The Perfect 10 (31 page)

‘Right, well, that’s up there with genocide. What else?’ I ask, cupping my chin in my hand to mimic interest.

She glares at me, but continues, ‘And you never ask about us any more, you just talk about yourself. Basically, you think that now you can fit in to some size twelve trousers, and you’ve had a bit of male attention, you are better than we are.’

But she can’t hold my stare, and she looks at Lisa for support, who isn’t saying very much at all. I don’t doubt that they have had this conversation, and that Lisa has agreed with Anna, even if she had to be persuaded. But it’s as if a light bulb goes on in my head. They haven’t always been like this. Anna’s life, certainly her romantic life, has always been more interesting than mine, and maybe I have been overinterested in the past, sucking up all the juicy details, filling up the empty space in my emotional cupboard, where my own romantic details should have been. Maybe she doesn’t feel idolised any more.

‘I think, Anna, that the truth might be the other way around.
You
think that I am better than you now. Which probably means that you thought you were better than me before.’

‘No …’ she says, shaking her head, but no more words tumble out of her big old mouth with its perfect cupid’s bow.

So I go on, ‘The only person I really judge on how they look is myself. I’m not sitting here judging your shoes, or your hair, or the fat that hangs over your jeans. I couldn’t care less about that – you’re my friend. Why do you have to beat me up for this? Why can’t you just be happy for me? I get to taste the good life for a little while – don’t I deserve it?’

But Anna isn’t listening to anything other than the words that allow her to make another point, slap me hard with another personalised attack.

‘You said it right then: you couldn’t care less! You only care about yourself now.’

‘I meant that I don’t care how you look, with regard to us being friends. I don’t need to measure myself up against you, and decide that I win, to feel better. And I don’t want a friend who only wants me around for that …’

The table falls silent, and suddenly I notice that there are other people in the room, and they all seem to be laughing, and enjoying themselves, with people who like them, and support them. They are all having a good time. I push myself to my feet, and grab my jacket and bag from the back of my chair.

‘I’ve lost my appetite, and that isn’t a lie.’ I push my chair out and walk calmly to the door.

‘I’m sorry, that’s just what I think,’ I hear Anna say as I slam the door behind me. I stride twenty paces down the road, then stop, standing perfectly still in the street, trying not to cry. I want to scream, but I don’t. It isn’t about other people. I didn’t do this for anybody else. It’s about me.

I sift through some invoices and check the site for flaws, trying to work through my anger. I need to focus on today’s orders and the pile of paperwork in my in-tray that is over a week old. I have never let things slip like this before; I have never been so distracted. My life doesn’t run as smoothly with all of these romantic rumblings and fractious friendships. I want to go to the gym, and run everything out of my head: my confusion over Adrian, my need to pick up the phone and just scream at Anna … I am scared that, however impure her motives, some of what she said may have been right.

My doorbell rings, and I shuffle through to the hallway in bed socks and press the buzzer. ‘Who is it?’ I trill down the intercom.

‘Are you even talking to me?’ Adrian asks pathetically.

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘Can I come up then? I need to talk to you.’ He sounds serious.

‘Not more revelations!’ I say, and press the buzzer, not really believing he can have any, unless he has a child with him that asks, ‘Daddy, who is that lady?’ when they get to the top of the stairs.

But either he doesn’t answer, or he doesn’t hear.

I check my hair quickly. I am still dressed for lunch with Anna and Lisa, I have only taken off my high-heeled boots and replaced them with comfy cashmere socks, so I know that I look OK. It’s not as if I have just rolled out of bed, hitting the floor in a flurry of crazy hair and pillow lines creased across my face. It’s not such a bad sign that I don’t really care.

Adrian loiters at the top of the stairs with his hands in his pockets. I open the door but immediately turn to walk into the lounge, so as not to share a doorstep kiss. I feel too much pressure, too much would ride on it. But he grabs my hand and spins me round and pushes me up against my hallway wall, narrowly avoiding a picture of my mum and dad in Austria last year, standing next to a ski lift, in summer. Adrian holds my face in his hands.

‘Don’t I even get a kiss now?’ he says sadly.

‘I don’t know, maybe …’ But it is easier to kiss him than not to kiss him. If I push him away it will be such a big deal, and we’ll have to talk about it, and I’ll have to explain. Besides, part of me really does want to kiss him, wants to feel his hands creep up and over my chest to my shoulders, feel his tongue at my neck, feel him so close, wanting me. But it’s just the physical side rushing in, the promise of another Fondler moment. It has very little to do with Adrian. It’s no more than right place right time for
him. So I let him lean in, and he gently brushes his lips over mine, before pushing his tongue into my mouth. I want to cough and make choking noises, and pretend to pass out. But I just kiss him back, until he is ready to stop.

‘The thought of kissing you, Sunny, is the only thing that has got me through the day,’ he says, in his slightly pissed northern accent. I have to fight to believe it. I cannot imagine that kissing me could get anybody through an ad break, never mind an entire day. Simultaneously a vicious poison-filled thought bubble bursts in my head. Only remembered me today then? Because I haven’t seen you all week!

Instead I say, ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ moving into the kitchen, flicking on the kettle.

Adrian leans against the doorframe between my kitchen and lounge, crosses his arms and looks down at his feet. I realise I am staring and still waiting for an answer after fifteen seconds.

‘Adrian? Tea?’ I ask tersely

‘I’ve left Jane,’ he says, looking up with such a serious expression on his face it makes me want to laugh out loud.

‘Why?’ I ask.

‘I thought … it was the right thing to do.’ Saint Adrian, Patron Saint of Better Late Than Never Morality.

‘Is it the right thing to do?’ I ask, flinging a tea bag lazily into a mug for him.

‘I think so.’ He nods his head, and smiles at me slightly.

‘You seem OK about it,’ I say, staying on my side of the kitchen, not wanting to get any closer to him just yet.

‘I am OK. Of course I am sad, but … I can’t do what I’m doing … anyway, I don’t want to talk about it. I just wanted you to know.’

‘Oh, OK, thanks very much. I don’t know what you expect me to say …’

‘Can I come and stay on Saturday night?’

I pour out the boiling water, and splash some milk into his cup. ‘I guess so. Why Saturday, particularly? I mean, where are you living now?’

Adrian pauses for a moment, staring at me, concentrating. ‘With Mark in Brentford, on his sofa,’ he says, and sips his tea. He stares at me again and says something I don’t hear.

‘What?’ I ask, running a little cold water into my black coffee so it doesn’t burn me.

‘You look lovely today,’ he repeats.

I don’t agree or disagree or thank him or reprimand him. And he gives up waiting for me to walk his way, and moves slowly towards me. I let him take my hands in his, entwining our fingers as if we are about to play Mercy.

‘So this means we can see a bit more of each other,’ he says, leaning down, kissing my neck.

‘Yes, it does,’ I say, peculiarly numb. I feel as if things are being taken out of my hands, and that if I let it, everything will be decided for me.

‘I have a party to go to on Saturday night,’ I say, as he licks my left ear.

‘I’ll come with you,’ he says, running his fingers over my left breast. ‘I can’t promise to be completely around. I mean, I just need some thinking time, for a while, so I can decide what to do. But I’d like to see you on Saturday night as I said.’

‘OK,’ I say, allowing myself to be kissed again. Manhandled. I don’t feel any nervous kicks. Now I don’t feel any deep-rooted desire to climb on top of him, or check if he is excited. But his hand moves down to his crotch and flicks open his button-fly jeans.

I ignore it.

‘You’re so hot,’ he mumbles.

I ignore it.

‘I’ve had such a hard day,’ he says, with a childish smile.

‘Haven’t we all,’ I say, and let go of his hands.

‘All I’ve thought about is you sucking me off …’

‘Nice,’ I say, and take a step back. ‘I mean, that sounds just magical, Adrian, for me.’

‘Sunny … I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant I love the way that it feels …’

‘I know what you meant. You are feeling sorry for yourself, so you want me to make you feel better. Well, you can’t just show up here and demand a blow job, Adrian. I’m not a whore.’

‘Oi! Nobody called you that,’ he shouts at me, annoyed.

I turn to walk away, and he grabs me again, and spins me round. ‘I didn’t say that.’

‘I know, I know. I’m sorry, I’m just in a funny mood. I had an argument with Lisa and Anna at lunchtime. I’m all worked up and lashing out at you. I’m sorry.’ I stroke his face quickly and smile.

‘Don’t apologise’ he says, looking guilty for a second, and then, ‘Let’s go to bed.’

I don’t think I should. It will only confuse things. I check my watch – it is 1.30. I shouldn’t go to bed, with a man, at 1.30 in the afternoon.

‘Late for a bus?’ he asks, and pulls me towards him.

And I think, now isn’t a time for laughs. Just say something, something serious, something that makes me feel something for you. Something real, and not a joke about how you don’t care. Something, anything, that has everything to do with emotion, and nothing to do with sex.

But instead Adrian says, ‘Come on, Sun, let’s go to bed.’

I follow him into the bedroom, when I know I shouldn’t. It’s not that I feel I can’t say no. I just don’t. I think I might just like the idea of sex in the afternoon. I’ve never done that before either. It is sex for sex’s sake, not just because it’s night-time, or we are in bed. It’s a product of
passion, while the rest of the world works and shops and taps away at keyboards, I am indulging in pure adult pleasure. It makes me feel like a grown-up, but simultaneously the child in me feels naughty, and that only fuels my fire.

It is good, and bad.

It is good because as Adrian holds my hips and pulls me on to him, as we sit up, with my legs wrapped around him, I hold him tight and bury my head in his neck, and I have a slight hurried orgasm, but an orgasm none the less. It is bad because I am thinking of somebody else.

Adrian and I lie on separate sides of my bed afterwards. I look over at him, lying in a wilderness of duvet and cushions and my pyjamas, and my underwear, that all somehow got jumbled up into a white elephant fête stall on my bed. It is fair to say that I don’t have that much experience with men, but even I know it is a bad sign to be thinking about somebody else three weeks into a relationship. If that’s what this is. Shit. Adrian has left his girlfriend! I shake my head, to wake myself from a dream, and grasp on to reality, have it pull me back from the brink, where I stand, dangling a rope off a cliff that is tied to a bucket, that swings precariously over rocks, filled casually with all our lives. It is only my indecision that need let it fall.

‘So, if you come on Saturday, it could be like, our first proper date?’ I say, and turn my head to look at him, pulling the sheet up around my chest.

‘What do you mean? We’ve had dates.’ His eyes are closed but I see his brow dent with confusion.

‘They weren’t real, Adrian. Now we’ll really be able to see …’

But the sound of one of Adrian’s wet snores rings viciously in my ears.

By 2.10 p.m. Adrian is waving goodbye to me from the street, as I hold back the curtain at my window. I turn around to face my bedroom, and the mess that he has left behind. I marvel at the speed at which things can flip around in my head, and ideas that seemed inspired and brutally perfect only moments ago now seem like utter stupidity.

I spin around on the spot three times, and run my fingers through my hair, but they get caught around my crown, which has just been shoved up and down against my sheets by a thrusting Adrian. I claw my way through it, and sigh. I fight tears, and I fight laughter, and eventually end up with a whimpered, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know what I’m doing …’

I can’t look at my bedroom any more. I spin again and press my nose up against the window. I need to get out of my flat.

I burst into Screen Queen and sing, ‘Help me, Christian! I’m falling apart …’

Christian carries on serving the customer in front of him, turning to me only when I reach the counter, placing his finger to his lips, and saying, ‘Shhhh.’

He is filling out a membership form for a guy in a white T-shirt with a handkerchief hanging precariously from his back pocket. I point to it as subtly as possible behind his back, sure that it means something in ‘homosexual’, but Christian only responds, when the guy glances down at the form, with a furious dagger stare in my direction.