Seth’s stone cold sober too, I know by the way he’s probably the only person in the whole room not flushed with the heat and with too much champagne. I strain my ears and lean as far back as I can to try and pick up Jake’s replies, or even try to catch his eye, but every time I do, Shania, with that drunken sixth sense people get when someone’s trying to extricate themselves from them, keeps gripping my arm so tightly she’s nearly bruising it, pulling me right back to her.
Christ knows what deep probing Seth is doing on poor Jake. All I know is that there’s a cold clutch on my heart that wasn’t there before and tiny beads of worry sweat are inconveniently starting to pump down my temples.
Turns out I’ve every reason to fret.
Shania has strong-armed me down into the place beside her, with Jake on her other side, while Seth sits opposite leaving his date, who it turns out is called Vogue, on my left. Now having been exposed to Vogue for approximately five minutes, not only am I now convinced she is in fact a hired escort, but also that Seth is paying her an hourly rate. The giveaway being the subtle way she keeps checking her watch again and again. I’m sorry, but there’s just no way on earth Seth could ever land a stunnah like Vogue, short of paying her two hundred euro an hour, minimum. She’s one of those ‘look no carbs!’ thin women, with a glossy mane of Pippa Middletonesque, high-maintenance wavy hair, caramel skin and a mouthful of pretty white teeth so perfect, I’m thinking veneers. Spends twice as long as anyone else perusing the menu, and when it comes to ordering, it’s like an assault course of, ‘Oh no, I’m lactose intolerant, coeliac, allergic to fish and only eat red meat once a week.’
God love the poor harassed waiter, is all I can think, looking at him pityingly.
If I didn’t have other things on my mind and for nothing more than pure bloody-mindedness, it wouldn’t have been easier for me to start grilling her about Seth, just as he grilled Jake out in the bar. Just a handful of questions, I correctly suspect, along the lines of, ‘So tell me, how exactly did you two meet?’ would be enough to flush out an escort from a genuine girlfriend before you could say, ‘Dial 1-800-
hotsexydates
’.
But I don’t get a chance to. Because Shania, having drained the champagne flute in front of her, then picks up mine and says, ‘You’re not finishing that, are you?’ before downing it in one. I flash Jake a look that says, ‘fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to get bumpy’, but Shania’s bypassed drunkenness and has now moved onto obnoxiousness and once she’s on a roll, there’s absolutely no stopping her.
‘Now pleeeeashe don’t get me wrong Eloise,’ she slurs into my face, ‘this guy that you’re with … Jack? Jock?’
‘Jake,’ I answer her absently, my thoughts miles away.
And, just so you know, he’s not deaf and is sitting just one person away from you, I want to hiss at her, but she’s now at that stage of pure stociousness that it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference.
‘Yeah, him. Thatsh’s the one. Jock. He’s a good-looking guy Eloise. Have you noticed? And he’s completely changing your whole pershonality, everyone is saying so. You’re the talk of the whooooole party …’
Oh would you shut up, please for the love of God, just shut up now. Do you know how much you’re embarrassing both of us?
‘He’s sexy too. Jusht the kind of strong, silent type I’d happily go for myself if my bollocking hushhhhband wasn’t staring over at me,’ she says cattily.
‘Here, have some lovely, cool, iced water,’ I say artificially brightly, anything to get off this most mortifying of subjects and get back to all my silent stressing and fretting.
‘Oh sod the sodding water!’ she says, roughly pushing my arm away, so I slosh a bit of it over my own dress.
‘Now you just lishen to me, Eloise. I alwaysh liked you. Alwaysh did. Even though all the other corporate wives said you were just this inhuman, ice-maiden bitch-queen, who terrified grown men and who had nothing else going on in her life apart from her job …’
‘Here, have a bread roll, please, go on, just one little bread roll …’ I say to her in the same coaxing tone I use to get Lily to eat her broccoli. Bit of food to soak up the alcohol, I reason, might just keep her quiet and sober her up a bit at the same time.
‘But all that time, I shtood up for you. Said absolutely not! That you weren’t just the overambitious saddo everyone said you were.’
I say nothing to this, just pick at the corner of a bread roll myself in silent fury, mind racing ahead, wondering what exactly it’ll take to get her to shut the feck up once and for all.
And on she still goes.
‘You wanna know what I shaid about you?’ Shania nudges me so roughly she almost knocks me off my chair. ‘Said to hell with what the lot of you think of Eloise Elliot, I admire a driven woman with a bit of determination …’
‘Oh look, isn’t that Gemma Ingram over there, talking to Marc Robinson? Haven’t seen her in years, let me just slip over to her to say hello …’
‘Shtop changing the shagging subject!’
She senses I want to escape and is gripping onto my arm now. Short of the fire alarm going off, there’s just no way out.
‘But you just lishten to me Eloise, and lishten good. Don’t let any fecking man take over your life. Because that’s what all men will eventually do. I don’t want you to end up like me. I don’t want to see you five years from now, having sacrificed your whole career for some man who’ll then shhtart chasing after thirty-year-olds while you sit at home night after night thinking he’s at a board meeting. At shagging
ten o’ clock
on a Saturday night, for fuck’s sake. Mark my words Eloise, let a man into your life and you’ll loshe so much more than you have to gain. You have to trusht me … I’ve been round the block and I know exactshly what I’m talking about.’
‘Oh look, here’s the menu,’ I interrupt her, brightly. ‘Mmmmm, I’m starving, what are you going to order? I think I might start with the monkfish …’
‘Sex,’ she nods sadly into her now empty glass, her teeth already well-blackened from all the red wine. ‘That’s all they’re good for. Sex. Even that big hunk of yours on your other side here …’
Jake, who’s in turn being bored to death by Seth beside him, shoots me a quick ‘you okay?’ look and I feel him squeezing my hand under the table, but right now I’m beyond rescuing.
‘Wanna know what I think the best FECKING thing you ever did in your whooole life was, Eloishe?’
‘Why not tell me later? Come on, let’s order …’
But I’m too late.
‘Beshhht thing you ever did was deciding that you wanted to have a baby and not hanging around for any man to make it happen for you.’
Okay, now my stomach actually physically clenches. I shoot her a dangerous, shut-up-now-or-I’ll-physically-throttle-you-with-my-bare-hands look, but it’s no use.
Maybe Jake didn’t hear that. Maybe not – there’s a good chance he didn’t. Every chance in fact …
Next thing, Shania is clapping her hands together, loudly applauding me, just in case we weren’t attracting enough attention.
‘Fair play to you Eloise, tshat’s what I shay! You took control and did what you wanted to do! Who needs a fecking man anyway to have a baby with these days anyway?’
‘Shania, shhh, please!’ I’m almost snarling at her now, heat rushing to my face.
‘Don’t you dare shush me! I’m throwing you my pearls of wishdom here, you know!’
To make matters worse, by now the speeches have started and Jimmy Doorley, our CFO, is droning through a microphone with so much reverb that it nearly whistles, about last year’s fiscal returns and how this year, our projected profits will be down five per cent and blah-di-blah-di-blah.
Meanwhile I’m telegraphing furious ‘we need to listen to this!’ looks at Shania, but she’s on a drunken roll now and no power on earth is about to shut her up.
‘In 2011, our net profit after tax was regrettably down almost five per cent on a lik-for-like basis, compared with the previous financial year,’ Jimmy’s monotonous voice is whistling into the gammy microphone, boring for Ireland, whining on and on and on.
Polar icecaps will melt and seabeds will rise before he ever shuts up, I think, willing him to get on with it as quickly as possible so we can get onto the meal and then get the hell out of here. But even though the room has gone quiet and everyone is at least feigning interest in his speech, no such concerns about politeness are troubling Shania.
‘Courshe I remember all too well the gosship going round about you at the time,’ she nudges me roughly. ‘When you were pregnant I mean.’
‘Shhh … we really need to keep quiet for this speech,’ I hiss at her, nearly ready to stuff a napkin into her mouth if I thought it would do the trick.
‘Oh don’t be so ridiculoush!’ Shania’s voice is vinegary by now. ‘Who in their right minds would wanna listen to boring old Jimmy Doorley anyway?’
A few filthy looks from the tables beside us, but they don’t even register with her.
‘Oh people shaid all kinds of things about you at the time. Who’s Eloise Elliot’s baby daddy was like a partshy game we all played – but you wanna know what I said? I said “to hell with the lot of you anyway!” I shaid that I admired any woman with the balls to do what you did. Because being a shingle parent is bloody hard. And didn’t you have the lasht laugh? You’ve got a lovely little child now … Boy or a girl? I forget – but they’d be about three years old now, ishn’t that right?’
‘Shhh, please!’ I shoot her a scalding stare and furiously grip her arm, but it’s a waste of time.
I offer up a silent, panicky prayer to anyone up above who’ll listen that Jake hasn’t overheard any of this, but it’s impossible to tell. He’s sitting stone still beside me, looking straight ahead of him, fixing the podium with a borehole stare. All the gentle hand squeezing that went on under the table just a minute ago has suddenly stopped.
‘Then when the truth leaked out, no one could believe it! Artifishal insemination – genius! But I said, for Christ’s shake why does any modern women need a partner to get pregnant with these days? Who wants some man in their life telling you how to be a bloody parent anyway? You were dead right Eloise. Are you lishenting to me? Look at me when I’m talking to you! I want to tell you that I think going to a sperm bank was the BESHT idea you ever had! Beshides, I think I might even be able to guess the name of the clinic you musht have gone to; the Reilly something, the Reilly Institute out somewhere in Shandyford, is that where you went? The name shtuck in my mind ’cos a friend of mine goes there for H.R.T. and she shays it’s THE place in town to go to for artificial … artificial … what-doyoucall it, anyway, you know what I mean. So, am I right? Eloise, anshwer me, for God’s shake!’
She’s actually thumping the table, infuriated now at being ignored and airbrushed away.
Please, please, please don’t let Jake have heard, please God, Santa, Buddha, anyone who’s listening, please …
But I’m wasting my breath. And it’s the way Jake is staring straight ahead, glassy-eyed, that’s worrying me.
He knows, I can just feel it. Knows everything now, Shania’s lovely, tactful reference to the Reilly Institute surely put paid to that.
Plus, judging by the looks we’re getting, not only our table, but half the room just heard Shania’s last remark. I’m sweating worse than Robert de Niro ever did in
Raging Bull
and all I know is that I have to get her out of here. Right now. I don’t care how rude it looks, I’ll worry about damage limitation later.
‘Right, that’s it Shania, I think the best thing is if I take you outside for a bit of air, right now. Come on …’
I cast around our table, desperately needing someone to help me, but no one will. Not Seth, not his Dial-A-Date and not even Jake, who won’t as much as make eye contact with me. So I try to arm-lift her out of her chair, but she’s a lead weight and won’t as much as budge for me.
‘Get your handsh off me, I’m not going ANYWHERE!’ Shania is almost yelling at me now, viciously swatting me aside. ‘I wanna another drink!’
‘Excuse me, is there some kind of problem at that table?’ Jimmy politely asks into the microphone.
‘No, emm … There’s no problem here! Everything’s fine!’ I answer over-brightly, my mouth stretched into a smile so wide that my muscles start to twitch with the effort.
I’m now sickeningly aware that even though four hundred other pairs of eyes in the room seem to be solely focused on Shania and me, Jake alone just stares straight ahead, saying nothing, doing nothing, like he’s wilfully ignoring me.
Jake, who’s spent the whole evening so far looking over at me, checking on me, mouthing me little silent words of acknowledgement, slipping his arm round me when he thought no one was looking. It feels like the mysterious telepathic bridge that was always between us has just been broken in two. He knows, is all I can think. Knows everything.
‘For feck’s sake Eloise, will you let me go!’ Shania yells, if not quite savagely, then in that general area. ‘I was only trying to give you a shagging compliment, you moron!’
I nearly burst with relief when I see the white head of Robbie from Foreign leaping to his feet to help me lead her out. He mutters something to me about finding Sir Gavin, but he’s up at the top table, rustling through a pile of notes and getting primed to make his own speech next, generally acting like his wife’s carry-on is a relatively normal occurrence that he doesn’t particularly want anything to do with.
‘I was only trying to tell you,’ Shania spits furiously at me as we eventually haul her out of her chair, ‘that if I had my time over, I’d do exaxtshly what you did! Not bother with a man, jusht go to a sperm bank and have done with it! Now, will you fecking well let me go!’
Meanwhile Seth sits back opposite, fingers latticed thoughtfully, mouth pursed in a cat’s-bum shape, looking from me to Jake and from Jake to me with just one expression hardened onto his face.‘Tonight just got interesting.’
‘You know what they say,
in vino veritas
,’ is the last thing I hear him tell the entire table, as Robbie and I gently steer Shania out of the room and to safety.
Takes every last gram of strength I have not to go back there, pick up an empty wine bottle, smash it up against his greasy, slimy head and pray that it causes lasting damage.