Greatest Love Story of All Time (27 page)

Heavy and uncoordinated after the milkshakes and Red Bull, I flew into the air like a polar bear. I crashed down on Toni’s head as his arms gave way, and we ended up in a heap on the floor, helpless with laughter. Toni gave me a smacker on the mouth and we hauled ourselves up, coming face to face with Leonie who was laughing and shaking her head despairingly. ‘You’re the most embarrassing person I know,
Franny,’ she yelled. ‘And are you sure this man is homosexual? He’s all over you!’

I twirled her round and yelled that Toni was my favourite man in the whole world. And that, yes, he was gay, was she actually blind?

Toni put his arms round me and started some sort of bump and grind routine as ‘Africa’ came on. I whooped loudly. Leonie, watching me over Alex’s bony shoulder, continued to send me fairly obvious visuals regarding Toni’s sexuality. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ I shouted at her, as he got side-tracked dancing with the twelve year-old Brad Pitt-alike. ‘Look at him! He’s seen more cock ends than weekends!’

‘Well, just keep an eye on it!’ Waistcoat Man danced up and stole her from Alex.

Back from his brief romp with Brad Pitt, Toni grabbed me and screamed, ‘HAVE SOME POPPERS, BABE!’ shoving a bottle under my nose. I hadn’t done this since I was twenty-one – the novelty of what was essentially glue-sniffing had kind of worn off at that point but, well, what the hell? I inhaled deeply, and a few seconds later my head caught fire and the helpless laughter and whooping came on. Toni kissed me on the lips and yelled, ‘Oh, babe, what are you like?!’ in my ear. I had another toke, then stopped because I could feel my brain frying and Toni had started snogging me. With tongues. And, dear God, he had his hand up my top. I sat down suddenly on the dance-floor, my head spinning.

In a blissful, glue-sniffed haze, I saw Alex remove Toni from my environs and Leonie bent double with laughter. Then I went back upstairs to sit on the velvet sofa and have a sleep. This was a strange night.

An hour later, wedged against the window of the 29 bus with Leonie on my knee and a deadly kebab spilling its guts over us both, I found myself helpless with laughter again. Leonie had decided to come and stay with me ‘just in case you die of popper-poisoning’ and we were talking blow jobs.

‘I really believe it’s an important skill,’ Leonie said, as if she were talking about Photoshop proficiency. She fed me a mouthful of unidentifiable animal. ‘Of course I enjoy it, but I think a lot of women get it badly wrong and need to learn.’

I laughed even louder through my kebab. ‘Maybe you should write a book about it, or upload tutorials on to YouTube,’ I suggested. ‘I’m sure we could all learn a lot from you.’

She smiled enigmatically.

‘NO! STOP IT! STOP THINKING ABOUT LAST TIME YOU GAVE ALEX A BLOWJOB!’ I yelled, occasioning the noisy bus to come to a standstill. Leonie smacked me lightly round the head, going red. ‘Sorry,’ I whispered noisily. ‘You see, I’m drunk. That’s the problem.’

‘I’d noticed,’ she hissed back. ‘So please shut it! And, for your information, we haven’t slept together.’

I was aghast. ‘Oh, my God. It’s been
weeks
! You’re going to fall in love with him, aren’t you?’

She took a bite of the kebab, looked me in the eye and said, ‘Let us resume conversation on the topic of blowjobs.’

I’d missed this. Me and Leonie on a night bus with a kebab and a thorough analysis of the Blowjob. I could barely remember the last time we’d done it; being with Michael, wonderful though it might have been, had not provided the opportunity for many night-bus-and-kebab scenarios. Our Saturday nights had tended to be more of the sharing-a-bath-with-a-bottle-of-wine-and-the-papers variety. On the occasions when Leonie and I had got together, Michael had never joined us.

When we arrived back at my flat, ready for further bread products and an assault from Duke Ellington, I looked at the picture of Michael and me on Brighton Beach and, in spite of the usual blow-to-the-stomach moment of sadness, I felt an unexpected sense of liberation. I was thirty. Thirty years old. Night buses and kebabs were still very much part of my agenda.

Frances, I am much loving. I like cats and woman maybe you will like come at Tunisia for visit and maybe wedding with me, I, live in Tunisia, my mother is waiting for you come tomorrow for visit us! We cook great food for you! Come to Tunisia! Come! We marry ourselves! Frances I want to have wedding to you!

‘What did you get up to this weekend, Fran?’ asked Stella Sanderson. We were in the kitchen and she was eating what appeared to be a piece of grey card with faeces spread on it. ‘Want one?’ she offered, following my gaze.

‘Yes!’ I replied immediately, grateful for any communication whatsoever after the silence of the previous week. Stella pulled a jar of homemade poo out of the fridge and started spreading it on another slab of card. My stomach heaved. After Saturday night’s drinking and glue-sniffing efforts, Leonie and I had had to take ourselves down to the Grand Union for brunchtime burgers yesterday, at which point I’d got on to the Bloody Marys. Hard. Having checked in
with Mum this morning – she had not had a drink in three days and sounded exhausted and utterly terrified of the task ahead of her – I felt very ashamed.

‘Er, this weekend I was mostly researching stuff for work,’ I said vaguely. And then, lest she cross-question me, had a bite out of her horrid-looking offering. It was surprisingly good.

‘Oh, great. Sounds like we’ve got you back! Your
Alice in Wonderland
special on Friday was cracking,’ she said briskly. I blushed and had another bite. ‘So, what were you researching?’

Bugger.

‘Erm, it was mostly – Blimey, Stella, this is delicious! What is it?’

I realized I was actually shouting. She smiled and spread some more. ‘It’s sprouted millet crackers with plum jam that I sweetened with stevia. So, what story are you cooking up?’ She handed the cracker to me and brushed down her skirt, waiting for me to tell her precisely what I’d been researching all weekend. I scrambled around mentally for a few seconds. On the copy of
Metro
folded on the table behind her there was a trail for an article on the forthcoming Bloggies. ‘Oh, I’m working up a story about the Bloggies 2010,’ I said airily. ‘They’re an annual award for the world’s best blogs …’ I trailed off and had another bite, chewing with gusto. Stella was still looking at me expectantly. ‘We Brits have won quite a few over the last ten years,’ I improvised.

Stella raised an eyebrow. ‘I see. Lots of reading this weekend, then. Is the awards ceremony over here? I thought a lot of these people were anonymous.’

‘They are,’ I replied. ‘Actually, there isn’t an awards ceremony, they just announce the winners online. The prize is tiny – it’s more about the kudos.’

‘Oh, right,’ Stella said politely. ‘So what shape is your report going to take if you don’t even have an awards ceremony to film?’ I took another bite, turning cold. Good bloody question.

And then, suddenly, a beautiful thing happened: a Useful Thought emerged deep from the bowels of my history A-level classes, most of which I’d skived off with Leonie in favour of all-day breakfasts at the Tesco café in Chiswick.

‘Samuel Pepys began his diary four hundred and fifty years ago, in 1660,’ I said matter-of-factly. ‘I’m working up a piece about how the average London blog compares to Pepys’s diary. These guys are just as important to the Londoners of the future as Pepys is to us now … And they’re all writing about the same old London – all that’s changed is the detail. I’ll meet some of them, get into their lives and try to take out a few snotty historians who think that blogs are the devil’s diarrhoea. It’ll be fun. Irreverent. Contemporary. Character-based.’ I took another bite, colouring.

Stella nodded slowly. ‘Yes, that’s interesting. I like the Pepys part of it.’ She smiled.

‘How come you’ve gone all health-food on us?’ I
asked, popping the last of her hippie snack down the hatch.

‘Just trying to look after myself better,’ she replied. ‘We have to take responsibility at some point, eh? Take control of our lives?’

She’s not wrong
, I thought, as I wandered back to my desk, wondering if it was OK to take paracetamol and aspirin at the same time for a hangover. I could do with looking after myself a bit more. Even if Michael
was
knobbing Nellie, I didn’t need to drink myself to death. Much as it felt like a nice alternative right now.

There was an email from Dave in my inbox. He was up in Glasgow, having a long weekend with his mum, and I smiled, imagining his massive hairy frame being ordered around by the sharp, sprightly little woman in the photo he’d shown me. Mrs Brennan was a force to be reckoned with, by all accounts. Freya had once told me that the first time she’d been taken up to Glasgow and presented to Dave’s mum she had been ordered into the kitchen to assist with dinner-making, handed a tumbler of Scotch and told quite firmly that Dave needed looking after and that if Freya didn’t feed him broccoli at least three times a week there would be murder.

Morning Fannybaws! Heard you and Leonie patched things up. That’s fuckin grand news! Next action points:

* Stop fuckin drinking

* Get dating

* And leave that fuckin Nellie girl alone, OK?

Sound advice, I thought. It was time to step away from The Daniels once and for all. I’d lost; she’d won; I’d never get Michael back. I promptly brought up Nellie on Facebook and added her as a friend.

Dave, I am insane. Just read your email and then added Nellie as a friend on Facebook. Please help.

I sat drumming my fingers on the desk and waited for him to reply. While I waited, a Facebook notification plopped malevolently into my inbox, telling me that Nellie had accepted my request. Dammit! Why was she on Facebook at 10.12 a.m. on a Monday morning? Why wasn’t she poncing around on Savile Row or talking strategy around a sturdy white table in Kensington? Helpless, I clicked through to her page.

And what I saw made my heart stop. No bloody wonder she was on Facebook at 10.12 a.m. on a Monday morning.

Nellie Daniels
is engaged!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Below it, among the mushroom cloud of comments that had gathered overnight, was Jenny, Michael’s sister, with a gigantic, capital-lettered WOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The final twist of the knife.

I called Leonie and stared at my hands. My vision
had begun to tunnel and my mouth had gone dry. This could not be happening. It just
couldn’t
. If they got engaged it would be the greatest rejection of all time. The largest imaginable demonstration of my inadequacy as a human being. Michael getting married to a Pantene model from Chelsea? Save for him getting married to Leonie, I couldn’t think of a worse scenario.

Leonie didn’t answer. My heart was pounding. I needed help.
Now.
My desk phone rang and I ignored it. Hugh had not yet lifted his embargo on me speaking on the phone and, quite frankly, there wasn’t anyone work-related I wanted to speak to right now. I carried on staring at my hands, trying frantically to get a handle on my feelings. My phone started ringing again. I looked at it and registered, vaguely, that it was an 0141 number. Glasgow! I snatched it up, relief exploding through my veins like heroin. ‘Dave! They’ve fucking got engaged …’ I trailed off as my voice began to break.

There was a pause. Oh, treble fuck. ‘Oh … er, news desk – hello?’ I added.

A dry, papery cackle came down the line. ‘Well, good morning to you, Frances. It’s Glenda Brennan here.’ She sounded exactly as she looked in the picture: small, efficient and sharp as a razor.

‘Oh. Mrs Brennan … I, oh, blimey, I’m sorry. I sort of expected it to be your son –’

‘David was just after telling me about your situation.
I told him it sounded like you needed some common sense drilled into you.’

‘Right,’ I mumbled.

‘Still, it seems that the situation has progressed further since you emailed him just now,’ she said briskly.

‘What’s going on, Mum?’ Dave said in the background.

‘Och, the girl has got engaged to Michael, that’s all,’ said Dave’s mum.

That’s all?
But suddenly, with all my might, I wanted to be in Mrs Brennan’s warm tenement kitchen with the smell of the batch loaves that Dave told me she made every Monday morning.

‘Now, Frances, this situation is unacceptable. You’re to get this girl out of your life right now, do you hear? And you’re to stop drinking. This is an order.’

I waited for her to chuckle or do
something
to indicate irony, but nothing came.

‘Frances, David told me about these web romances you’ve signed up for. Please take your friends’ advice and go on them. Stop filly-willying around, you hear?’

I nodded dumbly.

‘FRANCES?’

‘Sorry, Mrs Brennan. Yes. Right. No filly-willying around.’

‘Grand,’ she said. ‘And stay away from that girl. You masochistic fool.’

In spite of everything, I smiled. ‘OK, Mrs Brennan.’

‘Good,’ she replied, scraping back a stool. ‘Well, I need to get on with my bread. Good day to you.’

‘’Bye, Mrs Brennan,’ I said, slightly dazed. ‘Give my love to Freya.’

But she’d already put the phone down. Dave’s email followed a few minutes later.

I can’t put it any better than that. Behave yourself. Hope your mum’s doing OK. Back tomorrow X

Strangely calm, I logged back into Facebook and, without pausing for a second, went into Account Settings and closed my account. Just like that. Gone. Poof. Then I emailed Dave.

OK, David. I’ve just committed Facebook suicide. And I’ve taken Nellie’s number out of my phone. I’ll arrange another date by the end of tomorrow & I’ll think about this drink thing.

I meant it. I’d try anything if it stopped me feeling like I had just been run over by a train.

I took a deep breath, started up an email to Hugh about the Pepys/blogger situation I’d pulled out of my backside and pondered the ‘drink thing’.