Greatest Love Story of All Time (16 page)

I didn’t say anything, just fiddled with my non-Mulberry handbag sheepishly.

It finally dawned on him. ‘Oh, fuck, you invited her, didn’t you? You mad fucking pervert. Oh, my
God.’ He started chuckling, then broke into a full-scale roar of laughter. ‘Barman, another drink for this fucked-up wench, please’ he called, slapping the bar with one of his big paws.

‘No, I can’t. I have to go. It’s time for Meditation. Which, for the record, Stefania is organizing from now on. I don’t even know if Nellie will be there,’ I said primly. I wasn’t in the mood for being laughed at.

Dave stood up and put his coat on. ‘Well, I sure as fuck am coming. I wouldn’t miss this for the world!’ He threw his satchel over his shoulder and offered me his arm. ‘Come on, you bell end. Let’s meditate.’

Stefania had forgiven me for lying to her, partly because I’d agreed to arrange another date for this week and partly because Renaissance had asked her to stay on, offering the room to her for twenty-five pounds per night after a whole load of my media bitches had signed up for club membership last week.

But although she had forgiven me, I hadn’t forgiven myself. The Nellie-stalking was bad enough, but to lie to Stefania was unforgivable. Had she not spent three weeks putting meals through my cat flap and cleaning my disgusting flat when Michael had demanded this hellish separation? What kind of a repayment was this?

‘Vhat the holy hell is zis outfit, Fran?’ she asked, as I walked in. ‘Vhy are you dressing like a banker zese
days? And vhy are you so thin?’ She turned on some Zen music.

‘Nellie here today?’ I asked, with a face of burning shame. Stefania came over and touched my head. ‘Come on, my silly child, stop thinking about her. You do not know she is banging viz Michael. She left a message to say she is at running club tonight. She is running ze marathon in April.’

Of course she was running the marathon. Of course.

Mona Carrington’s friend, the hot bloke, had turned up in a suit today. I wondered if the suit was part of an effort to show Nellie he was one of her number. As Stefania started the class he glanced disappointedly at the door, as did Dave. Frigging Nellie. Frigging men.

At home I had a lonely gin and tonic with Duke Ellington, who abandoned me to go and kill birds.

Desperate to get out of my own head, I scrolled back to a message Mum had sent a few hours ago while I was in Meditation. It yelled drunkenly, I have heard nothing from Nicholas in 48 hours. Mum. It broke my heart to think that she might be about to be dumped too. But how could Nick possibly continue the affair if he was about to become a big cheese in British politics?

Mum seemed to be permanently drunk now, from what I could tell. And, I realized, if she was going to be dumped I would need to be prepared. I downed
my G and T and – heart pounding a little faster – called Nick.

‘Er, Frances,’ he said hesitantly. It sounded like he was still at work. ‘How may I help you?’

I swallowed. ‘Hey, Nick. I, erm … well, I sort of wondered if we could talk about Mum.’

Nick said nothing but I heard the sound of his leather-soled shoes clicking out into an echoey corridor. ‘Frances, are you out of your
mind?
Why are you calling me about this? It is
none
of your business.’ He sounded quite terrified.

I held my ground. ‘Nick, I’m not calling to make trouble. I’m asking because I’m worried about Mum. If you’re about to dump her so you can go off and be a big Tory star I need to know. I need to be prepared.’

I watched Duke Ellington emerge through the cat-flap and march over to my bed, where he took a spot right in the centre.

‘I don’t know, Fran,’ he said eventually. ‘I don’t know what to do. I must keep my family and the Party safe but you know I care about your mother.’

‘You promised you’d always look after her,’ I said dully, accepting the inevitability of what would happen next.

‘Things were different then. I need you to guarantee me your discretion,’ he said shortly.

I nodded sadly. ‘Of that you can be very confident. The last thing Mum needs is some sort of press scandal. It would kill her, Nick.’

Someone called his name from further down the corridor.

‘Like I said, it’s difficult for me. But I have to go, Fran. Please don’t call me about this again. I’m doing the best I can.’

‘Well, this is all just great!’ I said brightly, to an empty room. ‘Life is wonderful!’

I turned the TV on and made a cheese sandwich with some rock-hard yellow Cheddar. Dave texted: Just checking you’re not thinking of calling Michael.

No I replied, truthfully for once. I was eating a mouldy sandwich. But thanks for your concern.

Good girl.

I couldn’t believe that Dave – of
all people
– was getting involved with this crazy Eight Date thing too. What the hell was going on?

Sent:
Sun, 7 Feb 2010 19:33:50 GMT

From:
Fran O’Callaghan [[email protected]]

To:
LEONIE [[email protected]]

Subject:
Fuck

See below. Is he being serious? I can’t tell. HAVE ALREADY HAD IT WITH THESE CUNTING DATES, LEONIE. PLEASE CAN IT STOP? I want out.

YOU HAVE A NEW MESSAGE FROM JAMES! HERE’S WHAT HE HAD TO SAY!

> Did you use the word ‘cunt’ that many times just to test me?

> I propose we meet on Thursday night at the Bridge House pub in Little Venice. According to my calculations it is equidistant between our two houses and I do not want there to be any resentment if we do not get on and one party has had to travel further than the other. I should say now that I believe in buying the first drink but after that I prefer an ‘even stevens’ policy. Please, tell me what time is convenient. Yours, James

I shifted around in the back of the taxi, trying to find
a way of sitting that didn’t involve being cut in two by the crotch of my high-waisted trousers. How did women like Nellie manage to dress like this every day? It was like having a cheese slice in your crack.

I looked over at Alex, who was slumped elegantly on the other side of the cab, fiddling with his iPhone. The effort of being near him over the last two weeks had been intense and I was developing facial paralysis from the effort of fixing a smile I didn’t feel. And now here he was, gatecrashing my fake shoot at Nellie Daniels’s posh Chelsea mums’ club.

As I had crept furtively into a taxi on Grays Inn Road earlier on, he had appeared out of nowhere and grabbed me. ‘Where are you off to?’ he’d asked, his gaunt features framed by his stupid trendy hairstyle. He was wearing a black shirt with a slim grey tie and an extremely expensive military jacket. If he wasn’t such a tosser I’d probably have to admit that he was quite attractive.

‘I’m shooting a recession story about the Chelsea set and I’m in a hurry. I’ll tell you all about it later,’ I replied, leaning over to shut the window. But before I could, Alex jumped in. ‘I’ll come,’ he said. ‘Hugh gave me the afternoon off because he was so pleased with my Nick Bennett dossier. It’s good to get out with a camera every now and then.’

Why had Michael’s best friend – of all the people in the world – been sent to torment me? Why couldn’t I stalk Nellie in peace? As usual, I felt small and
stupid in Alex’s presence, like Bridget Jones fannying around with her press releases.

As I stared out of the window it occurred to me that it wasn’t just Alex who made me feel this way. I’d often felt like a total moron around Michael too. His Oxford PPE degree and air of
knowing
stuff had scared the living hell out of me so I’d positioned myself, from the outset, in a place of deep intellectual inferiority. It was easier to play the buffoonish simpleton than to try to have a conversation with him about Clever Stuff and end up exposing myself as a buffoonish simpleton.

‘God, the
brazenness
of all these bloody countries, pretending to be working
multilaterally
in the Middle East … What a fucking
joke.
Doesn’t it just
incense
you?’ he’d raged one night about a year ago. I’d frozen, a piece of steak and ale pie halfway to my mouth.

‘I, er … Yes. Incenses me. Does the same to Duke Ellington, doesn’t it, Duke Ellington?’ Duke Ellington hadn’t even bothered to look my way.

Michael was clearly frustrated.

‘Go on. Tell me, clever Michael Slater. Tell me what’s wrong with these countries.’

And he did, for about three hours. While Michael talked, I ate a steak and ale pie, then ate Michael’s steak and ale pie. I had a bath, I shaved my legs and got into bed. And when he’d finished, I got out of bed, padded over to my dressing-table, where he was sitting, and put my arms round him. ‘You are intelligent beyond my wildest dreams. I love you,’ I said.

His grin had stretched from ear to ear. ‘No, I’m not. Don’t be silly.’

‘Yes, you are, Michael. That’s why I fell in love with you. Your amazing brain. Well, I suppose you don’t look that bad either.’

He buried his head in my stomach, smiling uncontrollably. ‘I’m not clever,’ he said delightedly.

I stood back and looked at him. Then I let out a little growl and whispered, ‘Take me now, Michael Slater, you intellectual fiend.’

We’d had probably the best sex ever that night. He was on fire.

As I fell asleep, an uneasy thought had flashed across the back of my mind.
Michael was too clever for me. I wasn’t good enough
.

Turn the taxi round and come back to work, you fucking basket case, Dave texted.

No.

You‘ll get yourself sacked Fannybaws, came the response.

I turned my phone off and brushed down my posh trousers. It may well be time for me to purchase a proper handbag, I thought, clutching my Primark holdall.

How was I going to keep this made-up shoot a secret now Alex was here? As we inched down Brompton Road I considered throwing myself out of the taxi by way of escape. But I wanted a bit more crack first. A bit more Nellie. I wanted to know where her soft
side was; how well she looked after him; what she liked about him. I wanted to know who was in charge in bed; I wanted to know if she was in love with him yet and I wanted, more than anything else, to know if he was in love with her. It was Monday, five days since last week’s Meditation when she’d failed to turn up. And I hadn’t been able to take any more of the waiting.

‘So, anyway, Alex, this is going to be pretty low-key. I’ll shoot the interview on this camera and you can monitor the sound, if you want. Any interference or distortion, give me a nudge and I’ll sort it out. OK?’

‘Yeah, whatever,’ he said languidly, continuing whatever he was up to on his iPhone.

‘It was a bit last-minute organizing this, actually, and I’ve not had a chance to run it past Hugh and everyone, so until I do, could you keep it to yourself?’ My face was going red.

Alex peered at me suspiciously. ‘That’s fine, Fran, but I don’t want any trouble.’

‘No, no trouble.’

He stared at me for a moment, then said, in deceptively friendly tones, ‘Fran, you know you can trust me.’

I thought about all the things he’d said to Michael about my ‘jazz hands’ ents and culture department and buttoned my mouth. I’d sooner trust Mugabe.

Isabelle Langley-Gardiner had been banging on about the horrors of parenthood for twenty minutes
before I realized that I hadn’t taken in a single word of what she was saying. I was transfixed by Nellie, who was tapping away at her BlackBerry to our left. She looked outrageous. Slim, groomed and perfect in a black cashmere jumper dress with exquisite tan boots and two small diamond studs in her ears. She was wearing a strong fifties power fragrance, and I imagined Michael inhaling it on her neck. The thought made me long to garrotte her with my tights.

The only mercy was that she and Alex showed no signs of having met. At least Michael wasn’t at the meet-my-friends stage with her.

When I snapped back to the present I discovered that Alex had started setting up the camera to interview Isabelle himself. ‘Er, Alex, I can take it from here, thanks,’ I said.

He stepped away from the tripod. ‘Sorry
,
Fran, I was just trying to help,’ he muttered, and arranged himself on to a leather armchair as if he were in a painting. I couldn’t deny it, he
was
beautiful in a sort of thin, aristocratic way. ‘What kind of set-up are you aiming for?’ he asked interestedly.

I bristled and resisted the urge to wallop him with the tripod. ‘Simple, businesslike and tight on her face,’ I replied briskly. ‘We’re interested in what Isabelle has to say, not how the room’s furnished. We can get some shots of the club later.’

‘Not too close to my face!’ Isabelle trilled, winking at Alex with one of her mad eyes.

I ignored her. Nellie was now on the phone and had walked off to the end of the vast day room. I couldn’t hear what she was saying but I could tell, from the way she wiggled her hips, that she was talking to a man.

I excused myself to go to the toilet so that I could walk past her and eavesdrop. ‘Yes, but your mum thinks I’m the best girlfriend you’ve ever had!’ she was squealing.

Dammit! Michael’s mother would
never
have said that about me. When we’d driven down to see her the first time I’d had visions of her throwing her arms round me, crying, ‘You’re the daughter I always wanted,’ and inviting me to bake scones with her while Michael and his dad smoked pipes and tinkered with classic sports cars in the garage. Instead she’d merely asked me to take my shoes off because they were muddy and gone back to her newspaper. Why would any mother want their son to be shacked up with a girl who had muddy shoes, crap handbags and an unfortunate reliance on toilet humour? Nellie was every mother’s dream daughter-in-law.

Freeing myself briefly from the womb-crushing trousers, I sat on the toilet and thought idly that a little gin and tonic would take the edge off things very nicely.

Back outside, I was in no way surprised to discover the camera running and the interview in progress. Alex, in headphones, one hand on the camera, was
chatting away animatedly to Isabelle, who was delighted by his attention. The Mother Teresa of Chelsea, I thought bitterly, as Alex asked a devastatingly brilliant question about something to do with egalitarianism.