Either way, it’s going home time, and only a couple of hours, I hope, until I see the love of my life all by myself.
“I had a great day today.” God knows why I’m bothering telling them, but I need to talk to someone, so instead of simply hovering in the doorway of Sophie’s bedroom, which is what I usually do before disappearing up to my own room, I walk in and sit on the bed, which I know must seem slightly strange to them.
“Oh,” says Sophie, and then Lisa. “Great.” I can see they’re both flummoxed, having never heard me volunteer any sort of information, and never, in the history of our living together, have I walked in and sat on the bed.
“Why?” Sophie, at least, has the decency to be polite.
“No real reason, just a good day. And . . .” I pause for dramatic effect. “And,” I continue, “I’ve got a date tonight.”
“A date?” The two girls chorus, looking at me in wide-eyed amazement. “Who with?”
“With the most gorgeous man in the world,” I say dreamily, in a tone remarkably similar to theirs. “With Ben Williams.”
“Oh,” says Sophie.
“Ben,” says Lisa. And I know that each of them is simultaneously picturing a fat/ugly/boring/computer nerd in an anorak.
“Where are you going?” says Lisa.
“I don’t know. Just out for a drink.”
“Well, that’s great! Good for you!” Sophie is being patronizingly kind.
“What time is he coming?” says Lisa.
“He’s calling me when he’s finished work. He’s stuck in the office.”
“That’s brilliant,” says Lisa. “We’ll be here for a while yet. We’re going to a new club tonight so we won’t be leaving until later. Maybe we’ll meet him?”
“Oh.” Shit, no. Not if I can help it. “Maybe.”
“Anyway,” says Sophie, all smiles, “any chance of a cup of tea, Mimey?”
“Nope.” Abso-bloody-lutely not, my slaving days, I have just decided, are over. “Not tonight. I’ve got to get ready.”
I can see Sophie and Lisa look at one another, and from the expression on their faces I suspect they have just realized that the gentle equilibrium of our household could well be about to change.
But Jemima doesn’t care, why should she? She’s got more important things on her mind, Ben Williams for one. She saunters out of the room, and doesn’t let the fact that she can hear Sophie and Lisa whispering about her bother her for a second.
Jemima Jones flings open the doors of her wardrobe and desperately looks for something new. Something exciting, something inviting, something that might make her look slim, or at least slim enough to attract the advances of a certain Mr. Williams.
But it’s not easy to hide the flesh of someone as large as Jemima, and in the end she settles on a long black jumper and black trousers.
Jemima lies back in her bath, bubbles stretching to the ceiling, and loses herself in her usual daydreams. This time she sees herself out for a drink with Ben, in a small wine bar in West Hampstead.
Jemima will be on sparkling form, sharp and witty enough to have Ben wiping the tears of laughter from his eyes.
“I never realized you were so funny,” he’ll say, clutching his stomach with mirth and looking at her in a whole new light, for even Jemima isn’t stupid enough to think he’ll fall for her beauty.
But perhaps if she is funny enough, charming enough, he may take a second look at the emerald green of her eyes, or the fullness of her ripe lips, or the shiny swinginess of her mousy but ever so glossy hair.
At the end of the evening he will walk her to the front door, and he will look at her very seriously, then shake his head, shaking away the crazy thought that he might be attracted to her. But the thought will not go away, and he will bend his head and kiss her, a gentle kiss on the lips.
“I’m sorry,” he’ll say. “I don’t know what came over me,” but then he’ll lose himself in her eyes and kiss her again. That’s enough for tonight, a happy ever after would be inevitable after that.
“Jemima?” A gentle knock on the door.
“Yes?”
“I’ve brought you a cup of tea. I’ll just leave it out here shall I?”
“Oh thanks, Sophie. That’s lovely.” Now that really is a first. A smile spreads across my face as I hold my nose and duck my head under the water.
At ten to nine the phone rings.
“Jemima? It’s Ben.” But of course. Who else could it be?
“Oh, hi.” He phoned! He phoned! He phoned! “How was the rest of your day?”
“Fraught. But thank God it’s finished now. Listen, I’m just leaving the office so shall I come straight to you?”
There’s a silence while I digest what he’s just said. He hasn’t canceled! He’s coming here!
“Hello? Jemima, are you still on for a drink?”
“Yes, yes. Sure. Fine. I’ll see you soon.”
“Just give me your address again.” And I do.
“God, you really do like him don’t you?” says Sophie, who’s sitting on the sofa manicuring her nails with spiky spongy things sticking up all over her head, wrapping her hair into tight little knots in preparation for this evening.
I nod happily as I suddenly realize what will happen when Ben comes over, that there’s no way on earth he could fancy either of them in the state they’re in at the moment, and with any luck they’ll still be like this when he arrives.
“Well, you look lovely,” offers Lisa, sitting there in her dressing gown with curlers in her hair and a face pack looking incredibly like someone who’s been dragged through a hedge backwards. Ha!
I can’t help myself, I’m so excited I dance round the living room, whirling round and laughing, and Sophie and Lisa actually join me, and the three of us leap up and down in a rare state of happiness and unity. I don’t think we’ve ever felt this before and we probably could carry on for hours except the spell is broken by the doorbell ringing. And me feeling sick.
I freeze. We all freeze. “I’ll get it,” says Sophie, and I don’t even try to stop her as she runs down the stairs and opens the door. I peek my head round the landing. I’m going to enjoy this.
“Hi,” says Ben, leaning against the door frame in his beautiful navy suit. “Is Jemima in?” He smiles, and I can see what Sophie’s seeing. What I see every time I look at Ben. Dimples, white teeth, and blue eyes.
Ben’s face falls. “Have I got the wrong address? Damn, I’m so stupid, I must have written it down wrong.”
“No!” Sophie recovers her composure, simultaneously remembering that she looks terrible, that she has spiky spongy sticks in her hair, and no makeup, and is wearing a grotty old dressing gown, and I literally have to hold my hand over my mouth to stifle the laughter that’s bubbling up inside.
Sophie doesn’t say anything. She can’t say anything. She’s absolutely, one hundred percent speechless, and she stands aside and gestures upstairs with a look of shock on her face.
Ben smiles his thanks and starts walking upstairs, as I start walking down. We meet in the middle.
“Have a lovely time,” shouts Lisa, who at that moment appears at the top of the stairs to see what Ben looks like. She can’t see, for she hasn’t got her contact lenses in, so she runs downstairs, still caught up in the excitement of dancing round the living room, for a closer look.
“Oh,” she breathes, one hand coming up to try and hide her face, the other frantically covering the curlers.
“Oh.”
“Oh?” Ben raises an eyebrow, grinning in amusement at the sight of these two strange creatures, and I think I’m going to burst.
Lisa runs back upstairs, followed swiftly by Sophie.
“Bye, girls,” I shout as I follow Ben out the door. “Have a good evening.”
There’s no reply. Sophie and Lisa have collapsed on the sofa, each groaning with embarrassment.
“Oh my God,” shouts Sophie.
“Oh my God,” groans Lisa. “Did you see
him?”
“Did I see him? Did I see him? I’ve just seen the most gorgeous man I’ve ever set eyes on in all my life and you’re asking me if I saw him? Jesus Christ, look at me.”
“Jesus Christ,” echoes Lisa. “Look at me.”
“I’m in love, I’m in love,” moans Sophie softly, leaning back against the cushions.
“No, I’m in love,” says Lisa, putting her head in her hands at the thought of this gorgeous man seeing her like this.
“Shit,” announces Sophie.
“Shit,” announces Lisa. “We have to see him again. Where do you think they’ve gone?”
“You’re not thinking what I’m thinking are you?” says Sophie, a sudden glint in her eye.
“We could try.”
“Fuck it,” says Lisa with a grin. “What have we got to lose.”
Chapter 9
“You don’t mind walking do you?” says Ben Williams, as the front door closes behind them. “I thought we’d go to that bar on the main road.”
“No, that’s fine,” I say quickly, because I’m already struggling to keep up with Ben’s large strides, and consequently already trying not to lose my breath.
“Strange roommates you’ve got there,” Ben volunteers after a silence. “I take it they don’t always behave like that.
“Or look like that,” he adds, as an afterthought.
“No. They’re on their way out. That’s them looking their best.”
Ben laughs. “What are they like?” Not that he’s interested, he’s just trying to make conversation.
“They’re okay,” I say, praying he’s not interested, praying he couldn’t see beyond the face masks and spiky spongy things in their hair. “They’re nice girls, really, but I wouldn’t say we’re friends.”
“What do they do?”
“They’re receptionists at Curve Advertising Agency.”
“What, together?”
I nod.
“Do they ever get any work done?”
“I don’t think their job is that stressful.” I silently muse on the conversations Sophie and Lisa constantly have about men.
“In fact,” I add out loud, “I don’t think they ever talk about ‘work’ at all.”
“I bet they’re the sort of girls who go out with very rich men, with very fast cars, who have very short relationships.”
I laugh in disbelief as I look at Ben. “Very good. How could you tell?”
Ben smiles. “I just can.”
Ben can tell because Ben has done that scene. Not as a rich man with a fast car, but as himself, because Ben can intrude on any social scene by virtue of his looks.
Ben had just left Durham University, where he had been hugely in demand, both as a boyfriend and as a friend. He was the golden boy of the campus, and his best friend, Richard, who had been down in London already for two years, had infiltrated the Chelsea set of bright young things, and welcomed Ben home with open arms and lavish parties.
Ben met heiresses, minor aristocracy, Eurotrash, minor celebrities. He went to dinner parties with people he had only ever read about on the rare occasions he had picked up a girlfriend’s magazine, and he sat next to them and talked to them as an equal.
Most people wouldn’t want to enter these circles. And even if they did, most people wouldn’t have a clue how to get in. There was one occasion where Ben found himself spending all evening talking to the star of one of the most popular soap series in the country, a girl who, with her olive skin, long dark hair, and petulant lips, was, at the time, the most adored girl in the country.
When Ben walked into the room—a party held in one of London’s smartest restaurants—he spotted her and his heart turned over. Only that morning he had been reading about her in a newspaper, how she had just split from her equally famous boyfriend, a star of a rival soap, and how she was enjoying some time, probably about five minutes, on her own.
Ben was dying to meet her, but how can you approach someone so beautiful and so famous? Not even Ben had the balls to do that.
“Have you met Laurie?” said Richard casually to Ben, after Richard had himself kissed her on both cheeks and been enveloped in a warm hug by the delicious Laurie.
“We haven’t met,” said Laurie, fixing her gaze on Ben and beaming a smile as she held out a hand to shake his, a smile that spread up through her face and gave her eyes, or so Ben thought at the time, the most amazing warmth.
“I’m Laurie,” she said, shaking his hand.
Ben nearly said, “I know,” but luckily he didn’t, because it’s not the done thing in those circles to show you recognize someone, not unless you are equally famous. “I’m Ben,” he said, smiling a perfect smile and struggling not to lose himself in her big brown eyes.
They spent the rest of the evening laughing softly together, and after a while Ben forgot she was Laurie, the most lusted-after woman in Britain, and she became Laurie, a gorgeous girl he was talking to at a party.
He didn’t ask for her number. Not because he didn’t want it, because Ben wanted nothing more, but because he thought she would be so used to being chatted up, she would never be interested in him. Admittedly, they did get on, but no, she couldn’t have been interested in him, Ben Williams, trainee news reporter.
But wonder of wonders, Laurie called him. She got his number from Richard, called and invited him to a party. A party where they didn’t so much fall in love as consummate their lust for one another, a lust which continued for three months, three months of whirlwind jet-setting and partying.
Ben accompanied Laurie everywhere. They went to film premieres, to restaurant openings, to exclusive nightclubs, and this in fact was the problem. Towards the end of three months, much as he liked being with Laurie, he was starting to feel that if there was the opening of an envelope, Laurie would insist on going.
With Laurie he mixed with the beautiful people. He even brushed shoulders, on the odd occasion, with Sophie and Lisa, who were never actually invited themselves, but who would be there with their latest glamorous men, not that Ben ever noticed, he was far too busy being Laurie’s boyfriend.
And that, you see, was the beginning of the end. “So you’re Laurie’s mystery man,” people used to say, instantly forgetting his name. “So this is Laurie’s boyfriend,” they’d say, greeting him distractedly before turning away to someone more famous, and consequently, at least in their eyes, more interesting.
He was bored, and it showed. On the few occasions he tried discussing this with Laurie, she’d smother him with kisses and tell him not to be ridiculous, that he was being silly, that none of these people mattered.
But you see it did matter. It mattered that Laurie had to be the center of attention, wherever she went, and in the end Ben went to her flat one night and told her it wasn’t working. He said he wasn’t happy, that he really liked her, but he didn’t like her lifestyle.
Laurie, being the actress that she is, cried for a while, and tried begging him to stay, promising things would be different, but Ben knew they wouldn’t be, and he put his arms around her and kissed her softly on the forehead as he wished her good luck and goodbye.
Ben walked out of Laurie’s flat, out of her life, and out of the whirlwind of parties, and truth to be told, although he missed Laurie, particularly at night, he was filled with a huge relief.
Because Ben isn’t much good at pretending and, try as he might, he never felt he fitted in with the jet-setters, nor did he want to. It didn’t take long for Ben to see beyond the glitz and glamour, to the heart of insecurities, pretensions and inadequacies that people tried to cover up.
He hated the fact that on the rare occasions people asked what he did for a living—and I say rare because most of these people were far too self-absorbed to be interested in anyone else—their faces would cloud over with boredom when he told them he was a reporter on the Kilburn Herald.
Ben never tried to disguise his job because he didn’t have to. He was, is, secure and confident
enough to not care what others think, and this is what he hated most of all, how he was judged by his job, not himself.
So yes, Ben is more than familiar with women like Sophie and Lisa, with the men they go out with, the parties they go to, and he wouldn’t touch their lifestyles with a ten-foot pole. But of course Jemima doesn’t know this. Nor do Sophie and Lisa, who, at this moment in time, are buzzing round the flat, pulling spiky, spongy things out of their hair, washing off face masks, expertly applying makeup.
They are going out later, but they have decided to do a pre-clubbing pub and bar crawl. They watched Jemima and Ben walk up the road, and they know they won’t have gone far, and they will soon be off on a search.
Ben and Jemima reach the bar, slightly incongruous for this part of Kilburn, for it looks like it ought to be in Soho or Notting Hill.
Large picture windows look out on to the street, and a huge bust of a woman, the sort of bust that used to be on the front of ships in pirate movies, stares fondly down from the top of the door frame.
Ben holds the door open for Jemima as they walk in, and Jemima instantly wishes they had gone somewhere else, somewhere less trendy, somewhere where she didn’t feel out of place.
For despite being in Kilburn the bar is filled with beautiful, fashionable people. A different sort of fashion to Soho or Notting Hill, more of a street fashion, less a designer label fashion, but nevertheless fashionable. The air is filled with smoke and soft laughter, and Jemima follows Ben to the bar, her shoes clip-clopping on the scrubbed wooden floors as she walks.
Antique mirrors and mismatched paintings cover the wall, and in a small room off the main bar are a couple of beaten-up leather sofas and armchairs. It is to this room that Ben carries their drinks—a pint of lager for him and a bottle of Beck’s for Jemima.