by Pippa Wright
‘I am being careful, Lu. I don’t know where this is going, but, like you said, I’m just trying to enjoy the journey. And I really am enjoying it.’
‘Well, I’m sure you’re right, darling. Just remember that Randy might be good for you in the short term, but don’t go getting too caught up with a guy who’s . . . well, who’s more of a transitional shag than a long-term prospect.’
I’m suddenly overwhelmed with a desire to own up to it all. To the fake relationship, to the staged encounters, the photographer-friendly embraces, the spontaneous moments that have been carefully choreographed by Camilla. To the subtle shift in our relationship recently, to my confusion about everything. But I can’t. Randy and I have only a few weeks left of our fake relationship to run. His US promoters are flying over especially to see his charity gig, and if they think he’s back on form (and if his drug tests come back clean), his thirty-city US tour will start in September. And then I’ll see whether Randy really is a transitional shag or something more. Until then we’re both still play-acting; and I’m not sure if we’re still reading from the original script.
‘I promise I know how to take care of myself, Lu,’ I say. ‘Trust me.’
‘I do, darling,’ says Lulu. ‘Now, quick – laugh hysterically, because that silly bitch is looking this way and she needs to see you couldn’t care less about her.’
And, actually, with a ginger Martini in my hand, several hundred pounds’ worth of posh underwear under the table, my best friend by my side and my hot boyfriend awaiting my return at home, I really couldn’t. Everything is so utterly bizarre and ridiculous that it’s easy to laugh my head off.
16
When Randy gets home from seeing his personal trainer that evening, I’m ready for him in the kitchen. The toile-de-jouy bra and knickers are not quite covered by a transparent matching chiffon robe, and I am wearing the most ridiculous marabou mules, which are crippling but leg-lengthening in a gratifying way, and just about bearable when I’m sitting down. With my hair artfully pinned up in a manner that looks effortless but took nearly an hour, I’m quite pleased with the overall effect – a sort of sophisticated and pampered housewife who’s saucily entertaining a gentleman on the side. With sufficiently dim lighting I convince myself I can pass, if not for Catherine Deneuve in her Belle de jour heyday, then perhaps a distant relation. Nina the not-cleaner-but-cordon-bleu-chef has helped me to make a chicken casserole, which is warming in the oven. I plan to thank Randy properly for my shopping spree.
I hear his key in the door and swiftly turn off the kitchen light, leaving just a few candles burning on the kitchen table. I arrange myself as seductively as possible in the agonizing mules on one of Randy’s cold plastic chairs. But his tread in the hall is accompanied by another, and I can hear two male voices instead of Randy’s usual shout of greeting. Oh, surely not? He’s brought someone back? Suddenly my seductive housewife look seems hugely trashy and embarrassing. I glance around the room in a panic – where can I go? As the voices come closer, I have to rule out a desperate rush up the stairs; there’s no way I could make it unseen. I lurch towards the larder door and quickly shut myself in, realizing as I do that there doesn’t appear to be a handle on the inside. And that, despite the evening sunshine, it’s like being shut inside a dark, cold fridge. Great.
‘Lizzy?’ calls Randy. ‘Liz? God knows why it’s so dark in here.’ The glimmer of light I can see under the larder door becomes brighter as he flicks on the kitchen light. ‘Guess she’s not home yet.’ As if I’d leave candles burning if I’d gone out – is he blind?
‘Something smells good, mate,’ says Randy’s companion in a strong New Zealand accent, confirming his identity as Wade, the personal trainer.
I can hear the sound of the oven door being opened. ‘Yeah, it’s a stew or something. A Nina the Cleaner special, looks like. Fancy a bowl?’
What? He’s not even going to wait for me? He knew we were meant to be having dinner together this evening. I’ve been priming him with flirtatious texts since five.
‘Yeah, go on, why not?’ says Wade, and the legs of a chair scrape on the kitchen floor as he sits down. ‘Just a little bit – got dinner with the missus later.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ says Randy. ‘But she’ll never know if we make a little dent in it, will she?’
Thanks a bundle, Randy, you old romantic, you. I shiver in the larder and rub my arms to keep warm. I’m absolutely starving, and the smell of the casserole as they take it out of the oven is far too much for me. I fumble along the shelves in the dark in search of Nina’s secret biscuit supply, rip open a packet and shove two into my mouth, chewing viciously. They turn out to be Garibaldis, full of evil raisins and possibly my worst biscuit of all time. I eat them anyway.
‘Delicious, mate,’ says Wade, tucking into my supper. ‘Speaking of making a dent in things, got anything to help this stew slide down easier?’
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ says Randy.
‘Well, it might not be part of your training regime, but it is Saturday night, isn’t it?’ says Wade with a matey chuckle.
‘You’re absolutely right, Wade, absolutely right. A beer on a Saturday night is not just a privilege, it’s a man’s fundamental bloody right. Just wait here a minute.’
Randy’s footsteps head at great speed downstairs towards the basement and make a sprinting return, then I hear the hiss of two cans of beer being opened. I am appalled – Randy’s house has been a booze-free zone ever since my first visit (well, okay, since my second visit – Randy was so inebriated on my first that he counted as a booze zone on his own). Many’s the time I’ve wished for a glass of wine after a long day at work only to have to make do with a cranberry juice to show solidarity with Randy’s sobriety. And all along he’s been hiding booze downstairs?
‘I keep a secret stash in the gym fridge,’ says Randy in a near-whisper, as if he knows I’m hiding only feet away. ‘The bloody babysitters would have it off me in a flash if they knew, but as long as I’m not doing any of the naughty stuff, I think I’m allowed to indulge in a bit of the legal stuff, don’t you?’
‘Whatever floats your boat, mate,’ says Wade, and there’s a metallic clunk of tin cans colliding as they toast each other.
By the time they’ve finished, I’m half asleep with cold and boredom at their earnest discussion of sets and reps and carb-loading, whatever that means (though I wonder if it has any bearing on the ten unsatisfying Garibaldi biscuits I’ve eaten in the past half-hour). The Tupperware box I’m perching on gets more uncomfortable with every minute that passes. I hear Randy take Wade to the door and then return to the kitchen. There’s a click and then a faint beep – his mobile phone?
My mobile suddenly trills in my handbag, which I’d flung on the kitchen window seat when I came in. Not that Randy had noticed it while boozing with his trainer.
‘What?’ says Randy to the empty kitchen, obviously clocking at last that my phone is in the house, and therefore I must be too. ‘Lizzy?’ He shouts up the stairs. ‘Lizzy, where are you?’
I bang feebly on the larder door, half wanting to be found and half wishing I could just stay hidden in the dark for ever. I feel so ridiculous.
The door is flung open and I flinch in the sudden glare, throwing a hand across my eyes.
‘Lizzy?’ says Randy, clearly torn between concern and amusement. But not that torn. He starts to laugh as he wraps his arms around me and pulls me towards him. ‘Babe, what the frigging Nora are you doing in there? And what are you wearing? You’re freezing!’
‘I know,’ I say crossly. My whole seduction routine is ruined. The Tupperware box has left red lines on the backs of my thighs and I’ve gone an unattractive corned-beef colour from the cold. Not to mention the Garibaldi crumbs in my cleavage.
‘Oh, babe, let me warm you up – you’re a block of ice,’ says Randy, pulling me on to his lap on the kitchen window seat. I’m too embarrassed to look at him properly, especially as I can
feel his shoulders still shaking with laughter. I face primly towards the kitchen door while he rubs his hands up and down my arms until some sensation returns to them at last. He places a finger underneath my chin and turns my face towards his. I keep my eyes downcast.
‘Now, my gorgeous girlfriend, can you please tell me just how it is that you feel so cold, but look so unbelievably hot?’
‘Really?’ I ask, looking down at my finery. ‘You like it?’
‘Like it? Babe, you look like a million dollars.’ He runs a hand over the toile-de-jouy cups of my new bra and pulls me further up on his lap.
‘One hundred and twenty-five pounds, actually,’ I sniff, daring to glance up at last. ‘Four hundred and twenty-eight in total.’
‘A total bargain,’ murmurs Randy, nuzzling into my neck. ‘Are you feeling warmer?’
‘A bit,’ I say, giggling as he moves his hands lower.
‘Warm enough to think about . . . taking this off?’ he asks, sliding the chiffon robe off my shoulders and on to the floor. I shiver a little and he looks at me questioningly.
‘Oh, I’m definitely warming up,’ I say, turning to straddle him.
Suddenly he stands, lifting me as if I weigh nothing; I wrap my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck. His eyes are very dark in this light.
He swings me over to sit on the edge of the kitchen table, kicking the chairs out of the way. ‘Warmer or colder?’ he asks with a filthy grin and kisses me, hard, before I have time to answer.
‘Warmer,’ I murmur, reaching for the waistband of his football shorts. ‘Warmer; moving towards hot.’
‘I should say you are, babe,’ says Randy, leaning over me on the table.
The rest of the casserole dries out in the oven, but we’re not hungry any more.
17
Camilla’s charity gig for Randy has begun to hurtle towards us at great speed, and I’m quite relieved when she finally ropes me in to work on it with her once it’s just two weeks away. Her idea of a small underground gig for an invited audience of generous friends and fans has been eclipsed by Jemima’s grander ambitions. Jemima has insisted that Declan Costelloe and Jim ‘Mandy’ Manders, two of her up-and-coming comedy clients, could benefit from the exposure of a gig with Randy Jones, and since she has pointed out that more people in the audience mean more money to charity, Camilla has found it hard to protest (despite the fact that both she and I know Jemima’s interest in charity pretty much starts and ends with popping into the Kensington branch of Oxfam once a month in the hope that some old lady might have donated a vintage Hermès Birkin). Now we find ourselves preparing for a major event in the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank, an incongruous venue but the only one available at short notice thanks to the unfortunate demise of a Hungarian conductor which has freed it up unexpectedly. The audience will be well over two thousand people, and even at that capacity tickets sold out in just three hours.
As the gig has grown, so has the administration attached to it, which means Camilla and I are in the office until past nine each night making sure that the press tickets are allocated to the right journalists, that the US promoters have the best seats, that the exclusive after-party in a basement bar across the river is hyped enough to be eagerly anticipated by those who are invited, but not so much that we’re pestered for invitations by those who aren’t, that the two less-famous comedians stop fighting over who gets the better dressing room. A tedious dispute over the precise contents of fruit baskets in the hospitality suite takes me over two hours to resolve, but there is a certain list-ticking satisfaction in sorting out such problems before they can escalate into proper dramas. While Camilla is often absent during the day on her mysterious errands, she always returns to work after hours, ordering in sushi for us both each night until, like one of Pavlov’s dogs, the very sight of a maki roll instantly makes me feel exhausted and overworked.
Camilla works furiously in her office; she spends hours on the phone absent-mindedly twirling pens and pencils in her pinned-up hair and then leaving them there until it fairly bristles with them. I think she forgets they’re there after a while. At nine-thirty on Friday night I’ve done all I can for one week, and pick up my handbag and jacket ready to head back to Randy’s.
‘I’m off now, Cam,’ I say, leaning into her office. ‘Hope you don’t have to work for much longer. It looks like it’s all shaping up amazingly.’ And it does – for all that it’s frantic, we’re inundated with requests for comps and special dispensations and plus-ones and press passes. If nothing else, this will be the most anticipated gig Randy has done for years.
‘Do you know, I think it is,’ she says, brightly. ‘I didn’t agree with her at first, but Jemima was right – the bigger the better for this gig. I’ve been speaking to Jamie from African Vision about how much they can do with the money we’re raising, and it’s really quite extraordinary. Randy’s little act of redemption might actually save some lives.’
‘It certainly puts the fruit baskets in perspective, doesn’t it?’ I say, and Camilla laughs.
‘Oh gosh, darling, I know. All that fuss over a sodding kiwi fruit. Frankly I’d like to ram one down Declan’s throat right now. I mean, what kind of a weirdo is allergic to a kiwi?’
‘Oh, you mustn’t trivialize it, Cam,’ I say, rolling my eyes. ‘Declan has a very specific and life-threatening allergy to the killer combination of furry skin and black seeds. In fact, I’m thinking Randy’s next gig should be in aid of his terrible affliction.’
‘The next gig Randy does after this one, Lizzy,’ says Camilla, suddenly serious, ‘is going to be the first in his thirty-city US tour. Don’t forget what we’re doing all this for. How is he at the moment, anyway? Behaving himself?’
‘Oh yes, he’s taking it all hugely seriously, Cam – he’s working mad,’ I say, and it’s the truth. Randy has supplemented his daily workouts with hour after dedicated hour developing new material with a couple of writer friends. ‘And he’s absolutely as clean as clean. The drugs tests won’t be a problem, I can promise you. He’s on really good form. Really good.’
Camilla looks at me with interest. ‘And he’s still behaving properly where you’re concerned?’
I’m not quite sure how to reply to this one. Randy is behaving to me extremely improperly; and with my full and enthusiastic encouragement. But that doesn’t feel like a conversation I can have with my boss. And it certainly wasn’t part of the deal of being Randy’s fake girlfriend.
‘Oh yes,’ I say. ‘He’s absolutely fine these days. I don’t know what you said to him, but it definitely did the trick.’
‘I told him if he messed you around, I’d fire him as a client,’ says Camilla matter-of-factly.
I open my eyes wide in surprise.
‘You did?’
‘I did. Now go off and have a good evening – what’s left of it, anyway. I’ll see you on Monday.’ Camilla smiles and turns back towards her computer.
I walk out through the dark office; a few pools of light show that Camilla and I are not the only ones ending the week with a late one. I wave over at Francoise, Lucy’s workaholic assistant, and manage a polite good night to Mel, but I note there’s no sign of Jemima. Once she’d manoeuvred her clients on to the bill, she ‘allowed’ Camilla to make the project exclusively hers. I don’t think it’s any kind of an accident that Jemima’s brainwave has effectively doubled Camilla’s workload.
In reception, Winston the security guard puts down his copy of the New Yorker, unlocks the front door and wishes me a good evening with a formal little bow.
I decide to take the bus. Camilla always insists on paying for a taxi if I’ve worked late, but I feel I need a bit more time to think before I get back to Randy’s. Camilla has confused me by telling me about her ultimatum. I know she values me as her PA, and that Randy’s been a difficult client for her, but why would she be so insistent about keeping him out of Jemima’s clutches one minute only to threaten to drop him the next? It doesn’t a
dd up. Randy might be demanding – I know that better than anyone these days – but he’s also the star client, not just on Camilla’s books, but on the whole of Carter Morgan’s. His existence allows us to get the rest of our clients the best possible press coverage: without him, we’d lose one of the golden carrots we dangle in front of the media.
Although I can’t help but be flattered by Camilla’s loyalty to me, I’ve got to question her judgement in even considering getting rid of Randy. Clearly her renewed efficiency and drive over the last few weeks are only surface-deep. I can see that I’m going to have to keep Randy in line even more than ever. Camilla would be committing career suicide to lose her superstar client. How can she not see that?
18
When I finally make it home, that is to say, to Randy’s, Camilla’s superstar client is not looking especially super. He has dark lines under his eyes that look as if they’ve been drawn on with his much-abused eyeliner pencil, and his hair clearly hasn’t been washed since his morning workout. When I poke my head round the door of his study, he grabs me into a bear hug until I think I’ll snap in half.
‘Babe,’ he says, ‘I missed you. Have you been at work all this time?’
‘Yup,’ I say into his chest. ‘Working like a loon, and all for your benefit, my fake boyfriend.’
‘Hey,’ he says, pulling away to look at me with a wry smile. ‘I thought we’d talked about faking it?’
I know this way of looking deep into my eyes is a trademark Randy-Jones move – God knows I’ve seen him do it to enough girls in the past – but tell that to the flutter in the pit of my stomach. No matter how much my head says that this is not a real relationship, that for Randy this kind of flirtation is nothing more than a reflex action, my pounding heart begs to differ.