Every Good Girl

by Judy Astley

  ‘Drink after this? I think we deserve one,’ the girl was saying, her smile confidently expecting a ‘yes’.

  ‘Sorry, I’d love to but I’ve got to get back. I’m late for the family,’ Joe heard himself saying. She pouted and turned away, blushing rather appealingly. The detached part of his head, where he kept the old juvenile Joe, jeered at him but there was no wavering, no contest.

  As he left the studio, going down to the car park in the lift, he wondered about Nina alone that evening in their – no, her – house. He thought of her curled up in the soft lamplight on the sitting room sofa with the TV on and Genghis snoring softly on the rug. When she kicked her shoes off they always landed upside down. Or she might be upstairs wallowing in a scented bath, indulging in some serious body-pampering. He tried not to think of her giggling over a bottle of wine with Henry in the kitchen or brutally discussing All Men are Bastards with the flimsy new woman from across the road. Not once did it cross his mind that she might not be home at all.

  Nina sat at the large round table and pinned her name tag to the lapel of her jacket. She felt as if she was at a primary school social where people she had been seeing at the gate for the past few years would come up and say ‘Hi . . . er . . .’ swift-look-at-label, ‘Nina’ and they’d both pretend the label wasn’t necessary, not at all.

  For a Friday night the restaurant didn’t seem to be particularly busy, and their table, away in an alcove slightly apart from the main room, reminded Nina of taking the girls for a birthday treat at a burger bar where large parties were safely roped off out of range of trouble. She shifted uncomfortably on the cane chair: she’d been right about the skirt, which was already riding up and would only stay put if she kept her knees virtuously still and together, defeating, she thought with a smile, the unspoken object of a Knights Out evening.

  She looked over to where Sally was sitting on the opposite side of the table, already with a large drink to hand, her eyes swivelling round to check out the other, what were they, customers? punters? Sally’s lower half, which no-one could see, was wearing a pair of sensibly comfortable stretchy trousers but her top half was a stall laid out: a low-cut blouse of something semitransparent, blotched with scarlet roses which reminded Nina of her mother’s bedroom wallpaper. Big tumbling frills of the same fabric fell across her bolster of a bosom and a necklace of silver leaves (from gallery stock, Nina noticed) nestled in the folds of her cleavage. Her thick, streaky blond hair was fluffed out like the fur of a cat that’s spoiling for a fight. Nina hoped that among the six men on offer, who so far all looked discouragingly like corporate lawyers on their way home from the office, Sally would truffle out a true Knight for herself. To Nina, so far, they were simply a collection of dull grey suits and safe ties. There were four other women: two in safe black but sporting something bold in terms of jewellery, and one with jet-black long hair who wore a scarlet high-necked Chinese-style dress that clung to her slim body and what she and Joe used to call shag-me shoes, high, gold and open-toed with double ankle-straps. Nina sipped her spritzer and imagined Joe muttering comments in a restaurant along the lines of, ‘Pity she can’t just put them on the table and let them do the talking’, as he’d be sure to do if he was with her. She wished she was at home, suddenly, with him and the girls and a Friday night video, Genghis and the cat scavenging on the carpet for spilled popcorn . . .

  Welcome to Knights Out,’ Scarlet Dress suddenly announced. ‘I’m Belinda, I’ll leave it to you to make your own introductions as the evening progresses. For those of you who haven’t joined us before, this is simply dinner with friends. The only difference is that you’ll be friends by the end of the evening, rather than at the beginning.’ Her audience tittered softly and some of the braver sets of eyes started to seek out someone round the table to be sharing the joke with. Sally grinned across at Nina and winked, raising her glass. Her eyes and head slid sideways to indicate the man sitting on her right and Nina forced back a giggle as Sally made a being-sick face across the table, hiding behind her menu.

  ‘Hi, I’m Lawrence,’ the Grey Suit on Nina’s left spoke. ‘Have you been to one of these things before?’ It sounded like an echo, because, Nina quickly realized, this seemed to be everyone’s opening line.

  ‘I’m Nina. And no I haven’t actually. And you?’ He looked all right on close inspection, she thought, tall, athletic and with very clean hands. Add a Good Sense of Humour and he might be anyone’s Lonely Hearts column dream man. Surely, by definition, the sort of man who shouldn’t need to be doing this.

  ‘Yes, once or twice. I prefer it to one-to-one dating and for very good reasons. Can I just ask, are you divorced or widowed or what?’

  ‘Divorced, actually,’ Nina lied, feeling that if she said ‘Separated’ she might be outed as a Fake Single and marched from the premises. She wondered which profession to select when he inevitably asked. Lion-tamer came to mind.

  He smiled, rather sadly. ‘Ah, then you’ll understand. You see with my wife, well I had a terrible time. The wrangling in the courts, you wouldn’t believe it, absolute bloodbath . . .’

  ‘I am not watching bloody Watership Down. Not on a Friday night and that’s final.’ Emily faced Lucy in Blockbusters and wondered how disgracefully sad she looked, arguing with her sister about the best way to spend a night in.

  ‘OK, what about Clueless.’

  ‘Seen it twice. Look Luce, it’s The Saint or Evita. I don’t feel in the mood for anything with heavy sex or violence.’

  ‘Had too much of both this week?’ Simon’s voice behind her, too close to her ear, flippant and careless, made Emily jump with nerves and she swung round angrily.

  ‘You fuckwit, what would you know?’ she hissed rudely in his face. Simon’s smile still beamed, but his eyes looked as if he’d been smacked. He backed away a few steps, alarmed.

  ‘Hey, sorry. Whatever I said wrong, I didn’t mean it.’

  Emily tried to collect her wits, tried to smile back at him but her treacherous lip trembled. She felt a complete fool for over-reacting, but men really shouldn’t creep about startling girls like that. Lucy crept up next to her and took her hand, patting at it with soft fingers, doing her best to soothe. Simon was looking perplexed. He had his hands shoved far down in the pockets of his jeans just like boys at school when they were embarrassed by a teacher’s thoughtless sarcasm. He tried again. ‘Er, look – Catherine rang and told me you were in here choosing something to watch. I just thought you two might be wanting a bit of company, that’s all. I’ll go home again if you like.’ He grinned: ‘Actually I think she’s a bit scared of being on her own with the two of you.’

  ‘Yeah, well I’m not surprised,’ Emily confessed. ‘I’m really sorry, I’m not usually such a bloody Rottweiler, I’ve just had a dreadful couple of weeks.’

  ‘Oh I remember it. A-levels,’ he shuddered. ‘Your degree finals somehow aren’t as bad.’ Emily let him ramble on, happy enough that he’d so misinterpreted her idea of a bad time. He didn’t need to know it had all started with him. If he only hadn’t given up so easily outside the school and driven away after Nick turned up . . . She looked at him, trying to see him with newly attracted eyes. She felt nothing, only numb indifference. He was still the best-looking thing she’d seen that year, the man that if she had to give marks out of ten to would easily rate a score of twelve and a half. He had Catherine’s slim pale features, eyes the colour of chocolate cake-mix and the kind of foppish blond hair that Nick would probably slag off as ‘fucking public school’. It seemed a pity, she thought from this new chill sex free distance, that she felt no zing of attraction. She’d work extra hard that evening on feeling better.

  ‘So can we have Star Wars?’ Lucy was saying to Simon.

  ‘Yeah, if you like. OK with you, Emily? Have you seen it?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t mind. Lucy hasn’t seen it.’

  ‘And my big sister will hate it.’ Simon grinned at her. Emily smiled with weary politeness. I really do
hope I wake up again in the next couple of hours, she thought. Otherwise it really will be the most terrible wicked waste.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Main Course Man (Lawrence) was now, thankfully, at the far end of the table repeating to one of the Black Dress women the miserable details of his divorce. Nina knew he was doing this because the poor woman was sneaking a glance at her watch behind her glass and looking as if she was trying to make up her mind between faking sudden nausea or the need to make a phone call. In a quiet moment, Nina could just catch the words ‘absolute bloodbath’. The poor man probably thought his sad story made him somehow appealing. Perhaps he’d read somewhere that the fastest way to bed a woman was to get her to feel sorry for you. Or maybe he just wanted someone to tell – and tell and tell. He’d be better off in counselling, she thought as she turned to size up the man she’d been allocated for the next course.

  Pudding Man, labelled Mick, was studying the menu very carefully, from which she gathered that his priority seemed to be food before seduction. She looked at his face and could see his lips moving slightly as he read. Generously, she trusted that he was simply savouring the words as if they were edible. He had not yet spoken to her, merely managing a barely polite shy smile. On her left, a stocky Welshman was explaining to an eager big-eyed redhead the importance of the rugby throw-in and his large splayed thigh twitched up and down with nervous excitement, jiggling Nina’s chair.

  Nina didn’t particularly want anything more to eat. While Lawrence had given her the uncut version of his divorce, she had stolidly munched her way through a vast plate of guinea fowl stuffed with foie gras, boulangère potatoes and a wigwam of French beans. There’d been nothing else to do, for she’d quickly realized she was not required to converse or even comment beyond the occasional ‘How dreadful’ and ‘Poor you’, just to show she was still awake.

  ‘Well Nina, what are you going to have? Anything nice and gooey taken your fancy?’ Mick suddenly turned to her and grinned.

  Not you for a start, was her immediate reaction. Then she took a closer look. He wasn’t just a Grey Suit. He was an Armani grey suit with dark brown hair cut neatly in a style that reminded Nina of old photos of Mods. His blue eyes were framed with sun-ray laughter lines and his teeth were so beautiful she could hardly believe they were British. His hands were craggy and worn from some sort of hard manual work, which had Nina vaguely weighing up how pleasurably abrasive they might be on her skin. At the far end of the table, Sally was winking shameless encouragement at her. She bit her lip to stop a giggle. ‘I wouldn’t mind a crème brûlée,’ she admitted, wondering if this could be construed as a double entendre, and also whether she cared if it was.

  ‘Mmm. Sweet and creamy. Delicious,’ Mick purred suggestively, then as if recalling some kind of behaviour rules, said, ‘I’m more of straightforward pie man myself. Apple, pear. Lemon tart at a push.’ He looked confused, rather sweetly embarrassed as if he’d realized he was rambling and didn’t know how to stop. Nina wanted to give him a hug, tell him it was all right, he was doing fine.

  ‘I’m a plumber,’ he told her, looking wary and eyeing her carefully to get her reaction.

  ‘Well that’s useful,’ she enthused. ‘Such a change from all the helpless musicians and artists I usually meet. I mean you rarely find a pianist who can even so much as bleed a radiator, do you?’

  ‘No thank God, or I‘d be out of work. Each to his own talents, I say, and then we might be on the way back to full employment. What do you do?’

  ‘I parent, I run a gallery with a friend and I worry a lot,’ she told him.

  ‘But we won’t talk about our other halves, OK?’ he said, grinning and indicating Lawrence, hunched forlornly over the table, snivelling into his wine glass, his eyes glinting with drunken tears. He was muttering to himself and a photo of his family was propped up against a bottle of Perrier. The Black Dress beside him was chatting happily to the woman on the other side of him, and the two of them shouted across him, having discovered a shared interest in salsa classes.

  ‘My friend Sally told me that it’s the best thing about these dinners, the women you meet rather than the potential partners,’ Nina commented, then rapidly added, ‘Well sometimes, not with everyone, I mean . . .’

  ‘Hey, don’t apologize, I agree with her,’ Mick laughed. ‘I’ve met some great women. Sorry if we men aren’t up to standard. I’m told we very rarely are.’

  ‘Someone’s given you a hard time. Sorry, I know we’re not supposed to talk about it,’ Nina said.

  ‘Makes me sound like something with big sorrowful eyes in Battersea Dogs’ Home. Don’t waste too much sympathy on men, trust me, that’s playing right into their hands. Sympathy leads to sex,’ Mick said with a smile.

  ‘OK I’ll keep that in mind. I shall remember to be callous and cruel so I don’t give the wrong impression.’

  The crash at the far end of the table was shattering and wonderfully loud. Lawrence had reached the point where alcohol and misery had obliterated his balance and had tumbled off his chair to the floor taking bottles, glasses and plates with him. The entire restaurant fell into inquisitive silence, necks craned; some people were standing for a better view. From a nearby table there came a ripple of applause.

  ‘Oh bloody hell, I just knew he was going to be a sodding disaster,’ Belinda, the team leader yelled. She scrambled out of her chair and tottered round on her delicate gold shoes to see what damage the stricken Lawrence had caused. The Black Dress he’d been attempting to bore with his divorce details was wiping tears of hysteria from her eyes and scooping Mississippi Mud Pie from her cleavage at the same time.

  ‘I just hope he doesn’t think I’m going to let him lick this lot off,’ she spluttered through her laughter. Lawrence lay groaning, tangled in his chair and broken crockery.

  ‘We could make a quick exit, what do you think?’ Mick grabbed Nina’s hand and was already steering her towards the door. ‘Unless you want to hang around and wait for him to throw up all over Belinda’s gold shoes as well?’

  ‘No, you’re right,’ Nina said, looking round for Sally, ‘I’m ready to go. What about paying?’ As she said it, Mick was showering £20 notes in the direction of Belinda, who gave the departing pair a sharp and speculative look. ‘She looks like she’d be thrilled if we all disappeared,’ Mick commented. ‘What a bloody fiasco.’

  ‘Poor man,’ Nina said as they walked out into the chill air. ‘He’s going to feel terrible about this later.’

  Mick squeezed her hand hard. ‘Now I told you, don’t waste your sympathy.’

  ‘Nina! Where the hell are you going?’ Sally, panting for breath and with her bosom heaving impressively under its frills, caught up with them as Mick was flagging down a taxi. ‘Are you mad?’ she demanded. ‘You can’t just go off with the first bit of tasty rough that grabs you with his hairy paw, you don’t know what could happen.’

  ‘Yes I do, but nothing will. Not with my luck,’ Nina told her. ‘But you’re right, really, I know. We’re just going for a drink, somewhere public I promise, and then I’ll go home, all by myself and safe, OK? I won’t even give him my address.’

  ‘OK,’ Sally agreed grudgingly. ‘Be careful.’

  The taxi sped off down the Fulham Road and turned into Beaufort Street. Nina sneaked a look at her watch. It was already past eleven and she suddenly felt very tired and not at all in need of another drink. She felt safe enough, in spite of Sally’s warnings. But if she had to pin down her lack of anxiety, there was nothing more to go on than that Mick smelt reassuringly of baby soap. Making an effort was called for, she decided, if she was ever to get back into the swing of this dating thing again.

  Out on the King’s Road, it was still as busy as in the middle of the day. Young twined couples laughed into each other’s faces on their way home to bed. They made it look so easy, so normal. She yawned gently and thought about cups of tea and her warm soft duvet. Being single was very wearing. As the taxi sped past Design
ers Guild she caught sight of a solitary girl leaning against a shop doorway, her arms huddling round her body and her face turned down towards the pavement, like someone who was trying to disappear. There was, in the paired-off street bustle, something curiously still and lonely about her. A mane of tangled hair hid her face but her body and long thin legs could have been Emily’s. I wonder what the girls and Joe are doing, Nina thought, only half listening to Mick being amusing about plumbing disasters.

  Well it was his fault. Simon’s fault. ‘Come round any time, whenever you want,’ he’d said. Probably he didn’t mean just an hour after he’d left, but she couldn’t do anything about that, not when she was up against instinct.

  Sitting next to him, their matching denim thighs touching, while they watched Star Wars she’d felt her body sizzling. This was what came of concentrating so hard on getting back to feeling like she used to. Her feelings had started to creep back, and then just kept coming like an unstoppable tide. She could hear his munching teeth as he chewed the popcorn and she felt maddened with the need to have those teeth on her skin. In the air were faint traces of his shampoo and she became faint with the effort of trying to keep the scent in her nostrils. If she talked to him about the man on the Common, told him all about it, made herself tearful, he’d have to comfort her. He’d have to wrap her body up in his, show her that not all men were like that, not all men, not him. He couldn’t do any of that with Lucy squeaking and bouncing on the rug in front of them, with Catherine looking icy in a chair with her silky legs crossed, waiting for Joe to stop falling asleep on the opposite sofa and take notice of her.