The Exchange (20 page)

‘Sex took over. It wasn’t supposed to be like that, but I found myself writing these long, graphic sex scenes and enjoying it. And not only that, but I’m good at them.’ She laughed. ‘It sounds ridiculous, I know, but it turns out I’m a damned good erotic writer. But I can’t be “out”. There’s no way my academic publishers would countenance it.’

‘And the club?’

‘Ah yes, the club. Well, I auditioned and they accepted me. I did do ballet well into my teens, so it’s not as if I’m a total klutz. But well – you’ve seen me. They must have been desperate.’

‘If your heart’s not really in it …’

‘It’s not my heart, it’s my damned body. God knows I like sex – when I’m having it, which I’m not right now. But it’s that whole showing yourself off, pouting and preening and showing yourself to best advantage. It’s just not in my nature.’

‘I looked at her in an amused way. ‘It didn’t seem like that when on your balcony this morning.’

For a moment she looked at me blankly, then she burst out laughing. ‘Oh Christ,’ she said, ‘I didn’t think anybody could see me.’ Then her eyes bulged a bit. ‘Hey, you little stalker! You were outside my apartment? How… but… So that wasn't a chance meeting, in the Musée d'Orsay? You followed me there?' She eyed me darkly. 'But how did you know where I live?’

I looked down, avoiding her probing gaze. 'I – I followed you home from the club last night,' I confessed.

'Why on earth would you do that?'

'I – I found you fascinating. You seemed so ill at ease. I wanted to know your story.'

For a moment I thought she was going to get cross, but then she linked her arm through mine. ‘I guess we’re kindred spirits,’ she said. ‘We’re both lying, deceitful bitches.’

I smiled at her and thought how wonderful it would be to have a soul mate at last.

For me that night in the hotel was it. I woke up hungover, dirty and full of self-hatred, and this time I was adamant that I would have nothing more to do with Tatiana and her crowd. I’d been complicit in my debasement, but this was an end to it.

Soaking my sins away in the bath, my face coming back to life under a creamy mask, I wondered again about calling off this life-swap and going back to Paris early. London had brought me nothing – nothing but these people to whom I was sport and diversion. To whom I was some kind of living doll.

I thought about Paris. I’d thought I was through with dancing, but now that I wasn’t doing it, I felt a kind of emptiness. I simply didn’t know what to do with myself, and my idleness was leading me into situations that really didn’t make me happy, even if they gave me a thrill at the time.

I thought of my ‘interview’ with Lulu, the day I’d gone out to lunch with Tatiana in Holland Park. She’d never got back to me, and I hadn’t chased up. I’d been distracted. I hadn’t done anything about the songwriting course, so there had been no immediate urge to earn money after all – I wasn’t thinking about my Vivienne Westwood debt to Konrad, knowing he wouldn’t press me to pay him back anytime soon.

I told myself that when I got of the bath I’d call the music college about making an appointment to go and look around, but I knew in my heart I wouldn’t. I felt a sudden void yet there was no impetus in me to do anything to fill it. Calling Lulu was pointless – in all likelihood she’d gone away already, having filled the role. And then there was the uncomfortable fact that she constituted a link between me and Tatiana. Maybe it
was
time to return to dancing, and to Konrad.

I spent the day nursing my hangover in front of crap TV, flicking through a crap magazine filled with cheap, disposable fashion and gossip about celebrities I’d never heard of. All the ads were full of airbrushed, too-perfect women. Everything was manufactured. All sexiness had gone out of it. Women looked like Barbies; breasts were plastic, unreal, uninviting. It was depressing as hell.

I thought of the club. Of course, there too, unreality held sway, but it felt like a more honest unreality. There, most of the girls had their own assets. A few had had enhancements, but nothing major. They were essentially themselves, even when they donned their make-up and costumes. On stage, within arm’s reach of the front row of the audience, they shone with sweat. You could smell them – cheap, floral eaux de colognes mixed with perspiration.

The club was selling a dream, but it was a dream of ordinary girls. Everyone knows that that’s what they were, beneath the veils or the bunny outfits. And that was surely the point – they were attainable ‘girls next door’. They weren’t supermodels, and many of the clientele could feasibly aspire to be with a girl like this.

I closed my magazine, switched off the TV. I wondered about Skypeing Konrad or Lisette but held off, thinking it might only make me more homesick. I needed to give London a chance.

Instead I called Kyle, on the off-chance that he was in town.

‘Hi, Rochelle,’ he said when he heard my voice. He sounded genuinely pleased to hear from me but also a bit sheepish.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’m really sorry I never got back to you about getting you set up with a guitar. I did ask around but I didn’t hear back from anyone and then I had a trip and it was all very hectic. I’ve not long been back.’

‘That’s OK,’ I said. ‘It’s really no big deal.’

‘Did you find one?’

‘No, but I kind of – oh, I don’t know. I just went off the idea I guess.’

‘Oh, OK. So what have you been doing with yourself?’

‘Well … nothing much, to be honest. Just hanging around.’

‘Who with? Have you been making friends?’

I didn’t want to tell him about seeing Tatiana and Morgan. Even if I didn’t tell him what we’d been doing, it felt like a betrayal, going out with his friends. And anyway, I really didn’t want to even think about them.

‘Not really. I’ve mainly been staying in. You know, just chilling out.’

‘Well I guess that’s fine if that’s what you’re in the mood for.’ His voice was dubious, but I could tell that he was restraining himself from asking to see me.

I wanted so much to reach out to him, to ask him to take me out for dinner. I liked him so much, but I knew that it was unfair to give him any hope that we could be together. I think that at heart he knew that he wasn’t my type, but it’s not so easy to accept that when you’re sitting across the table from your object of desire and just want to reach over and take their hand, kiss it, lead them away to bed.

‘It is,’ I said. ‘I don’t want you to worry about me. I’ll get out and about, make the most of London. I just – I just need some time. My life in Paris is manic. I’m a bit burnt out, to be honest.’

‘I understand,’ he replied. ‘I feel like that after a concert tour. There’s just so much socialising, and so little privacy and time for yourself. I often feel the need to retreat into myself when I get back to London. Just for a week or two.’

I wondered then, about his life on the road. Like me, he was a performer. Did he have the kind of camaraderie, with his fellow musicians, that I had with the girls at the club, or was it different when there were men and women together? Was the closeness I felt with my colleagues heightened by our wandering around naked in front of each other?

Did Kyle get close to the other musicians? Did he sleep with any of them? It must get lonely on the road, being away from lovers, family, friends. Did unlikely bonds form, accidental alliances? It was human nature – some of them must fall into bed together, just for the companionship, especially if alcohol was involved.

I didn’t ask him. It was none of my business. Perhaps if we spent more time together, we’d become close friends and it might be the kind of thing he’d divulge to me. I regretted that we couldn’t, but like I said, the last thing I wanted was to lead him on. I liked him too much for that.

We chatted for a while longer and then he told me that he had to get ready to go out. He was going to the cinema with an actress friend, he told me. As soon as he said that, I felt a stab of jealousy. Which actress? I wondered. Was she famous? Was she beautiful? Was it a date, or were they just friends?

I knew, deep down, that it wasn’t really jealousy so much as self-pity. My life felt desolate, and anyone whose didn’t merited my envy.

I put the phone down and went straight to the clothes hanger, where I picked off my red 1950s cocktail dress and slipped it on. Then I sat in front of the mirror and did my make-up: black flicks of kohl, lashings of mascara, and plum Cupid’s bow lips. I pinned my hair then finished the look off with seamed stockings and black stilettos, and then a soft black stole around my shoulders and a black clutch.

I left the flat not really knowing where I was going. My shoes made it impossible for me to walk anywhere, so I hailed a taxi – to hell with the cost – and when the driver asked me where to, replied, more or less at random, ‘Soho.’ Then I leaned back in my seat and watched London go past my window in a blur, noting along the way Selfridges with its marvellous classical façade and brilliant window displays, and the equally gorgeous Liberty with its mock Tudor façade. I scolded myself for not seeing more of London. There was so much to see and do, why was I moping about? Why could I only motivate myself when I sniffed trouble? What was so wrong with ordinary life?

Once the driver had dropped me off, I walked around for as long as I could stand it in my heels, and then I waited until I spotted some likeminded-looking souls – two girls walking along chatting, one with a severe black bob, pale face and carmine lips, wearing a 1960s Mary Quant-style mini-dress, black with white polka dots, topped by a suede jacket, and the other in a violet-grey suit, nipped at the waist, and fishnet stockings, her hair pinned up 1950s-starlet type like mine.

I followed them as far as the Crystal Carrington Rooms, realising from both the name and the queue on the street that it was a lesbian bar.
So be it
, I thought. I didn’t really care what happened tonight, so long as something happened. It was the refrain of my life – I was the girl who was constantly asking, ‘What’s happening?’ Always looking for the next party.

The queue vanished quickly, and soon I was inside. I’d lost sight of the girls I’d followed, but it didn’t matter – they had just been a way in, an entry into a scene. I wouldn’t have minded falling in with them and hopefully getting in with whatever crowd they were hooking up with, but glancing around me I knew there was plenty of scope for fun. Already, lots of girls were looking at me, one eyebrow raised or a twinkle in their eye. I could have my pick. But I told myself to bide my time, to wait for the right one – or ones.

I sidled up to the bar, ordered myself a G&T, then stood facing the room, sipping demurely, careful not to catch anyone’s eye. A few girls stood out, had me curious. But I held myself back every time, enjoying the sweet torture of anticipation.

The soundtrack was pure 80s that night, and soon the dance floor was packed with pretty young lesbians or bi-curious girls, many of them embellished with butterfly or other tattoos. Most wore make-up. It was a dressed-up, lipstick scene and I guessed that many of the women were here to experiment and wouldn’t ever fully commit to the lifestyle. Most would end up married with kids.

And what about me? I pondered as I ordered myself a second G&T. What did life have in store for me? Would I ever settle down? It was a question I’d never really asked myself, but now that I did I felt a swirl of anguish. So far I’d floated through life, never really making any attachments, or certainly none that were long-term. I never thought about the future, or made plans. That was why I was here now, alone in a lesbian bar in a city I didn’t know, where I didn’t know anyone and no one knew me. Tatiana and the others didn’t count. Even Kyle didn’t count.

But what about Paris? Was there anyone who really knew me there? Konrad certainly didn’t – his inability to pleasure me, or ignorance of the fact that he didn’t, was a symptom of that. For all our affectionate companionship, none of the girls at the club knew me, and I didn’t know them. Lisette was my closest friend, but even there I wasn’t sure that we ever really went below the surface.

No – there was no one who knew me, and that was in part why I found myself here, seeking something that I couldn’t define. All my adult life, it suddenly struck me, I’d been looking for something in the lovers I’d had. I’d thought it had been excitement, but now I wondered if it wasn’t love, pure and simple. And that was something I’d never found anywhere.

I looked around, alert but knowing that my senses were affected by alcohol. Did love wait here? I asked myself. Was there someone here I could fall in love with? Surely of the couple of hundred women here was one who had what it took not just in bed but out of it too?

Suddenly I was fearful. It was as if at the very word ‘love’ I got the heebie jeebies. I wanted it and yet I ran from it. There were times in my life, I reminded myself, when I had felt its flickering – in myself or in another, or in both – and I’d bolted like a spooked horse. Love, I’d believed, meant giving up. But was that necessarily the case?

I finished my second drink and thought it was perhaps best to just go home and get an early night. I wasn’t in the best state, mentally, and I knew from past experience that when I got into this frame of mind I could get myself into hot water.

As soon as I’d made up my mind, I felt a pair of eyes on me, insistent. I raised mine to meet the gaze and was blown away by a tall redhead watching me from across the room. As our eyes met, my pussy throbbed violently and I knew that she would register that in my gaze.

There was no point wasting any time. I placed my empty glass on the bar and turned back towards her. She was already on her way over. Our gazes locked again. I thought back to those nights in the dorm with Aileen, biting on my clenched fist or on her fingers crammed into my mouth, to keep myself from screaming out in ecstasy. There’d been other girls since then, but you rarely find someone who makes you burn so hard as the one who showed you what your body can bring you.

As we stepped up to each other, it struck me that this girl reminded me of Aileen, in many ways. She had the same long, athletic limbs, the same trailing copper-red tresses, the same startling hazel eyes flecked with gold. The strong similarities heightened my anticipation.