Behaving Like Adults (6 page)

‘The usual suspects,' she said to Nige and Claw, adding, ‘Mwa, mwa,' rather than put lip to cheek. Pause. ‘Nick.'

Nick moved his head.

‘Rachel,' I said hastily, ‘this is Stuart. Stuart, my friend Rachel.'

‘Ah-hah. You must be the pilot. The man who scared Holly sick. Not that it matters, babes – that dress has been due a dry clean since Glyndebourne. How many hours have you flown, Stuart? You must be rather advanced to pull a stunt like that.'

‘Oh, no,' replied Stuart, grinning at his feet. ‘That's kids' stuff.'

‘What?' barked Rachel, who has no concept of false modesty. ‘So you're
not
advanced?'

Stuart looked annoyed.

‘Who wants a drink?' I said. ‘Anyone?'

Nige summoned a barman. I wanted to be sober when my prodigies arrived, so I asked for an orange juice. The furore was such that you'd have thought I'd requested the fresh blood of a murdered child at room temperature, no lemon. ‘An orange juice,' I restated, as everyone hissed. At least, their mindless communal urge to drive me to drink hacked into the awkwardness, and by the time the first
guests poked their heads round the door, everyone was well on their way to getting in the mood.

Running a dating agency is like being a nursery school teacher. You can't be friends with everyone but you have your favourites. Girl Meets Boy is supposed to be unashamedly elitist, catering for ‘those who are beautiful, inside and out'. That was our USP (excuse me for swearing). But it emerged with our first postbag that pretty much everyone thinks they're beautiful inside and out, even people who – to quote Nige – ‘are very ugly'.

It reminded me of those self-help books on confidence, briskly advising you to stare in the mirror every day and chant ‘I am amazing'. But what if you're
not
amazing?

I couldn't bear it. I didn't know how to reject non-beautiful people in a way that didn't devastate. I kept sneaking them in. Nige had a fit and accused me of ‘diluting our appeal'. When I replied with a mutinous silence, he tried to make me swear I wouldn't ‘cross-pollinate'. He wanted members to be divided into As, Bs and Cs. At first I thought he meant according to name. But his thinking was more along the lines of
Brave New World
. Trouble is – much as it pains me to admit it – Nige was right. Good-looking people are intolerant of being fixed up with less good-looking people. They'll allow us a small margin of error which I push to its limit.

Samantha, for example. She crept in to the party raw with ezcema, in her trademark dungarees. Claudia nudged me. ‘How the hell does Flaky expect to get a man when she dresses like Andy Pandy?'

I sighed. Every time I see Sam, her vulnerability takes my breath away. She makes it hard for herself. There are men who regard weakness on a par with cockroach infestation. They spot it and get the urge to bash it flat with a sledgehammer. Sam applied to GMB because the love of her life ended their relationship. That was six years ago and she won't stop talking about him.

‘He's the man,' she told me sadly, ‘who's going to ruin
my wedding.' I didn't say – although I could have – ‘
What
wedding?'

I was hoping, that night, to introduce Sam to a new recruit, Bernard. Bernard was rare in that he was a fortysomething male who wasn't looking to meet a twenty-two-year-old girl. Sam was thirty-four. For a woman, in dating agency terms, that's past it. You think I'm joking? After a year in this business I know that men would rather meet the Devil on a dark night than a thirty-four-year-old woman. To them, thirty-four spells desperate. It means she wants to be married, pop out some kids,
yesterday
. I like men as a gender, but sometimes I could knock their heads together.

Talking of which, I never got to introduce Sam to Bernard because I was too busy fending off Nick. As you know, Nick has an advantage: he makes me laugh. It kept us together longer than it should. I now realise that his refusal to be serious, while amusing, cut every conversation dead. I'd stop talking to laugh, then lose my train of thought. He'd never encourage me to find it again. If I ever wanted to pursue a discussion to its bitter end, I'd have to bleat, ‘But anyway, to go back to what I was saying . . .'

But after seven weeks of practised frostiness, my armour was chink-free. Nick would
not
make me laugh. It helped that my members kept rushing up to me, wanting to chat – every time Nick embarked on a quip he got cut off. Stuart, though, wasn't acting as possessive as I'd hoped. He tailed me like a shadow, fetching me glass after glass – at some point, the orange turned to alcohol but it was rude to object – and resting a hand gently on my back, showing himself to be the gentleman where Nick was not. But he also seemed nervous, as if he didn't want to trespass. He kept glancing uneasily at Nick.

I couldn't blame him – with every fresh drink or touch, Nick twitched with menace. While Stuart's deference was inconvenient, it endeared me to him. I thought it showed sensitivity. I had a burst of affection. ‘Stuart,' I said, and
curled a finger at him. When he bent his head, I kissed him on the mouth.

Nick flipped.

I felt the breeze as he ran at Stuart and jammed him against the wall. ‘Stay away from her, alright, you little prick! Stay away from her! –'
boff!
Through bleary eyes my blearier brain registered that ‘
boff!
' was the sound of Nick's fist making violent contact with Stuart's mouth. My reflex thought, I'm sorry to say, was ‘Lucky it's so loud and crowded in here, hardly anyone's noticed'. In other words, I was less concerned that Stuart might be missing teeth than that the party wasn't spoiled for my members.

Stuart looked terrified. ‘Take it easy, mate,' he stammered, his shoulders hunched. ‘Take it easy.'

Now I'm the first to pass blame if I can get away with it, but this
was
my fault. Again.

‘Nick,' I said, grabbing him by the collar. ‘Jesus!' He shook me off and glared at Stuart. I had the urge to say, ‘Hang on, soldier, I thought this was about
me
?'

Rachel – she doesn't miss a trick – thundered over. ‘Babes? You okay?' I rolled my eyes and giggled. Terrible what alcohol does to you, removes your social inhibitions, revealing your more primitive self.
My
more primitive self is a dumb fool.

‘I'll deal with the Ex,' she said quietly. ‘You take the Pilot. Nightmare city.'

She frogmarched Nick to a dim corner like a cop dragging an offender away from a crime scene. I turned to Stuart. He was wiping the blood off his mouth with his sleeve.

‘I'm so sorry,' I said, meaning it.

‘That bloke is a fucking nut.'

I made a sympathetic face. I mean, what do you say?
Yeah, I know
. I dated the man for five years, I agreed to marry him. If he
was
a fucking nut, it didn't reflect well on me. But, you know, this was good. Not only did Nick lack the drive to join me in the lovely life I was forging for
myself, he had just shown himself to be a thug. He would have held me back. Definitely, definitely, the right decision. All the same, I wasn't comfortable with Stuart slagging him off. That was
my
job.

Stuart must have seen something in my eyes because he shut up. And grinned. His teeth were red.

I giggled. ‘You look like Dracula.'

His smile drooped. He groaned. ‘I feel dizzy.'

I felt terrible. ‘Stuart' – I had to concentrate not to pronounce it
Schtuarch
– ‘Stuart, do you want me to get the club to call you a cab?'

He looked alarmed. ‘No, no. My car's here.'

‘But you've been drinking.'

‘No, I haven't. Honest. Holly, don't look at me like that! It's true, I haven't. If I drive, I don't drink. Ooof.' He put a hand to his chin and winced. ‘But, maybe I could do with a chaperone and you could do with a lift. I don't want to tear you away though. What time is it?'

Bizarrely, this reminded me of when Nick and I were about to catch an internal flight from New York and our pilot sat beside us in the waiting area. Nick doesn't wear a watch and I'd broken mine. I whispered to him, ‘What's the time on the pilot's watch?' Nick – to whom my fear of flying was, like everything, a joke – glanced at it, turned his voice Hollywood and boomed in an evil husk, ‘Time to
die!
'

‘It's a quarter to twelve,' I told Stuart.

I'd planned to stay till the end, but then it nearly was chucking-out time. No one needed me – all my babies were walking, talking just fine. Their loving mother, however, could barely stand. A lift would be great. It would serve Nick right. And I owed it to Stuart. Poor guy, his jaw was caked in blood.

‘If you're getting dizzy spells, I ought to stay with you. But my house is miles out of your way.'

He smiled. His teeth were pink. ‘Listen to yourself, Hol. There's such a thing as being too proud.'

Of all the cheek.

‘Let's go,' I said.

Stuart seemed alert until we turned into my road, then he zigzagged the car. I yelped and grabbed the wheel.

‘Sorry! Christ, my head. What a weird sensation, all buzzy, like I was floating. I didn't know where I was for a second. Something must have jolted when Nick attacked me. We're okay though. We're safe.'

My heart fluttered out of nowhere. I ignored it. ‘Look Pull in here. I'm a minute up the road. Come in, have a glass of water, then you can take a taxi from mine. It's too dangerous to drive.'

We wove along the road together, then I unlocked my door and stood aside to let Stuart into my home. Mean though it was, I felt irritated. I'm past the age where a party is a failure unless you socialise till dawn. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, I enjoy being in bed asleep by midnight. It was one of the few perks of being engaged. And you know what? Compared to some of my friends, that's
late
. Truth was, I was too tired and drunk and old to play geisha to this guy and, while it wasn't his fault, I was annoyed with him for making me.

‘Do you want some water then?' I said, hoping the grudge didn't show in my voice.

‘No, Holly,' he replied. ‘I want
you
.'

I felt myself being kissed before I had agreed to it. Stuart's hands were hard everywhere, plucking at my clothes. You don't think a man is that much stronger than you, until he is. My legs and arms felt weak and light, my heart was racing again. This time I didn't ignore it.

‘Let's slow down,' I said.

‘Why? Don't you like me?' He smiled. His teeth were white. Oh Grandma, what big teeth you have. And suddenly I knew I was in trouble.

IT'S NOT AS
if he leapt on me in an alleyway with a knife. Maybe he misunderstood me. But he had that smile on his face as if he didn't want to stop. I tried to pick off his hands. Imagine trying to remove a wheel clamp with your fingers. I said, ‘It's too soon.' I thought that was a fair compromise. But he didn't respond, he just kept kissing me, pinchily dragging off my clothes like he hadn't heard. He pushed me flat on the floor, his shoulder was pinning down my neck. Then he prised apart my legs with his knee. My hands were at my pelvis, pressing upwards with flat palms to keep him off me but it seemed that he merely brushed them out of the way. The fear was so black and thick it was like drowning in tar. I got stiff with panic, breathing in quick little gasps, and he murmured, ‘Relax, sshhhh, relax, enjoy it,' but he wouldn't look at me, and then I couldn't speak. It was as if my eyesight was a watercolour that had got wet. I was seeing in reds and oranges, my vision blurred and ran.

I'd never been treated like that. I lay there like a helpless twit, I had no idea how to defend myself. So I focused elsewhere. I'm a coward when it comes down to it. I don't like to get hurt. I see it in Emily when she has to get her injection. At first she's all scratch, wriggle and hiss, not
ssssssssss
like a snake; a cat's hiss is more venomous,
hhaaaaaaaaaaach!
And then survival instinct numbs her and she goes limp. I never liked it when she gave up, I preferred her to bite me, I hated to see the end of hope. Then I did it myself and I understood her.

Nick says it takes a lot of little burns to understand what a big burn feels like. You learn to be afraid of fire. My problem was, I'd never been burnt. I probably should have been.

When I was fourteen, I got into a stranger's car, mainly out of laziness. I was going to visit a friend, took the wrong bus and got lost in suburbia. So I approached some guy coming out of a shop, and asked if he knew where this road was. No, but he had a map in his car. Well, I
watched
myself trot down a side street after him, and when he said, ‘Look, it's only there, I could give you a lift,' I heard myself accept. Guess what? He dropped me at my friend's door, and when I thanked him he replied, ‘No problem, it's my first time in London, and I'd hope someone would do the same for me.' Yeah, I thought, they won't.

My friend freaked out. Holly, are you mad, etc. No, merely invincible. I'm highly intelligent, I could tell he was harmless. Believe me, I am alert to danger. I give people the benefit of the doubt, but I'm not suicidal about it. For instance.

One night a few years back, I was on the tube and two middle-aged men sat opposite me. One looked as if he was on drugs, scruffy, crazy, and the other, mean and big. They kept trying to scare me. I'm not kidding. The druggy one leapt out of his seat and screamed ‘Raaaaaaaarrrrrrrrr!' in my face. I jumped halfway to the ceiling and they keeled over laughing. All the potential heroes in the carriage looked away. What was I going to do? Quip, ‘Aren't you big and brave, picking on
me
'? No way. Fear told me to move carriage and I did.