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‘I’m busy.’
‘Friday night?’
‘Busy … I wasn’t sure when you’d be back, so I made other plans.’ And if you’d called me sooner then I wouldn’t have had to …
‘I’m not surprised you’re so popular, a girl with your qualities. Okay, Sunday afternoon, let’s see a movie – all these dinners with you are making me fat!’ Nonsense, he had a gut when I met him!
‘I might be free Saturday night …’ I say.
‘Seeing Rob and the boys,’ he says quickly.
‘Fine, no, Sunday then …’
‘I’ll pick you up at 3pm, I’ll choose the film.’
I like a man who takes control.
‘I’m outside your flat, come on down,’ he says at 3pm on the dot.
‘What car are you in?’
‘The little blue one that makes a funny noise.’
For some reason I imagined he’d drive a BMW or a Golf GTi – something mainstream and fast and solid and a little bit flash.
But no. No, no, no. He is, in fact, behind the wheel of a very shiny, fancy sports car.
What make is it? There is a little crown insignia at the front, but I can’t tell. I know the difference between a Porsche, a Ferrari and a Lamborghini. James does not have a small penis and clearly doesn’t feel the need to drive any of these.
But nowadays Jaguars, Aston Martins, even that Ford with the old Steve McQueen ad – all meld into one.
‘Listen to this,’ he says, and revs the engine, ‘it has the best purr of any car. And it’s shaped like a woman’s body …’
‘Sometimes you sound like such an 80s dickhead,’ I say, smiling as he leans over to open the door for me.
As I step in, I see a large Maserati logo in silver on the floor. Handy. In case you forget which of your cars you’re driving.
I am surprised and pleased to see what a tip it is inside, as bad as my Honda Accord. Boots, fleeces, mud, sweet wrappers, even an empty white mug in the drinks holder, that’s surely meant to accommodate a goblet of Krug.
I do so like this about James. He is not precious about things, he’s carefree, careless even. I had a boyfriend at college who had a three-day tantrum after I knocked his Raybans onto the floor as I handed him an orange juice at a Happy Chef on the M6. I hate people who treat generic branded goods like they’re family heirlooms; it’s just stuff.
‘So, what’s with this car?’ I say, trying not to sound impressed.
‘A little toy I bought myself when the Bonders bought 25% equity in JSA. I do like the occasional toy.’
‘How much did they pay you?’ Blunt, but I’m trying to work out just how fancy this car is.
‘Three.’
‘£300,000?’ If that’s 25%, that’s a £1.2 million pound business. Not bad for selling socks.
And a whole house in Camden must be worth a million at least.
He laughs. ‘You’re so sweet, Soph. Add an 0.’
‘Oh.’ Oh, oh, oh.
We’re driving to the Curzon in Soho. I am still in shock about his wealth.
My immediate reaction had been: my God. I’ve found a prince, the last handsome, tall, not-bald multimillionaire in London. That’s lottery ticket win money. That doesn’t happen. Well, the odds are 1 in 12 million.
But a nanosecond later the discovery has started to bother me. It has set off various small alarms that I’m trying to put on snooze:
That sort of money rockets him in to a different universe.
That sort of money lets him do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, without consequence.
That sort of money goes to a man’s head. It is power.
No one makes that much money without being ruthless and hard as nails along the way.
People want to be close to a man like that. Men, yes, but the women. The type of women who would not look at him twice if he was a regular guy. That explains the Wolford model.
I’m bloody glad I didn’t know he was rich when I first met him. I wish I didn’t know now.
Maybe he doesn’t own the whole company; maybe his dad and brother own half …
‘Play some music, would you?’ I say, stroking his thick dark hair and thinking how good his genes are, and hoping if we have kids they’ll inherit his straight, shiny locks rather than my curls.
James fiddles with his CD player and on comes the soundtrack to the inner circle of hell: Dido, Flo Rida, some vocoder crap, the sort of banging dance music they play in gyms.
‘Have you not got the Crazy Frog tune?’ I say.
He presses the forward button and on comes Sam Cook.
‘Well recovered,’ I say.
There is a queue of cars in front of us, and James suddenly pulls to the left and speeds down the bus lane.
‘Bus lane,’ I say.
‘It’s fine.’
‘It says “At any time”.’
‘It’s fine.’
‘You’ll get a ticket.’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘Just because you’ve got a crown on your steering wheel doesn’t mean you can act like royalty.’
‘It’s a trident, love.’
‘What about the people on buses? There are bus lanes for a reason.’
‘They’ll still get there,’ he says.
‘If I was on that bus, I’d think you were a dick,’ I say.
‘But you’re not. You’re in my car.’
He has booked tickets to see Antichrist, because he thought I’d like an art house film. The cinema is very warm, and half an hour into the film, he falls asleep. Occasionally I nudge him but he looks extremely content, and quite frankly I wish I could sleep through it too.
As the end credits roll I wake him up. ‘You missed the bit where she drills through his leg, and the bit where she wanks him off and blood spurts out of his cock,’ I say.
He shudders. ‘Thank God.’
‘What now,’ I say, ‘Chinatown for some duck pancakes?’
‘I thought you might like to have dinner at mine.’
‘You’re going to cook for me?’
‘I was thinking more like a takeaway,’ he says.
‘Why don’t we cook?’
‘You’ll see why.’
‘Are you sure your wife’s not at home tonight?’
‘She’s on holiday with the kids and my three mistresses,’ he says.
He pulls up outside a house in Fitzroy Road. That’s Primrose Hill, not Camden. It has the loveliest front door of all the houses on the street – a deep, inky blue, with a semi-circular glass window at the top, like the sun rising.
This is all too good to be true. He’s too sexy, too rich, too tall, too much fun, too interesting, too smart, that door is too perfect. You don’t get to have all this in one person. Maybe you get three of the above but the guy turns out to be a cokehead or a depressive. James is the golden ticket. Something must be wrong.
Inside, everything is homely and unpretentious. On a low wooden sideboard sits a beautiful old-fashioned globe, the countries in faded pinks and yellows and greens and blues.
‘Who are these guys?’ I say, looking at the framed photos next to the globe.
‘That’s me and Rob in Mexico.’
‘You look happy,’ I say.
‘We’d just been skydiving,’ he says. ‘I think I was still high.’
‘And in this one? That must be your grandfather … father’s side?’ I say, looking at a faded photo of a stern looking man with James’s nose and dark eyebrows, his hand on the shoulder of a young boy who’s trying not to giggle. ‘Your hair was so blonde!’
‘My grandad was, what, early seventies? Still smoking thirty a day and drinking a large whisky before lunch. He made me go and find ten different types of leaves in Epping Forest while he sat on that bench with a hip flask, smoking and reading the Essex Chronicle.’
‘And this one! Look at your hair! How old are you here?’
‘Ten. June 3rd, 1975, Woodford Under 11s Junior Chess Champion.’
‘Such a nerd!’ I say. ‘Do you still play?’
‘Not really. But I’ll give you a game if you don’t mind losing,’ he says.
‘I love losing. So, why can’t we cook?’ I say, as we head downstairs to his kitchen.
‘You’ll see.’ And I do. His kitchen is like a student dig. He has a double electric hob, a microwave and a tiny, none-too-clean oven. I open one cupboard and see three Pot Noodles and two tins of tuna. In the next cupboard is some Tesco own brand pasta. ‘I need a wife,’ he says. ‘A wife who can cook!’
‘What’s in here?’ I say, spying a waist-high fridge in the corner.
‘Don’t look!’ he says, but it’s too late. I open the door and see that his fridge has no shelves at all. The few things in it are all stacked on top of each other at the bottom.
‘What’s that all about?’
‘I broke the shelves a while back, I keep meaning to replace them, but I never get round to it …’ he says.
‘How do you even break a fridge shelf?’
‘Ask Jack Daniels,’ he says.
‘I have never seen anything like that,’ I say. ‘How come the rest of your house is so lovely and your kitchen’s so shit?’
He laughs. ‘I’ve been travelling so much in the last year, it’s not been a priority. I’ll get round to it soon.’
‘Takeaway it is,’ I say.
‘There’s a great Japanese on Parkway, I’ll pop out and get some,’ he says, ‘No, it’s Sunday … pizza?’
‘Pizza’s good,’ I say. ‘Or I see you’re harbouring a lovely selection of Pot Noodles in your cupboard.’
‘Don’t say you like Pot Noodle or I’ll think I’ve dreamt you,’ he says.
‘I don’t mind it, if I’m drunk,’ I say. ‘Let’s get pizza. A bit more sociable, isn’t it?’
We lie on his sofa and eat a spicy meat pizza from his local takeaway. I’d never normally eat meatballs from a delivery place – I work at Fletchers, I know how bad a bad meatball can be. But James fancies meatballs, and I fancy James, and they taste delicious.
‘My friend in New York’s just had a baby and called him “Domino”,’ I say.
‘That’s a terrible name,’ he says.
‘Isn’t it?’
‘If I had a boy I’d call him Genghis,’ he says.
‘Gengis Stephens, nice ring. What about girls’ names?’
‘What do you think’s nice?
‘Don’t know. Lauren’s pretty. Olivia, maybe too posh. Martha?’
‘Martha’s a fat girl’s name,’ he says.
‘No, it’s not!’
‘How about Yasmine Jayde, and Anoushka Rose.’
‘You’re not calling our daughters after Bratz dolls and air fresheners.’
‘I’m the husband, you will obey,’ he says, beating his chest.
‘Don’t hold your breath,’ I say. ‘– By the way, do you normally date women a lot younger than you?’ I know Celine is now forty-two, but presumably if he wants children, he’ll want a wife under forty.
‘You’re a few years older than what I’d normally go for,’ he says.
‘Outrageous! You’re pushing fifty!’ I say.
‘Shhhh,’ he puts his finger to my lips.
Truth is we both know his age doesn’t matter. You can knock a year off his real age for every million in his bank account: Forty-five, thirty-five, thirty-three … now he’s my age. Knock another year off for each inch over five foot seven. Twenty-six. A full head of hair buys at least five. Excellent personal hygiene, another couple. Good in bed, another five. He’s officially fourteen.
Yep, I am dating a teenage boy.
He has two very different faces. When he frowns, concentrates or looks anxious – 40% of the time – he looks Sicilian and cruel and sexy; when he smiles he looks like a warm, happy, child. His face glazes with delight. Later, when we are together, I take photos of him, and when people ask to see them, they think they’re looking at two different people. He is a chameleon. There is something about him that makes me want to hold on to him forever.
‘He is really, really rich,’ I say to Laura the following day.
‘Good for him.’
‘I wish he didn’t have that much money.’
‘What would you prefer, three million?’
‘I could even go to four …’
‘Whatever, Soph. It’s a number, isn’t it? Doesn’t make anyone truly happy.’
Insert the cliché of your choice, but she is, I promise you, correct.
It is almost April and I have finally pinned Devron down and made him taste the trifles and fools he should’ve eaten weeks ago. I hate waiting for anything and anyone, but I particularly hate waiting for product sign-off from a man who won’t go to a restaurant that doesn’t serve a well-done steak and wedges.
‘What’s the life like on this one?’ he says, sliding his finger along the top of a chocolate trifle I was planning on taking round to Laura and Dave’s at the weekend.
‘Seven. This is life minus three,’ I say – we’re three days off the ‘eat by’ date, so four days into the pudding’s life.
‘And how does the consistency of that hold up on minus one?’ He points to a raspberry trifle. Devron will always ask one question that makes him sound knowledgeable, but blindfold him and he doesn’t know the difference between a blackberry and a blackcurrant.
‘Flavour’s good, texture and mouthfeel maintained till end of life.’
He nods. ‘Custard’s good on that lot,’ he says. ‘Approved.’
I feel like the proud mother of twenty kids, all of whom have just won the egg-and-spoon race.
‘Appletree are great with custard,’ I say. ‘Brûlées, tarts, crème anglaise …’
‘Brûlées … can you look at a microwaveable brûlée for autumn?’
‘The custard part?’
‘Whole lot.’
‘You won’t get crispy, browned sugar from a microwave, you need direct overhead heat for caramelisation.’
‘Orangy custards? Mands loves tangerines.’
‘Not ideal – citric acid interferes with the protein network, the fat globules separate at heat.’
‘Huh … what’s our margin on those trifles?’
‘38%’
‘And the cost of custard as percentage of total?’
‘Low. Bulk of cost is fruit and labour.’
‘Right, work up a dozen or so new custard-based puddings for launch next summer, margin of 40% plus. Yeah?’
I do like a challenge when there’s custard involved.
James has gone to Paris. When I left his house on Monday morning, he’d said, ‘I’ll call you on Friday.’
And he does. He always calls when he says he will, and very rarely at any other time. Although I’ve been busy all week with Devron’s new brief and out every night with friends, I’ve been distracted, hoping he’ll call just for the hell of it, just to say hi, but that doesn’t seem to be his style.
‘I’m on the Eurostar, so it might cut out. What are you doing tomorrow?’ he says.
I have kept my Saturday free in the hope that I’ll see him, but I’m bothered by his presumption that I’ll have done this.
‘Why?’
‘Meet me at the Tate Modern at 5pm.’
‘I’m not sure if I’m free.’
‘I’ve got something for you, it won’t keep.’
‘What sort of something?’
‘Trust me, you’ll like it. The man in the shop said it’ll be okay till 6pm Paris time, so don’t be late.’
‘We could meet earlier?’ I’d like to spend a bit of the day together.
‘I’ve got some errands. Meet me at the top of the slope?’
I wear a white cotton sundress that I bought in a New York flea market for five dollars. When I bought it two summers ago it was too tight, but I fell in love with the idea of one day fitting into it, and the fact that it cost less than the Thomas Keller chicken sandwich I’d just eaten. My wardrobe has a smattering of random, very cheap clothes like this, most of which will never fit, but when I try the dress on today it’s perfect. I put on a pair of beautiful pale pink silk French knickers. And at the last minute, I grab the large brimmed floppy straw hat that I’ve never dared wear outside of my flat. I feel French. I feel pretty and delicate and like someone in a Vanessa Bruno advert, rather than someone who spends most of her life with perpetual underarm stubble.
Today is the first proper day of spring. As I walk along the embankment from Waterloo I feel like the person I always wanted to be: happy, confident, cool. God, I wish I could make myself feel like this every day. Men stare. Fashiony girls surreptitiously look with a mix of envy and admiration. I should wear this hat more often.
There’s so much I want to do around here with James. Late night cocktails at the Festival Hall overlooking the Thames. A Sunday tea-dance at the Savoy with champagne and scones! Ice-skating, come winter, over at Somerset House. Afternoon Billy Wilder double-bills at the NFT. I browse the second-hand book stalls along the river and find a near-perfect copy of Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy. I’d love to buy it for James, but I suspect he’d be more comfortable with the John le Carré on the next table, or last year’s Top Gear annual.
I have spent too long pottering. I’m fifteen minutes late and as I approach the Tate, I see James from a distance looking at his watch with an anxious frown. God, I love the size of him. He’s so man-shaped, so masculine, so male. He’s wearing a navy coat and his dark blue Levis. This is a man who would never countenance wearing a pair of jeans with Lycra in them. He turns his head in my direction, then does a double take. I have to order myself not to break into a run towards him.
‘Good hat,’ he says, and kisses me for a full five minutes.
‘For you.’ He holds out a box wrapped in pistachio coloured paper with a big pink ribbon. ‘I hope this kitten’s got big lungs or you’ll have one guilty conscience, Miss Klein.’
‘If there’s a dead cat in here it’s your fault for kissing me so long,’ I say.
‘You shouldn’t be such a temptress,’ he says. ‘Come on, open up before the RSPCA nick us.’
Inside the box is a Jean Clement praline millefeuille: a mythical dessert. The cakes in Jean Clement are displayed like diamonds on velvet casings. They cost more than diamonds, and the praline millefeuille is the Great Star of Africa. I once had a migraine that lasted three days, and a Jean Clement millefeuille cured it. They only make ten a day and if you’re not in the queue when the store opens, you’ll just have to take my word for it that you’ll never put anything better in your mouth.
‘I had to wrestle a very determined Japanese lady with a dead fox round her neck to get you this.’
‘Oh my God. You’re a very good boyfriend.’ I kiss him and he smiles. ‘Open wide,’ I say, and attempt to feed him the cake.
He shakes his head. ‘I bought it for you, Queen of Puddings.’
‘I want you to have the first bite,’ I say. He takes a small nibble then looks at me in wonder. ‘Jesus, is that even legal?’ He takes a bigger bite and pretends he’s going to eat the whole thing. I wouldn’t even begrudge him if he did, that is how much I fancy this man.
He grabs my hand and I follow him into the gallery. ‘I read about this guy in the paper. I know how cultured you are,’ he says. I don’t know where he gets this idea from. Oh, yes – it was the fact that I mentioned a poet on the first night we met. I’m entirely not cultured, really. I like art and books and films but I can’t explain Martin Kippenberger. The thought of seeing Ewan McGregor play Shakespeare leaves me cold, and I’d rather watch Trading Places than a Bergman film. However, I get the impression that his previous girlfriends spend a lot of time down the gym and consider Paolo Coelho the best writer in the world, so I guess in the kingdom of the blind….
We kiss on all the escalators up to the fifth floor. If I was behind us on the escalators I’d hate us, we are so goddamned happy.
Tucked away in one of the smaller galleries is the entrance to a tiny exhibit with a grumpy security guard standing outside. A placard on the wall reads, ‘The Beauty of the World, the Paragon of Animals.’
When the guard sees my dress he shakes his head. ‘Put the boots on. And don’t spend more than a couple of minutes in there, it’s bad for your lungs,’ he says ushering us through a door into a narrow corridor, lined with wellies. He closes the door behind us and we’re in darkness, stumbling and giggling as we feel our way along the walls in ill-fitting boots, taking a sharp left, then a right. And then all of a sudden the tunnel ends and our eyes automatically shut and then slowly open against the light, and we’re standing in a room full of sparkling silver glitter. Piles and piles of shimmering dots like a disco moonscape, dazzling and beautiful, shifting softly under our feet.
James dances me to the centre of the room and my dress does a perfect 50s prom twirl, and he laughs in delight. He grabs a handful of the dust and throws it up into the air, and it falls like rainbows of light down on us and suddenly he lifts me up and we kiss passionately and before I know it he has pulled my knickers to one side and he is inside me and I am thinking this hat is going to fall off and laughing and panicking and I don’t want him to stop but I’m scared the guard is going to come in and wondering if there is CCTV in this room and thinking well if this footage ends up on YouTube at least the hat will hide my face and wondering if anyone else has done this in here and then I don’t even care if the guard comes in and finally I am not thinking anything at all.
‘I can’t believe you shagged him in public just because he bought you a cake, you are such a cheap date,’ says Pete, placing a third double gin and tonic and a packet of Tyrell’s in front of me.
‘Trust me, that cake was not cheap,’ I say, ripping open the bag of crisps. I have told Pete about the incident in the gallery because I am very drunk.
The reason I am very drunk is because I feel insecure, because I have not spoken to James since Monday morning when he left my flat, and it is now Thursday night. So I have dragged Pete to my local, the Prince Alfred, and have banged my head twice in the last hour en route to the bar, on the low wooden partitions that carve up the pub into snug little areas.
I have not told Pete about how James and I spent all of Sunday walking in Regent’s Park, holding hands and talking about our shared family values, because he will find this nauseating, and like any right-thinking person he is only interested in hearing about the sex.
I have also not told Pete about the way James looks at me – like he’s amazed and surprised that he found me. He smiles all the time. Because I have no context for him, no mutual friends, I have no idea if this means he’s specifically happy to be with me, or is generally a very happy man. Either way, it is contagious, and I find myself smiling too. Except for now, when I am not smiling at all.
‘He sent me a text on Monday,’ I say.
‘So what’s your problem?’ says Pete, who it’s fair to say, is neither the paranoid nor the romantic type.
‘It said “I had a wonderful time with you”.’
‘And?’
‘Something’s not right.’ Laura says he must be hiding something.
‘Women are so neurotic. He’s saying he had a great time, what more do you want?’
‘I want to know when I’m seeing him again. We’ve been seeing each other for nearly two months, this isn’t normal.’
‘Look, Soph, this guy is not Nick. Nick didn’t have a job.’
‘Nick’s a musician.’
‘Which is basically the same as being unemployed, so he had loads of time to sit around writing you faggy romantic emails. This guy runs a business, plus he’s older. He’s busy. I hate it when girls text me all the time.’
I’m not texting James ‘all the time’. At all, in fact. I am being very careful not to treat him like I treated Nick. I’d text Nick to tell him the filling of my sandwich because I was fundamentally bored in my old job, and because Nick was also bored pottering around our flat. Eventually we bored each other and then we split up.
I can be guarded and I can be cool and I can hold back, but at the same time today I saw a man on the bus with a moustache that was so long it curled round his ears and I would like to tell James about this moustache because it would make him laugh, and yet I feel I can’t. And that is why I’m not happy.
‘He’ll call. Now tell me about the bit with the glitter again.’
I wake early the next day, hung-over. Outside the sky is already bright and from my bedroom window I can just see a patch of daffodils pushing through, down by the banks of the canal. I consider going for a walk to clear my head – past the colourful boats and vast white stucco houses – then think better of it and climb back under my duvet to replay last night’s conversation.