don’t think I’ve ever been turned down before. I was awfully disappointed. I kicked my office fridge because I was so disappointed. Now it’s broken. Just like my heart.’

  Turned down? Wait, what?

  ‘I didn’t turn you down,’ I say, outraged. ‘You turned us down!’

  Valentina’s brows draw together. ‘I told you at the party! It was damn near as good as a done deal. Of course, I was a little tipsy, but where books are concerned I never say anything I can’t back up. When Summer said you’d decided to go in another direction, TV of all things, I was heartbroken. I thought we had a connection, you and I! No need to be embarrassed, Jess. I can’t win them all, although,’ she muses, ‘I usually do . . . ’

  I don’t believe it. Summer really did screw me over. We were offered the book deal for Summer in the City, but she turned it down because some glossy American TV producer was interested and she didn’t need me for that. She would have needed me for a book. What the hell? Disappointment claws at my empty stomach. What makes the whole thing worse is that there’s not a bloody thing I can do about it.

  ‘Jessica, you are a writer?’ Grandma asks, leaning forward in her chair.

  ‘I was almost a published one,’ I mutter darkly. Bloody Summer.

  ‘Jessica is a wonderful writer,’ Valentina says cheerfully, and then pauses. ‘Wait. Why did you not know that, Matilda? You’re her grandmother.’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ Grandma and I say at exactly the same time.

  ‘I do love a good long story. What a shame I have to dash off. Perhaps you can tell me over a gin and tonic sometime, Jess? Ping me an email, we’ll pencil it in.’ She turns to Grandma. ‘And once again, Matilda, I’m so sorry not to be able to make you a reprint offer.’

  Grandma rises from her chair, worriedly kneading one thin hand into the other. ‘Miss Smith, I implore you to reconsider. Women today really could learn a great deal from my books, from my years of expertise. The way they behave nowadays. No grace! No manners! No skills for the home! How on earth are they supposed to find a good man . . . ’ She trails off and eyes the hot pink Wonderbra wrapped around my wrist. I unravel it and stuff it underneath my bum.

  ‘Oh, Jess, do help me to explain this to dear old Matilda,’ Valentina pleads, glancing discreetly up at the grandfather clock. ‘Perhaps she’ll listen to you. The Southbank Press can’t republish her 1950s Good Woman guides because they simply would not sell in the year 2014. My hands are tied.’

  Grandma’s huge eyes are shining with tears behind her red-winged glasses. She looks so desperate. I feel quite bad for her. But Valentina is right.

  ‘Sorry Matild— Grandma. I’m afraid no young woman I know would take notice of old self-help tips in this day and age,’ I say gently. ‘They’re irrelevant. I mean, it’s just not what we’re thinking about any more.’

  Grandma sighs, throwing her hands up in exasperation. ‘You, my dear, are a woman of almost thirty and without a husband! The whole thing is unfathomable. It is . . . sad.’

  ‘Oi, I’m not sad!’ I stand up from the sofa, indignant. ‘I’m not “almost thirty” either. I’m twenty-eight. And aside from marriage being a generally daft idea, being single is my choice. I like the way I live. That’s who I am. Young, single and ready to tingle. I’m a feminist and an independent woman and I love it. I work hard, I play hard, I party hard and do any bloody thing I want to, OK? That’s the opposite of sad.’

  ‘Bravo, Jessica!’ Valentina claps. ‘Bravo!’

  ‘Oh dear me. Dear me.’ Grandma presses both wrinkly palms to her cheeks. ‘You mean to tell me that you choose to live this way? I thought this was just part of . . . a terrible breakdown. Goodness. Does this mean that the colour of your hair is a considered decision and not a cry for help?’

  I gasp. Beneath the teary eyes and worried glances, Matilda Beam has got an attitude and a half. And she’s not finished yet. ‘You have no job, Jessica. You have no home. You come to me for money, dear. Living the way you are living doesn’t seem to be making you very happy at all.’

  ‘Gosh,’ Valentina says, thoroughly enjoying herself now. ‘Gosh.’

  ‘Leave my lovely platinum blonde hair alone!’ I complain. ‘I’m not super happy right now, admittedly. Things are quite shit, actually. But in general I am! I have more freedom and equality than you ever had. That’s awesome. And it’s not like you’re in great shape now, either, is it? You’re totally skint, you hoard all of your shit and you have a room full of porcelain dolls. I’m pretty sure that life tips from you just would not fly with the cool, fierce young women of today.’

  Grandma gasps, two blotches of pink colouring her cheeks.

  ‘I assure you, my tips are one hundred per cent effective in any day and age,’ she sniffs, folding her long arms in front of her bosom.

  �
��Er, I don’t think so,’ I grump back.

  Valentina looks between us, a most entertained grin on her face. ‘The familial resemblance is uncanny.’

  My face buzzes with heat. I need to go for a run, shower, clear my head, get the hell out of here.

  ‘Can I go now?’ I indicate the door.

  ‘I really must be going too,’ Valentina says brightly. ‘It was so lovely to see you both. A particularly wonderful surprise to see you, Jessica.’

  As I open the door, Valentina close behind me, Grandma suddenly gasps and calls out, ‘Wait! Both of you. Just a moment. Don’t go! I can prove that my tips will work in this day and age. I have an idea! I will – I will show you how!’

  Valentina’s face melts into a sympathetic grimace. ‘I really am sorry, Matil. I truly am. It’s simply not possible. I hope that you can—’

  ‘It is possible!’ Grandma frantically shouts out over Valentina. ‘Jessica here will help me to prove it!’

  ‘Excuse me?’ I say.

  ‘Beautiful Jessica?’ Valentina narrows her eyes for a moment before nodding. ‘All right, go on.’

  Grandma glances at me and takes a step towards Valentina.

  ‘If we could use my tips to transform Jessica into the epitome of a Good Woman, then surely that would absolutely prove that the guides work and are worth republishing.’

  ‘Well, that’s the daftest thing I’ve ever heard,’ I scoff. ‘And pretty fucking presumptuous, to be honest.’

  Grandma flinches at my swear, but ignores me and continues addressing Valentina as if I’m not even in the room.

  ‘We would fix poor Jessica’s look, work on her manners and poise, her feminine skills, how to behave around a good man . . . ’

  Manners? Matilda Beam is the one who needs a lesson in manners!

  ‘My look is cool!’ I cut in. ‘And trust me, I have plenty of feminine skills. Plenty. Jeez.’ I turn round once more to leave the room when Valentina calls me back.

  ‘Hold on a second, Jessica.’ She puts a finger to her chin thoughtfully. ‘Continue, Matilda, I’d like to hear this.’