The Case of the Missing Boyfriend Read online

  Darren turns towards me. ‘Oh,’ he says, pulling a face. ‘Brown- sock moment.’

  ‘Yes . . .’ I say. ‘Indeed! Nylon, methinks.’

  ‘Sorry?’ the evil-one asks.

  ‘So what do you do, Dave?’ I ask him, my voice over-sugary in an attempt at hiding my gathering anger.

  ‘Oh, this . . .’ he says, gesticulating to the four guys in the middle of the room. ‘I’m responsible for this.’

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ I say. I turn from Dave to Ricardo. ‘I thought this was all your work.’

  ‘It is,’ Ricardo says. ‘Dave is a . . . a sort of fixer for events, aren’t you? He found these beautiful men for me.’

  Dave nods proudly.

  ‘Right,’ I say. ‘Well, that can’t have been easy.’

  Dave shrugs. ‘Well, they’re just escorts,’ he says, somewhat dismissively I feel, considering that said escorts are all within earshot.

  I try to think of a really good put-down, but of course, nothing comes to mind. And truth be told, if I did think of something really good I wouldn’t have the nerve to say it to him anyway. Being bitchy on demand requires training and dedication and sadly, I just haven’t put in the hours.

  Ricardo grabs my arm, links it through his, and literally yanks me away. ‘Come and look at some of the bigger works,’ he says loudly.

  I bite my lip, unsure if he is having a dig at Dave’s size or not, but I’m grateful to have been saved.

  As we walk away, he murmurs into my ear, ‘Such a nasty little queen, don’t you think? In Colombia we say that they smell funny.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The red ones.’

  ‘Oh, gingers?’ I restrain a snigger because of the un-PC nature of the remark.

  ‘But he’s a great organiser,’ Ricardo continues. ‘He has all the good contacts. He had no problem finding four prostitutes to pose naked for selling my stuff. What does he think this is if it isn’t advertising, huh? Now come on, tell me what you really think.’

  ‘Oh, I’m useless when it comes to art,’ I say, suddenly feeling that I could quite like this man.

  ‘That’s because you’re nervous,’ Ricardo says. ‘You think you have to say things like, what was it? Exaggerated objectification of human body blah blah . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ I laugh. ‘But honestly. Other than the fact that I think your photos are beautiful, and very arousing . . .’

  ‘Ah! So they make you feel hot, huh? This is what I want to know.’

  I nod and smile at him. ‘Well, yes, they do,’ I say.

  ‘And you know how I get that . . . how do you say it? Erotic, into my art?’

  ‘Eroticism,’ I say.

  ‘Yes. Of course. Eroticism. But you know how I get it to communicate?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘I have to be very horny, and very frustrate.’

  I nod.

  ‘So no sex, just, lots of temptation. And then it work. It’s funny, huh?’

  ‘So you really do have to suffer for your art,’ I laugh.

  He nods. ‘Oh yes,’ he says.

  ‘There’s something very powerful about them, quite . . . I don’t know . . .’

  ‘Primeval?’ Ricardo prompts.

  ‘Maybe, yes,’ I say. ‘I was thinking how tribal the centrepiece looks with all those people walking in a circle around them. Almost like a sacrificial offering or a witch-burning or . . . Oh, honestly, I don’t know what I’m talking about when it comes to art.’

  Ricardo freezes and then unlinks himself from my arm, then turns to face me and takes hold of my shoulders. He looks like he’s maybe going to give me a good shaking.

  He stares madly into my eyes. His own have tears in them. ‘The tribal circle!’ he says crazily. ‘You see it! It is the reason they are there! And you are the only person who see that! I think I love you!’

  I slip into a grin. ‘Well, thank you!’ I say. I nod across the room and see Darren crossing to join us. ‘And thanks for saving me from the red dwarf.’

  I say this last part discreetly, but Ricardo roars with laughter, and repeats very loudly, ‘The red dwarf ! I love this woman!’

  House of Cards

  In the nightmare – a scene lifted straight from the French film I watched on Film 4 on Thursday – I am the crazed Betty and my boyfriend is smothering me with a pillow.

  I awaken with a jolt to find that I am lying on my front and my mouth is indeed full of pillow. No prizes for interpreting that dream then.

  I roll over and take a deep breath and wait for my brain to assimilate the fact that that was a dream, and this is reality.

  Grey light is leaking through a gap in the curtains. My mouth is gloopy and disgusting, and the pain above my left eye is really quite stunning. I groan and rub my eyebrow. ‘Jesus!’ I mutter. ‘What a night!’ Though in truth, for the moment, I can’t remember much of it.

  In the bathroom I listen as what I assume to be a litre of pure rum gushes out: Rum. Mojitos . . . memories are surfacing.

  Whilst I wait for two Alka-Seltzer to dissolve (they seem to take forever) I feed Guinness. The smell of the cat food makes me retch. The noise of the Alka-Seltzer fizzing hurts my head.

  I eventually down them but have to remain poised for a few minutes over the kitchen sink as I’m not entirely sure they won’t be coming straight back up.

  I look out at the twilight of the garden. It’s just before eleven a.m. but the cloud cover is so thick that it looks like evening already. What light is dribbling through is of course being double-filtered by the Leylandii.

  As I stare into the middle distance waiting for the Alka-Seltzer to do its stuff, it starts to drizzle.

  I switch the kitchen light on and fill the kettle and slump at the table and try to remember how I got home. For some reason it’s always the first thing I try to remember. There’s something particularly unnerving about not knowing how you got to where you are.

  But I soon give up on working my way backwards, and start at the beginning: I remember the exhibition, my sudden friendship with the crazy artist, the endless drinks of Champagne as the crowd dwindled . . . I remember Ricardo saying that the Champagne was all paid for and that we had better drink it. And I remember doing precisely that.

  I recall six of us in a taxi to Brixton, to a Colombian bar – Amazonica, I think – and drinking mojitos, lots of mojitos, and . . . oh God! . . . dancing sexy salsa with . . . I’m thinking . . . V? Victor, perhaps?

  I pinch the bridge of my nose and struggle to remember.

  I make a giant cup of tea and take it through to the lounge. My body aches and the big purple sofa is beckoning to me.

  On the coffee table I find a beer mat from Bar Code, and this prompts another memory: a different taxi, this time just Darren and Ricardo and, yes, Victor, the three of them snorting white lines in the back of the taxi . . . me being terrified in case the taxi driver noticed. I didn’t partake, thank God, or my hangover would be even worse. Which is, of course, precisely why I don’t: the only effect cocaine seems to have on me is to enable me to drink far more than my body can handle, and I could never really see the point in that. Indeed I seem to be able to achieve that perfectly well without chemical help.

  I glance at the beer mat. Yes, Bar Code: stuffed with men – stuffed of course with gay men. Darren and Ricardo went to the bar and were absorbed by the crowd leaving only Victor sweetly chatting to me, the only one of the three to worry that I might be feeling left out. I remember feeling too drunk and having to sit down and looking at everyone’s waists around me – an impenetrable wall of jeans between me and the exit. It reminded me of being a little girl and looking up at all the adults, only this time no one was there to hold my hand, no voice coming over the tannoy to save me.

  Darren and Ricardo never did make it back from the bar, and for a while it was fine, Victor and I had the loveliest chat about music and life and the importance of friends and the need to escape to the country and I thought for a moment that he might
kiss me, but he introduced me to a friend instead whose name I really don’t recall, and I felt stupid because, of course, Victor, like the rest of the world, was gay, and I felt sick and lousy and had no idea what the fuck I was doing there anyway.

  And then I somehow stumbled through the crowd and out into the rain and fell into a taxi. And here I am. The gaps have been filled. Phew!

  I sip my tea and snort sadly. The thing about a gay night out really is knowing when to stop – when to stop and go home. And I’m afraid I never seem to get that right. There is always a terrible moment of drunken solitude when I realise that whoever I was with has gone off, or is kissing someone . . . There is always a moment when I realise that I have become surplus to requirements, and that ultimately I’m an intruder in someone else’s space, a voyeur whose alibi has vanished.

  I sip my tea and think, not for the first time, that though I love my nights out with Mark and Darren, this isn’t healthy – really it isn’t.

  It’s a bit like watching TV – a useful distraction but ultimately unproductive. I need to reorganise my life. I need to spend more time with straight friends. I need a boyfriend of my own.

  And then I remember Brown Eyes and wonder if he has phoned.

  I stand and cross the room for the handset. For a second I think I might throw up again. I have to steady myself by holding on to the mantelpiece as I dial voicemail.

  There is an instant of hope when the computerised woman – she of the erratic intonation – announces that I have one . . . new, message . . . yesterday . . . at . . . ten, oh, five . . . p.m.

  I hold my breath for a moment, but then groan as Cynthia’s nasal twang says, ‘Hi pumpkin. Cyn here. As I’m sure you remembered it’s Carl’s birthday on Thursday, so of course we’re having the traditional “do” on Friday. Hope you can come. The usual crowd. Let me know if you’re bringing anyone. Oh, and no need to worry about food. Just bring lashings of Champagne. It’s the big four-oh!’

  Oh God! The traditional ‘do’! The usual crowd! Lashings of Champagne!

  I slump back onto the sofa, feeling not only sicker but thoroughly, irrecoverably depressed.

  After the break-up, when all the possessions and friends got divided up, I somehow ended up with Cynthia and Carl. That doesn’t sound very appreciative, and I guess that it isn’t really fair – it’s just my hangover doing my thinking for me.

  Fact is, that Cynthia and Carl couldn’t forgive Brian for what he had done to Yours Truly, so when everyone had to choose sides, they chose mine. Which is lovely, really, seeing as they had previously been Brian’s friends rather than mine.

  So I’m not ungrateful . . . it’s just that the traditional ‘do’ means a sit-down dinner at their house, and the usual crowd means Cyn and Carl, Pete and Betina and Martin and Cheryl. Don’t get me wrong . . . they’re all perfectly nice couples. But the truth is that now I’m a single girl, I fit into happy-couple-hell (New! With added children!) about as well as I fit into single-homo-hell . . .

  In fact, I probably fit in slightly better with the gay crowd, for at least they understand that lives and loves are tenuous at best. We at least have that shared knowledge to bitch about.

  The happily-marrieds really seem to have no idea. They don’t understand yet just how fragile their relationships are. They don’t realise how reliant they are on their partners remaining sane, and stable, and truthful, and, long-term, how improbable that is.

  We: the single, the dumped, the lied-to, have learnt that relationships are a house of cards, and that with the slightest jog of the table everything comes tumbling down.

  And it occurs to me that far from the loss of the relationship itself, the most profound thing Brian did to me was to give me that knowledge: that you can be the happiest, luckiest girl around. You can be in love, confident in your future and overjoyed to be pregnant. And then someone (Brian) nudges the table, and wham! you’re a single, childless spare, casting desperately around to try to find someone, anyone to fit in with.

  It can happen anytime. And it can happen to anyone. And it happened to me.

  And now I think I need to throw up. And then I need to go back to bed.

  An Arse-Slapping Success

  By the time Monday morning arrives, the worst of my hangover is past and I am feeling almost human again. And yet, as is always the case with these things, a shadow of my self-inflicted abuse remains, specifically a vague blurring of my thought processes, an inability to concentrate on a single thought for long enough to get anywhere with it.

  This is not good news for the Grunge! pitch and I am only too aware of it.

  When I get to the impressive offices within the far bigger, but less sexy sounding, Bowles, Richards and Parkinson Group, or BRP as they are known in the trade (Darren calls them Burp most of the time), I am well known enough to be able to make my own way to the boardroom where the presentation is to be held. I am half an hour early – half an hour which I hope is going to enable me to organise my thoughts.

  In the otherwise empty boardroom I find Darren spreading glossy posters out on the giant oval table.

  ‘Hey,’ he says, as I close the door. ‘Have a look at this and tell me what you think.’

  He sounds sharp and confident, and stunningly awake, and I wonder for a moment why dealing with hangovers gets so much harder as you get older. Then again, I never remember having felt like that after a weekend on the razzle at any age.

  Darren reveals his secret, though, before I can ask. ‘Shit, you look rough,’ he says. ‘You look like me when I got up. Do you want a line? Because I’ve got a bit left.’

  I roll my eyes.

  ‘I know you don’t and everything,’ Darren says, ‘but it is sort of exceptional circumstances. Anyway, the offer’s there.’

  But a single glance at the posters on the table provides the jolt of adrenalin required to get my brain on the move. No drugs required. ‘What the fuck is that?’ I say, rotating one of the glossy sheets towards me.

  The image is a total reworking of the concept I was presented with on Friday. In fact, the image, a man on a sledge in carpenter pants holding a three man-dog husky team looks more like a poster for Ricardo Escobar’s exhibition than an ad for jeans.

  ‘You don’t like it?’ Darren asks incredulously.

  ‘I . . .’ I say, momentary speechless.

  It’s a beautiful poster but it’s not what we agreed. And it’s not what Grunge! will want to see. I leaf through the other posters on the table. They are all slight variations on the same theme.

  A voice behind us says, ‘Like what?’

  We both swivel to see Jude enter the room, lean his bag against the glass partition, and circle the table to join us.

  I shake my head and swallow and put my now trembling hands into the pockets of my D&G trousers. The three cups of espresso plus the quickly mounting stress have pushed me from comatose to panic attack in a single leap.

  Jude rounds the table. ‘Huh!’ he laughs. ‘Cool. Were these taken at that exhibition you two went to?’

  ‘The next day,’ Darren says. ‘You see, Jude likes it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jude laughs again. ‘Excellent. Anyway . . . Show me the visuals for today. We haven’t got long.’

  Darren frowns at him.

  ‘The storyboard,’ Jude says. ‘Show me the finished storyboard.’

  ‘I thought this . . .’ Darren says, his voice tailing off.

  ‘You did do the storyboard?’ Jude says. ‘The original one. The one we agreed.’

  Darren coughs. ‘I thought this was . . . better,’ he murmurs.

  Jude wrinkles his brow and looks from Darren to me.

  I say nothing, but combine a raised-eyebrow look which expresses, You see what I’m dealing with here . . . with a, Your problem not mine, you fix it, shrug.

  Jude turns back to Darren, then grabs his arm and bustles him into a corner.

  As head of Creative, Jude has never let me down, but even so . . . this is cutting it fine, even
for them.

  In an attempt at remaining calm I stare out of the window at the London skyline and repeatedly sing ten little Indians in my head. In Italian. Uno, due, tre indiani, quattro, cinque, sei indiani . . . Ridiculous, I know . . . but it has always worked for me.

  I try not to listen to their discussion, but occasional phrases slip through my filter: Where the fuck . . . don’t care if the fucking Queen took the fucking photos . . . so you do have them . . . Go! Now!’

  Darren grabs his laptop bag and turns to leave.

  ‘And take this shit with you!’ Jude bellows.

  Darren swivels back, gathers the posters, rolls them, and then, red as a beetroot from his dressing-down, runs for the door.

  Jude turns to me, smiles, and slides into a seat.

  ‘And?’ I say.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Jude replies calmly. ‘He’ll be back.’

  ‘With the boards?’

  Jude nods. ‘I think he just got carried away. A case of less is more, I’m afraid.’

  I shake my head. ‘Incredible!’ I say.

  ‘I’ll sack him if you want . . .’ Jude says. ‘He would have asked for it.’

  ‘Shit!’ I say. I shake my head and sigh. ‘Well . . . we can talk about that afterwards. If any of us are still alive.’

  At precisely ten I take my place beside the empty whiteboard and begin my pitch.

  I smile confidently at the assembled people: Clarissa Bowles, Peter Bowles (her father), four people from the Grunge! marketing department, the Grunge! marketing director Simon Savage, and Peter Stanford, our own grey-haired, impeccably suited, sixty-something, Romeo/Director of Marketing.

  Three words are bouncing around my head: How the fuck?

  I take a deep breath and try to shout myself down. ‘Hello everyone!’ I boom. ‘We’re here today, as you know, to present our campaign for the new Grunge! Street-Wear range of unisex carpenter pants.’

  I cough and clear my throat and Jude winks at me, egging me on.

  ‘It’s a well-known fact that gay fashion typically precedes the mainstream by anything between six months and two years, and for this product, because our market research has revealed instant appeal within the trend-setting gay market, our strategy evolves . . . sorry, re-volves around exploiting this fact for maximum advantage.