by Neal Doran
‘Dan! Loosen up, it’s a party!’ he’d shouted to me. ‘I can’t believe these young people just standing around. We’ve got to show them how it’s done!’
Disturbed as I was that Chris was putting me in the same age demographic as him, rather than the bright young things around us, I had to admire his transformation from the vague yet obsessive office oddball into another type of oddball altogether. After I’d declined the opportunity to join his interpretation of the latest routine from Lady GaGa, he’d admitted defeat and rested a damp clammy arm around my shoulder and sighed contentedly.
‘Isn’t it great to be away from the artificial strictures of the office?’ he’d asked, and I could see no reason to entirely disagree. ‘And from home too. Too many restrictions, eh?’ I’d told him how I lived by myself and how restrictions didn’t apply so much when you were able to wander about in your pants eating spaghetti hoops from a can.
‘No women, you see?’ he’d said, after rolling around the phrase ‘wander about in your pants’ in his mouth a couple of times. ‘Women are always trying to define who you are, and what you can do. It’s the same for society. It’s too hard to express everything you can be.’
I’d noticed that the friendly arm around my shoulder didn’t seem to be going anywhere so I’d suggested we got drinks. A whole new knot tied in my stomach as I remembered a look in Chris’s eye as we toasted men being men and not needing women and then chinked mugs containing healthy measures of whisky — hold on, my central nervous system protested, whisky too?
It had been a look I’d last seen when he spotted a solitary eclair in a box full of pastry treats brought in for an office birthday that made it obvious what he wanted.
On the edge of the bed I feverishly searched my memory, trying to work out what had happened in our conversation after I’d begun to feel a bit like a cream-filled bun. My hand tingled as I remembered a moment from later, in bed at my place. I remembered my fingers tracing the curve of a breast before sliding down over cool smooth skin… No, unless Chris was wearing some sort of unforgiving corsetry to keep a pair of pert soft moobs really under wraps in the office, and unless the tufts of chest hair that stuck out of his collar whenever he took his tie off had been waxed for the occasion, I could be pretty sure I hadn’t discovered something new about myself with a forty-six-year-old married father of two. My mother would be disappointed her latency theories were as yet unproven, and I was no nearer to identifying my escaped bedmate.
And I really needed to get up for that wee.
I finally stumbled across my bedroom and into the bathroom. Exhausted by the effort, I couldn’t even piss standing up, so I sat down on the toilet, and leaned my head against the cool of the sink next to it. I decided I’d maybe stay there for a bit while I got some strength back for the return trip, and another memory floated up from the wreckage of my brain.
‘Why do men have to be such bastards?’ I had asked, slumped on a shabbily upholstered sofa between Delphine and Janice, the three of us staring despondently at the party going on around us. It had gone up through a couple of gears by this point, whereas I think we were on a bit of a slump.
‘They think they can just show up when zey want something, and, boof, they just disappear again.’
‘They poison your drinks and play upon your allergies.’
‘They tell you things they know destroy your confidence, then act all lovey-dovey as if nothing has happened.’
‘They grass you up to the law, then don’t even call to see if you’ve got bail.’
‘They get so angry when you just ask them a simple question.’
‘Zey think nothing of cheating on their partners with you, but then blame you when they feel bad about it.’
‘They wait ten years and then make a pass at you when you’re at your most vulnerable because of a relationship going through a sticky patch.’
‘They think they can get away with it, but Karma catches up with them,’ Janice had said, looking angrily into her Bacardi.
‘But that’s bollocks!’ I remembered exploding. ‘They do get away with it. And you let them! You just keep going back for more. You put up with the odd infidelity here, the odd lie there. Men that are TERRIBLE for you, but you stick with them, you forgive them. You say you won’t put up with anything more, but then you DO!’
‘It’s not that easy, Danny,’ Delphine had said.
‘Yeah, well, it should be.’
‘And women are no angels, remember. I am not so easy to put up with,’ she’d added.
‘And men let themselves be so manipulated, and are so gullible. Thinking with their willies,’ Janice had chimed in.
‘Well, I just think you’re two really great girls, and I hate that you seem so unhappy all the time… You deserve so much better!’
God, that would have been the gin from earlier talking — pre-party sharpeners in the pub. Another good idea at the time. It always gets me a bit tired and emotional. I think I must have got a bit teary, because I seem to remember some sort of group hug, and then Chris had arrived and proposed a round of Jägermeister shots — don’t, I know… — before insisting that we go off for some synchronised dad dancing to an old track by Lily Allen.
In my bathroom I stood up again, then paused with my hand gripping the basin while the room revolved a few times before coming back into focus. I slunk back across the hallway to bed.
Then I remembered sitting on the landing at Jamie’s flat, having a heart-to-heart with Janice. Whether it was before or after my outburst on sisters standing up for their love rights, I’m not entirely sure, but I do remember it being confusing again. She was asking about how my black eye really happened and I told her again I’d tripped on the street. She said with this heartbreaking small reflective smile that when she’d tripped on the street last she’d decided to take Tae Kwon Do lessons so it wouldn’t happen again. We chatted for a while about her ex, who had been controlling, and unreliable and demanding, and had only got the idea they were over with the help of a court order. But he had been kind at first, when she had needed him to be, and loving. He’d helped her out of a home situation that had been pretty fraught.
Whenever I heard about somebody’s life that had been more eventful, and more difficult than mine had ever been, I struggled to know what to say, because my only comparisons came from the TV show Brothers & Sisters. People didn’t always appreciate hearing that Rob Lowe and her from Ally McBeal experienced similar difficulties with a troubled extended family. The other thing about learning a bit more about why people did things was it made it that bit harder to judge them for their actions. Which was obviously massively inconvenient. Behind Janice’s ever so slightly manic grin and doll-like eyes was a sensitive, kind, vulnerable soul.
Just one that would have you fired, at best, if you accidentally happened to wrong her by taking advantage when she was drunk, say.
God, I thought, I hope I don’t need to be thinking about updating my CV just now.
Another flashback and I’m in the car park outside my block leaning someone up against the side of someone else’s car, my hand up their top, their hand edging down inside my belt. There’s giggling and kissing. Then I get myself loose from the tangle of clothes and limbs and, with my hands on my knees, gesture that I’m going to need a minute, as I’m feeling a little nauseous. I remembered the feel of the freezing night air in my lungs and battling against throwing up over what looked like an expensive pair of shoes, but it passed, and I suggested that maybe we should go upstairs.
But who I was saying it to remained elusive.
At some point Alex, Delphine’s putative boyfriend, had arrived at the party, I remembered. We’d been introduced for about the sixth time in a couple of months, and he again pretended not to remember my name. This must have been quite late on, because I remembered going over the top with my fake friendliness, under the impression that he’d not realise that my disproportionate interest in all elements of his life assurance business and views on the aftern
oon’s football results was sarcastic. It was like two rutting stags, except they’d decided to try and prove their virility through passive-aggressive mateyness and ironic admiration for the size of each other’s antlers.
I seemed to remember asking for his card, in case I ever had a large amount of money I wanted to put into financial vehicles that would really set me up for life after I was dead. I thought that one won the round for me as he did this little laugh and promised to ‘catch me later’. Next thing I saw he was in a heated discussion with Delphine before he scattered a load of coats on the floor in the search for his black leather jacket, and headed for the door on his own.
Later, I remembered, I was talking to some young giggly blonde, a friend of a friend of Jamie’s, about just how great Harry Connick Jr was, and how much more she liked him than that young Michael Bublé. That I don’t remember going off on a rant about Frank Sinatra being the unmatchable original and best led me to believe I must have thought I had a chance with the girl.
Another sign I had reason to believe I was in there was that Delphine had appeared, with a pretty fierce look in her eyes, and wanted to talk to me about something. But I’d just brushed her off so I could continue talking to my young friend about her other favourite classic jazz album from way back when: Robbie Williams’ Swing When You’re Winning.
Oh, God, I hoped it was her that had come back with me. A probably humiliating experience with a youthful friend of a new colleague — who would probably be told all the gory intimate details of what had happened, which would then be disseminated around the office to make me a laughing stock in front of all my colleagues — seemed a much more attractive option than the rest of the field of potential victims.
Then I remembered another flash of Delphine’s crystal clear eyes, this one exhibiting something other than anger as she showed me some sort of Latin American dancing. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it involved her crotch being in remarkably close proximity to my groin. I also remembered my hand slipping a bit, during a particularly sudden and unexpected twirl, from caressing the small of her back to, well, caressing a little lower down. I saw Jamie was watching us at this point — I got a big thumbs up and a leer for that, but it was at a point in the night when I didn’t bother to put my hand back anywhere more demure.
Had that gone somewhere further?
Lying there mortified by my behaviour, I buried my head under the duvet, prompting another memory from a few hours earlier — I was claustrophobically closeted under the duvet again, and, from the muffled sounds I could hear above, doing some good work. But the moment was lost as my left leg spasmed and I involuntarily shouted out, ‘Argh, shit, cramp! Cramp!’ and somebody else yelped, ‘Ow! My knee!’ as the grip of my hand tightened in response to the pain. My head tilted back and I cracked it into another knee that was being reflexively pulled up. I tried to roll clear, but the second I put any weight on my cramping leg it collapsed on me, slamming my head down and my bruised eye into sudden contact with a hip bone. At that point I slid slowly off the bed as the room filled with shouts of ‘argh!’ and accusatory ‘ow!’s, if I remembered correctly.
I pulled the duvet back down to my chest and cringed. The constant humiliation-prompted bursts of adrenalin were at least keeping the worst physical symptoms of my hangover at bay.
But the more I thought that my brain must be trying to protect me by not revealing the identity of the person that had just left, the more I panicked about working it out. They’d been lying there in the bed for several hours. There’d probably still be a trace of their perfume or shampoo or other nice-smelling woman products on the pillow.
Would I be able to remember who it was by their trademark scent?
I shifted onto my side and leaned tentatively towards the dented pillow. I couldn’t do it. Sniffing bed linen to try and identify a woman I’d just slept with was just too icky.
My phone! Maybe there’d be a clue on there. Another headrush hit as I leaned over towards the floor and delved into my discarded jeans pockets for my mobile.
A sense of foreboding tensed my fingers as I unlocked the keypad and went to check my texts.
At the top of the sent items there was a message, sent at about midnight, saying just 17 Lavender Hill Road Flat D — Jamie’s address.
After the dribs and drabs of memory that had been filtering through all morning, reading that message suddenly sent everything flooding back at once.
Holding up the queue for the loo as I sat in there on the shut toilet seat, swapping text messages until somebody started banging on the door.
Feeling the full impact of everything that I’d drunk previously hit me by stepping out into the fresh air of the car park to make a phone call.
A phone call that had been long on silences and words of sympathy, but ended with exhortations to get in the cab and get over to the party and have some fun.
And then of Hannah arriving, dolled-up and smiling but still a little puffy-eyed behind the night-out make-up, striding over in jeans and heels, waving a nearly full bottle of tequila lifted from their drinks cabinet.
Hannah leaving me on the building steps wiping away lipstick after a big smacker right on the lips as she headed into the kitchen, demanding I find out where, in the midst of this student squalor, they kept their salt and lemons.
Chapter Nineteen
The next couple of hours had been glorious. Laughing, joking, and dancing with everyone, Hannah had floated to the centre of a party she’d arrived at knowing no one, and taken me with her. I’d been swapping jokes and even managing what I believed was known as ‘a bit of banter’ with Jamie’s blokey mates, drinking shots with a string of impressionable young women, and even helping Weird Boring – now ‘Disco’ – Chris get some choreographed dance routines going.
Evidently I’d texted Hannah to apologise at some point earlier in the evening, and the response had come back that she’d hate to say she told me so, but that after early evening drinks in the pub with Angus and Sarah, just as they were all planning to grab some dinner, Rob had once again found there was a crisis at work that just couldn’t wait. He’d disappeared before they could even decide if Angus had drunk enough to even consider going to a kebab shop, and Hannah had left not long after. Her choice was leave, or stay and have to deal with the sympathetic yet probing looks that she was getting from Sarah, and with Angus trying to make a claim for ‘a really genuine Afro-Portuguese restaurant’ he’d read about on the other side of town on a council estate renowned for its gun-related crime.
My text had arrived with Hannah as she’d been settling down to her Kettle Chips and Chenin Blanc dinner. Then, after I’d called to see if she was OK, she’d decided to sod it, she wasn’t going to spend the last year of her twenties sitting in watching Saturday night TV and wondering what her tomcatting husband was up to. And more importantly why she was continuing to put up with it.
‘Hey, you know, you’ve picked up some new moves since we were last out dancing,’ she said as we slid out of the noisy, sweaty living room and into the kitchen, cooling down with cups of vodka and lukewarm ginger ale.
‘That probably was nearly a decade ago, so I’d hope I’ve moved the art form on in that time.’
‘Well, if abstract dancing didn’t exist before, I think you’ve invented it now.’
I blushed at the teasing of my best efforts at grooving.
‘Awww, don’t be embarrassed, sweetheart,’ she said, putting her arm around me for a squeeze. ‘I remember what you were like back in Manchester — queuing up to go to the toilet at parties to avoid having to dance with your pals, and when you were finally dragged up doing that strange shuffle that looked like you’d had an accident. It looked like you hadn’t been faking your enthusiasm for hiding in the loos.’
‘If my dancing now looks like I have full bowel and bladder control, I’ve done my job.’
‘You remember that party when we first met?’
‘Little Coronation Street house off Fairfiel
d?’
‘You looked very cute with your little DMs and retro sitcom T-shirt.’
‘I remember you were dancing to Daniel Bedingfield…’
‘I remember you were getting very cross about that. That was cute too.’
‘It was about the only thing I could think to say to you. I was a bit shy and awkward around girls back then.’
‘Amazing how people change, eh, hun?’
‘You look even better now than you did then, you know? Being a proper grown-up woman suits you.’
‘It was a better option than the alternative. And you’ve turned into quite the smooth talker, haven’t you?’
‘Plus look, no more dance-floor incontinence,’ I said, mimicking some of the most elaborate steps I’d seen committed on the living-room dance-floor.
‘Funny how things could have turned out differently…’
Jamie staggered through, heading out to the yard with cigarettes and Delphine in tow. She gave me a pointed look that suggested that, after throwing me several chances to adore her tortured life already this evening, which I’d turned down to flirt with happy strangers and dance with late-coming interlopers, she’d moved on and was taking her foxy nihilism elsewhere now. Hannah grinned at me and pulled a mock tragic shocked face.
‘C’mon, let’s get home. Get a taxi,’ she said, and I hastily turned to the kitchen fridge door to get a cab number.
‘Colliers Wood, please, but there’s a stop in South Wimbledon first,’ I explained to the cabbie as we clambered into the back seat, a miraculously short twenty minutes later.
‘Don’t worry, just do the Colliers Wood stop first,’ Hannah told the driver as she buckled up next to me.
‘But it’s probably easier, and I wouldn’t want to leave you by yourself,’ I said before whispering, not nearly quietly enough not to be heard by the cabbie, ‘You know, taxi drivers…’
‘I think I’ll be all right taking my chances. I don’t think he wants to rape and murder us,’ she whispered back, before whispering even more loudly to the driver, ‘You aren’t planning to rape and murder us, are you?’