by Mina Ford
Bloody hell. Why on earth can’t she just laugh in my face like her mate Gloria would? Tell me no daughter of hers is swaddling herself in overalls and rolling out pastry for a living, no better than a common kitchen maid.
Still, two days after the free papers containing my ad have been pushed through letterboxes all over London, the phone calls start for real. I can’t believe how easy it is. A woman in Totteridge wants to know if I can make red food for her ruby wedding anniversary. A TV gardener needs a ‘green finger’ buffet when he opens the grounds of his manor in Hertford-shire to the public for charity. And a Sloane Ranger from Battersea (only, needless to say, she pronounces it Batterseaar) wants me to ‘do’ her hen night.
I suppose I’d better not let on about my record for doing husbands as well.
Slowly, with each booking, my confidence, along with my contacts book, starts to grow. And during the next few weeks, I’m so busy, sitting in my pink office planning menus and seating arrangements, that I don’t even have time to think about the wedding. Even Sam’s disapproval over the whole affair pales into insignificance when I think about how much I have to do. I’m spending every single minute cooking. Baking mini banoffee pies and tiny tiramisus, designed to be scoffed in one mouthful for Mr TV Gardener. Making podgy pink babies out of marzipan for a christening cake in Nappy Valley. Or strawberry flans the size of paddling pools for Mr and Mrs Ruby Wedding. One afternoon, I’m slaving over phallic vodka jellies for Battersear’s hen night when the doorbell rings. I put down the Smirnoff bottle. It’ll be the lard-arse from the bakery, delivering the basket of fresh hereby focaccia, the fat loaves of olive ciabatta and the sundried tomato bread I’ve ordered. I open the front door.
Blimey oh Reilly!
It isn’t lardy at all. It’s a new chap altogether. And let’s just say that the last time I saw thighs like those, I was gawping at an advert for Calvin Klein pants. Before they got those bag-o’-bones Jarvis Cocker lookalikes to drape themselves all over the show likes great big strings of snot, that is.
Oh yes. This one’s what Janice would call a ‘nice bit of rough’.
Not quite her Driver Eating Yorkie type, of course, but close.
Cyclist eating Curly Wurly, say.
He’s younger than me, probably around twenty-five. He wears an ageing, possibly cheesy, pair of Adidas old school trainers and has eyes the colour of espresso. And a quick glance at his skin-tight cycling shorts reveals that his thighs aren’t the only attractive bulge he possesses. I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for farting, that’s for sure.
I rootle through my purse. On a normal day, I’d have taken one look at a bloke in cycling shorts and thought, ‘Ew, all sweaty,’ and moved on. But there’s something about today that makes me think twice. Perhaps it’s the fact that it’s such a beautiful day. I can practically smell the pheromones bouncing around in the air. Or perhaps it’s just the way his browny gold hair is knotted into deliciously scruffy dreads. Or the way he drapes himself languidly against the doorframe, looking so utterly carefree.
Or perhaps I just need a good shag.
Call it chemistry, call it desperation, whatever it is, I suddenly feel totally compelled to come on to him. I’m getting married soon, for God’s sake. I need to get it while I still can.
OK, so Max is still calling my mobile. Which means I could just shag him and save myself the bother. But Max is nice. And nice just gets on my nerves. If Max wanted some kind of relationship when we got it together that day I saw him on the tube, he should have got it from me in writing. I didn’t make him any promises. I am a single, independent woman. I have nothing whatsoever to feel guilty about.
‘I don’t seem to have any money in here.’ I smile, cupping my hand round the crisp tenner I’ve just found and taking a step backwards into George’s immaculate cream-painted hall. ‘Do you mind coming in a moment while I find some upstairs?’
He smiles, a slow, sexy, slightly stupid smile that might or might not be interpreted as open to suggestion. Which is fine, obviously. Stupid is good. I have absolutely no problem with stupid whatsoever. The chances of a reasonably intelligent—albeit slightly ginger—girl like me forming a lasting relationship with anyone who’s thicker than two short planks are verging on nil, so I can drag this chap upstairs right now if I feel like it, without giving a flying fuck about the consequences.
‘Sure.’ He lopes after me into the hall.
‘Whatevva.’ Of course by the time I’ve rolled the note I’ve just found in my purse into my palm, gone upstairs with it and come back down again, waving it between forefinger and thumb, I suddenly realise that I have absolutely no idea how to pull.
Do I just go straight for it and say huskily, ‘Come in, Notch Number Nine and a half, your time is up’? Should I just slip him my phone number and have done with it? Or would that look a bit Bored Housewife? Then again, I don’t live in my own house, I don’t even live in the dumpy, clarty flat any more either. I live in a house that’s so effortlessly pristine and minimalist it can only be inhabited by gay guys. So I can’t reasonably be mistaken for Mrs Two Point Four Children.
I’m just deciding to sod it and hand him the cash, when I notice he’s glancing into the kitchen, looking vaguely amused. I follow his gaze, to where the first batch of pink jelly willies stand turned out of their moulds, proud and erect—if ever so slightly wibbly—on the kitchen worktop. Buggeroo. He’s probably thinking I’m some sort of pervert serial killer who lures delivery boys into the house so I can have my wicked way with them before boshing them over the head and stashing them in the freezer to do things to with jelly later. I know if I were in his shoes—or even just his skanky trainers— I’d be a smidgen concerned for my personal safety right now.
‘It’s not what you think,’ I stutter. ‘I’m doing them for a hen party, see. Just for fun. I mean I’m not into anything kinky. I’m more M&S than S&M, honest. You can’t beat them for knickers.’
‘Shame.’ He treats me to another lazy, sexy grin, which turns my knees to a wobbling mass of blancmange. Is he laughing at me or not?
‘You’re a chef?’ he asks. ‘Caterer,’ I reply. ‘Weddings and stuff, mainly. Just getting started.’
He grins. ‘And does the caterer get to test the canapés?’ He nods towards the pink willies, which now seem so downright ridiculous, I have an absurd compulsion to get rid of him as quickly as possible.
‘Not really,’ I say.
‘What about the delivery boy?’ His grin widens. ‘Does he get to have a taste?’
‘He might.’ I can’t help laughing at the mischievous expression on his face. ‘Just the one, mind. These have to be at a party in Battersear tomorrow.’
I should really have known better. I should know that my capacity for alcohol generally tends to exceed the ‘just the one’ that’s good for me. Nick, as his name turns out to be, pronounces my jelly willies so delicious that he has to have another. And I just think sod it and jam in a couple for myself. And after I’ve eaten nine, or thereabouts, I tell myself that not only is he probably the most fanciable, un-uphimself male I’ve seen since I came to live in Islington, I decide he’s also one of the most scintillating I’ve ever met.
And we’re getting on so well.
‘Sheriously,’ he says, finishing off the last jelly and beginning to slur his words just ever so slightly. ‘I might be looking for shomeone like you. I’m a DJ, shee? I’ll be famoush this time next year.’
‘Really?’ I’m impressed. ‘How faschinating.’
I’m so drunk by this time that I’m pouring what’s left of the vodka into shot glasses and liberally tipping it down my neck. It doesn’t really occur to me to wonder why, if he’s such a famous DJ, he’s delivering bread all over North London on a crappy pushbike. And, to be honest, I don’t really care.
‘Me mate’sh organising a party shoon. He needs shomeone to do the food and shit. How ’bout I give him your number?’
In my drunken state, I decide this is a defi
nite attempt on his part at trying to pull me. And, when I scribble my mobile number on the corner of a crumpled-up copy of Attitude and he closes his hand over mine as I hand it to him, I just know I’m IN THERE.
With barely any effort whatesoever.
Two seconds later, he’s kissing me passionately, and a second after that, he’s explaining drunkenly that he can’t go back to his shift in the state he’s in, so we might as well go to bed. I don’t care that he’s being presumptuous. I don’t even care that he probably does this all the time. In fact, it just makes him ideal one-off material.
What I do care about, however, is that I’ve been so into work all day that I haven’t even bothered to shower. Consequently, I’m still stewing in the sour pants I slept in. I can’t let him see me like this, regardless of the fact that afterwards I never want to see him again.
‘Wait here.’ I pull away from his searching tongue.
‘Wh-wha?’
‘Telly’sh there. Wait five minutes. I’ll be back in a…’
I dash upstairs with the intention of jumping in the shower for literally two seconds. But the enormous walk-in shower in George and David’s bedroom is out of bounds, so I decide, out of loyalty to the pair of them, to use my en-suite bath instead.
Turning on the taps, I stumble around drunkenly, finding lavender-scented soap, bubble bath and a fresh towel, before easing myself into the deliciously hot, scented water and inhaling the fragrant steam. There’s something so utterly decadent about having a bath when shitfaced that I relax my body totally. And, come to think of it, I’ve had a hard day. Exhausting, in fact. Actually, now you mention it, I’m really, really…
Shit.
I’ve no idea how much time has passed by the time I eventually come to. All I do know is that I’m freezing my tits off and my fingers are all pruny. Shivering, I pull a white, fluffy towel around me and gingerly tiptoe through my bedroom and onto the landing. Seconds later, I hear the front door bang. I rush to the window, hoping to stop him from leaving. But there’s no one outside. And then I realise why. It’s not him leaving, it’s someone coming in.
‘Hello?’
David.
‘Oh, hi.’ I pad down the stairs feeling sheepish. God. My head. ‘How’s things?’
‘Good, thanks. I’ve just got some freelance work on a new magazine. Brilliant money as well.’
‘Good for you. I don’t suppose…”
‘Hmmm?’
‘Is anyone else there?’
‘Where? In here? I don’t think…’ David peers into the kitchen, the sitting room then every other room in turn. ‘No. No one.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
Trust me to miss out on a shag. But I really can’t have been up there that long. The impatient sod. It can only have been three o’clock when I went for my bath.
‘What time is it?’ I ask David, as nonchalantly as I can.
He glances at his watch. ‘Five thirty. Bloody hell, Katie, it’s a bit of a mess in here.’
‘You wha’?’ ‘Five thirty.’ He looks at me. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been abducted by aliens and you’ve totally lost the last two hours.’
‘Something like that,’ I say. ‘Shit, David, I have to meet Janice in half an hour. She’s coming back from Paris. I don’t suppose if I paid you you’d clear up all that vodka shite from the kitchen before George gets back and goes totally mentalist, would you?’
‘Go on.’ David grins at me. ‘I mean you’ve shown me your bum at least once and you’re going to be my wife in a couple of months’ time so the least I can do is mop up a bit of vodka. What the bloody hell have you been doing in here anyway?’
‘Tell you another time.’ I hug him. ‘Thanks, mate. Janice is going to have my tits for earmuffs if I’m late. She’ll be dying to tell me all the goss.’
Janice, when I eventually meet her in Soho, is thunderous. Plonking her turquoise baguette on the table, she orders a large margarita, lights two cigarettes at once and pronounces the whole Paris thing a ‘total washout’.
Actually, it doesn’t sound like much of a washout to me. Days of glorious sunshine, clothes purchased by the glossy designer bagful, courtesy of Jasper’s platinum credit card. Dinner at the Ritz, which she couldn’t really take pleasure in because the sheer sumptuousness of the menu meant that she was forced to break her wedding diet completely, even to the extent of having a pudding. And every time she took another forkful, she got palpitations, because she felt certain that this was the night he was going to pop the question, and she didn’t want to have to tell their grandchildren that she had her mouth full when she said, ‘I do’.
There was also the additional worry that he’d hidden the ring in her pot au chocolat and there was nothing remotely romantic about the Heimlich manoeuvre.
On their last evening in Paris, they sat on the wrought iron balcony of his apartment drinking a bottle of extremely mellow red wine, while the noise and the hubbub of the Champs Elysées at night buzzed way below them. Janice was getting desperate. It was, after all, the last night of the holiday.
Jasper’s last chance to propose.
And as she describes their conversation in minute detail, my mind keeps rewinding like videotape, back to an event that, in the whole whirlwind of my fake engagement, I’ve totally forgotten. The restaurant on Upper Street and the girl in the raspberry dress. Should I tell her what I saw?
But if I do tell her, and it turns out to be something completely innocuous, then I’ll look like a stirring old witch.
But what if I don’t tell her and he’s been stringing her along the entire time? What happens then? She’ll be having charity biddy sex for nothing when she could be bonking half of London Irish instead.
‘And so I’ve just given up altogether,’ Janice is sipping her third margarita and looking at me curiously, ‘when he says…’ She gulps.
‘Ye-es?’
Thank God for that! He’s proposed after all. Phew. I’m saved! I don’t have to mention Raspberry Dress. After all, as long as she gets the marriage certificate and the bank account, she’s hardly going to be concerned about a smidgen of infidelity, now is she?
‘He says, “I’ve got something for you”,’ she finishes. ‘And he brings out this Tiffany box. I know it’s Tiffany, right, because I recognise the colour, you know, it’s the same as the walls in my kitchen.’
I nod eagerly. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, of course I’m getting really excited by this time, because I know, I just know, it’s a solitaire diamond and that this is It and I’m sure he must have popped out and bought it that morning while I had a lie-in and he went to fetch fresh croissants…’
‘Croissants too.’ I snigger. ‘Lucky girl. So you didn’t have any problems with the false zoobies then?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ She shoots me a look. ‘His back won’t take that kind of bending. No, I mean real croissants. And those nice, sticky pains au raisins you get from the boulangerie. Well, I don’t mind telling you I wolfed down three, because I’d just about given up hope of there being any wedding to speak of so there wasn’t any point in slimming any more. So there we are,’ she continues, talking faster and faster to get out exactly what she has to say, ‘in the most romantic city in the world, and he’s giving me the famous turquoise box and I’m just kicking myself for eating three pastries for breakfast, because the moment has finally arrived. And I just know, Katie, I just know that this is when my life is going to change for the better and I’m finally going to get rich, so I delay opening the box because there’s a tiny little part of me that’s worried he’s picked one I’ll hate and I won’t know what expression to have on my face if that happens. But then I can’t wait to see it, because I can’t wait to know and so I open the box and…and…’
‘And…’ I breathe, urging her on. God, even I’m getting excited. I must be going soft.
‘And it’s a fucking locket,’ she spits. ‘Imagine, Kat
ie. A silver Tiffany locket. And there I am, wanting to go to the bathroom and cry my eyes out with the disappointment of it all, and there he is, slinking up behind me and expecting me to be thrilled to bits, saying, “Shall I put it on for you?” The smarmy old git.’
‘Oh dear,’ I say sympathetically.
‘Oh dear is fucking right,’ she says bitterly, a fat tear rolling down her cheek. ‘You see, I was so sure that this was it that I let him boff me every night. Imagine!’
‘Yuck.’
‘And you know what’s worse?’ ‘What?’ I signal for more drinks. I think we need them.
‘I gave him a blow job and everything. Yes, a blow job,’ she shouts, as the whole of the next table, and the one after that look on, open-mouthed. ‘And I swallowed. And this is the thanks I get. A poxy fucking locket and a gutful of fogie sperm. And then, when we get back to London, I have to get the sodding tube here on my own. No limo. No car. Not even a shitty black cab. Nothing.’
‘Why? Where’d he go?’
‘No idea.’ She shrugs. ‘Work, I expect. He’s a workafuckingholic, that man.’
I decide I have to tell her about Raspberry Dress. At least then she won’t have to have sex with the old fart for nothing. She can find herself a nice G ’n’ T to have sex with instead.
‘Janice,’ I begin.
‘What?’
‘If he was having an affair, would you want to know?’
‘He’s not having an affair,’ she snaps. ‘He’s old, for God’s sake. Who’d want to shag him?’
‘You?’
‘I don’t particularly want to shag him.’ She takes a drag of her fag and looks at me sympathetically. ‘I have to.’
‘OK…’
‘Why do you ask, anyway?’ She knocks back her margarita in two big gulps and signals for another. ‘Do you know something I don’t?’
‘Well.’ I hesitate. ‘You know I told you George and David proposed over lunch?’
‘Mmmm?’
‘Well, Jasper was there.’
‘Having lunch with you?’ she asks innocently. ‘Well, that’s fine. Why didn’t you just say? Having lunch with him’s hardly having an affair with him, is it? I trust you. And we don’t have to tell each other every little thing.’