Do You Want to Know a Secret? (29 page)

‘Vicky?’

‘Yes?’ I answer curtly, patience at a very low ebb by now.

‘What time do you think this do will be finished at?’

‘It’s a black-tie do, Peter, what exactly do you mean?’

‘It’s just that I might call on Clare on my way home. Just to check that’s she’s all right. You don’t have a problem with that, do you?’

Somehow, he misinterprets the icy glare I give him as being full of loving warmth and consideration, because, next thing, he comes out with, ‘No, of course you don’t. You’re really something, you know that, Vicky? You’re so cool about all this. You’re probably the only person I can
really
talk to about the whole thing, and you’re such a great, great listener.’

It’s well after the main course has been cleared before I can drag Barbara off to the Ladies again for yet another emergency de-briefing session.

‘Right then,’ she says firmly. ‘So, OK, he’s not over his ex . . .’

‘Not OVER her? That’s an understatement on a par with saying that . . . that . . . oh shit, I can’t even think of something smart-alecky to back that up with. What am I going to do, Barbara? I went to so much bother over tonight, I had such high hopes, and it was all shaping up so well, and now the best I can possibly hope for is that I end up as his rebound person.’

I’m doing my best to sound cool and rational but what I actually want to do is slump down in front of the Ladies dressing table, right here, right now and bawl my eyes out. But of course I can’t, because there’s people here I know, so I have to cover over the cracks with lip-gloss and go back out there, and smile and get through the rest of this miserable, huge disappointment of a night. Somehow.

It’s almost becoming like a pattern with me, the more I like a guy, the worse they seem to treat me. ‘You’re a great girl, Vicky, and you’re such a good listener,’ is all I seem to get and I’m sick of it. Enough is enough. Tonight was supposed to be my turn to get lucky, and
here
I am, dressed up like a right dog’s dinner, sitting beside a guy who’s confusing me with a hotline to the Samaritans – and not having the first clue where it all went so wrong. Barbara, thank God, knows me well enough to know when I’m close to break point, so she stands behind me in the mirror and starts massaging my shoulders, like I’m a heavyweight boxer and she’s my trainer.

‘OK, here’s what I suggest,’ she says very decisively. ‘Plan A, we leave now. Just run out the door and leave Baldie and Ex-Files to cop on that they’ve been dumped.’

‘Can’t,’ I say dully, although I’m sorely tempted. It would be unbelievably rude, granted, but then my date’s total and utter lack of interest in me affords me some wriggle room. Oh, who am I kidding? I’m stuck here and that’s all there is to it. ‘Too many people would see us go.’ I sigh so deeply it physically hurts. ‘Plus there’s a charity auction on after the meal, and it would look terrible if we just upped and left right now.’

‘OK then, plan B, we stay for the auction, then I’ll come up with an ingenious cast-iron excuse, like my feet are killing me, or my chicken fillets are about to fall out, or I want to get home to see
Newsnight
. You know, something brilliant that no one can argue with. Like diarrhoea for instance. As I always say, you can do a lot of things but you can’t negotiate with
diarrhoea
. Best excuse ever dreamt up by mankind.’

‘Thanks, hon, but it was kind of long-term plans that I was thinking of. I think we need to be brutally honest here and accept that while “project Barbara” and “project Laura” are shaping up very nicely, “project Vicky” has been a total loser. And I can’t figure it. I just wish I knew what I was doing wrong. I feel like I’ve been on this fifteen-year losing streak and here I am, doing my utmost to turn it around and I bloody well can’t.’

I’m a bit choked now, and in spite of my best efforts, fat, wobbly tears are starting to well up.

‘Come on, stop
expecting
failure . . .’

‘But that’s the thing, I wasn’t! Not tonight! I had a great attitude altogether, I even went out and spent a fortune on all new bedlinen . . .’

‘Vicky, you want to attract the right guy and you will. OK, so maybe we revise our strategy. I think we need to accept that the dating-one-guy-at-a-time pattern isn’t working for you, and go back to the drawing board.’

‘What do you mean, the drawing board?’ I ask dully, feeling like I might as well have a big F for Failure stamped across my forehead.

‘Another Thursday night on the town, babe. What else?’

She’s right, of course she is. It’s just the sheer effort required in picking myself back up off the floor yet
again
and doing the whole clubby/pubby scene with her right now just sounds so bloody exhausting. Oh for God’s sake, I think, catching a glimpse of my defeated expression in the mirror, just look at the effect that hope has on me. This is what happens when I send all my longing for love and romance out into the world. I end up a nervous wreck, on a date with a fella who barely realizes I’m even here.

‘Or,’ I say, turning back to Barbara as I get up to go, ‘maybe I’ll just stop fighting fate and become one of those single spinsters who drink a half bottle of wine alone every night, and keep cats, and complain when the neighbours have late-night parties. Maybe I struggled with my destiny for long enough and now it’s time to wise up to the inevitable. My name is Vicky Harper and I repel men. Born to live out the rest of my days alone.’

‘You certainly didn’t repel Eager Eddie,’ she says as we head back outside where the auction’s just about to begin.

‘I won’t even dignify that with a wisecrack.’

‘Oh now, come on,’ she says, kindly, squeezing my arm. ‘At the risk of sounding like a kids’ TV show presenter, what have we learned from the past few months?’

‘I give in. Stop asking me hard questions.’

‘Focus on what you want and not what you don’t
want
. If it can work for me, then it can work for anyone, babe.’

By the time we get back to the table, Peter has now abandoned all pretext that he’s on a date with me, and is actually on the phone to Clare. Chatting away goodo. And he doesn’t even have the grace to hang up when he sees me coming back, just keeps on talking. One of those excruciating ‘no, no, you were right and I was wrong’, type conversations that, frankly, is making me want to vomit.

‘I’ll rip the phone out of his hand and dance on it if you want,’ Barbara thoughtfully offers when she sees what he’s at. ‘Cos, you know me, I’m like that.’

‘No need,’ I say, smiling a bit over-brightly, aware that people, even, maybe, clients could be looking over. ‘The minute the auction’s over, we’re so out of here.’

‘Suits me. Baldie on my left here is seriously starting to drive me nuts.’

‘Shhh! He’ll hear you!’

‘Sorry, Charlie the razor-happy geek on my left is driving me nuts. That any better?’

With that, the auctioneer launches into his mile-a-minute patter and I sit very still, half-afraid to move in case by inadvertently scratching my head or something, I’ll have bought a painting worth five grand. And you should see some of the items: holiday cruises, a full pamper day at Powerscourt Springs (only the poshest
health
spa in the whole country), a role as a film extra in a movie that Gabriel Byrne is shooting here, a Graham Knuttel painting, some really unbelievable stuff. Whoever did the PR for this gig must have had some serious connections.

One cursory glance down the list of items to be auctioned off tells me they’re all waaaay over my humble budget, so I opt for sitting mutely, hands locked at my side to avoid financial embarrassment, and amuse myself by properly scanning the room, the first time all night I’ve really had a decent look around at who’s here and who isn’t. No one I know in the immediate vicinity, apart from a competitor of mine at the table behind me, who blanks me as I look over. Which in the mood I’m in, actually suits me just fine.

Ooh, then I see a friend of Paris and Nicole’s sitting at the table beside us, dressed like an extra from a Jane Austen adaptation, in a pretty empire-line dress with her hair swept up and ringlets framing her face. She’s got her own social diary, very handy for free press, so I make a mental note to self to be really nice to her afterwards.

‘Sold to the gentleman at the back!’ says the auctioneer, and the room applauds politely. ‘For four and a half thousand euro!’ and now the applause strengthens.

Unbelievably, Peter is still chatting away on the phone, jacket off and finger in one ear like a stockbroker, oblivious to how rude he’s being. At one point
Baldie
, sorry, I mean Charlie, asks him if he’d like to order a drink, and Peter actually waves him to shut up, like we’re all in a public library or something and we’re daring to shatter his concentration. Bastard. Rude bloody bastard.

‘And now lot number four, a three-day holiday in Paris, the city of love, flights and five-star accommodation in the Hôtel de Crillon, do I hear six thousand euro?’

Without even being aware of it, I must have drifted off, because the bidding is racing on, getting furiously higher and higher all the time, while I’m sitting here staring into space.

‘Eight and a half thousand euro, do I hear nine?’

I look over to Peter, who is smiling, actually smiling, down the phone, and I take one long, last look at him. Cos after tonight, he’s banished to the land of ‘never to be seen again’. And he just looks so handsome, it almost breaks my heart.

‘Yes, I have nine thousand euro, to you sir, the gentleman at the back, do I have nine and a half thousand euro? Do I hear the magic ten?’

. . . so what lies ahead for me? Oh God . . . it’s nothing I’m looking forward to. I have to somehow readjust my attitude, pick myself back up off the ground again and get back out there with Barbara yet again to see what I can dreg up some Thursday night . . . and
then
, who knows? Go through all of this shite all over again, most likely . . .

‘Sold to the gentleman at the back for ten thousand, euro!’

More mad clapping, and a lot of feet thumping now, and all the while I’m desperately trying to come out of this awful slump I’m in and be all positive and focused . . . law of attraction book . . . I’m racking my brains to remember what it says is the key to relationships, or in my case, the total and utter lack of them . . .

‘Our next item is a luxury spa day at Powerscourt Springs, for a very lucky lady. The package includes unlimited treatments, lunch and a bottle of champagne to really chill out over . . . perfect for the busy working girl who needs a little “me” time, do I hear five hundred euro? Yes, sir, five hundred to you
again
, sir.’

. . . there’s something in the book about filling yourself up with love like a magnet, so that you’ll attract it to you . . .

‘Eight hundred euro! Do I hear a thousand? Thank you, sir!’

. . . but the trouble is, I’ve spent my whole life attracting emotionally unavailable cretins, and the fact is, whatever I’ve been doing wrong all this time, guess what? I’m
still
doing it . . .

‘Two thousand five hundred euro, sir, thank you! Do
I
hear three thousand? Come on, gentlemen, time to spoil the lucky lady in your life!’

. . . I glance over at Barbara, who’s looking, well, a bit bored actually, but Baldie actually has this liquid-eyed expression as he’s chatting her up. She has about as much interest in him as she has in the price of J-Cloths, and yet there he is, looking at her adoringly, hers for the taking, should she so choose . . .

Oh for f**k’s sake, I think, suddenly furious, where did I go so wrong tonight? My luck with guys is so unbelievably bad that I’m actually starting to think that I’m paying off some huge karmic debt from a past life. Hmmm, maybe that’s the answer, maybe I should give up on the Butterfly Club and start doing past-life regression therapy instead . . .

‘Sold! Yet again, to the gentleman at the back! Sir, may I say, you are single-handedly keeping this auction going!’

‘Is that the same guy who’s buying everything?’ Barbara whispers hopefully to me.

‘Whoever he is, he must have spent well over sixteen grand by now,’ says Baldie, and I turn to look at him in utter astonishment. Well, in my defence, it’s the first words he’s uttered to anyone other than Barbara all evening.

‘Well, I wonder who he’s with tonight?’ Barbara says, giving me a significant look. This may sound innocuous
enough
, but is in actual fact girl-code for: ‘Because if by some miracle someone that filthy wealthy also happens to be single and straight, we’re so in there.’ It seems that a lot of the single women here have the same idea, as out of nowhere there’s a lot of elegant, bejewelled necks and bare, fake-tanned shoulders craning to see who this mysterious guy with cash to burn is; all of a sudden there’s suddenly a lot of compact mirrors out and lip-gloss being hastily re-applied. You can almost feel feathers being preened and peacock tails being paraded out for show.

‘And who is the lucky lady you’ll be giving this beautiful spa voucher to?’ the auctioneer calls down to whoever mystery man is, a bit cheekily.

‘She’s here, actually,’ comes a distant voice from the very back of the ballroom. Now there’s a wave of Chinese whispers circulating all around us, ‘She’s here, he bought it for someone who’s
here
.’

I join in the general neck-craning, to try to make out who he is, but it’s too dark, and whatever table he’s sitting at is just too far away from ours. Barbara and I meet in an eye-lock and simultaneously shrug. Well, it was too good to be true really, that the mystery millionaire guy could be free and single. Besides, I tell myself, he’s probably ninety-five with a colostomy bag and a Zimmer frame. And he bought the spa day as a gift for his nurse to thank her for feeding him through a tube. Probably.

‘And the lucky lady’s name?’ says the auctioneer, into the mike.

‘She’s a Miss Vicky Harper.’

‘Sorry sir, what was that name again?’

‘The gift is for Miss Vicky Harper. She’s sitting right over there at table nine.’