‘I can help,’ he said suddenly.
Betty looked at him curiously. ‘How? I mean, you work longer hours than anyone I know.’
He shrugged. ‘I can take time off. An hour here or there. Everything’s walking distance. Let me know what you’re looking for and I’ll find it.’
‘Seriously?’ she asked.
‘Sure. Why not?’
‘Er, because your name is John Brightly and you are an island.’
He laughed and stirred his coffee. ‘What do you mean?’ he said, although it was obvious from his tone of voice that he knew exactly what she meant and just wanted to hear her say it.
‘I mean,’ she said, ‘that you live in a bubble. The Bubble of John. Record stall, club nights, damp flat …’
‘Don’t forget the records fairs, every weekend.’
‘Record fairs every weekend,’ she continued. ‘You don’t exactly put a lot of yourself out there, do you?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve got friends,’ he said.
‘Right. So you say. And when do you see them, these so-called friends?’
‘I see them,’ he said. ‘Not that much. Most of them don’t live in London. But I see them when I can.’
Betty smiled. ‘You’re not fooling me,’ she said. ‘You’ve got bars up all over the place.’
He laughed and put his hands up in front of him in a gesture of surrender. ‘Yeah, right, OK. I hear you. I am kind of closed off. I always have been. But that doesn’t mean I can’t get close to people. That doesn’t mean I’m not a nice bloke.’
‘Oh, John, I don’t think I was suggesting that you’re not a nice bloke. You’re just not the sort of bloke to get involved in other people’s shit. So thank you. For the offer. I really appreciate it.’
John smiled and nodded.
‘And actually,’ Betty leaned down into her coffee, hiding her face from him, ‘I think you’re a really nice guy.’
He peered at her and said, ‘Say that again, this time so that I can see you.’
She laughed. ‘I like you. OK? I think you’re really nice.’
He smiled again. ‘So you’ve made your mind up then? You’ve decided?’
‘Yes,’ she nodded, ‘I have decided. John Brightly is a nice bloke and I like him.’
They both laughed then, and John said, ‘Good. Then it’s mutual.’
She peered at him suspiciously. ‘You like me too?’
‘Yes. I like you. I think you’re nice.’
‘Very nice or quite nice?’
He pretended to mull over the question and then said, ‘Very nice.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘That’s good.’
They smiled at each other and Betty felt the air around them fill with something light and golden.
Then John said, ‘Promise me one thing.’
She nodded.
‘Promise me you won’t fuck Dom Jones.’
‘What?’
‘Seriously. No good will come of it.’
‘But – what on earth makes you think I’m going to sleep with him?’
He cocked an eyebrow at her.
‘No. Seriously, Amy Metz said the same thing. I don’t even fancy him!’
He cocked his eyebrow a little higher.
‘Why do you think I fancy him?’
‘I don’t think you fancy him. I just think you could end up in bed with him.’
‘Because he’s a pop star?’
John shrugged.
‘So you think I’m that shallow?’
‘I don’t think you’re shallow. I just know how these things go.’
Betty narrowed her eyes at him and said, ‘I might have to review my recently expressed opinion of you, John Brightly.’
He held his hands out, palms up. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I totally retract everything I just said. I know you wouldn’t. You’re better than that. You’re
different
.’
‘That’s better,’ she smiled. ‘Much better. Thank you.’
But even as she said it, Betty suspected that John was just placating her, that deep down inside he did believe that she was capable of sleeping with Dom Jones because he was a pop star. And deep down inside, Betty thought that he was probably right.
The noise of the buzzer cut through a dream that Betty had been having about Arlette and John Brightly and Amy Metz, and she awoke, vaguely with the sense that she was still in Amy’s house, making a ridiculously big strawberry cake for everyone in a ridiculously big pink Aga. She looked at the time. It was midnight. She had been asleep for only an hour, and she cursed the ringer at the bell for robbing her of the benefits of an early night.
‘Yes,’ she muttered into the intercom, feeling fairly certain that it would be just a drunken reveller, mistaking her front door for the front door of a drinking den or that of a young model.
‘Betty, it’s Dom.’
‘Who?’
‘Dom. Jones.’
Betty ran her hands down her hair and grimaced, no longer certain where her dream had ended and reality was beginning, and thinking that maybe this was just an example of the events of the day influencing the things you dream about; that she was
imagining
this because of the conversation she and John Brightly had had earlier in the café.
‘Betty?’ said the voice again, and Betty did then, literally, pinch her own flesh, before clearing her throat and saying, ‘Yes.’
‘I’m lonely,’ he said.
‘Sorry?’
‘I’m lonely. I just got back from Berlin and I’m not tired and I’m missing my kids and I want to have a drink with someone.’
‘I’ve got no booze,’ she said.
‘Come out with me, Betty. Please. Put on a nice dress and come out with me.’
She took her finger off the button and gazed at the floor for a moment, plucking the last remnants of sleep from her head and considering the proposal. She was starting work the next morning, had to be at Amy’s house at eight o’clock. She had turned down John’s offer to sit with him during another club night because she needed an early night, because she wanted to be fresh for work. And now Dom Jones was standing in the street outside her flat asking her out for a drink.
Dom Jones.
‘Will you take me to the Groucho?’ she said.
‘You wanna go to the Groucho?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘I’ll take you to the Groucho, then.’
‘Good, but just a quick one, OK? I’m starting work for Amy tomorrow.’
‘You got the job!’
‘Yeah. On a trial basis.’
‘Well, then, get down here fast as you can. I can feel champagne in the air.’
Walking into the Groucho with Dom was an experience that Betty would never forget. Faces opened up like lotus blossoms at the mere sight of him, doors were held open, drinks were brought
without
being ordered. It was as though the club were a dark room and Dom was a light bulb. Betty wrapped her cardigan tight around herself and tried to pretend she didn’t exist. It was clearly ridiculous that she was walking in here with Dom Jones, and everyone who looked at her would know it too.
People whose faces she vaguely recognised put out hands to Dom as he passed, which he clutched at and patted and then said things like, ‘Yeah, man, good to see you. Hanging in there, mate. Hanging in there.’ A man played a piano by the staircase, and another man behind the bar shook together a Martini in a silver shaker.
Dom walked Betty across the room and they sat together on a leather sofa. Betty felt dazed and bewildered, all the lines between dreams and reality entirely blurred. Champagne arrived and was poured, and she and Dom toasted each other and people swivelled their heads surreptitiously in their direction and then whispered to each other excitedly.
Betty smoothed down her bed hair and scraped a blob of something off the hem of her black Lycra dress and remembered a night that felt like months ago, but was in reality only a few weeks, when she had walked in here hoping for a job, and been charmingly ejected back onto the pavement without even a sniff at the interior. And now here she was, warm in the heart of the place, sharing a sofa with Dom Jones.
‘So,’ said Dom, turning to face her, his elbow on the back of the sofa. ‘Welcome to the family then, I guess.’
‘It’s just a trial run,’ Betty stressed.
‘Yeah, but think about it. Unless something goes drastically wrong, why would Amy get rid of you, have to start looking all over again?’
Betty shrugged. ‘We’ll see,’ she said.
‘It’s good,’ he said. ‘It’s brilliant. I couldn’t be happier. Seriously.’
Betty smiled and drank some champagne and hoped that it
might
take her away from this sense of being a joke. The scruffy young nanny, dragged from her bed by a drunk pop star and plied with champagne in a celebrity hangout.
‘You know, I fucking hate living on my own,’ Dom said, suddenly and unprompted.
Betty looked at him with concern.
‘It fucking stinks. It’s OK during the day, but at night …’ He ran his hands down his face and sighed and suddenly looked tired and ten years older. ‘I used to love getting back when I lived in Primrose Hill, even if it was really late, even if everyone was asleep. You know, I liked having to tiptoe about the place, seeing the kids’ things here and there, you know, their little shoes, then going into their rooms, watching them sleep, all that shit.’ He sighed again and smiled sadly at Betty.
‘Is there any chance that you and Amy, might, you know …?’
He shook his head and laughed. ‘No,’ he said categorically. ‘No. That ship has sailed. She hates my fucking guts. And yeah, you know, got no one to blame but myself. And, you know, my little fella.’
He glanced down at his jeans and Betty’s eyes followed his until she too was staring at his jeans. ‘Oh,’ she said, pulling her gaze away hurriedly. ‘I see.’
‘Yeah. I think I’ve got a problem, you know. Maybe I need therapy. Or maybe I need a chemical castration.’ He laughed hoarsely and Betty smiled nervously, wondering why Dom was being so open with her, why he was telling her so much. And then something occurred to her. Firstly, Dom was very drunk. But secondly, and more pertinently, she’d signed the privacy agreement that afternoon. At Amy’s house. He must have known. And now he was using Betty for free talk therapy, because he knew that she could never tell anyone.
The thought emboldened her and she said, ‘But surely if it meant that you got to live with your kids again, if it meant that you could get your old life back, surely you’d do anything?’
Dom downed his glass of champagne, poured himself another and topped up Betty’s. ‘Yeah, you’d think so, wouldn’t you. You’d think it would be easy. But that’s what I’m saying. I think I’ve got an addiction. And it’s like, you know, if you’re an alcoholic and someone offers you a drink, you’ll say yeah, but most people with a sex addiction don’t get offered sex all the time, but when you’re in my position, well, you know …’
Betty nodded.
‘It’s hard to say no. It’s impossible. It shouldn’t be. But it is. Even if the girl’s, like, ugly. You know.’ He shook his head from side to side and then downed his fresh glass of champagne in three thirsty gulps. ‘Everywhere I go, I swear, they’re there, they want me to sign their tits, they want me to touch them just so that they can go home and tell their mates that I touched them. It’s like I’m a talisman, you know, like they’ll get something from me. And it’s all just utter bullshit, because of course I’ve got fuck all to give. I’m just a bloke, with a dick. Who can sing. And write amazing songs. But I’ve got nothing to give. Nothing real. Unless it’s a baby.’ He laughed out loud, a sudden burst that made Betty jump slightly in her seat. ‘Yeah. I’m pretty good at giving women babies.’
Betty held her breath. There had long been a rumour in the tabloids that there was a Dom Jones love child somewhere in north London, a child only two weeks younger than Donny. But nothing had ever been proved. The mother, an emaciated sculptress called Tiffany, who’d also had a baby with another rock star, had never said anything to either fuel or kill off the rumours. But there was a suggestion here – the use of the plural ‘women’ – that maybe he was the child’s father. Betty looked into Dom’s eyes. They were bloodshot and slightly dazed. He’d clearly spent the whole day drinking to some extent or another. He was drunk and tired and vulnerable. She didn’t ask the question. Instead she smiled and said, ‘Yes, and very nice babies you make, too.’
‘Ah, yeah, my babies.’ His face softened. ‘My beautiful fucking babies. I miss them so much. So fucking much.’ And then he started to cry. He dug the heels of his hands into his eye sockets and sobbed. ‘I’ve fucked it all up, Betty,’ he sniffed. ‘Fucked the whole thing up. I wish I could be different. I wish I could be just like some normal guy, you know, off to work with my lunch in my bag, kiss the kids goodbye, home for bath-time, glass of wine, shag the wife. But you know, I never could have been that person. I’ve always had it in me, all this creativity, all this power, all these urges, these overwhelming urges. Even when I was at school. All I did was chase girls and make music and cause trouble. And now I’m like, thirty-two, you know, and maybe it’s too late for me to change. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is all there is for me. Just all this arsing about. And sometimes that’s enough, you know.’ He sniffed again and wiped his nose against the sleeve of his denim jacket. ‘And sometimes it just ain’t. I mean, tell me, honestly, Betty.’ He looked up at her through wet lashes. ‘What do you think of me, truthfully? I mean, the real me, the one you’ve got to know against the me you used to read about in the papers?’
Betty took another sip of champagne, buying herself time to consider the question. ‘I don’t know,’ she said eventually. ‘I mean, obviously I read stuff about you, and obviously I had an opinion, but I don’t think those opinions really count for much …’ She paused and saw that he was staring at her intensely, like his whole future depended on her opinion of him. She took a breath and continued, ‘And yeah, I suppose I thought you were a bit of a …’
His eyes widened, waiting for her pronouncement.
‘… a bit of a rabble-rouser,’ she finished diplomatically. ‘And, you know, I’m not really a Wall fan so I haven’t followed the stories religiously but I just saw you as being part of a select group of people all doing the same things, hanging out in the same places, drinking too much, sleeping around, putting two
fingers
up at everything, all being really, you know …
clever clever
.’
He winced at her words and then smiled encouragingly. ‘But what about now?’ he urged. ‘Now you’ve got to know me a bit. Has your opinion of me changed at all?’