Lizzy Harrison Loses Control (17 page)

For once, Randy requests a quiet table in the corner and, in any case, the locals in this pub are so used to celebrities they hardly bat an eyelid. The only person who has ever melted the notoriously cool bar staff is Madonna, who famously called in for a pint of ale during her flat cap Ye Olde English phase. Although everyone studiously ignored her for the hour that she perched her yoga-honed self on a bar stool, once she left it was total carnage – the girl behind the bar even fainted, said Mel, who claimed to have been there. But there are no megastars here tonight – just a few faintly recognizable faces, with whom Randy exchanges a little mutual celebrity nod: ‘You’re famous, I’m famous, we’re just acknowledging that.’ Randy adds a slight uplift to the chin, a subtle refinement which translates as, ‘Even so, I think we both know I’m more famous than you, and my acknowledgement of you is therefore all the more gracious.’

‘So, a party – cool!’ he says once we’ve ordered the kind of hand-reared, organically grown, heartily rustic peasant food that no peasant could possibly afford.

‘You’re really good to come with me, Randy,’ I say, picking at a chunk of herby focaccia. ‘Thanks.’

‘S’not good,’ he says, refusing the bread. ‘You’re my girlfriend aren’t you? Course I’d come to a party with you.’

‘Well, it
is
good of you, because I’m only your fake girlfriend,’ I whisper, with a quick glance around the room to make sure no one’s listening.

‘Are you saying you’ve been faking it?’ teases Randy, pushing a denim clad knee firmly between mine.

‘Ha! I think you know I haven’t been faking anything, Mr Shagger of the Millennium,’ I say, flustered. I busy myself with more bread to hide it.

‘Thought not,’ he says, leaning back in his chair with a satisfied grin, one leather boot rubbing against my leg. ‘There’s nothing fake about you, Lizzy. That’s why I like you.’

‘Really?’ I ask, looking up shyly.

‘Yeah,’ he says, a small smile lurking at the corners of his mouth. ‘You’re different from the girls I usually go out with.’

‘Randy,’ I say, quietly, ‘we aren’t actually going out, remember?’

He frowns.

‘Babe, you spend just about every night at my house. We’re shagging like Duracell bunnies. I want to see you all the time. What’s fake about that?’

There is a part of me that wants to believe him, to let myself swoon into his arms, to fall for him instead of holding myself back. But the hard shell around my heart won’t let me do it. Not yet. I can’t deny, though, that Randy’s constant attention has caused a few cracks to appear. I’m not saying I’ve suddenly become some Sandra Bullock character, weakening as I realize I need to let love into my life, or anything that cheesy and ridiculous. In any case, unlike Miss Congeniality, I am perfectly capable of walking in high heels without comic pratfalls. But I will admit that there is a hint of something real in this formerly fake relationship, and I’m not going to entirely refuse to allow its existence.

‘Seriously, babe,’ Randy continues, smiling at me across the table. ‘Why would I have to fake it? You’re smart. And funny. You’re all good and pretty and, I don’t know, you’re all . . . clean.’

Why is it that when
he
says I’m clean it makes me feel unspeakably dirty? It felt like such an insult from Dan, such a condemnation of sensible Lizzy Harrison, but in Randy’s mouth it seems flirtatious, exciting, challenging.

‘Clean?’ I say, laughing.

‘It kind of makes me want to mess you up, babe,’ he says, leaning over to cup my face in his hand. ‘Know what I mean?’

I know exactly what he means, and it’s making me blush like a schoolgirl, so I’m a bit relieved when the waitress comes over with knives and forks and glasses and our conversation is temporarily interrupted. By the time she’s finished, Randy’s attention has already moved on to what the two of us should be wearing for our first official event as a couple, though it becomes obvious as he speaks that my role in this sartorial partnership is going to be as accessory to Randy rather than equal partner. He’s talking about using a stylist, about bringing in a hairdresser, about borrowing jewellery and shoes. I’m too grateful to him for agreeing to come to say that all of this sounds like my worst nightmare.

‘I’m thinking a sort of denim and leather theme,’ says Randy thoughtfully, as if this is a completely dramatic and unexpected departure for someone who is rarely seen in anything else.

‘I thought you might be,’ I say, waving a forkful of lamb shank at him, ‘but you can think again if you think you’re going to get me dressed up like Suzi Quatro.’

‘Hey, that’s an idea, babe,’ Randy coos. ‘Matching leather jumpsuits. I like it.’

‘Er, look – I’ve promised Lulu that I’ll go shopping with her, so I don’t know yet what I’m going to wear,’ I protest, rejecting the visions of myself forced into hideously unflattering, not to mention unbearably sweaty, skintight pleather. This is not the sophisticated ensemble I’ve been imagining for Lulu and Dan’s party.

‘Don’t worry, babe,’ says Randy, leaning forwards. ‘Leave it to me. Let me treat my girlfriend. I’d like to.’

His girlfriend. He’s said it twice now. Without the ‘fake’. It can’t be an accident.

When the waitress offers us the pudding menu, Randy declines it with scandalized horror as if she’s presented him with a syringe on a tray with a row of pills to follow, and instead suggests that we go back home for coffee. As I know that Randy’s as anti-caffeine right now as he is anti-sugar, I have a pretty good idea what he’s got in store. The sun is just starting to set as we start to walk home, and suddenly Randy pulls me down a different road, heading away from Belsize Park, lined with tall houses painted in ice-cream pastels.

‘Where are we going?’ I ask.

‘You’ll see,’ he says, entwining his fingers with mine as he leads the way.

As we pass the cafés and bars of Regent’s Park Road, where crowds have gathered outside on the pavement, a few people call out to Randy. People he knows, beautiful girls in summer dresses, two tall men wearing sunglasses, a statuesque girl dressed entirely in leopard-skin. He just raises a hand in greeting and keeps on walking. As we get to the gates of the park, he wraps his arm around my shoulder and pulls me in closer.

‘Are you cold?’ he asks.

‘No,’ I say, leaning in towards him.

It’s a beautiful night. The sky is a pale pink streaked with delicately rippling grey clouds, which darken to red close to the horizon. The park is dotted with clusters of people stretching out the summer evening for as long as they can. As we climb up the path to the top of the hill, we pass a group of teenagers. Four girls watch adoringly as a tall, angular boy with long dark hair picks at a guitar. A chubby boy sits on his own a little distance from them, chewing his lower lip and glancing in their direction. Randy waves at him, and he turns, open-mouthed, to watch us.

‘That’s sweet of you,’ I say. ‘Especially as I bet you were the guitar-playing boy when you were his age.’

Randy turns to look at me in surprise. ‘No way, babe. I was the lonely kid all the way. I wasn’t a chubster, mind you, but being four feet high at the age of fifteen and lumbered with a pair of inch-thick plastic NHS specs does not a ladykiller make. Surely you’ve heard all this before? It’s all in my bio – Speccy Geek Turns Celebrity Swordsman? Funnyman Randy Jones Gets His Revenge on Childhood Bullies?’

‘Seriously? Weird, I can’t imagine you with glasses.’

‘Yeah,’ he laughs, but sharply, like he doesn’t find it funny at all. ‘The kids in the playground used to throw my glasses into the bushes and leave me trying to find them. Mrs Hopkin used to have to help me search for them at the end of every morning break. It doesn’t do a lot for your popularity to end up spending most of your free time with a fifty-something head of maths.’

‘So, what happened?’ I ask.

‘Contact lenses, babe. Contact lenses and the miraculous powers of puberty,’ says Randy, waving a hand over his face like a street-corner magician. ‘Grew two feet in a year, lost the glasses, changed my life. You’d think Bryan could get me some kind of endorsement deal out of it, wouldn’t you?’

‘Mmmm,’ I say, still trying to imagine the famous man beside me as a bespectacled weed set on by bullies. ‘But I don’t know that puberty actually needs a spokesperson, Randy.’

‘Oh, very funny,’ says Randy, squeezing my fingers with his own. ‘I’ll make the jokes around here, babe.’

We walk on towards the top of the hill. At the highest point, with London stretched out in front of us, Randy leads me off the path and pulls me down to lie on the grass next to him, hidden away from anyone else. He doesn’t say anything and nor do I. We just lie there side by side, holding hands and looking at the sky as the first winking stars emerge.

‘So, were you one of the adoring girls, then?’ he asks. ‘When you were younger, I mean.’

‘Oh I didn’t really go out much when I was a teenager,’ I say, suddenly feeling a panicky flutter in my chest. I don’t want to talk about this.

‘Why’s that, babe?’ says Randy, rolling on to his stomach to look at me. ‘Were you hideously ugly? Did no one never ask you out?’

‘No,’ I say, laughing nervously and pulling at a piece of grass next to Randy’s arm.

‘What then? Were you brought up Amish or something?’ he asks.

‘Yes, that’s it,’ I say. ‘I wasn’t permitted to mix with the English and all their new-fangled gadgets and temptations. However did you guess?’

‘Ah, it’s your lack of proficiency with the DVD player that gave it away,’ Randy teases, pushing a strand of hair away from my forehead. ‘That and your love of a horse-drawn carriage. No, really – were you a speccy nerd, too?’

‘Um . . .’ I say, not really sure how much of my life I want to share with this almost-stranger. ‘My dad died when I was sixteen. I didn’t really feel like going out much for a while after that. And when I did, it kind of took some time before anyone would treat me normally.’

‘Oh, babe, I’m sorry,’ says Randy, gently kissing the top of my head.

We lie in silence for a while before Randy asks, ‘What was he like, your dad?’

It’s hard to know where to start.

‘He . . . was just my dad, you know? He was a biology teacher, but his real love was botany. If he was here with us now, he’d probably be giving us a lecture on all the different kinds of grasses we’re sitting on.’

‘Grasses?’ says Randy dubiously. I realize that I probably should have tried for a more interesting fact about Dad, especially for Randy, Mr Zero Attention Span, but that’s all that came to mind in the moment.

‘I know,’ I say. ‘My brother and I thought it was about the most boring thing in the world to listen to him going on and on about plants and grasses. But I’ve forgotten it all now. I’d give just about anything to have him tell me about it one more time.’

‘Oh, Lizzy,’ says Randy, his face pressed close to mine. ‘That’s too sad.’

I curl into him as it gets darker, and he gently strokes my hair. It’s all very innocent and chaste, and yet somehow it feels more intimate than any of the time we’ve spent in his bedroom.

Though of course we do go back there afterwards.

Lulu is practically beside herself when I tell her that Randy and I will be attending her party as a couple. It almost distracts her from the question of what she will wear.

Dan and Lulu’s shared birthday parties are legendary amongst our friends, and when we were younger it often felt as if the rest of the summer’s parties were just a series of rehearsals for theirs, the main event. For years they insisted on fancy-dress themes, from ‘Hello, Sailor’ to ‘Footballers and their Wives’, and discussion about appropriate outfits would dominate for weeks. But since Lulu got banned from a bar last year for surfing down the stairs on an inflatable alligator (theme: ‘In The Jungle’), Dan had declared that their next party would be a more civilized affair. Lulu and I have been bitterly lamenting the lack of opportunity to dress up in stupid outfits, as we are both firmly of the Fancy Dress Should Be Funny school, and are always slightly contemptuous of girls who use fancy dress as an opportunity to dress as sexily as possible. It’s just too easy to dress yourself up as a gold-bikini’d Princess Leia for an Outer Space party. How much more inspired to come along as Miss Piggy from the Muppets’
Pigs in Space
. Then again, that may well be why I haven’t been chatted up at one of their parties for years. (Lulu, of course, didn’t let a plastic snout and ears stop her from going home with the bouncer on that occasion.)

Once their parents decided to fund a posh do instead of the usual gathering in a pub garden, the lack of fancy dress was a condition Lulu was happy to agree to. Not least, she said, because the idea of her sixty-five-year-old mother dressed as a showgirl (Lulu’s preferred theme for this year being ‘What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas’) was too disturbing to contemplate. So, on reflection, Lulu and I are glad of the opportunity to look attractive instead of mental, and have spent several happy hours flicking through magazines and discussing what to wear.

Lulu’s realization, however, that Randy’s presence also means the presence of the press, has stepped her sartorial considerations up a gear. After two fruitless hours in Selfridges, we retire to the champagne bar to restore ourselves with a quick drink and a shopping post-mortem.