The Perfect 10 (20 page)

‘So … what are you offering me?’ I gulp back tears, and pray.

‘I didn’t know I was “offering” anything.’ He takes my hand, and laces his fingers through mine. ‘Let’s just angle our faces to the sun, feel the wind in our backs, and see what happens?’ He smiles at me as he says it and squeezes my hand.

I look up into his eyes, and I hear myself saying, ‘OK,’ and nodding, like the dog in the back of the car, waiting for its head to be ripped off.

I am instantly terrified of how it will feel when he leaves. Of how my heart will bruise and bleed when he decides that it is easier to hurt me and stay with her, than hurt her and be with me. When he actually makes the decision that my feelings don’t matter as much, that I don’t matter as much. When he admits that he’d rather I was sad than she was. And maybe he won’t even picture me, sitting on my own somewhere, fighting off tears, because he won’t like the thought that he caused it. But it doesn’t mean I won’t sit on my own, and I won’t cry, because I will, when his actions turn my life on its axis and dump all the plotted points in a mess on the floor. I can already feel it coming. But for some reason I feel that it is good for me to stay in this, and wait with morbid curiosity. I need to know that it won’t kill me.

I glance up at the clock. ‘It’s quarter to seven, we have to go.’ I unlock my hand from his, and wipe my eyes, standing up and brushing myself down.

‘Or …’ Adrian kicks back his chair, and walks slowly round the table towards me, and puts his hands around my waist.

‘Or?’ I ask, incredulous. But he doesn’t get it, because he starts to hitch up my dress carefully, tickling my thighs with his fingers as he lifts it slowly higher, and tickling my neck with his lips and his breath. Crouching down slightly, silky material in his hands rising inch by inch, he massages his
thumbs upwards on the inside of my thighs, pushing me gently back against the kitchen wall. I am waiting for the right moment to stop him, as he pulls my knickers down with one hand, and squeezes my breasts through my dress with the other, leaving wrinkles and creases where his hand has been. I wait to say no, as he kisses me gently, his tongue slowly circling the inside of my lips. But then he pulls back, and looks me straight in the eye, so near to me that I feel it can only be honesty that I see, he is too close to lie. Then he drops to his knees, and lifts my dress, and pushes my legs a little further apart. I run my hands through the long dark hair on the back of his head as his tongue teases me gently, before he kisses me long and hard, alternating his mouth with his fingers, until I am digging my nails into his neck. He knows instinctively when to stop, and stands, unzipping his trousers quickly with his left hand, while the fingers on his right keep me ready. Suddenly I feel him graze me with his cock, which is the hardest I have felt it, not softened by drink … I can’t believe he makes me wait, and just lingers there, watching my face, tracing a line with himself, up and down me. But then he pushes forward, and this time it is slow, and it is hard, and he watches my reactions, and knows exactly what to do, and it feels as if it is only about me …

As we run along the road afterwards, holding hands, and I click click click in heels, and we both check our watches, knowing we are late, I cannot believe how amazing I feel. How hard I shook, and how loudly I screamed, actually screamed, with pure joyful bloody relief. It was unlike anything I have ever felt before. It was the kind of amazing that I know, just like a first hit of heroin to a teenager, or the murderous rush of a first kill to a psychopath, that I won’t be able to resist again. And yet like the addict and the killer, I already know I am doomed … because I am
giving away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of a decoration to charm his vanity … and there is no picture hanging in my attic to smudge with tears and crumple and fall apart. When it happens, that will really be me, and everybody will see.

Children are screaming and swirling around my legs, grabbing hold of Adrian’s trousers as they spin past us to stop themselves toppling into the balustrades of the stairs or the large glass Philippe Starck thing in the hallway. William, who doesn’t pay me any attention although we have met before, is chasing two very young girls in jeans and citrus-coloured T-shirts. The girls squeal and giggle and call out to each other.

‘Poppy!’

‘Gabriella!’

‘Poppy! Poppy!’

‘Gabriella!’

Sweet high voices and perfect diction, they could read the ten o’clock news – and now over to Poppy for a breaking story on the CIA in Afghanistan – and back to Gabriella for predictions of the chancellor’s third budget tomorrow, and incidentally, Gabriella, is it true that you are only five years and two months? Yes, yes it is, Poppy, and is it true you will be four in three weeks’ time? Yes, Gabriella, that’s right!

Clean curls bounce on their little shoulders, dancing and
twirling, playing kiss chase and escaping from boys, splashing about in a perfect childhood. As they run off into the kitchen, hotly pursued by Charlie, I see a little red head and freckles peeking out from behind a stable door, but as we catch each other’s eyes, Dougal disappears. I grab behind me for Adrian’s hand, but he has already moved through into the sitting room.

My heels announce me on the wooden floor as I take three steps through the doorway, and everybody looks up in my direction with wide friendly eyes, but they all forget to smile. I shouldn’t have had sex with Adrian before we left. I feel like everybody knows, and it makes me a whore. Deidre will introduce me to her neighbours, perched on the edge of the sofa reeking of Amnesty International and back garden rosemary, as ‘Sunny Weston, the whore who saved my son’.

Adrian has just sat down in the last available armchair in the corner of the room, and he pats its slightly worn purple arm for me to come and sit with him, but I don’t. Deidre flies out of the room as she hears an alarm buzzing angrily in the kitchen, mumbling back over her shoulder that Terence has popped out to Oddbins but will be back in minutes; he didn’t feel they had the right white.

There is one other armchair, and Cagney James is sitting in it. I quickly look away. Standing by the fireplace is a tall handsome man in an impeccable suit who looks totally familiar, but I can’t place him. I try not to appear frantic with nerves, but instinctively pull at the front of my dress to make sure it isn’t caught up in any rolls of fat. I always pull too hard, because there isn’t anywhere for the material to be stuck now. My dress is claret silk and knee length, simple and fitted, with a scoop neck and elbow-length sleeves. I am wearing chocolate brown Mary Janes, but no tights, because of the heat.

Christine and Peter Gloaming from next door introduce themselves with big smiles as the parents of Poppy and Gabriella. Christine, who is small-framed but with a large stomach, and is no taller than five foot two, asks if she can get me a glass of wine, and moves past me to the kitchen. My gut instinct is to refuse, alcohol effectively doubling the amount of calories consumed in a meal, but I don’t know if I will make it if I have to observe this night with sober eyes, so I thank her and hope she won’t be too long with my much-needed glass of Dutch courage.

I stand in the middle of the sitting room, in front of Adrian and Cagney James, and Peter Gloaming, who is thin but flabby, with a long neck and metal glasses, and the man at the fireplace who introduces himself as Christian Laurie. He explains that he is here with Cagney, and that we’ve met before because he owns Screen Queen, which is where I rent my videos. He smiles at me warmly, and I wonder, if he is as lovely as he seems, what is he doing with Cagney? Seconds later the penny drops that Cagney is gay, and I feel a little angry. My therapist had it very wrong indeed.

I glance back at Christian, who beams at me again, and I think it must be because he remembers me, from last year, bigger. Of course, he will have told Cagney James. I didn’t want him to know. I didn’t want to give him the ammunition. I look around and see that everybody here weighs about average, the only real felony being Christine’s stomach, and that is just age and two lots of childbirth, unfortunate genes and no real cardio. But because there is nobody present who is noticeably overweight, I am sure that at some point this evening Cagney will make a fat jibe, and they will always sting.

The children are sitting at a separate table that has been set up in the kitchen. Christine and Deidre take it in turns to
supervise them: Deidre slips quietly in to the dining room, and lowers herself back into her chair as Christine pushes herself gently to her feet, and moves noiselessly into the kitchen. By the sound of it the children are having a lot more fun than we are. I have only said ‘hello’ to Cagney. I haven’t looked him in the eye at all. I sit between Peter Gloaming and Terence Turnball, and turn from one to the other and continue what seems to be the same conversation about phone masts or local schooling or schooling children about local phone masts. Deidre sits next to Peter when she is not checking on the children. I notice that her husband, Terence, has winked at her twice across the table, and half smiled. Cagney sits to Deidre’s right, and Christine’s left, and so only ever has one table-mate, but whomever it happens to be, Christine or Deidre, they give him their undivided attention. He finds this uncomfortable, I can tell. He would rather they were both there, and talked over him, or neither was there and left him in peace. I haven’t heard him give more than a one-word answer since we sat down half an hour ago. To Christine’s right is Adrian, but as Christine only ever talks to an otherwise solitary Cagney when she is at the table, Adrian only ever talks to Christian. They seem to be having the most acceptable time. They laugh lightly and occasionally, and chat animatedly, and it makes me jealous. And then there is Terence, and then it’s me.

I haven’t seen Dougal since that first early glimpse, and I have to say I am relieved. Terence excuses himself early on and darts into the kitchen while Deidre clears away our starter plates, which are licked clean of their salmon sashimi on seaweed, with deep-fried baby oysters on top. He returns moments later, leading Dougal by his little food-stained hand into the dining room. The small talk stops.

Dougal doesn’t resist his daddy, but looks down rather than at his audience.

‘Dougal wanted to say hello, and show what a big brave boy he is,’ Terence says as Dougal looks at his Clarks pasty shoes.

I hear Christian inhale sharply. I glance over at Cagney, who is looking down at the table, mortified.

‘Dougal, this is Sunny, and this is Cagney,’ Terence says.

Dougal looks up, from me to Cagney, and then back at his little shoes with Velcro fastening for babies. I feel a lump in my throat, and swallow it loudly. Cagney hears it and looks up at me. Dougal doesn’t recognise us, and I am relieved.

‘I think it’s good that he doesn’t remember who you are,’ Terence stage-whispers, so that the neighbours, if they were next door and not sat at our table, would be able to hear.

Dougal looks up at his daddy, who wasn’t there on the day that he needed him most, and I wonder who it is that hurts more. Dougal opens and shuts his hand, as his father clasps it.

‘Well, I think it’s time you went to bed, young man.’ Deidre moves anxiously forward and takes Dougal’s other hand. Dougal lets go of his father instantly.

‘Say good night,’ Deidre says, and Dougal whispers, ‘Gnight.’

‘Why don’t you give Sunny a kiss good night?’ Terence says suddenly, and I hear Christian gasp again.

‘Oh Jesus, no!’ I exclaim. A table full turns to face me sharply. ‘I mean, please, just let him go to bed. He doesn’t need to do that. He doesn’t know who I am.’

I don’t want him to have to touch me. Deidre smiles at me, and leads Dougal out of the room, avoiding eye contact with Terence, who mulls something over as he moves to sit back down.

‘More wine, anyone?’ he asks, holding another bottle of the ‘right white’ aloft.

Four glasses shoot out in unison.

Two hours later we have descended into a drunken slurring band who stalked and snatched intoxication with bare desperate hands. The fog in my head is sweet relief from the silences that keep enveloping the table. Christian blurts out random statements at ten-minute intervals, taking the time to compose each one in his head, and ensure he has the syllables of each word in the right place, before he declares them to a table desperate for something to say.

‘Hathor was the goddess of both love … and laughter, you know.’ He sighs heavily, having just realised a lifetime’s worth of depression in that one thought. His head slips from his hand and his chin jerks forwards and upwards just in time – moments more and it would have smashed on to the table and into a thousand tiny pieces.

‘How apt,’ Cagney says. It is hard to tell whether he is truly drunk or not, but his tone is more aggressive than usual and his manner allusive. He seems like a man desperately trying to hint at something we, his audience, should be guessing, miming it out to us but at the same time hoping we don’t see.

A moment passes when nobody says anything.

‘Meaning?’ Christian asks, passionately drunkenly bored.

‘That love is a joke. Obviously.’ Cagney’s sentences have begun to resemble the shots of whiskey he is downing sporadically from a bottle that magicked itself on to the table half an hour ago. He conjured it from thin air. I am waiting for the handkerchiefs, the bunch of flowers, the single white dove. There is barely a quarter of the bottle left. He fires out his words bullet fast and hard at us all, waiting for one of us to get hit and ripped open, and scream a response. How does this man function in the world, on a daily basis? How does he buy milk, or stamps, or fill up his car with petrol, or speak to his mother, or his cleaning lady?
How does he do any of these things, so filled with this rage?

‘And what is it that you do, James?’ I ask. ‘I mean, Mr James. Cagney James … what do you do?’ I giggle childishly at how that last sentence sounds, and then feel my face fall into an animated but stern expression – the face of a person doing an impression of a person who is stern …

‘I run an agency.’ He speaks quietly, addressing the table, not me.

‘A modelling agency?’ I ask.

Cagney’s fingers, which have been folding a napkin into smaller and smaller squares go still, and he looks up at me. ‘Why a modelling agency?’

‘Oh … because that’s what I think of, when people say agency.’ What other kinds of agencies are there?

Nobody speaks, and I realise that I haven’t asked the question aloud that I had asked in my head. I gulp quickly, feeling sick.

‘What other kinds of agency are there?’ I ask.

‘The Employment Agency – that’s the new name for Job Centres,’ somebody says, but it’s not me or Christian or Cagney, so I can’t make out who. Ours are the only voices I recognise now. It’s been so long since Adrian spoke I turn sharply to check he is still at the table. But he is, looking at his phone, texting.

I slur at him under my breath, ‘Why are you even still here? Go if you wanna go …’ But he doesn’t hear me, and nobody understands me.

‘Do you run an employment agency?’ I ask Cagney.

‘No.’

‘What kind of agency then … do you run … what kind?’ I hiccup quietly, and try to hide it behind my hand.

‘An investigation agency.’ Cagney is refolding his napkin, but lets it fall open suddenly, on the table, the creases springing out.

‘What do you do?’ Christian turns and asks Adrian, when nobody says anything.

‘I’m in IT,’ Adrian replies, not looking up from his phone.

‘Oh … shit.’ Christian looks crestfallen, and turns back to me.

‘What do you do, lovely breezy bright and Sunny? What’s your biz, squiz?’ Christian laughs, and stares at me with wide eyes, waiting for the answer to his life’s question.

‘Probably children,’ I say earnestly. And then realise that wasn’t the question that he asked at all. ‘I mean, I have my own business. I wouldn’t quite call it an agency, though.’ I elongate the word ‘agency’ to aggrandise it in a way that Cagney didn’t.

I sneer in his direction a little, but without looking up he asks, ‘Doing what?’ He picks up his napkin and starts to fold it again.

‘It’s an e-business … a website. E-commerce, if you will. I am part of the … new media … wave of technology …’ I gulp with alarm as a little rush of something nasty chases up my windpipe from my stomach, and then sinks down again. Whether I am now sick or not is out of my control. But that would be awful! Throwing up at an actual dinner party thrown by adults, all over the dining table, in front of everybody! That would be the most awful thing I can ever think of … ever … My eyes widen at how awful that would be. But Cagney is speaking …

‘Doing what?’ he asks again.

‘I sell toys … and other things …’ I say it as if it were explanation enough. As if ‘other things’ is a spectacularly specific way of putting it, and there is no need for any further explanation.

‘What, like teddy bears and pogo sticks and hula hoops? Can you still get hula hoops?’ Christian asks, momentarily interested, barely interested.

‘I’m not sure … I don’t really sell those kinds of toys. My types … of toy … are meant more for … the bedroom.’ Bedroom sounds loud and round and enunciated, even though I whisper it. I reach for the bottle of wine in front of me, grab at it, and fill my glass, deliberately leaving a significant gap between bottle and glass, so much so that the wine being poured sounds like a man relieving himself. I check all the faces of the men at the table to see if it makes them uncomfortable, and it does appear to affect all of them. Except Adrian, who is still texting.