Separate Lives (23 page)

“Your house is beautiful,” I said to Ruth when I came down again.

“I'm glad you approve. Admittedly I've only known you for five minutes but already it seems to matter that you like it on behalf of your grandmother. What was she like?”

“Pretty much the blueprint for grannies. She also baked brilliantly. Exceptional lemon drizzle. If you try baking that she may not be able to resist returning to give you a hand.”

“Well, that might just work. Waddya think, Zo? Shall we get Pippa's nana to help us bake?”

And Zoe nodded and smiled and, to my surprise, walked round the table and clambered on to my lap. So I drank tea and chatted to Ruth while her daughter sat on my knee in, of all places, Nana's house—Ruth's house—and then Ruth suggested starting to make the cakes with Zoe, so I said: “I'm so sorry to take up your afternoon. I really must tear myself away.”

“No need to go on our account; we're enjoying the company, aren't we, Zo?”

“Well, that's very kind but I should probably crack on back up to town. I'm actually flying to Lanzarote tomorrow.”

“Blimey, lucky you. Away for Christmas?”

“Yeah. I'm not a massive fan of Christmas.” And I paused for a moment, close to launching into why I didn't like Christmas before I checked myself. “Anyway my son's with his dad this year so I thought I'd just treat myself.”

“Don't blame you. Christmas is for kids—but without them, as far as I'm concerned, Christmas is for sleeping.”

“Well, thanks for the tea and everything. Really lovely to meet you. Both of you.”

“Likewise. I'm so glad you knocked. Most days you'd have got an empty house—my husband and I are both pretty full on with work.”

“Do you mind if I ask what you do?”

“I'm a midwife and my husband's a GP. But you should see us if Zoe so much as trips over and scrapes a knee. Pathetic excuse for medics, both of us. And you? What do you do?”

“Well, I'm mostly a mum these days, albeit nearly a redundant one since my thirteen-year-old has decided he wants to start boarding. But I used to work in, uh, fashion.”

“Cool. Hence the Chloé?”

“Just a by-product. And sorry, but are those Seven jeans?”

“They are. And there's not much call for them when you're up to your elbows in the birthing pool, I can tell you.”

I was halfway out the door by now, but we were still chatting.

“Yes, I can imagine. Really good to meet you, Ruth. I love what you've done with the house, I really do. Nana would've totally approved. Thanks so much.”

“Pleasure.” Ruth dug around in the back pocket of her Sevens and produced a business card:

“Here, take this. I'm not suggesting you need my professional skills but if you're ever in the area knocking on strangers' doors do please come and see us again. I mean it. Bring your son sometime; I'm sure he'd be interested to see where his great-grandma lived, but if he's not there's a Go-Kart track round the corner and a very cool new skate park up the hill. So . . .”

Ruth shrugged and grinned.

“Thanks very much. Really. You've been very kind.”

And then after I'd walked thirty yards or so down the road I turned around, and there they both were, Ruth and Zoe, still waving from their doorstep. And I felt a strange but not entirely unpleasant butterfly-wings sensation in my
solar plexus, a feeling which, funnily enough, reminded me of Hal's first fluttering fetal movements all those years ago.

Mid-afternoon in December, the streets were quiet in the Old Town and dusk was descending fast. I walked back to the car, chilled by the strong sea breeze gusting from the darkness on the edge of town which contrasted with the maniacally bright lighting and loud “kerchings” emanating from Slots of Fun. Funny old town, this, I thought, though I could see its charms, too.

In the car—my great big cliché of a Range Rover—I felt safe and swiftly warmed, with Steve Wright burbling quietly in the background as a light spray from surf I couldn't actually see spattered the window. On the spur, I fished my phone out of the pocket of my parka, and sent Ruth a brief email:

And then I wrote a short text:
Random-on-Sea is lovely . . . x

And I hit Send. And I waited. And within a couple of minutes back came a reply:
Who is this? Don't recognize the number, sorry

And I stared at it for a moment before deleting it, just as Alex had clearly deleted my number. And then I turned Steve Wright up a bit louder, reversed out of the parking space and began the long journey home.

My spa trip was restful, regenerative. More books, no blokes and lots of yoga. I also successfully avoided eating turkey and every day was sunny enough to fall asleep beside the pool, if not to actually get in it. When I got
home on the 28th, the day before Hal, I felt both restless and relaxed enough to come up with yet another out-of-character idea—though given that out-of-character ideas were now becoming such a regular default they were, of course, redefining my character.

I decided to have a party. I couldn't actually recall the last time I'd had a party at home—any of my homes—that hadn't been for Hal. I don't “do” parties, and I don't know any other single people who do them either. I mean, I go to them, of course—but hosting? I guess I'm old-fashioned enough to think that every hostess needs a host, even if he is just lurking in the background with a corkscrew and a bowl of Kettle Chips. But I suddenly wanted to have a party, and I figured that at thirteen-and-a-half, Hal was old enough to wield a corkscrew and make polite small talk with adults before retreating to his room with a mate or two for a sleepover. How hard could it be to give a party, after all? Even a New Year's Eve party? People were always going on about how New Year's was such a nightmare if you were over about twenty-one. I could do the kind of New Year's Eve party that divided into two parts—the people with kids but no babysitters could do the early shift from say 6 to 8, then the hardcore singles and those blessed with sitters could tip up later, and then if they got a better offer they could all bugger off elsewhere. I really didn't mind. In fact I quite liked the idea of having a bit of a bash then being in bed by 12 watching Jools Holland's
Hootenanny
—even though the pleasure of that show had dimmed since I discovered it was recorded weeks in advance. Whatever. With a bit of luck I'd probably still be dancing by midnight. And it turns out it's far easier to organize a party than I'd thought it might be—why hadn't I done it years ago?—and Hal was gratifyingly enthusiastic.

“This is an awesome idea, Mum. Can I help?”

Can I help
? I wasn't entirely sure I'd ever heard Hal utter the phrase before. Anyway, he could and he did. We made a trip to the Majestic wine warehouse in St. John's Wood to load up the Range Rover, and raided Waitrose for every conceivable nibbly/crunchy/dippy thing we could find. And then Hal decided he was going to turn DJ and sort out some tunes on the MP3, almost certainly including such prehistoric stuff as Nirvana, though I did beg him to include a few things everybody could dance to if the mood grabbed us and steered him toward my doubtless amusingly retro collection. I couldn't recall buying a single CD in the past five years.

“Mum, you've actually got some cool stuff here. Did you know that?”

So I'd pretty much nailed the party-giving thing, really . . . apart from the all-but-insignificant business of choosing the guests and then actually inviting them. Would I find anyone at all at such short notice? Maybe I was just setting myself up to fail? My friendships were so scattered and compartmentalized and many were now so lapsed that I barely knew how to corral them under one roof. And then I wondered how it would be if I glanced around the room and suddenly felt like a gatecrasher at my own party, because the problem with being the hostess is that you can't really leave when you've had enough.

I made list after list. I trawled through my phone and emails to recall old colleagues, old dates and old (as in a long time ago) mates. Then I narrowed it down to the people whom I'd either actually seen or had really wanted to see in the last five years, because my life was very easily divided into pre-and post-2005 and I knew that however much I may
have “moved on,” I much preferred that the pre-2005 version of me should remain compartmentalized.

In the end the list ran to about sixty people, of whom maybe half might reasonably be expected to turn up at such short notice, in which case it would be a shuffling around the kitchen with the drinks-and-nibbles sort of party, while if the figure miraculously ended up closer to sixty then we'd probably actually be up for some dancing. And then of course it took me the whole evening of the 29th just to invite everybody via text and email, and then about halfway through that process I started feeling like a complete arse. After all, who even considered organizing a party for NYE precisely two days in advance? Perhaps only the sort of person who, secretly, deep down, hoped nobody would turn up?

Ha! Turns out that the over-thirty-fives are, pretty much to a man and woman, actually gagging for that last minute alternative to the pub or over-priced local restaurant. Don't ask me how but, come 11:30 p.m., Lisa, me and Marta were doing a version of Beyoncé's “Single Ladies” dance in the living room in front of (a pseudo-appalled but actually finding it quite funny) Hal and a couple of his mates, plus some rugby players brought along by Guy and Lisa, whom the boys actually recognized but to me just looked like big blokes who were exceptionally bad at dancing. Then there was another bunch of people downstairs, including—astoundingly—half the booking desk (still there, still booking and, presumably, also still bitching for Britain) from my old employer Model's Own. I'd've imagined they would have had much better offers for NYE but we always assume other people are leading a different sort of life from the one they actually are, don't we? Personally my own “best” New Year's Eve had occurred in 1988 when I was twenty. Up until then I'd
always hated New Year's Eve. As a teenager I just hadn't got the hang of enforced “fun,” preferring to have my fun a bit more off the cuff, on my own terms rather than everybody else's. Anyway, on the 31st December of 1988, when I was living and working in Tokyo, one of my flatmates, a German model called Claudia (her nickname: “But-Not-Schiffer”) said: “I hear there's a private party somewhere in Roppongi. It might be a laugh. It's for . . .”

But-Not-Schiffer named a hugely famous British pop band who were currently touring Japan and my interest was admittedly slightly piqued, partly because I was a fan but mostly because it was already 10 p.m. and the prospect of a quiet night in with the TV and But-Not-Schiffer was suddenly unbearable.

I peered at clothes, sighed and was uninspired. Tonight was not, I felt, a night for making mad London-girl fashion statements but for keeping it simple with some basic black Body-Con by Azzedine Alaia and the essential late 1980s slash of red lipstick (think Robert Palmer's “Addicted to Love” video). Plus a pair of false eyelashes, just because.

By 11:15, But-Not-Schiffer and I found ourselves in a predictably sweaty basement in Roppongi. The New Year's Do turned out to be a band member's birthday party, while the hostess—a friend-of-a-friend-of—was unfazed by yet more crashers. Anyway, in Tokyo even a couple of
gai-jin
catalog models were usually granted Access All Areas.

And so I hovered, nursing a fluorescent drink and attempting to shrug off my habitual anti-New Year apathy, pointy stilettos toe-tapping at the edge of that dance floor, waiting for a tune that would impel me on to it . . . when I spotted him. A capital-H Him, as it happens. And even at the moment when our eyes locked and stayed locked (if it had
been a film everything else would have gone slow-motion and blurry round the edges) and despite being entirely “in” the moment and savoring it, and suddenly realizing that my prospects for New Year's Eve 1988 (not to mention very early 1989) were looking up quite dramatically, I also knew this was one of those moments I was going to remember forever, whatever happened next.

What actually happened next was that I walked on to the dance floor and straight up to the handsome man, who was also famous—what with him being in the band and the band being massive and everything—and despite the fact that there were people dancing around him, both literally and metaphorically, I just stood there and waited for what felt like minutes but was actually about a second, before he smiled and said: “You have very beautiful eyes.”

I probably rolled my (very beautiful) eyes, but I also smiled the sort of smile that said, “Even I know that in terms of cheesy chat-ups that is the very ripest of Camembert, but I don't mind, mostly because I actually believe you. And of course I do have beautiful eyes. And I really hope to God you don't find out about these eyelashes too soon.”

But obviously I didn't say any of that. I just stood there, staring at him, until the moment kind of snapped and we were hurtled back into the “ten, nine, eight, seven, six . . .” and “woo-hooh!”s and popping champagne corks, and whatever the next record was. I should remember what the next record was, of course, but I don't. I could cheat and make one up—Prince's “1999” seems pretty likely—but that would be to diminish the Moment, which was perfect just as I remember it.

Anyway, of all the so-called “romantic” moments of my life—and there have been a few, despite having had such a
car-crash of a “romantic” life—the moment Johnny Stone told me I had “very beautiful eyes” in the middle of a Tokyo dance floor at about 11:55 p.m. on New Year's Eve 1988 remains one of the very best. Because “romance” is, after all, mostly about context. And I couldn't have written this one any better myself. For me, “romance” should have some sort of slightly filmic quality and preferably a script to match; it should also tick certain boxes—the “right” timing, location, weather even—and should preferably (not that I'm picky, much) occur at exactly the right moment in your own story. For me, locking eyes with Johnny Stone happened in just the right place: in the middle of a dance floor in my decade of dance floors. Mind you, in terms of a relationship it was going nowhere. I was in Tokyo, he was touring the world, mobile phones had barely been invented—much less text or email. Complete non-starter then, and probably for the best. It would only have ruined what was already a perfectly beautiful moment, though we did manage to make that moment last until just after midday on January 1 by judicious use of an old-school hotel “Do Not Disturb” sign and the removal of the suite's numerous phones from their hooks.