Lizzy Harrison Loses Control (27 page)

‘The room’s jammed, Randy – they’re all waiting for you. Barry and Nolan can’t stop going on about how wonderful you were.’

‘That lovely pair of old fruits – let me at them,’ says Randy, turning as we hear a thudding tread rising up from the stairs that lead down to the party.

The heavy footsteps slowly reveal themselves as belonging to Mel, who is ascending the stairwell at glacial speed. Her mouth is screwed up into a sulky little twist, her eyes narrowed as she glares in my direction. And then she spots Randy.

‘Hey, wow – congratulations, Randy,’ she beams, skipping up the last few steps towards him. ‘You were amazing!’ She attempts to flick her hair in a flirtatious manner, but as she is unwisely attempting to make homage to Jemima’s trademark lacquered and sprayed bob, everything stays resolutely and unflirtatiously rock-hard and unmoving. Instead she looks like she has an unfortunate tic of the neck.

‘Thanks, babe,’ he says mechanically, looking beyond her as if she wasn’t there. ‘They all ready for me downstairs?’

‘Oh yes, they’re all waiting – the party hasn’t started until you get there, Randy. Jemima says—’

‘Great,’ says Randy, hurtling head first down the stairwell without a backwards glance at the three of us left on the landing. There is a roar from the room as he opens the door, and Camilla smiles with satisfaction.

‘Barry says you’re to go downstairs and I’m to look after the door,’ intones Mel flatly to me, her flirtatious ways instantly abandoned.

‘Thanks, Mel, that’s really good of you,’ I say, schooled by Camilla Carter to be nice no matter what.

‘Just go,’ she says, rolling her eyes and grabbing the clipboard from my hands. School of Jemima Morgan. ‘Right then,’ says Camilla briskly. ‘Ready for battle?’ And she’s not kidding. It’s carnage down there. The noise and heat of the crowded room hits us like a wet towel as Camilla opens the door. I spot Rebecca standing behind the bar, her usually elegant composure slightly dampened by a cloud of steam from the bar dishwasher. One sweating barman hauls a crate of empty champagne bottles towards the kitchen; another is opening new bottles as fast as he can and handing them to the ridiculously beautiful waitresses who squeeze their way through the crowd. No one even gives these women a second glance: so intent are they on having their glasses refilled that they could be being served by Quasimodo for all that they notice. The champagne’s been flowing a little too freely and I can’t see a single tray of canapés in circulation to sober people up. All is explained when I spot a pack of hungry guests hovering expectantly by the swing doors to the kitchen. No sooner does a tray emerge than it is picked clean in seconds. The waiter has to retreat for new supplies before he’s taken two steps into the room. Because we’re deep underground there’s no air conditioning, and the combination of all these people and all that booze has turned the place into a furnace. Coiffures wilt, foreheads glisten, mascaras run; even Barry’s Mr Whippy bouffant is drooping. Suspicious drips fall intermittently from the low, arched, painted-brick ceiling. Jemima gives a fierce look upwards as one lands on her snap-on hair, as if the ceiling can be compelled into dryness by the sheer force of her withering stare.

Camilla glides off into the throng towards Jamie from African Vision, who greets her with an exuberant kiss before introducing her to his companions. Nina the Cleaner is offering an enchanted Nolan MacDonald one of her biscuits – I hope it’s a shortbread; he’s obsessed with his Scottish roots. Randy’s tricorne hat bobs above the crowd, though how he can bear to wear it in this heat, I don’t know. Next to the hat is Barry’s diminished bouffant, and next to that Rochelle’s quiff, not even slightly affected by the atmosphere. I think her hair is probably too afraid of her to misbehave. As long as I can keep my eyes on Randy, I don’t think I need to be glued to his side all night, so instead of going straight to him I head over towards the bar to check on Rebecca.

‘Everything okay?’ I ask, leaning across the concrete surface.

She grimaces cheerfully. ‘Jesus, they can drink! Are you okay for me to open more champagne or do you want to move on to wine yet?’

‘Stick to champagne,’ I say. ‘It’s a celebration.’

‘Jim – I’m afraid you’re going to have to head to the cellar for more,’ Rebecca says to the barman, who’s only just straightening up, a hand on his back, from shunting the empties aside. His white shirt clings to his retreating shoulders as he wearily leaves the bar. She turns back to me. ‘And the canapés are nearly finished,’ she says, nodding in the direction of the kitchen, where the waiter is being mobbed once again.

‘Thanks to that pack of vultures,’ I groan, looking over at Jemima’s cronies. ‘Is there any way the kitchen could rock up some bread and cheese? And chips? Anything to stop this lot getting any more pissed.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she says, and pushes her way through the crowd to the kitchen.

I owe her. I make a mental note to courier her a present first thing on Monday. Camilla’s account at Liberty’s will have to take a hit for this.

Squeezing past a young couple who are energetically getting to know each other in a corner that is not as discreet as they think it is, I make my way over to a cluster of reviewers and newspaper diarists who are all noisily comparing notes on Randy’s performance, the party in general and the behaviour of the other guests. If I want to know what’s going to be in the papers in the next week, this is the place to be. Caspian Latimer, the
Telegraph
’s young and gangly arts reviewer, turns to greet me, nervously pushing his glasses up his nose, only to have them slide down again.

‘Ah, hello. So very nice to see you.’ He wipes his hand on his tweed jacket before proffering it to me, which is a thoughtful gesture but one I rather wish I hadn’t seen. ‘Very nice indeed. Randy was very good. Ah, very good indeed.’

Poor Caspian, a Classics graduate from St Andrews with a passion for antique furniture of the Edwardian period, is far more at home at the Royal Academy than in Savoy Street, and it’s not just his tweed jacket that’s making him uncomfortable here. But he’s scrupulously honest and I know he’d have politely avoided saying anything about Randy’s show if he hadn’t liked it. We have one in the bag.

‘Indeed?’ I say. His manner is contagious. ‘I’m so glad you enjoyed it, Caspian. So, what did the rest of you think?’ Caspian shuffles backwards so that I can get a clearer view of his companions.

Rikk Dyer (don’t forget the two Ks) sneers in my direction, but this is not an immediate worry as it’s a habitual facial expression formed in his punk-rock youth. I do actually believe the wind changed one day and now, pushing fifty, he’s stuck like that.

‘Rocking, Lizzy, rocking,’ he says solemnly, his faded black T-shirt straining across the gentle paunch that betrays his age. ‘Loved the new material. Four stars – wicked. You can quote me.’ He nods decisively. Two broadsheets down.

The dumpy blonde diarist from
The Times
bustles her way forward to thrust a tiny tape recorder under my nose. ‘What did you think about his material on
you
, Lizzy Harrison?’

‘I thought it was very, very funny, Tilly Abbott,’ I say clearly into the machine, in the firm tones I have learned at Camilla’s knee. ‘Randy’s a genius.’

‘Do you think he’s really a changed man?’ she says with a dreamy stare in Randy’s direction. ‘Can you actually trust him?’ I know she’s one of the few women here that he hasn’t tried it on with and clearly she hopes he hasn’t mended his ways before she gets her chance.

‘I think Randy is Randy,’ I say diplomatically, ‘and we wouldn’t want him any other way.’

‘Really?’ she says, bustling closer in a confiding way as if we are just two chums having a cosy chat. The Dictaphone between us rather spoils the effect. ‘So you don’t object to – ow!’

She turns to glare at Roy Matthews, charming arts correspondent for the
News of the World
(I know – you didn’t think they had one, did you?). This jovial forty-something devoted father of three little girls is as far from the clichéd tabloid hack as you can get. He runs pieces when he says he will, he answers his phone, he doesn’t stitch people up for no reason, he apologizes for mistakes. Camilla and I adore him.

‘Lizzy, he was brilliant,’ he begins, grasping my hand effusively and squeezing himself between me and Tilly, until he is shunted aside himself. By Daz ‘Dazzler’ Davies, showbiz chief for the
Sunday Reporter
.

‘Liz, yeah, hi, good to see you again,’ he says, though we have never actually met because I have always been palmed off on one of his many minions. His affected nonchalance is betrayed by the vicious elbow in the ribs with which he despatched Roy, who is wincing beside him. Daz’s highlighted hair is flicked low over his face, Flock of Seagulls-style, making him instantly recognizable and also, say his rivals, covering up a Botox-related cratering on the left side of his face. The fact that it obscures his eyes makes him rather accident-prone, and a large red wine stain is already visible down the front of his purple shirt.

‘So, cool – how are things with Randy? You’re in love, yeah?’ He cocks his head to one side expectantly, one beady eye visible through his hair.

‘Er, well – it’s early days, Daz,’ I say. Like I’m going to admit it first to a tabloid journalist. Even my best friends haven’t asked me if I love Randy yet.

‘But, like, it’s all good, yeah? You’re really happy with him? You think this is going places, right? You’re making plans for the future?’ Daz may be the one asking the questions, but I can see all the journalists hovering intently on my answer. Even Caspian Latimer’s beaky nose is leaning further forward than usual. Although the room is noisy around us, we are a tight little bubble of silence as they wait for me to speak.

‘It’s all good, Daz,’ I say, thinking that if this is what passes for news, then I despair.

‘I can quote you on that?’ he says eagerly.

‘If you like,’ I say with a shrug. It’s hardly the scoop of the century.

‘Cool, yeah, great, later,’ says Daz and instantly scuttles towards the door, bumping into several guests on the way. He’s off up the stairs just two minutes later.

With his departure, the crowd of journalists seems to lose its focus. Everyone melts into the crowd with polite murmurs of ‘great party’ and ‘nice to see you’. I look out across the room again. Rochelle’s quiff is bent low over Nina the Cleaner and the two of them are speaking animatedly to Nolan, who roars with laughter and slaps Rochelle’s thigh, to her evident surprise. Nina’s half-empty packet of biscuits sits on the table next to them. Barry is engaged in conversation with one of the barmen, whose flirtatious manner suggests he is not unaware of Barry’s reputation for generous tipping. Camilla is still talking to Jamie from African Vision, but their companions appear to have gone elsewhere. I don’t know what he can be saying, but Camilla’s eyes don’t leave his face. Randy . . . Randy . . . where the fuck is Randy? He’s unmistakable in that hat and unmistakably not here.

I know exactly where he’s gone – he can’t hide it from me. I storm up the stairs to the landing, two at a time, and push open the door to the men’s toilets.

I knew it.

The door to one cubicle is closed, and I can hear stifled giggles from inside it. So he’s got a partner in crime, has he? What kind of friends does Randy have that they’d jeopardize everything by doing this in public? If any one of those journalists had come in here instead of me, Randy could lose everything. I tiptoe towards the cubicle, but they must know someone’s here as I hear a muffled ‘shhhh’. Just in case I had any doubt that Randy was inside, the knotted ends of his leopardskin scarf trail out from under the door.

I go into the next cubicle and lower the toilet lid as slowly and as silently as I can. Taking off my shoes, I step on to the lid and lean over to look into his cubicle, ready to catch him in the act.

But I’m wrong.

Randy Jones isn’t doing coke. He’s doing Jemima Morgan. From behind.

I really should state, for the record, that I’m not proud of myself for throwing a kiwi fruit at them, but there they are at the bottom of my handbag, which is still slung over my shoulder, and before I know what I’m doing I’ve hurled one to splat with a shockingly loud thump on the cubicle wall. Two horrified faces, satisfyingly spotted with tiny black seeds, stare up at me. So I throw another one for good measure before getting a grip of myself and running out of the room. Despite Jemima’s later accusations, there is no way I could have anticipated that the next person to enter the gents that night would be Declan Costelloe, nor that the sight of the splattered kiwis would be enough to set him off on a dramatic panic attack that meant an ambulance had to be called.

Unknown to me, this rather effectively disguises both my exit and Randy and Jemima’s indiscretion.

Truly the universe moves in mysterious ways.

Even though it’s warm outside, I feel suddenly freezing. Perhaps it’s shock, but I shiver on the steps of Savoy Street as the photographers begin to circle, scenting a story.

‘Everything okay, Lizzy, love?’ one shouts. ‘Where’s Randy?’

‘Just need a breath of fresh air,’ I mumble. ‘So hot in there.’ I fan my face as nonchalantly as I can, but a suspicious volley of shouts and screams rises up from downstairs, and the photographers begin to move closer. Later I will learn that this is Declan in a kiwi-induced frenzy, but, not knowing this, I begin to panic. I don’t know if I’m more afraid that Randy will chase after me, or that he won’t. All I know is that I have to get out of here fast.