Wishful Thinking (52 page)

It also meant that if I was going to go shopping for anything, I would have to do it on my own. Since Georgie was doing cold turkey, it would be both unfair and unwise to take her anywhere near the scene of her addiction. All of which resulted in my losing much of my enthusiasm for retail therapy, at least for the moment. It's no fun on your own, and the thought of Georgie's debt hovered over any expedition like a supernatural warning, a phantom in a T-shirt with the legend ‘40K', moaning: ‘Beware! Beware!'

So when I went to meet Todd on Friday evening I was dressed in a skirt and sweater I'd bought some months earlier, both too everyday to merit description. I told myself it didn't matter. He seemed to like me, yes, but he had a girlfriend, and our one night of lust had been a solo effort on my part. Todd hadn't even been there.

We had drinks at 2, Brydges Place, a funny dark little club with a smattering of less well-known literary types scattered through a maze of tiny rooms. Todd had apparently joined a decade or more earlier, and, indifferent to the rise of more fashionable venues, had continued to use the place because he liked it. Afterwards, we went somewhere for dinner, but I don't remember the name or even the genre of food. By then, I wasn't noticing.

‘I'm sorry I took so long to call you,' Todd said. ‘Life's been a bit complicated. I expect you've gathered Helen and I are splitting up.'

I hadn't gathered anything of the sort, and my heart missed several beats, causing me to replace my drink on a patch of air next to the table, though happily I didn't let go so only a little got spilt.

‘Not much light in here,' I said. ‘I couldn't see what I was doing . . . You were saying, about Helen . . . ?'

‘I won't go into details. It's been going stale on us for a long time. When you get together with someone, your first interest is sex – you don't really discuss what you want to do with your lives. The way Helen wants to live and the way I want to live – they just aren't compatible. I know it's taken us too long to find out . . . I don't like giving up on things, I suppose. We've been papering over the cracks, but they got wider and sex didn't bridge the gap. She had an affair recently, one of her clients – Charlie Nguru. It finished with the case, but it was a symptom of her need to . . . break out. We've been talking it over for the past several weeks. She's moved in with a girlfriend until she can sort out her own flat. The house is mine – I had it before the relationship started and she never contributed to the mortgage, so she's got a lot of money in the bank. She doesn't need to demand palimony, or whatever it's called.'

‘She's a lawyer,' I said hesitantly. ‘Won't she – do what lawyers do? I mean . . .'

‘Sue? I doubt it. Believe it or not, Helen isn't that type. She'd consider it beneath her. It would be different if we'd been married, or children had been involved, but things never went that far. And the break-up's mutual, more or less. I initiated it, but she's been as unhappy with the state of play as I have.'

‘I'm glad she's not hurt,' I said, and found I meant it.

‘Oh, we're both hurting – a bit. When something's over, you do. But the relationship died a natural death, not a violent one, so you're sorry, you have a sense of failure, of regret, but it's not suicidal agony. Still, I daresay you must have been there yourself, once or twice. Or are you too young?'

‘Once,' I said. ‘Sort of. I was living with this guy, and then I found out he was seeing someone else, so I threw him out. But I missed him so much I tried to get him back, only he'd moved in with the other woman, and I – I made a fool of myself. It
was
suicidal agony, for a while. Then – it wasn't.' I wanted very badly to be honest with him, but I didn't feel he was ready for the story of the fat estate agent yet. Besides, it was out of keeping with the tempo of the evening.

‘Still suffering any pangs?' he asked, and I couldn't help trying to detect a trace element of anxiety in the question. Even if it wasn't there.

‘No,' I said. ‘None at all. I suppose . . . it wasn't the real thing, because if it had been, I don't think I would have recovered so quickly.'

Did he look more cheerful? I couldn't tell. That's the trouble with these saturnine faces: they don't function as mirrors of the soul. You just get little glimpses, here and there, and it's easy to be mistaken. And the dim lighting didn't help.

‘Do you believe in the Real Thing?' he said, with a kind of gentle mockery. ‘Love at first sight – the lightning bolt that strikes when you meet the one person in all the world who's right for you.'

‘Of course not. That's just romantic nonsense. Love isn't a lightning bolt – it sort of creeps up on you, when you're not paying attention. And it takes a lot of sightings. And getting to know the person. You can't possibly love someone you don't know.'

‘Many men would say you're wrong. Not knowing the person is often a prerequisite.'

‘That's because men are more romantic than women,' I said boldly. ‘It's like
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
, or The Song of Wandering Aengus. Some guys think love is an idealised emotion; they fall for a fantasy woman, an eternal stranger. They can't deal with a flesh-and-blood woman, flesh-and-blood love. So they're always searching for something more than whatever they've got, and they miss out.'

‘D'you think I'm like that?' He was looking sardonic.

I'd been drinking vodka martinis on an empty stomach, and as always with Todd I was getting reckless. ‘You tell me,' I said.

‘Well, they say all writers live in fantasy land, but I think I'm the flesh-and-blood type. Seriously, I'm surprised you think men are romantic; it's a novel attitude. I thought it was women who're supposed to be into flowers and chocolates and stuff.'

‘Women are into
gifts
,' I said. ‘That's got nothing to do with romance: it's sheer hard-headed practicality. We only take flowers and chocolates if we can't get diamonds.'

‘I'll strive to bear that in mind,' he said, and I hoped he meant in relation to me, then realised the phrase could've had a general application. ‘Now, are you going to explain what was going on at Jerry's party, or d'you want to wait till we get to dinner?'

I told the story like a professional, of course – starting at the end, leap-frogging over the middle, going back to the beginning. By the time we got to the restaurant I was relating how much work I'd done on Jerry's book, and my gratification when the reviewer called it a page-turner.

‘If you can do that,' he said, ‘you can do anything. How do we celebrate? I expect you're a champagne girl.'

‘I don't mind,' I said, ‘as long as it's alcohol. What do you like?'

‘I prefer burgundy, but—'

‘Burgundy is fine.' My only reservation was that it stained my lips, leaving me looking like a maenad after a particularly heavy bacchanalia. But I was
feeling
maenad-like already.

Glancing through the menu, I wondered about ordering asparagus tips so I could suck them erotically, but decided against it as they would be bound to drip butter on my skirt. Seductive food is all very well in theory, but I suspect the practice lets you down. And then there were the stomach-butterflies that fluttered away every time he quirked an eyebrow or looked at me in a certain way. I remember thinking: It wasn't like this with Nigel. (Nigel didn't take me out to dinner, for one thing.) But then, I'd never been out to dinner with a man I fancied madly in my whole life. I hadn't realised how much it would affect my appetite. We ordered wonderful food, and I hardly ate a thing. No wonder I used to be overweight – I'd never been really in lust. Lust is a very slimming emotion. Someone should write a book about it: the L-Plan Diet . . .

The burgundy was rich and heavy and much sexier than champagne, which always makes me burp. I started off sipping cautiously, hoping to let the wine slide past my lips so they would remain unstained, but after the first glass I didn't bother any more. I went to the Ladies and sure enough, I looked like a maenad, all tumbled hair and purple mouth. I didn't care.

I forgot that red wine and vodka don't really mix. There came a point in the evening when the air turned sparkly and the restaurant seemed to be floating around me. I knew I was having a very good time – an amazing time – but the small cold voice of sobriety at the back of my mind told me I should call it a night.

‘I'm a bit pissed,' I said. ‘No – I'm awfully pissed. I'm sorry.'

We'd been talking about D.I. Hatchett, and where he should go from here. I'd been suggesting a trip abroad, by way of variety. Affiliation to a foreign police force. Todd had said his character was too firmly rooted in his own mean streets; he'd be at a loss in New York or LA. I said that would be interesting, wouldn't it, and Todd added ruefully: ‘What I mean is,
I'd
be at a loss.'

‘Maybe you need a break,' I said, and that was when the alcohol kicked in.

‘I'd better take you home,' he said. ‘It's my fault – I shouldn't have suggested martinis.'

In the taxi, I flopped against him. Booze was definitely making a maenad of me, but he didn't respond. Still, perhaps the driver put him off.

When we reached the flat he took me inside, deposited me on the sofa. (The same sofa where we . . . well, you know.) I let my arms slide around his neck, thinking that now,
now
, at last, he would . . . He gave me a peck on the cheek. ‘You okay to get to bed?' he said with no sexual undertones.

‘I – yes . . .'

‘I'll call you.'

He was gone, leaving me racked with disappointment and hurt, and so drunk I fell asleep almost at once.

I woke in the wee small hours and tottered from the sofa to the bedroom, where I was plunged into dreams of rejection and personal inadequacy. I was back at the dinner party in Hampstead and Todd, minus Helen, was getting off with Laura. ‘It's all right,' he said. ‘You and Roger will make a lovely couple.' The nightmare deepened, and I saw him with a string of other women – Jocasta Tate, the It girl, even Georgie – all of them more glamorous and successful than me. And then somehow I was in bed with him, in Jerry Beauman's fourposter, and all around us the party was raging, and people were scrabbling on the floor for money. He sat up, and it wasn't Todd, it was Jerry himself, fixing me with his beady black stare, and I shrank in horror – waking with a jerk to find myself sweating and feeling extremely sick.

I made it to the bathroom just in time.

Todd phoned around midday, by which time I had plumbed the depths of hangover and depression. I'd always found a hangover was a useful distraction from other miseries, but not this one. This hangover was just
part
of the misery – not a purgative hangover after a night of drowned sorrows but the result of the cause of everything going wrong. I'd had a whole evening with him – a whole magic evening – and I'd got idiotically pissed and he hadn't even kissed me. Our moment of lust would remain forever in the realms of fancy. Quite possibly my chances of experiencing real lust with a real man – the complete flesh-and-blood deal – had gone for good.

The first time the phone rang, it was Georgie. ‘How'd it go?' she said.

‘Don't ask . . .'

I was feeling too awful to go into details, and said I would get back to her later.

The second caller was my mother. I don't know why it is, but she invariably phones at the worst moment, when my luck is out and my nerve is gone and I feel like a barnacle on the bottom of the great cruise-liner of life, while everyone else is on the main deck having a ball. She can be sympathetic (my mother often is), or bracing, or scatter pearls of wisdom which are too late to be of any use – even if I was prepared to listen to her advice, which of course I'm not – but the effect of this timing is that she always makes me feel a failure. It's a bit like Sophie, accusing me of bulimia when I've gone on a diet. For my mother, too, whatever I do turns out wrong. She's never worried about my sister (even when she was shacked up with a photographer in a state of Parisian decadence), but she worries about me constantly. I could feel her worry trickling down the telephone. I listened to a mixed grill of the sympathy/bracing/pearls stuff, dredged up a few filial clichés, and escaped, claiming I was running a bath. (It seemed like a good idea.) When the phone rang again, almost immediately, I nearly didn't answer it. I'd given up expecting it to be Todd.

But it was.

‘Hello? Are you all right? I didn't like to call too early – I thought you'd need some time to sleep it off.'

‘I – yes, thanks. I'm so sorry—'

‘I had a great evening. I wanted you to know that.'

‘– so sorry I . . .'

‘Stop saying you're sorry. What is there to be sorry for? Didn't you enjoy yourself?'

‘Yes, I . . . of course I did. But . . .'

‘But what?'

You didn't make passionate love to me.

‘I was horribly drunk. I only hope I didn't embarrass you.'

‘Don't be silly; of course you didn't. I was counting on getting points for chivalry, actually.'

Chivalry
?

‘Chi–chivalry?' I said.

‘I didn't lay a finger on you, in the taxi or at your place. I even resisted giving you a goodnight kiss.'

‘I thought that was because you didn't want to,' I said, shock depriving me of all normal restraint.

‘A gentleman,' he said with a note of irony, ‘does not take advantage of a lady in distress.'