Ralph's Party

by Lisa Jewell

  She thought about them now as she crossed over Lisle Street and remembered with a thrill that one of these two awkward but seemingly likeable men might be her destiny. It sounded daft, she was well aware of that, but fate had always made itself very plain to Jem and she had learned to trust in it unquestioningly. The only cloudy issue that fate had left her to deal with this time (and it was a very cloudy issue indeed) was which of the two men it was. Since it wasn’t about to hit her between the eyes, she’d spent the last week looking for signs.

  She couldn’t go on looks, although they were both good-looking men, in very different ways. Smith had the public-school, floppy-haired, well-structured sort of look that she would have swooned over when she was eighteen. He was tall and nicely but unathletically built, with soft brown eyes, handfuls of thick minky hair and a fine nose with the most perfect nostrils. But he was a bit ‘grown up’ for her tastes, a bit too mannered, a bit restrained, too much the gentleman. She got the impression he’d be taken aback if she ordered a pint in the pub and that his idea of romance would involve long-stemmed roses and surprise trips to the theatre – yuck. She liked her men quite rough and ready, men who didn’t treat women like ladies’.

  Jem sorted through a box of shiny red and green chillies, long, thin and beautifully misshapen, feeling for firmness, while she contemplated her destiny. She placed the chosen ones into a clear plastic bag torn with some effort from one of those useless bag-dispensing contraptions and moved her pale hands to a box of baby aubergines, small and apply-green with waxy skin.

  Jem found this sort of shopping therapeutic. A packet of M&S picked, peeled, topped and tailed, polished and prepacked vegetables just couldn’t compare. How much nicer to wade with your hands through boxes of colourful and excitingly exotic produce, fresh from Thailand, China, India that morning, the scent of distant sunshine still clinging to their skins.

  Ralph was probably more what she would have called ‘her type’. He had the lean, slightly undernourished look that she liked, emphasized by his shorn hair and too-large clothes. His face was sharp but the angles were well-defined and his round blue eyes were set inscrutably deep into his face, giving him a streetwise but somehow sweet look. And he had one of those wonderful lazy, lop-sided smiles that started on one side of his face before the other side caught up. Sexy. He had the traces of a South London accent, which she loved, and he would definitely not expect her to drink dry white wine when they went to the pub or be impressed by expensive meals for two in trendy restaurants.

  She reached the butcher’s counter.

  ‘Hello, Jem!’ The butcher smiled widely as she approached. He was wrapping a large slab of pork belly for the elderly Chinese customer in front of her. ‘What’ll it be today?’ he asked in a soft Mancunian accent. She’d always wanted to ask him how he’d ended up being the only English person working in a Chinatown supermarket.

  ‘Hello, Pete.’

  She surveyed the trays of ducks’ feet and pigs’ ears, the yards of shiny lilac intestines, the hunks of glistening white fat and rows of pink trotters.

  ‘I’ll have a pound of chicken breast, please, with the skins off.’

  ‘What are you cooking tonight, then?’ he asked. He always wanted to know what she was cooking.

  ‘Oh, just a Thai Green Curry.’

  ‘Making your own paste, are you?’

  ‘Of course,’ she smiled. ‘Don’t I always?’

  ‘Thin slices?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Who’s the lucky dinner-guest tonight then?’ he asked, deftly slicing through the pink meat with a lethal-looking knife.

  ‘New flatmates – I’m trying to make a good impression.’

  Jem took the chicken and put it in her basket. Who knows where the chickens from which these breasts had been wrenched came from? There was no handy label explaining their origin, no soft white-paper duvet for the breasts to rest on as they travelled from supermarket shelf to the purchaser’s fridge. They were anonymous, and Jem felt that bit more adventurous for choosing them from among the gory remnants which other supermarkets would never put on view.

  The shop was crowded, full of Chinese locals buying food for supper, of souschefs from Chinatown restaurants picking up an extra sack of rice or two for the evening rush, of tourists just looking, and amateurs. Amateurs were people who liked the atmosphere but didn’t know what to buy, and their baskets invariably held a couple of packets of twenty-five-pence instant noodles, a jar of oyster sauce and a can of something preposterous like Squid in Malaysian Curry Sauce that Jem knew would end up in the bin because it stood to reason that squid in a can would be disgusting. Jem always felt a rather nasty sense of superiority as her basket went through the check-out in front of an amateur, feeling proud of her bunches of fragrant fresh coriander, packets of glossy green lime leaves, cans of creamy coconut milk, spindly sprays of lemongrass and hairy bunches of rose-pink shallots.

  She looped her carrier bags over her wrists and headed for Shaftesbury Avenue. The sky was darkening to a deep plummy shade of black and the streets of Soho were assuming the night-time air of temptation and provocation that always excited her. She glimpsed the animated faces of couples over pints in pub windows, absorbed and stimulated even on a Monday night by the conversation and facial expressions of their obviously newfound love, and she felt lonely for a moment, until she remembered where she was going and the romantic potential that lay ahead.

  Smith couldn’t tell whether Jem was a wine girl or a beer girl so he picked up both. Maybe she didn’t drink at all – he grabbed a bottle of Perrier. He was in the vintner’s around the corner from his office in Liverpool Street. ‘Vintner’s.’ The City was just as pretentious as the West End in some ways, with its fake antiquity and overblown traditions. What was wrong with calling it an off-licence, for Christ’s sake?

  He took his purchases to the recently distressed mahogany counter and a traditional shopkeeper wearing a deep-green cotton apron and steel-framed glasses zapped them through the till with an olde-worlde barcode gun. Smith realized he was in a bad mood. He almost threw his card at the unfortunate vintner and bristled with unnecessary impatience as he rolled the bottles in tissue paper and put them into a bag. The copper bell on a spring which rang as he closed the door behind him irritated him.

  He walked across Finsbury Circus noticing how cold it was and thinking how it had seemed like only days ago that he had sat here basking in his shirtsleeves watching old farts playing bowls in his lunch hour. He was always much happier in the summer.

  He wished that Jem wasn’t cooking tonight. He really wasn’t in the mood to be pleasant and interested and conversational, he just wanted to sit in front of the television and have a big fat spliff and a lager and not talk to anyone. He was aware that this was exactly why he had decided that a flatmate would be a good idea in the first place, but just not tonight, that’s all. Tomorrow night would be fine. The presentation would be finished by then, James would be off his back and he would probably have bought a bottle of champagne and a bunch of flowers to celebrate, and Jem would have been impressed by how friendly he was, how amusing and how sincere in his appreciation of the great effort she had made to cook them this meal. Just not tonight.

  Smith arranged his briefcase and bag in one hand to grab the escalator rail with his other as he descended into Liverpool Street station. He took large confident strides and fumed as someone in front of him, a tourist who obviously had absolutely no understanding of escalator etiquette on the Underground, came to a halt.

  ‘Excuse me, please,’ he muttered huffily. The tourist turned and shuffled into the space to the right good-naturedly, apologizing with a smile. Smith felt guilty for a second, thinking of the times he had been a tourist himself.

  He sweated on the Circle line, feeling irritated by every other person in the carriage with him – they were too smelly, too noisy, too close, too tall, too fat, holding too much newspaper or just offensively unattractive. Smith had fantasies
about embedding pickaxes into their skulls.

  He wondered what he and Ralph and Jem were going to talk about that evening over supper. As he thought about it, it occurred to him how little he knew about Jem. He’d avoided talking to her whenever possible and didn’t even know how old she was, where abouts in London she worked, whether or not she had a boyfriend – for some reason he found himself hoping that she didn’t – all he knew was that she had a name nearly as silly as his, she liked honey in her tea, she drove a horrible Austin Allegro and she was really quite attractive. Not a Cheri, of course, not a magnificent specimen of well-toned, shiny, angelic goldenness like Cheri. But she was approachably pretty, small and sexy and sort of fluffy, like a proper girl. She had a sweet, unthreatening voice and she never wore trousers – Smith respected that in a woman. But for some reason, he had no idea why, she made him feel uncomfortable.

  The doors of the Tube train opened at Sloane Square and Smith tumbled out of the carriage gratefully, glad to breathe in the fresh, crisp night air. When he’d first bought the flat in Battersea, eight years ago, Smith had got a real kick out of alighting at Sloane Square. After all, the plebs waiting for friends and dates outside the station weren’t to know that he didn’t live in sw3, as he breezed past them swinging his briefcase confidently down the King’s Road. He couldn’t give a toss now what anyone thought. He was way past that sort of immature posing and knew that nobody waiting outside the station even noticed him, let alone gave a shit about where he lived.

  The flower stand outside the station caught his attention – it looked brave and colourful against the now almost leafless, grey October backdrop of Sloane Square and he decided that he would buy some flowers for Jem after all. She was paying for dinner and he didn’t suppose she had much money. He selected three fat posies of peonies, bright and unpretentious – he didn’t want it to look like a come-on.

  The act of buying the flowers seemed to trigger a calming chemical in his brain and he felt his mood improve as he boarded the bus, flashed his pass at the driver and took his usual seat at the back.

  As the bus passed over Battersea Bridge and filled with the glow of the pomegranate sunset filtering through the birthday-cake lights of Albert Bridge, Smith felt a small rush of euphoria. He allowed himself a little smile, and began to look forward to the novelty of a home-cooked meal and a conversation with a pretty girl.

  Chapter Six

  As usual, Siobhan had eaten by the time Karl got home after his Ceroc class. Siobhan had gone with him when he first started teaching. She would don one of her old fifties dresses bought from Kensington Market and fill it out with frothy petticoats, slide on some ruby-red lipstick and black eyeliner, put her hair up in a pony-tail, and the two of them would get into the black Embassy and drive down to the Sol y Sombra feeling like Natalie Wood and James Dean. But when they got Rosanne she felt guilty about leaving her on her own five nights a week and had gradually stopped going. And these days she wouldn’t be able to fit into any of her old dresses anyway.

  Now she would watch Karl as he slicked Black and White gel through his black curls and slid into his peg trousers and genuine Hawaiian shirt, looking, apart from a little less hair along his hairline, exactly as he’d looked fifteen years ago. He was a brilliant dancer and an even better teacher; some of his ex-pupils had gone on to teach their own classes. He was always much in demand at weddings and parties because he made women look and feel as if they could dance.

  ‘Has someone else moved in downstairs?’ he asked, unlacing his worn but shiny brogues. ‘There was a girl in the kitchen just now when I walked past, cooking.’

  Was she small and dark?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve seen her coming in and out all week. She must be a new flatmate or something.’

  Karl wandered into the kitchen and put his arms around Siobhan’s substantial waist and his chin on her shoulder. She reached back to ruffle his hair and realized, too late, that it was Ceroc night.

  ‘Eugh, I’ve got Black and White all over my hands. Yuck!’ She made a dash for the tap. Karl slapped her bottom gently.

  As he left the room, the smile disappeared from his face. He sat down on the sofa and put his head in his hands. He could hear Siobhan next door, singing softly as she washed her hands. Her voice was gentle and melodic. She sounded like a little girl, an innocent little girl. He wanted to cry. He wished he was on his own so that he could sob and sob until his heart broke. He had been robbed, robbed of his baby. It had been taken away from him without his permission, without his knowledge.

  Just one floor away, in the flat upstairs, his baby had been growing and breathing and sleeping in Cheri’s womb, a mass of cells the size of a fingernail, with eyes and feet and thumbs, carrying in it the strands of his DNA, of his black curly hair and his bad temper in the mornings and his funny big toes, and she’d killed it without even thinking to mention it to him.

  The fact that she’d ended their affair today, casually, over pan-fried scallops with lime juice and fresh coriander, meant nothing. Cheri meant nothing to him, except hair and sex and a dancing partner. But she’d killed his baby and she really didn’t seem to care. He’d looked at her cold and untroubled face – she’d seemed more concerned with the texture of her scallops than the murder she’d committed – and he’d hated her, really, really hated her.

  ‘One in three pregnancies ends in miscarriage, you know, it’s not such a big deal. It could have just died anyway and you’d never have known, neither of us would ever have known,’ she’d explained wearily, as if she had to explain away an abortion to some distraught, cheated-out-of-fatherhood ex-lover every lunchtime. ‘And what would you have said to Siobhan anyway? “Oh, darling, you know that girl who lives upstairs, that one you don’t like, well, I’ve been fucking her and guess what? Marvellous news, she’s pregnant.” Yes, I’m sure dear, fat, barren Shuv would have been very pleased for you.’ She’d arched her perfect eyebrows impatiently and turned to inform a passing waiter that her scallops were too tough, and would he mind bringing her a linguine with chilli and clams?

  Karl had no idea what he would have said to Siobhan had circumstances been otherwise; practicalities were not prevalent in his helter-skelter thought processes – all he could think about was the fact that his chance had gone. His baby had been in a womb. Suppose he and Siobhan had been so desperate for a child that they’d gone to a surrogate mother – it would still have been his sperm, another woman’s egg, another woman’s womb – what was the difference? He had about as much feeling for Cheri as a plastic syringe would have.

  As he sat listening to Siobhan preparing his dinner in the next room, remembering the pain on her face when she’d been told at the age of twenty-one that she was infertile, that she’d never be able to have a baby, he vowed he’d have his revenge. He wasn’t sure how he’d do it, but when the opportunity arose, he would make Cheri feel bad, as bad as he felt now.

  Smith hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry all day. He’d had two hours’ sleep, eight cans of lager and two tequilas the night before and now it was Tuesday and he only had another couple of hours to complete the presentation that his financial PR company was putting together for one of the largest banks in the country. The office was in a state of complete panic and James was being more painful than Smith could have ever thought possible. He was usually an unruffled, dignified sort of a chap, who prided himself on his elegance, but when the heat was on, the loose brush of silvery hair that usually covered his balding skull stood upright, his silk tie refused to sit in a neat vertical line and small wet patches appeared under the arms of his Jermyn Street shirt.

  His face was florid now, and he was shouting at Diana to ‘Open some fucking windows in here! It smells like a Bedouin fucking-tent.’ Diana, who hated working and was waiting for her pink-faced jellybaby of a boyfriend to propose and allow her to live the life of leisure she felt she deserved, had reached breaking-point half an hour ago and was about to cry.

 
; Smith moved back to his desk and looked at his screen. He’d written one line of the proposal so far, ‘Quirk & Quirk is one of the City’s longest established PR houses with a reputation for … ’, and it sat on the screen now, reminding him vindictively of his hungover state, mocking him for being so irresponsible, daring him, challenging him to write another line without thinking about last night.

  Smith felt his bowels begin to move. He picked up a copy of PR Week, and checking that James wasn’t watching his every move, as he tended to do when he was in a panic, he walked towards the toilets.

  Sitting in the shiny white cubicle staring blankly at the magazine on his lap, his reflections on the previous evening persisted. What a night, what a completely unexpected night. And what a mess. He put his face into his hands and smoothed back his thick hair with his palms, enjoying the feeling of the skin on his face stretching taut.

  What was he supposed to do now? It was all going to be so horribly embarrassing. Smith just wasn’t used to women coming on to him. In the days before Cheri, before he’d given up on women, it had always been up to him, he’d always made the running. Jem had really taken him by surprise last night, and he’d been too drunk to think about what he was doing. He felt guilty now, almost like he’d been unfaithful to Cheri. He’d saved himself for five years, five whole years, and now he’d blown it – just like that. It was all very flattering, the first time in years his ego had received a massage. And it had been enjoyable, extremely enjoyable. But he really shouldn’t let it go any further. He hoped to God that Jem regretted it as much as he did. Maybe she would prefer to forget about it too. And if not? He’d have to tell her, tonight, tell her it was all a dreadful mistake. Then what? Shit. The atmosphere would be terrible. She’d move out and he’d have to find another flatmate. What was he supposed to say to her? What the hell were they going to do? And why the fuck hadn’t he thought about this at the time?