Seeing Other People (5 page)

At this point there was literally nothing I could do other than usher Stewart through to hair and make-up and hope for the best. But as I was about to do that I noticed something else about him – other than the ketchup stains on his sweatshirt – that wasn’t quite right.

‘Where are your kids? You do know we need them to be here for the photos?’

Stewart shook his head. ‘Gaz never said anything about that. He just said that I needed to be a recently separated dad, which I am.’

This was great. Not only had I booked the world’s least photogenic man for the shoot but his kids weren’t even here. Camilla would burst a blood vessel the moment she saw the pictures. Wherever these kids were, whatever they were doing, I was going to have to get them to the studio in the next hour. ‘Where do they go to school? I’ll send a car round to pick them up.’

Stewart blinked and stared down at his chips and for an awful moment I thought he might cry. ‘My kids, Thomas and Victoria, they’re actually in Thailand. That’s where their mum’s from and where she’s taken them. I’m trying to get them back but my solicitor says it could take months if not years.’

I couldn’t have felt any worse than I did at that moment. This poor guy was stuck in the middle of an international custody battle, and here was me giving him a hard time. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Stewart, I really am. Listen, why don’t you take a seat over by the coffee and pastries and I’ll send someone to look after you.’

Five minutes later I looked up from my phone (still only one bar) to see a tall, stocky man accompanied by two sullen-looking kids, a boy and a girl, neither of whom was more than ten or eleven years old. They had to be my next interviewees. On the downside: in his long grey overcoat, rolled-up black jeans and Doc Marten boots, Tall Stocky Man looked like an overgrown student. On the upside: if I squinted it turned out that he was actually not bad-looking – not exactly Camilla’s type, but the sort of squishy, slightly overweight amenable beta male that most men wouldn’t mind their sister dating.

‘You must be Paul Baker.’ I recognised him from the picture he had emailed to me earlier in the week. ‘Nice to meet you and these must be your kids . . .’

‘Zach and Melody.’

‘That’s the one!’ I replied, hoping he hadn’t noticed that I’d completely forgotten their names. ‘Pleased to meet you Zach and Melody, just take a seat over there next to the—’

I was stopped in my tracks by the sound of bellowing. A huge hulk of a guy in his late forties with peroxide blond shoulder-length hair and the walk and demeanour of a retired WWE wrestler was yelling questions at the studio’s pretty receptionist even though she was sitting less than two feet away from him.

‘I’m here for a magazine shoot!’ he boomed in a heavy New Zealand accent that was straight out of
Flight of the Conchords
. ‘Bloke who’s organising it is called Joe Cook . . . or Cart or something like that.’

The receptionist – presumably terrified that he was about to lift her up and throw her across the room – pointed in my direction.

‘All right mate?’ he yelled down the corridor as though he was attempting to be heard over a crowd. ‘Don’t mind telling you this place has been a right bugger to find!’

This couldn’t be right. I had a photo on my phone of my last interviewee. He was a guy called Rajesh, in his mid-twenties, who looked a lot like an Indian Brad Pitt. This guy with his denim shirt open to the waist, leather trousers and cowboy boots looked like a stand-in for
Dog the Bounty Hunter.

‘I think there might have been some sort of mistake,’ I said quickly as I noticed the two small sandy-haired double–denim-dressed boys trailing after him. I made a big show of checking my list in the hope that this might rein him in a little. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Van Halen.’

Surely I couldn’t have heard that properly. ‘Sorry?’

‘Van
Halen
,’ said the man. ‘Like the band.’ He sang a couple of the opening bars to ‘Jump’ surprisingly well. ‘I changed it by deed poll. You can call me Van though, everyone does.’

This was all too much. I needed it to stop this very second. ‘The thing is . . . Van, I’m actually waiting for a Rajesh Bhatnagar.’

‘Yeah I know, dude’s my drummer and a bloody good one too. You should hear him do the solo from Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”. He kills it! Anyway, funny story: he was telling his ex-missus about the shoot last night and about how he’d need to take the kids out of school and long story short they’ve decided to give their thing another go. Knowing my circumstances he called me this morning and asked if I’d step in. I split up with my old girl a few months back, damn nearly killed me.’

I should’ve known better than to ask the next question but I couldn’t help myself.

‘Why did you split up, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘She caught me with a groupie.’

I had to stop myself from laughing. Of course he was in some awful band. Either that or he was a roadie. Again, I couldn’t help myself.

‘What kind of music do you play?’

‘We’re called Man Halen. We’re a Van Halen tribute band, formerly of Wellington, New Zealand, currently of Willesden Green.’ He looked down at the children. ‘And these are the twins: Harley and Suzuki.’

If this had been happening to anyone other than me it would have made for the funniest story I’d heard in years. After all, what wasn’t amusing about hearing how some journalist had laid out thousands of pounds hiring a studio, a top notch photographer, stylist and make-up artist on behalf of his newspaper for a cover shoot and feature only to have the whole exercise undermined by the ropiest bunch of interviewees ever? But what could I do? I was under no illusions: Camilla would hate the results. Equally, if I cancelled everything and returned to the office empty-handed I’d be in even bigger trouble. For a moment I seriously considered begging some of the better-looking fathers I knew to come down to the studio with their kids and then making up their interviews afterwards but that was precisely the kind of escapade that would guarantee the sack.

I shuddered as I cast a final look over at my interviewees who were chatting and laughing together like old friends. How did people get themselves into messes like theirs? Pitiful examples though they truly were, these men were what I was stuck with, my Divorced Dads’ Club. As I ushered them and the children towards the dressing rooms I took solace in the fact that as awful as the feature would undoubtedly be the one saving grace of the whole debacle was that this was one club of which I’d never have to become a member.

4

Despite Carl’s comment at the beginning of the shoot that he had the retouching house on speed dial the shoot actually went a lot better than I’d expected and the results, while not brilliant, were far from poor. Relieved at this news I’d agreed to join Carl and his assistant for a drink and so once we’d waved off the Divorced Dads and their kids, we’d helped pack up the studio before heading to the Hop and Grape, a down-at-heel pub around the corner from the studio.

The guys, both single, clearly wanted to make a night of it but somewhere around my fourth pint I realised that if I didn’t leave now there was every danger that I wouldn’t make it home at all and so I said my goodbyes.

Drunk, tired and feeling oddly emotional I left the pub and started following directions on my phone to the nearest overground train station. As I headed up the road my phone pinged. It was a text message from a number I didn’t recognise:

Sorry to text you out of the blue like this (I asked Dave Walsh for number, hope is OK?). Wanted to thank you again for being so nice today. Would love to take you out for a drink sometime to carry on the conversation. Hope to see you soon, Bella xxx.

Bella.

I’d been thinking about her – or more accurately, trying my best not to think about her and failing miserably – all afternoon. I wasn’t mad was I? She had been flirting with me at the café. The coy smiles across the table, the way she’d hung on my every word like I was the smartest guy on earth and that touch, that touch had been electric and had left me feeling on top of the world. On the very day that my bosses had let me know just how little they thought of me I’d received validation from this smart, sexy, confident young woman. Where in every other sphere of my existence I felt like I was old news Bella had made me feel like I was worldly and interesting. To her I wasn’t just an anonymous old hack with the best of my career behind me, I was a successful journalist at the top of my game, and a published author who happened to have written her all-time favourite book.

It was flattering. How could it not have been? She was gorgeous. But the truth is I wasn’t at all in the market for an affair. Don’t get me wrong: as a husband I was by no means perfect. And if I’m being totally honest I’ll admit from time to time to having had minor crushes on women other than Penny. But these were crushes, nothing more, and while Penny might not exactly have been over the moon had she been aware of their existence to me at least they weren’t signs of a desire to betray my wife; rather proof that I was still alive and kicking. I no more wanted these women in any real sense than I wanted to walk on the moon or score a winning goal for England in a World Cup final. It was the stuff of fantasy, pure and simple, but this thing with Bella felt different, it felt dangerous, and I wanted no part of it.

I quickly tapped out a reply to her message:
Was good to meet you too. Not sure how I’m fixed for next week. Quite busy. Maybe another time
J

I pressed Send and breathed a huge sigh of relief as I thought about my afternoon with the Divorced Dads’ Club. If flirting with a woman nearly thirteen years your junior wasn’t a guaranteed way of joining the club then I didn’t know what was. Turning her down was absolutely the right thing to do.

An electronic ping. A reply from Bella:
That’s a shame
L
. How did shoot
go?

Nervously I tapped out a quick reply:
OK. Interviewees=ropey. Have
been to pub to de-stress! On way home now.

An electronic ping. Another message:
So you’re still out? I’m out too! Have been for drinks for friend’s birthday so am v. tipsy. Everyone’s heading home now but I want to carry on. Why don’t you join me and I’ll buy you that drink we talked about!

She wasn’t making this easy was she? I tapped out another message:
I’d
love to but I can’t
, and in an instant I received her reply:
How about if I promise
not to keep you out too late?

It was time for a different line of defence.
Really I can’t
, I wrote.
Have
loads on at work tomorrow
. In a matter of seconds I received her reply:
You
work too hard! Everybody needs to let their hair down a little! I’m only in the Sun
and Thirteen Cantons. You could be here in no time
.

This was all too much for me. In spite of the boost it was giving my ego I knew it couldn’t go any further. I returned my phone to my jacket pocket. I had to get out of here, to somewhere safe where I wouldn’t be tempted to make any stupid decisions. I scanned the street for a taxi to take me home but the only cabs I could see were already occupied. I resolved to just keep walking and continued on up the road but then there was that all-too-familiar electronic ping from inside my jacket. I made up my mind to ignore it. No good could come from becoming embroiled in a game of text tennis. If I didn’t take part I couldn’t get in any trouble.

I managed to get a good thirty feet up the road before the insistent ping of the phone got the better of me. I took out the phone and checked her message:
Pretty please?
This was getting ridiculous. She was practically begging me to meet her. Was she really as drunk as she was making out? She had to be surely. I never had that much confidence when I was twenty-five.

I stared at my phone wondering how best to reply and then finally it hit me. I could just switch off my phone and have done with the whole thing until morning, by which time she’d be sober and so would I meaning that we could just get on with the business of avoiding each other forever. As I pressed down on the button that would cut off our communication for good I received another text that proved impossible to ignore:
I promise you won’t regret it!

I promise you won’t regret it.

Was she saying what I think she was saying?

I promise you won’t regret it.

This wasn’t just my imagination, was it?

I promise you won’t regret it.

I was a thirty-eight-year-old failed novelist and hack and she was a young, attractive woman with her whole life ahead of her and if I wasn’t mistaken she had just sent me a text outlining the fact that
she
wanted to sleep with
me.
Out of all the men alive in the world at this moment in time this beautiful woman wanted me and all I needed to do to make it happen between us was to jump in a cab and meet her.

But I couldn’t, could I?

It would be wrong in every way.

I’d always sworn I’d never cheat on Penny.

I just wasn’t that kind of guy.