Authors: Portia MacIntosh
‘Hey, how are you?’
‘Stressed with wedding shit, but nothing I can’t handle,’ she replies. ‘How are you?’
‘Fucking marvellous.’ I laugh.
‘You must be!’ she gasps. ‘You swore! Why are you swearing?’
‘Life,’ I muse.
‘So, how’s it going?’ she asks. ‘Is it as boring as you thought it would be without lover boy?’
‘I blind got drunk with truckers, I took my clothes off and danced in a strip club, I pretended to be Danny’s girlfriend to make his ex jealous, got taken to the police station in the back of a van, nearly had a second run-in with the fuzz while I was eating a double cheeseburger that was served inside a doughnut – which gave me food poisoning – and I’m breaking all the rules at the hotels. Streaking down the corridors, smuggling things in – toasters, pugs, the usual kind of thing. So yeah, pretty boring really.’
Amy doesn’t say anything.
‘Hello?’ I say, to check she’s still there.
‘Is that all true?’ she asks.
‘Yep,’ I reply. ‘Oh, and I got two tattoos. “Isis” on my wrist, and “Mr Wright” on my arse. That’s Wright with a W – that cosmic ordering is fucked up. It doesn’t listen.’
Amy laughs loudly down the phone. ‘Candice, I’m just… I’m so happy for you.’
‘You’re happy for me?’ I laugh.
‘Yes! You’re having fun! Proper fun, the kind your life has been severely lacking. It sounds like Danny is a good laugh?’
‘He is,’ I reply, but my lack of detail gets my friend wondering.
‘Anything, you know, between the two of you?’
‘We’re just friends,’ I tell her. ‘Although we are sharing a bed every night, and he has seen me naked way more than I’d intended on – which was ideally never,’ I quickly add.
‘You like him,’ she sings. ‘You like him and you want him and you want his babies.’
‘Shut up,’ I reply.
‘Has something happened between you?’ she asks again.
‘No. Well…we had a sort of moment.’
‘So, what did you do?’
‘I freaked out and caused an argument with him,’ I admit. My friend tuts. ‘What? I’m out of practice.’
‘You need to seduce him,’ Amy concludes. ‘You can do this. Just… OK, maybe one evening when you’re undressed, because your clothes don’t exactly scream “seduction”, you know?’
‘Says you, cheesecloth,’ I laugh and it catches my friend by surprise.
‘You’re cheekier now. I like the version of you that Danny brings out of you.’
I glance over at the bed and notice that the dog has gone. ‘Shit, Aims, I’d better go, Kevin has vanished.’
‘Kevin?’ she asks, confused
‘Kevin the pug,’ I half explain.
‘So
everything
you said was true?’ she asks.
‘Yep.’
‘Isis though?’
‘It’s a long story,’ I tell her. ‘Anyway, speak soon.’
‘Have fun,’ she sings.
I hang up the phone and start looking for Kevin. I soon find him in the bathroom, trying to drink from the toilet, so I grab a teacup and fill it with water. Kevin then waddles over to the biscuit box and yaps for one. I quickly take one and throw it to him to keep him quiet, but he immediately wants another one. I glance at the box and read that small dogs are only allowed two to three per day, so I’d better not give him another one. Plus, he’s not exactly the slimmest dog I’ve ever seen.
Kevin barks, except he doesn’t sound much like a dog, he sounds more like a tiny boar.
‘Listen, you can’t have another, it will make you poorly,’ I explain, stupidly thinking that maybe I can reason with a hungry dog.
Kevin barks, giving no shits.
I shush him, praying he keeps his mouth shut. He would if he knew what was good for him. If he’s found in here we’ll all be thrown out.
Still, Kevin barks. I grab the TV remote and switch it on, skipping through the channels to find something that will mask his little yap. One of the channels I flick past has an advert for dog food on, and as the dog on the screen yaps, Kevin breaks into a howl. I quickly switch the TV off, and grab Kevin another biscuit, hoping one over the recommended daily amount won’t harm him. This appeases him for a second, but just when I think we’re out of the woods, there’s a knock at the door.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ I rant as I usher him into the bathroom. I use a biscuit to get him to follow me, but I don’t give it to him. I shut the door on him, praying he keeps his little doggy mouth shut before going to answer the door. It’s the guy who checked me in. I look at his name badge. Phillip. It’s nice to know who I’m going to be pleading with.
‘Hello,’ I say brightly.
‘Mr Starr?’ he says.
‘Do I look like Mr Starr?’ I ask, pulling a face.
‘One must never assume,’ he tells me. ‘This is Mr Starr’s room. Was that Mr Starr who left shortly after you arrived?’
‘No,’ I admit. ‘That’s my guest though. We both work for Mr Starr. This is a business trip.’
‘What business, might I ask?’
‘Haulage and warehousing and distribution – oh my,’ I joke with a little giggle, but Phillip is immune to my charm.
‘Do you have a dog in here?’ he asks, cutting to the chase.
‘A dog?’ I ask, feigning shock. ‘Of course not!’
‘I think you have a dog in here,’ Phillip continues.
‘One must never assume,’ I remind him. ‘When you assume you make an ass out of U and ME.’
My sense of humour does nothing for Phillip. I fidget nervously with whatever I am holding and he notices. I follow his gaze to my hands and realise I’m clutching a dog biscuit.
‘Is that a dog biscuit?’ he asks firmly.
‘No. Well, yes,’ I babble, unable to explain its bone shape. ‘But it’s mine. They’re made from charcoal. They’re great for weight loss. I love them.’
Phillip stares at me for a moment, as though he’s waiting for me to take a bite to prove a point. Luckily before I have to, he continues with the evidence to support the claim there is a dog in my room.
‘Guests in neighbouring rooms have reported howling,’ he informs me.
‘Well, yeah, that was me,’ I tell him in a hushed tone, raising my eyebrows.
‘But you’re in here alone,’ he immediately replies.
‘Yes,’ I reply as flirtatiously as possible. ‘A girl gets lonely.’
Phillip just walks away, clearly unfazed by my flirtatious tone, the image of me touching myself until I howl and chomping on dog biscuits to try and keep my figure, bizarrely, not doing it for him.
I close the door behind me and breathe a sigh of relief, but it’s short-lived because I open the bathroom door to find Kevin chewing up a towel. Before I have a chance to react, Danny walks back in.
‘Good news,’ he announces. ‘They’ll take him in and find his owner.’
‘Good,’ I reply, kicking pieces of chewed-up towel with my foot. ‘Because I don’t think we’re cut out to be parents.’
So it turns out we were on some kind of red alert at the hotel in Cardiff, and as such they were looking out for us behaving suspiciously. Fair enough, we
were
acting suspiciously, but this made it even harder for us to try and sneak Kevin out of the hotel. When we were sneaking him in it was hard enough, but we couldn’t risk getting caught sneaking him out either, or they might have thrown us out of the hotel. One night sleeping in Danny’s car is more than enough for one lifetime, so we were careful to be discreet – well, as discreet as you can be when you’ve got a hyperactive pug in a Louis Vuitton holdall. It was tough, but we managed it, lurking around near the lifts, just waiting for a moment when Phillip disappeared into the office. Then we made a mad dash for the door and soon enough we were saying our goodbyes to Kevin, having the good sense to pose for selfies with him before we left, because we didn’t ever want to forget him.
Had I taken this trip with Will, I’m not certain how it would have played out. Sure, we could’ve got it on all day and all night without worrying about who might walk in on us, but would that have been it? The whole extent of our fun? Thinking about it, just because sex is the only kind of fun we ever got to enjoy together, it doesn’t mean that if we were to spend normal time together like a normal couple that we would instantly have a blast. I mean, what do we have in common? If everyone says I was being a more boring version of myself to try and be more like Will, then there’s no way we would’ve had fun. We didn’t chat on the phone much because we couldn’t, but what if we had been able to? I try to imagine doing these long journeys in the car, just Will and me, and I can’t imagine what we would talk about, or what we would listen to. How Julie the cleaner isn’t doing her job properly with a Classical FM backdrop? No thank you.
With Danny, car journeys are a blast. Hour-long treks feel like no time at all when we’re chatting about everything from TV shows we watched when we were kids, to what we’d call a pug if we had a pug of our own. When we’re not chatting, Danny will be telling me funny one-liners and lip-syncing to songs on the radio to try and make me laugh, which he always does. There’s just something about seeing this big, buff nerd grooving to Wilson Phillips’s ‘Hold On’ that could make even the most serious person smile.
It may have been a hasty decision born of an emotional reaction to a rough day, but I am so glad that I have taken this trip with Danny. For all the epic fuck-ups, scrapes with the law, mortifying situations and so on, I cannot deny that I am having the time of my life. I don’t think I’ve ever had this much fun, and even though, at times, I am the most stressed out I have ever been, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so chilled out. So chilled out, in fact, that this afternoon we’re in Brighton and I’ve done a potentially silly thing… I’ve agreed to let Danny give me a makeover.
The shopping stage was fine. Terrifying, and I feel sick with nerves at wearing any of these outfits in public, but fine. I can wear one of the, frankly, slutty outfits Danny picked out for me tonight, but then I can take it off, safe in the knowledge I gave it a go, and then I’ll never have to wear it again. Same goes for the OTT make-up. But here, now, sitting in this chair at the hairdresser’s, I am terrified. It’s a really funky place and I don’t think anyone working here has a hair do that would see them succeed in a job interview for any other professions, except perhaps the circus.
I twirl my longish ash-blonde locks nervously. This is my natural colour, and I’ve never dyed it before. I’ve never really had more than a trim, so I’m dreading the ‘expert advice’ I’m waiting on. Unlike the clothes, the hair won’t be so easy to rectify. Not without another sitting in the chair, and I’m not exactly flush with money right now. I can’t even really afford this, but I figured I could use my wages from this week, seeing as though I haven’t actually done a second of work, and pretend it was a holiday. I could’ve used my poor finances as a valid excuse to get me out of my makeover but, to be honest, I kind of want Danny to do his worst. I trust him. I know he wouldn’t make me look stupid. Then again, today he’s wearing Batman Converse.
A guy with a blue reverse mohawk (at least that’s what I imagine it is) comes over and introduces himself as Zander.
‘So, your friend tells me you’re after something completely different,’ Zander says as he ruffles my hair.
‘Yes,’ I reply confidently. ‘A different colour, for sure. Maybe a different shade of blonde, like Jessica Simpson.’
‘Fuck Jessica Simpson,’ Danny interrupts. ‘I’m thinking Jessica Rabbit.’
‘Oh, oh, yes!’ Zander claps excitedly. ‘With your little waist and your big cans, we can get you looking like Jessica Rabbit. I’m thinking we dye you red, put in a few extensions to give you a bit more length and a bit more volume – boom!’
I glance back and forth between them in the mirror for a few seconds, taking one last look at my blonde hair. Say goodbye to the old Candice.
‘Fuck it,’ I blurt out. ‘Do it.’
As soon as the words leave my lips it occurs to me to immediately change my mind. I know it’s only hair, and that technically it could be fixed if I didn’t like it, but there’s no way I could afford all the work it would take to have the red completely removed.
You know what? I need to take a few risks. Do a few things that can’t be easily undone. Well, now that Zander is slopping the dark-coloured dye on my hair, there really is no turning back.
I smile to myself as I watch all traces of the old me being covered up. The boring, stuffy, Candice I had morphed myself into to please Will is being plastered over, ready for me to start my life again.
Since we arrived they’ve been playing booming, clubbing music here in the salon, but the mood changes suddenly when Jack Duff’s new track comes on. He’s a singer/songwriter, not unlike Ed Sheeran or James Bay, with his poetic lyrics and beautiful acoustic sound making him sure to be the next big thing, picking up the Mercury Prize, going multiplatinum and then recording a cover for the John Lewis Christmas advert over the course of the year.
‘I love this song,’ I say with a sigh, to no one in particular.
Danny is sitting next to me, twirling in an unoccupied chair as he thumbs through a copy of
Tatler
.
‘This romantic junk?’ He laughs.
‘Yep,’ I admit. ‘I don’t usually like this kind of music, and it’s not because I’m heartless, although that is up for debate,’ I joke. ‘It’s just… I don’t know. I usually opt for the strong chicks, like Beyoncé or Kelly Clarkson. But I like this. I like Jack. He makes me feel a rush of something in my chest, like maybe my cold heart might be thawing, just a little, and he writes the kind of lyrics that make you feel like it might be quite nice to have someone who gives a fuck about you.’
Danny smiles. ‘You know, despite being self-depreciating and littered with expletives, that might be the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard you say,’ he tells me. ‘Perhaps you’re not the cold robot you make yourself out to be.’
‘Perhaps I’m not.’ I smile.
‘Rinse time,’ Zander chirps, interrupting our conversation.
After my hair is rinsed, Zander escorts me back to my seat.
‘Wait, don’t let her look in the mirror,’ Danny insists. ‘Face her away from the mirror while you dry her. It’ll be a surprise.’
‘I’ll plaster some slap on her if you like,’ one of the girls sweeping the floor offers. ‘Then the change will seem more drastic, extreme makeover style.’