Eat My Heart Out (4 page)

Dear Vic,

Do you want to skype? My username is purposedestiny7.

Ann-Marie X

Samuel decided to make a cocktail called Aqua Fortis because a friend of a friend who'd been to Williamsburg had said it was deck, so off he went to Gerry's specialist off-licence in Soho to buy marjoram-infused Lillet Blanc, El Jimador Reposado, and Meletti Amaro. He returned hours later, empty-handed.

Samuel couldn't get served. He couldn't get served because he was only seventeen.

‘Aren't you supposed to be at school?' I demanded.

‘I gave all that up.' He was standing against the wall in the kitchen, his hands behind his back.

Freddie sat at the table, morose and smoking.

‘Samuel.' I spoke very slowly. ‘Do your parents know where you are?'

Samuel started to nod, but then he shook his head. I saw the tears. ‘They think I'm at The Custard—' Now the tears flowed.

‘Is that your tuck shop?' I said.

‘No. The Custard Collective is my squat. East. I ran away to The Wick, as they say!'

‘They don't say that,' I said. ‘I've never heard anyone say that.' I came very close to his face. ‘You are in a lot of danger. Hackney is a very dangerous place for a boy like you. They will get you.'

‘I don't care! I don't care!' He went hysterical, grabbing at the copper pans hanging from the stove, banging them together. It reminded me of Allegra's performance back in my college room all those years ago. Three years ago.

‘Sit down!' I commanded.

He sat next to Freddie, who was repeating: ‘I want a drink. I want a drink.'

‘I was born to be a DJ!' said Samuel, with passion. ‘Or a lifestyle – a style consultant.'

‘Samuel's an Enlightenment polymath,' said Freddie, darkly. ‘I'm going to make him a star.'

Samuel turned to Freddie with the light of true love in his eyes. He buried his face in Freddie's neck and said again and again: ‘I'm sorry, sorry, sorry.'

I had agreed to buy the drink, but I had no intention of going all the way to Gerry's because I was due in Soho in two hours anyway to start my shift. I considered trying to find Vic's house after work and using Freddie's drink money to pay him to go out with me. I had £150 cash in my hand. I had never felt so free. But soon my freedom became a burden again.

I walked around the pond on Clapham Common, eyeing the men in tents. Their fishing-rods trailed in the freezing water. A tree bent its gnarled body all the way over so that its branches disappeared in the depths. Yuppies walked their dogs despite the adverse temperature. One mongrel bounded towards a collie of some kind; they yelped at each other and then sniffed each other's backsides in a circular dance of mysterious sweetness before their owners appeared in running-gear and ruined the friendship. I passed the fenced-off zone where feral cats and feral children roamed. Like voyeurs at a peep-show, young couples stared at sumptuous images of semi-detached houses in the estate agent's window. The council flats soared to the right, wrecking the dream. I passed the local crazy woman, parked outside Specsavers. She wore her hair in bunches and she carried a mangy Cabbage Patch doll. Her whole ensemble was bricolage.

I stopped and counted out £50. I gave it to her.

‘I'll tell you a secret,' she said. ‘It's something I didn't put in my memoir because they made me censor it when I had Betty.' She gestured to the doll.

I waited.

‘Soon the snow will come. The snow will cover us.'

‘Do you mean as in global warming?'

She shook her head. ‘No. I said
snow
. Not sun. It will freeze.'

‘Do you mean the world or just in London?'

Her teeth were black. She rocked her baby and told me that I was a good girl, really.

‘What do you mean, really?'

‘Really,' she said. ‘Really you are.'

I headed to the only vintage shop in Clapham, which was also a coffee shop. Yuppies were sitting around with their iPads and their real babies. I decided not to use the money to pay Vic to go out with me. Instead, I bought a cream satin blouse with a pussy bow and a black pencil skirt, perfect for work, then headed over to Sainsbury's and stocked up on Bio-Oil to counteract the ageing effects of smoking. I bought a bumper pack of Golden Virginia too. I threw the rest of the money – £17 – down the drain outside Snappy Snaps.

I had to go back to the flat; I needed to get my balletpumps for work.

I tried to discern a sign in the clouds that meant Vic would definitely skype me. But there was nothing. I saw a black cat cowering behind a rubbish bin but it didn't cross my path. I counted seven crow-like birds fighting over a scrap of food. But then another crow appeared. Eight is fucking useless to me. The grand old doors of the church where William Wilberforce had once preached against slavery were being shut and locked at just the moment that I tried to enter. I wanted to pray for Vic to text me. I got really excited when I passed the pond again and saw two white swans, their necks gracefully arched together, swimming in perfect symmetry. They looked utterly in love.

When I got closer, I realised that they weren't swans at all – just two white plastic bags, floating aimlessly across the freezing water.

‘Yah cos it's a gay thing,' Jasper was saying, spread-eagled on the chaise longue, fondling one of Freddie's uncle's bejewelled daggers. ‘That's why he wrote it. Cos he wanted this guy in like Copenhagen in the 1830s or something ridiculous. And the guy was like
no
. I'm not a homo. I'm getting married. So Hans Christian Andersen was like, fine. I'm going to write a story about it instead and make like a shit load of money.'

‘Who let Jasper in?' I demanded.

They were all dead drunk. Two empty bottles of champagne were standing on the painting of my face. The bust of Freddie's uncle seemed to shake its head in horror. Samuel was as alabaster as Allegra now; he looked like he was going to be sick.

‘Jasper,' I said. ‘Get out.'

‘Ann-Marie, charmed to see you as always,' said Jasper. He tried to kiss me on the mouth but I blocked him. He stank of musk.

‘I'm allowed to have friends over,' slurred Freddie. ‘We don't have to live like fucking hermits in a cave any more. Exams is over.'

‘Yeah, so over. Hey.' Jasper had a widow's peak. He had the frigid elegance of the international technocratic elite. ‘I'm so sorry to hear that you didn't get your degree.' He tried to get his arm around my waist; again, I blocked him.

‘It was a gesture,' I said. ‘Of emancipation.'

‘Yeah right,' said Freddie.

‘You only got a third!' I shouted at him. ‘Tell that to your fucking father then see if he lets you curate a bloody show!'

‘I think it's fabulous,' said Jasper. ‘Artists shouldn't have degrees. They should be renegades.'

‘I'm not an artist,' I said.

‘Yeah, what are you again?' said Freddie.

‘Oh, shut your mouth,' I told him.

Jasper collapsed onto the chaise longue. ‘So actually that cartoon is like a gay allegory. Because Hans was dreaming of being a human née heterosexual instead of a mermaid née queer in order to be like part of their world.' He swigged from his flute. ‘It's about yearning.'

‘I know about yearning,' said Samuel.

‘So do I, so do I,' said Jasper. ‘I was yearning to smash Sebastian's fucking face in last night when he started doing that preposterous whirling dervish dance.'

My heart stopped.

‘Yeah, and she was there, clapping and shit.' Jasper looked at Samuel. ‘Your sister.'

‘Shouldn't hold a grudge, old man,' said Freddie.

‘Was it a party?' I said.

‘Yah.' Jasper grinned. ‘Ann-Marie, I'm surprised you weren't invited.'

Freddie laughed.

‘It was their going away bash,' Jasper went on.

‘Where are they going?' I said.

‘Sebastian and Allegra are going to Mexico for six months to do some theatre thing about Aztec sacrifice,' said Samuel in a rush. ‘Allegra's going to rip out someone's heart at the top of a pyramid and eat it.'

‘Yeah, while Seb waits to ask her permission to use the toilet,' said Freddie.

The cigarette smoke in the room seemed to move inside my brain, fogging all thought.

Then I was striding over to the mantelpiece and crushing the seven brittle wish-bones that I had saved and dried every time Freddie and I cooked Nigella's roast chicken.

Four

Michel the sous-chef was simulating an ecstatic kind of anal sex with a skinned rabbit on the stainless steel cooker in the kitchen downstairs at William's, the Soho restaurant where I'd worked for the last five months. The rabbit's eyes were agog and aware like a human. It looked mortified. Michel held the hind-legs with the force of a man about to come and banged the livid red pelvis into his own again and again. The rabbit's body was long and muscular. Only the fluffy tail remained, which Michel squeezed and shut his eyes and hollered something about monogamy before he performed a vicious orgasm and collapsed on top of the rabbit's slender back so that we all heard the ribs crunch.

The rest of the kitchen slaves cheered and whistled and looked genuinely happy for once. A pile of rabbits awaited their violation to the left.

This was why I chose the hospitality and catering industry after I failed my degree. I had read Marco Pierre White's memoir
White Slave
, later more tastefully retitled
The Devil in the Kitchen
. All that protein and aggression appealed to me – I wanted to experience it for myself.

Now I made an espresso and returned upstairs.

The reception was my domain. I was the reigning door bitch, crowned in the summer, when I had answered William the manager's ad on Gumtree and made my way to Soho shaking like a horse in a thunderstorm. The aftershocks of finals were intense. I lied about my degree; I said that I'd left school at sixteen. William looked at my legs throughout the interview. He told me that my skirt was too short. I said thanks, it was a dress. William said that he'd give me the job if I gave him a blow job. I said no fucking way and stood up, but he said fine and gave me the job anyway, which undermined his authority forever in my eyes.

I had assumed that William owned the restaurant because it was his name above the door, but later Michel told me that no, William had applied for the job as manager because someone with the same name had owned the restaurant back in the 50s, when Muriel Belcher's The Colony Room was at its height just around the corner and Soho was a
place
. William desperately wanted Soho to be a
place
again. The real owner was a man called Bob who never appeared, but oversaw the accounts. He oversaw the renovation of the upstairs into a private members club, complete with a pianist and a team of mixologists, a billiard room, and something called The Snatch, a cushioned cell where everyone was encouraged to lie down. The iPod nailed to the wall only played songs that encouraged sexual healing.

Everything was going downhill in any case. William's attempt to source reliable foragers in rural areas of the West Country proved bogus; there was a bad write-up in the
Guardian
that used the word ‘gimmick' three times. But the single most powerful factor that impeded the restaurant's success was William's coke habit, which had soured his soul. He would have been a nice person without it. He was damaged. And damaged people constantly damage everyone else around them, as Madeline the Australian head waitress had told me often and sadly.

Madeline had left a copy of
Eat, Pray, Love
in the reception drawer. I read it, checking my phone every thirty seconds, then every twenty seconds, then every ten seconds, in the hope that Vic had texted me.

Nothing.

‘He's just not that into you,' came Madeline's sing-song voice, as she counted the number of covers for the evening. She reeked of a celebrity-endorsed perfume. She was square like a tank but she had a smiley face. She told me about Cirque de Soleil, which she had gone to see the night before with her sister. I told her that I hated musical theatre. She said she was amazed that I didn't want to take advantage of all the wonderful entertainment here in London. I said I didn't have the time or money or inclination. She laughed and told me that sarcasm was the lowest form of wit. I said that I wasn't being sarcastic, that I really hated musical theatre. I didn't see anything good about it at all. She went to give the waiters their briefing.

My job was to be nice at all times, to stand up when a guest appeared, to not merely point him or her in the direction of the toilet, but to accompany him or her all the way into the toilet if necessary and even wipe his or her arse for him or her if he or she should so request it because he or she is paying a fuck load of money to be here and I can get another girl who looks fucking grateful to be working, William had told me. I was paid a lucky £7 an hour, which was why I took this job as opposed to the door bitch job at Ronnie Scott's, which paid an unlucky £8 an hour.

William appeared just before the first guests were due to arrive and informed me that I was going to get slammed hard from all directions tonight so I better fucking enjoy it.

Paparazzi on motorbikes arrived just before the pop star, her tall, bald, much older boyfriend, and his parents. The paps seemed to balance like a circus pyramid. Their flashes dazzled me through the glass. The pop star was going for the Patti Smith look but without the courage to be truly haggard like Patti. Her hair was dyed black with a blunt fringe. She tried to hide behind it, but I could see her drugged eyes. Her movements were languid and paranoid. William ushered her to table twenty.

The first sitting was nearly full and there was a lull at reception. The cloakroom was stuffed with mink. Umbrella tickets were scattered on the floor. I never would be able to figure it out. William emerged from the toilet looking jaundiced and told me to wipe the mirrored surface of the coffee-table and straighten the orchids. Instead, I read about Elizabeth Gilbert falling to her knees in the middle of the night while her soon to be ex-husband slept, unaware that his wife was praying to God for a divorce so she could embark on a mystical quest of self-exploration. I put the book down and exited the restaurant through the revolving doors.

I was wearing the pussy bow and pencil skirt that I had bought with Freddie's money. I stood in front of the paps and posed. I waited for their bulbs to start popping – would they pop? – but there was nothing.

William came outside. ‘What the fuck do you think you're doing?' he shouted.

‘You said when I started here that it would be a good opportunity to network.'

He hauled me back inside.

He threw me in the cloakroom and shut the door.

Now I was alone.

I waited.

There was a knock on the door. I opened it.

An old man who looked like a toad was standing in reception. He was wearing a cravat. He handed me his cane and camel-hair coat.

‘Reservation for Douglas at nine,' he said.

‘Certainly, sir.'

The old man was looking at me with shameless hunger. I led him to table twenty-two in the far corner of the restaurant – set for one – and wished him a pleasant evening.

‘I hope it
will
be pleasant,' he said.

I saw a violently pink tongue dart over thin lips. He ordered the house apricot bellini.

The pop star was crying on table twenty.

I checked my phone. There was a text!

Please call. Love Mum X.

‘Fuck.' I threw the phone at the vase of orchids, but it landed on the leather banquette, and bounced.

A man walked in and shouted: ‘Taxi!'

All the lights in the restaurant went out.

The taxi driver and I looked at each other in the darkness.

One scented candle flickered.

‘Vic?' I said.

There was silence.

Soon the guests started murmuring, and then screaming their complaints. William ordered waiters to get more candles, apologising, but then he got angry and threw at least three tables out.

‘It is my lot in life to search for black umbrellas in the dark,' I told the taxi driver.

‘Taxi?' he said again.

‘Oh my God!' I said. ‘Vic had a poster of
Taxi Driver
on his wall. I left his room only this morning. This must be a sign.' I hugged
Eat, Pray, Love
, then waved it at the taxi driver but he ignored me and banged out of the restaurant.

Madeline appeared and told me that she didn't know why the crying pop star had a reputation in the press for being a sweet girl-next-door because she was a fucking diva and didn't even say thank you for the complimentary
amuse-bouches
that William had sent over.

The lights came back on.

Freddie and Jasper turned up at the restaurant at ten to ten, fucked. Samuel lagged behind. He was wearing a onesie with the words
Please Snort Me
emblazoned across it. The letters looked appliquéd on. He wasn't wearing a coat and his thin, ginger arms were trembling. Freddie and Jasper were bundled up.

‘Go away,' I told them. ‘I'm busy.'

‘No,' said Jasper. His hair was slicked back Lost Generation style and he wore a white silk scarf around his throat, which added to the impression that he was Count Dracula, come to drink my blood. ‘We want a table for two.'

‘Three,' said Samuel, glumly. ‘Freddie, I really don't have any money.'

‘Nonsense,' said Freddie. ‘We don't need money.'

‘You do,' I said.

Jasper glided into the dining room. He pounced on table fourteen, which had yet to be reset. The tablecloth was a mess of rabbit juice and breadcrumbs.

They sat down.

I was returning to reception, when the toad gentleman on table twenty-two said: ‘Miss. Miss. If you please.'

I went over and smiled my door bitch smile, explaining that only the waiters took orders, but he shook his head. He was looking very intently into my eyes. He held aloft a white wire which trailed somewhere under the table. I saw that he'd gone for the salmon: good choice. At least the salmon hadn't been raped. I put the ear in and waited. Rising voices of some kind of choral music competed with the din in the restaurant.

‘
Spem in Alium
,' said the man. ‘Thomas Tallis.'

I pulled the ear out. ‘That's lovely. Thanks. I hope you enjoyed the salmon.'

He looked disappointed.

I overheard Jasper ordering the most expensive bottle of wine on the menu. ‘And a cloudy lemonade for the child,' he said, nodding to Samuel.

Jasper and Freddie laughed.

A woman was waiting at reception with a girl, aged about thirteen.

‘Marge Perez,' she said. She was American. Her hair was red and spiralled in massive whorls around her head.

The girl looked like a ballerina. Her hair was done up in a chignon. She yawned: ‘Mommy, but I'm not hungry.'

‘Quiet, honey,' said Marge. ‘I'm sorry the sitter got sick, but you know Auntie Steph will be so pleased to see you.'

I led them to table eight.

Auntie Steph appeared. Auntie Steph was in fact Stephanie Haight.

I was speechless.

She was wearing a long duffel coat and, beneath that, grey tracksuit bottoms. I led her to table eight. I couldn't walk away. I wanted to tell her all about my botched sex with Vic the war criminal. I wanted to ask her how I could put that in a social and political context. But instead I said: ‘Why are men such fucking bastards?'

The ballerina looked at me with contempt. So did her mother. Stephanie didn't seem abashed at all. After a moment she smiled. Her eyes remained sad. Her face seemed burdened with wisdom. She was undeniably beautiful.

Stephanie and I continued to stare at each other.

I felt an acute sense of recognition. Maybe this was the
coup de foudre
?

Finally she said: ‘It's not the men's fault. It's The Symbolic.'

‘Capital S,' said Marge, with bitterness.

The scent of Madeline's perfume engulfed me from behind and I had to leave.

‘Kill the pig! Kill the pig!'

Freddie and Jasper were banging their forks on the table. Russian linen serviettes were tucked into their collars. The restaurant's signature dish sat at the centre. It was plagiarised from St John: a whole pig's head, sawn in half and braised, the brain transformed into beige glue. The pig grinned.