I am standing outside Ego on Hope Street, on the other side of the road, gripping a set of black railings that belong to a once-grand Victorian house, but which is now a jigsaw of bedsits with old sheets taped to the windows and junk mail protruding from unused letterboxes. I know I should be inside the restaurant by now – the others will be waiting – but I can’t move. I stand there for another ten minutes or so, wishing there was a bus-stop or a shop window nearby, so it wouldn’t look like I was being stood up or, the truth, that I was too terrified to walk up those steps. Trendy young couples with too much money walk past occasionally and I catch the odd slice of their pointless conversations; Heroes, honeymoons, Blackberry or iPhone?, coming all over her face (‘I told you I didn’t like that!’) and it feels like there should be some thumping dance tune belting out behind them as they walk. The soundtrack to their lives.
I hear seagulls crying in my pants and fumble about in my jeans for the cheap Sagem, still rooted to the spot and completely starving. It’s Stuart.
‘How long are you going to stand there for?’ he asks.
‘You can see me?’
‘Of course I can see you. I’ve been watching you tit around for, like, ever. Any longer and we’ll have to order without you. Do you want me to read out the menu? Maybe you can decide from your imaginary table out there?’
‘You’re a bitch.’
‘Thank you, darling.’
The cultural love-child of the Pet Shop Boys and Margaret Thatcher, Stuart had grown up hating his mother for not being Dusty Springfield and sticking two fingers up at society for daring to make him ‘different’. The fact that he wasn’t actually that different from me or any of his other friends in the playground – he just happened to fancy boys – was what really pissed him off. So he didn’t see why he was the one being beaten up in the toilets every day after school when there were real freaks like Angelica Hall (webbed fingers) and Oliver Grainger (ginger hair) who deserved to be pariahs. Stuart liked cock. So what? Didn’t everyone? After one particularly severe beating, I remember dressing his wounds in his bedroom as he cried on my shoulder, under the gaze of Maggie, vowing to ‘fuck every last one of them’. Whether he meant that literally or figuratively, I was never sure.
‘We’ll get married one day, you and me,’ Stuart would say, ‘I mean, I can’t see you ever finding anyone and I’m too much of a tart to stay monogamous. We’re perfect together. But no sex, obviously. Well, maybe, if we’re drunk or high or something.’
Hurtling to the end of the Nineties with a Masters in Chemistry and shares in Trojan, Stuart had walked blindfolded into a job with the biggest pharmaceuticals firm in the North-West and was now the Development Director, and he hadn’t got that far by letting teenage boys stick toilet brushes up his bottom after school. He was one of the shallowest, vainest, most acidic people I knew. Hydrochloric. He was also a genius, and my best friend. I adored him completely.
‘Get your bum in here sharpish.’ He was whispering now. ‘Lyla has a new pet in tow and if I don’t eat soon I’m going to start on him, and something tells me he’d rather enjoy it.’
Even though Stuart was a predator who’d fuck anything that had a hole, there was something in his voice that told me Lyla’s new boyfriend was worth a look. One thing Stuart and I actually had in common, aside from our age and shared hatred of the human race, was our taste in men. But I still couldn’t move.
‘Listen, petal,’ said Stuart, his voice soothing but serious, ‘I know what’s probably out there. I know why you’re not inside with us, so I’m going to talk you through it, OK?’
‘I’m not sure I can. This one is pretty bad, you haven’t seen it. I bet you didn’t pay any attention at all when you walked up the steps, did you? Too wrapped up in yourself as usual to even think about me and what this might do.’
‘You can do it, Jess.’
‘But it’s huge! The biggest one I’ve seen in months!’ Stuart giggled his Terry-Thomas giggle every time I mentioned anything even slightly risqué.
‘Just take a deep breath, close your eyes, and run past it.’ He said.
‘Fuck you!’
No words for a bit, just lots of heavy breathing, none of it sexual.
‘You’re going to make me come out there, aren’t you?’ Stuart said eventually. More giggles.
‘Yes.’
‘Now you’re the bitch.’ His voice dropped to barely audible. ‘Lyla’s little fuck-buddy, he’s call Hu-go, was just about to put his hand on my thigh.’
‘Of course he was.’
‘I swear. On Princess Diana’s life.’
‘She’s dead, idiot.’
‘She’ll never be dead, honey-bucket. She’s a candle in the wind.’
‘Just get your arse out here.’
Stuart sighed loudly. I could hear the scraping of chair legs, a couple of muffled apologies and then he was standing at the top of the steps, facing me, still holding the phone to his ear. He folded his spare arm underneath his other elbow and leaned against the doorway, cocking his head in that ‘now what are we going to do with you?’ way he knows I can’t stand. I’m still wearing concrete boots and it looks like it’s about to rain.
‘So?’ Stuart crackles. The reception is ironically worse now he’s standing closer to me.
‘Well? Can’t you see it?’ I plead, gesturing wildly at him. He curls his lip, narrows his eyes and he reminds me of Rupert Everett as he walks grandly down the steps and stops by the restaurant blackboard which stands in the middle of the pavement. Stuart scans the blackboard for ten tortuous seconds, I can hear him dum-de-dumming into his phone, and then he stops abruptly as he finally spots what’s been paralysing me for half an hour or so.
‘I seeeee.’ He turns to face me and smiles apologetically. ‘Now I understand. You’re right, it is pretty fucking huge. In Jess World.’
‘I told you. Get rid of it!’ It started to rain then. Not heavily, but enough for me to need Stuart to fix this problem quickly. I’d just coloured my hair for the third time that month – Blueberry Dusk – and, as usual, I couldn’t be bothered to let the water run clear before getting out of the shower. I was wearing a white Calvin Klein jacket and the consequences of what could happen if my hair got wet, just didn’t bear thinking about.
‘Bad news, sweetie,’ announced Stuart, ‘but I think it’s written with those bastard pens that don’t wipe off.’
I thought I was going to cry.
‘Oh, wait, no, I’m lying, it’s just posh chalk.’
Stuart slowly shut his phone, slid it into the front pocket of his Ted Baker jeans and pulled out an ironed and folded handkerchief which probably had his initials sewn into one corner. He spat delicately into the cloth, checked to see if anyone was looking, and bent down to erase a massive apostrophe which was floating erroneously between the ‘o’ and the ‘s’ in “Potato’s”. Mission accomplished, he straightened himself up and stood by the kerb, stretching his arms out to me like a father welcoming his five-year old home from her first day at school.
‘Come to Daddy!’ he called triumphantly. St George had slain the dragon, David had killed Goliath, Gary had beaten Robbie to number one.
I felt a little sick as I walked slowly across the road towards him, still not able to look at the blackboard, knowing that there would now be a missing ‘e’, but the nausea which had been infesting me for thirty minutes began to subside as an absent letter was far preferable to a misplaced apostrophe.
‘Now, can we fucking eat?’ Stuart put his arm around me, kissed me on the head and led me up the steps into Manana. I deliberately kept my eyes on the floor and let Stuart guide me to our table where, bless him, he’d saved me the only chair that didn’t have a menu propped in front of it.
The others – Lyla, Martha, Jack and, I presumed, Hugo – were already on a second bottle of Pinot and munching their way through appetisers. Lyla poured me a glass, placed it before me, then straightened in her chair as she prepared to introduce me to last night’s hot new conquest.
‘Jess, this is Hu-go. Hu-go, this is Jess, one of my bestest friends.’
Which was a lie. I resisted the urge to remind Lyla that there was no such word as ‘bestest’, but I sensed Stuart shaking his head subtlely at me.
‘Hi, Jess.’ Hugo offered his hand, a courtesy not common amongst people Lyla slept with, and I shook it with enthusiasm. Stuart was right, this guy was a babe. Tanned, impossibly white teeth, shiny black hair and perfectly proportioned biceps that rippled teasingly under a tight white T-shirt as he reached across the table. Totally our type.
‘We’re not sure how long we’re staying out tonight, we’re both a bit… tired.’ Lyla giggled as she leaned into Hugo who, in turn, began stroking her hair like she was some prized Persian. They’d obviously been shagging like rabbits all night. Martha and Jack raised their eyebrows at each other in that superior way only married couples do and took tentative, but synchronised, sips from their very full glasses. Stuart summoned the waitress over and ordered a bottle of Moet and six flutes.
‘And what are we celebrating?’ I asked, still trying to avoid eye contact with the Special’s Board which I knew would send me funny again.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘Aside from Lyla’s first-night shag not doing a runner before dawn, I’d like to announce my imminent pay-rise which, from Monday, puts me on a par with the leader of the City Council and, probably, Mel C.’
‘You’re my hero.’ I gushed.
‘I know. And I’m not paying for dinner, just the champagne.’
Lyla then told us all about her ‘fabulous’ night in Mojito, where she’d met Hugo, and how she’d never ‘felt this young in years’. The fact that she was only twenty-three anyway made me hate her even more than I did five minutes ago. Being forced to spend time in the company of someone who was not only a decade (and the rest) younger than me but who would also be getting regular sex for the next few days at least, made me want to bash her pretty little blonde head in with an axe.
Lyla was a PA at Stuart’s firm, which probably meant she had to give her ageing boss blow-jobs every morning before opening his mail, and Stuart decided she just had to be his new best buddy after he found out Lyla’s father was Damien Jackson, lead singer of 80s heroes, Carnival Of Truth. Lyla was Stuart’s little bean bag of joy and they were devoted to each other, especially since they shared a love of tiaras. I wasn’t jealous of their friendship, I was just annoyed at how easily Stuart whored himself out to anyone who could make him feel younger, as though their youth would transfuse into him by some kind of Faustian osmosis. Maybe I was being harsh on Lyla. She was harmless enough, just tits and ass and fifty five words a minute, but her energy and naivety coupled with the supermodel looks and the sheer ease with which she managed to get men into bed, just meant we’d never be seen shopping together anytime soon. I hated shopping, anyway.
The champagne arrived, which Stuart insisted on pouring himself, but Martha put a hand over Jack’s flute before Stuart could fill it.
‘No, no, not for Jack.’
She looked wistfully into Jack’s face and then Jack placed his own hand over Martha’s glass and cooed back at her, ‘And none for Mart, either.’
It was then I realised they’d hardly touched their wine, and that Martha hadn’t had the deep-fried manchego she usually had when we came here. I knew instantly what was coming next.
‘We’re hoping to become five by this time next year,’ Jack said, ‘No luck yet, but it’s not for lack of trying!’
It was all I could do to stop from throwing up. Everybody around the table was having sex, plenty of it, and I was surprised I’d even been invited to this almighty Sexathon until I remembered it had been my idea to come here tonight. Lyla hugged Martha like only women do, telling her how wonderful it was and how she hoped they’d have some good news for us soon. Hugo was peculiarly enthusiastic about this announcement from people he’d never even met before, and shook Jack’s hand like he’d just climbed Everest or something, while Stuart glanced at me, then at Hugo, with a look on his face that said ‘I so want to fuck that boy’s brains out, right now’.
The thought of Martha and Jack procreating once more was turgid. Their eldest, Summer, was a twelve-year old prodigy with a cut-glass accent, a vocabulary the size of Canada and a place at Oxford already secured, who claimed she’d been Cleopatra in a previous life (how original). She was a little bitch when she didn’t get her own way, which was rare, and even bitchier when she did, which was all the time. Stuart and I had had several late-night Stoli and coke-fuelled fantasies about giving the mini-banshee a whack on the head with her five hundred quid telescope and asking her what stars she could see now but, to her proud and unbelievably blinkered parents, Summer was the Second Coming, and they practically orgasmed every time they talked about her.
Their son, Harvey, was ten and had a mild form of autism. I liked Harvey a lot, because of the autism. He didn’t speak very much which, in a child, is the way it should be and, when he did, he told it how it was. He’d complain to his father, always in public, that he didn’t like the noises him and mummy made at night when he was trying to sleep, and that his ‘stupid’ big sister was the ugliest person he’d ever seen (she was) and everyone at school hated her as much as he did (also true). I thought Harvey was terrific and, if I were ever insane enough to breed, I’d like one just as fucked up as Harvey was obviously going to be. Martha and Jack professed to love Harvey just as much as Summer, despite his ‘problems’, but it was obvious that they thought Harvey was a blight on their otherwise perfect lives, hence the wish for child number three. If Martha could produce another Harvey without the brain fuck, then maybe Jack’s titled father would think about reinstating them all in his will because, as things stood, no gene mutation was going to get their hands on forty thousand acres of Cheshire without a fight.
Martha and I had been to college together. We’d both studied English, which qualified us to do fuck all but, on graduating, Martha had landed a plum publishing job at Smith & Wolfe Books in London (where she’d met Jack) while I’d bummed around working in theatres and the occasional stint as a croupier in the casino by the docks, which is where I picked up my gambling addiction and bespoke coke habit. While I farted about persuading anyone who would listen that I was about to finish writing the best novel in the English language since Wuthering Heights, Martha had risen through the ranks at Smith & Wolfe to Commissioning Editor before deciding to come back home and start a whole new splinter group of little publishing outfits – Zink - that never really made any money, but which satisfied Martha’s need to ‘do something’ while raising her children. She’d always regretted not being more politically involved at college, so this was her way of rebelling – fuck London, be a non-profit making, but worthy, satellite instead. Besides, Jack was loaded, so this wasn’t about money. More importantly, Zink provided me with a place to spout my rubbish, as there was no way any proper publisher would touch my stuff, and I relied totally on Martha’s nepotism (or stupidity) to keep me believing that I was actually a writer.
I was three weeks late with my latest submission, a sequel to last year’s moderately successful MTV Generation, entitled It’s Too Late For Your Kids, but I was confident that, with Martha’s preoccupation in getting pregnant again, she’d forget about it and I could spend the rest of the weekend chasing that elusive Royal Flush on PokerStars.com, which I was already thinking about as the waitress came back to take our main orders.
Tempted, as ever, by the gorgonzola risotto (anything with cheese could usually buy my soul), I opted instead for the chicken salad as I was promising myself a month off dairy in an inevitably vain attempt to shift some weight. Not that I was fat, I was an admirable size twelve, but something had happened between my early twenties (when I was a svelte size ten) and now (when I wasn’t), and I have no memory of what ‘it’ was. In fact, I don’t remember any of my twenties at all. I have photographs that prove I was there but I don’t actually recall anything that happened to me. I didn’t subscribe to Stuart’s belief that, if I wanted to lose weight, I’d have to knock the drinking on the head as well, because I rationalised to myself that wine was, in fact, very healthy, as The Times would regularly assert, although I could see how two bottles a night maybe wasn’t. My mother’s favourite phrase was ‘everything in moderation’ but, again, I didn’t see the logic. Who would drink in moderation? Wasn’t the point of drinking to get drunk? Like decaffeinated coffee. Whoever sat down and thought that was a good idea? I don’t drink coffee because I like the taste of coffee. I drink it because it is filled with stimulants that make my heart beat faster and my head whiz about like a hamster on acid. Ten cups before noon. If I’m up before noon. Which isn’t often. Still, going without cheese for a month makes me feel miserable so I order a Baileys as well, figuring the cream it contains doesn’t count as it’s in a drink and not poured over pasta.
We chit-chat inanely as we wait for our food and Stuart mentions going on to Phoenix afterwards. We know it’ll just be the two of us as Martha and Jack aren’t drinking and have to be back to ‘relieve’ the babysitter (which always makes Stuart chuckle), and Lyla and Hu-go will doubtless be fucking each other to death before ten but, to our surprise, it’s Hugo who suggests we all go to a new club in town called Burn, which used to be a crematorium and, by all accounts, hasn’t changed much inside. It’s the hottest place in town right now and the fact that Hugo says he knows the owner has Stuart ejaculating on the spot. Lyla looks pissed off. Doesn’t Hugo want to have sex with her again? Now?
It’s ten thirty by the time we pay our bill. True to his word, Stuart throws four twenties in for the champagne and his share of the food, then tells the rest of us to bugger off if we think he’s putting in any more. Outside, we say goodbye to Martha and Jack, whose SUV has been parked across the road on double yellows for three hours and has a bright orange instant fine stuck to the windscreen with superglue. Jack rolls his eyes when he sees it while Martha just laughs and ruffles Jack’s hair. What’s sixty quid when your husband will own the North West one day?
Lyla tries to persuade Hugo to go home with her (‘I feel so horny right now, babe…’) but Hugo is adamant he wants to party. I swear he winks at Stuart but decide that’s just the bottle and a half of wine I’ve thrown down my neck in less than an hour. I head off with them up Hope Street then down Hardman Street towards Burn. The rain has stopped, thank goodness, and I am left with Lyla, who’s linking arms with me in girly solidarity (which I hate) while the boys march ahead looking to score and people walk past us on the other side of the road, glancing over, wondering why a gorgeous young thing like Lyla is walking around Liverpool on a Saturday night with a woman who looks old enough to be her mother which, in some states of America, I could legitimately be.
