Love (16 page)

Orlando compromised slightly.

“Usually my silk boxer shorts, but when it's hot, nothing,” said Orlando, playing the game as well as he could bear to.

“Veerry nice, Mr. Rock.” She leered over her horn-rims.

“Call me Orlando, please.”

“OK, Orlando, would you say that the breakup of your marriage was in part due to the outmoded and politically incorrect characters you play? For instance, Mr. Rochester, who we all know to be not only a sadist but a misogynist to boot.” No pussyfooting around for Ms. Sykes, thought Orlando ruefully.

“I think that there is a certain element of charm in the character of Rochester, and indeed in my current role, as Clym Yeobright in
Return of the Native
. I think it's the women who hold the dominant position in both these films.”

“Come now, Orlando, I would hardly call Thomas
Hardy a purveyor of sexual equality. Rape? Persecution? I think he very much had it in for women.”

“Perhaps it was his age which had it in for women, and not Hardy,” Orlando ventured, taking his life, or certainly his manhood in his hands, for crossed Jane Sykes would surely be an advocate of castration, too.

“Let's move on to the subject of your marriage to Joanna. It has been suggested that the problems between you occurred because you weren't happy with her having a career.”

“Nonsense,” snapped Orlando. Stop it, Olly, the more testosterone you can quell, the nicer she'll be about you. “What I mean is that our marriage failed because we were both working on the opposite sides of the Atlantic.” He smiled winningly.

“And it had nothing to do with your extracurricular, and at times positively profligate love life, Mr. Rock?”

“I beg your pardon?” She handed him a two-day-old copy of the
Mail on Sunday
. Orlando looked at it and turned almost as pale as Amy had when she'd seen it.

“Excuse me, Ms. Sykes, I have a phone call to make,” he said, dashing out of the room.

“Bugger, bugger,” said Orlando, dialing Amy's number from the hotel lobby. He kept getting it wrong, his hand was trembling so much. Bill came along.

“Olly, what's the matter, man?” Orlando thrust the newspaper he was still gripping into Bill's hand.

“Great,” said Bill. “Just what we needed, lots of smashing publicity.”

“Bill, don't you get it? Amy will have seen this. Look,
it says we couldn't keep our hands off each other. Where do they get these lies?”

“Settle down, Olly. She'll understand, this kind of thing happens all the time.”

Orlando finally made the digits coherent but the phone just kept on ringing.

“Somehow I don't think she will understand, Bill,” he said despairingly.

Orlando tried and tried but no answer, bugger bugger bugger.

On the set that afternoon the temperature was arctic. Bill was frosty because no one was working hard enough. The crew were possessed of a certain
froideur
toward Orlando because Tiffany had confessed her affection for him to them and they all fancied her. Tiffany was a walking icicle because she had been spurned, for the first time ever. And Orlando was Jack Frost himself for obvious reasons, and because he still hadn't been able to get hold of Amy though he'd tried Vogue House and Lily in Dorset to no avail.

The Big Chill.

G
earing up for a big girls' night in, Amy sat with her Filofax open on her lap, phoning her way through those who told the dirtiest jokes, those who would dance naked on bars given enough vodka, those upon whose shoulders she'd shed many a tear throughout her life. In short, her best girlfriends.

“Charlie, hi, it's Amy. Do you fancy coming round to supper on Thursday?… No, nothing special, just haven't seen you for ages. OK, see you then.”

“Sal, I haven't seen you for ages. Come round on Thursday, Charlie'll be here and we can catch up.”

And so on and so forth. Amy went to the supermarket and bought two kinds of cardamom pods, a bottle of red wine, some fresh lemongrass, and coconut milk. She rushed home and, with her Van Morrison on at full blast, skipped round the kitchen concocting the wickedest Thai curry this side of Bangkok. Now, while it doesn't always pay to put on a brave face, Amy felt that masking her misery was the healthiest option. And you know what? It was paying off. She only thought about Orlando every three minutes now and not all the time. He was there, of course, just under the surface of her thoughts, waiting to jump out at unsuspecting moments, like when
she cleaned her teeth or thought about roast potatoes. Boo! But she'd dried her tears and was preparing a massive banquet for eight of her closest friends on Thursday. She chopped and diced and peeled and sliced, she licked wooden spoons and burned her tongue, she choked on chili powder and scraped her knuckle grating ginger. The smell was magnificent, creamy, spicy, and tropical all at once. Yum, thank you, Mr. Floyd, she said, closing the recipe book and putting her pungent concoction in the fridge to work its magic overnight.

The next day Amy played the part of fashion editor with aplomb. She borrowed a pair of red satin Manolo Blahnik stilettos from Lucinda and swirled her way through the swing doors of Vogue House with the panache of a catwalk model. Today was her first assignment on her own shoot. Council Estate Glamour had finally made it to the studio. She'd booked her models and chosen the clothes and was about to launch her career in fashion into orbit. Is power a substitute for love or vice versa? Amy wasn't sure and didn't really care; she threw herself headlong into her downbeat darlings. Her models were real women, which meant that they had breasts, and her clothes hung on rails, a violent mixture of psychedelic and Bet Lynch. Brash, brazen, and loud.

Amy took the whole shooting match in a minibus to a particularly grotty student hovel where she'd lived with three college friends one summer. She felt authenticity was imperative for her first assignment, and since the council had condemned the property, the whole team were able to clamber through the boarded-up bathroom window. Though the makeup artist claimed that if his
union ever found out, they'd sue Amy for all she was worth. Not very much, ha ha, let them try. It all came flooding back to her. Her summer of contentment. Not a man in sight. They were all meant to be encased in the library like hothouse flowers, pounding out their dissertation on the modern novel—
mais non!
The sun streaked into the library windows and Nabokov lay abandoned on the desk where he would sit all day until five o'clock when the library was about to close and they'd charge in and pack everything away until tomorrow. Inspired by Lolita, they spent their days wearing mules and barely there shorts, trotting up and down the high street. They'd lie in the long grass in the churchyard, reading magazines and laughing lazily. They went through their local Oxfam with a fine-tooth comb, unearthing fabulous caftans and a series of books enticingly called
Silhouette Desire
, obviously the raunchy seventies cousin of Mills and Boon, their favorite of which was
Renaissance Man
, which they took it in turns to read out to one another and which involved many a brush with “pulsating manhood” on cream shag-pile carpets. They searched for David, the open-shirted medallion-bearing hero of
Renaissance Man
, on the streets of the town but he'd obviously fled to Saint-Tropez for the summer. They lived on Eccles cakes from the bakers round the corner and, as a concession to dreaming spires, polished off a bottle of Pimms daily. One day they abandoned even the pretense of the library and took their caftans to the beach, buying whiskey and sausages on the way, and building a bonfire to cook on and keep them warm, spent the night beneath the stars. Hair was dyed in the kitchen sink, a
range of shades from magpie black to reddest henna. Thinking about that summer, Amy felt restored beyond measure, secure in the knowledge that life had been heady and perfect once and surely would be again.

She directed the models into moldering corners of what was once her sitting room, the peeling sixties wallpaper clashing fantastically with the model's lilac negligee. The overgrown roses in the garden they'd never even ventured into as students were the perfect back-drop for the models to have a neighborly chat over the garden fence, fags dangling, rollers resting neatly atop of heads. In fact, all went remarkably well. On their drive back to London everyone was declaring what an outré idea it was and how fabulously the shoot had gone. “The girls looked so slutty, it was heavenly,” mused the makeup artist.

“Thanks a lot,” a model groaned, busily removing a roller that had got stuck in her hair.

“Yeah, thanks, guys, what a buzz, eh? Who needs men when you've got a career and friends?” Amy bolstered herself.

“Oooh, I do. I always feel like a man,” the makeup artist pouted.

“That's because you are one, you idiot,” said Amy, and the bus collapsed into laughter and school-trip renditions of Boney M songs. Amy felt a once-familiar glow return, the warmth of being pleased with yourself and feeling the sky very high above. Yes, she could get by without Orlando Rock, or anyone else for that matter.

That evening she returned home and, in imitation of many an executive woman on television commercials,
kicked off her shoes and rested exhausted but fulfilled on the sofa. Her stomach still let her down by fluttering wildly every time the phone rang but logic fought equally hard. It's only one of the girls phoning to say they'll be late or Mom phoning to say hello, she told herself firmly refusing to even entertain the thought that it might be Orlando. After her token gesture to the exhausted career woman in her, she padded into the kitchen and boiled up a paddy field of basmati rice, not wanting her guests to go hungry. She gently simmered her coconut curry as instructed and, ignoring the stirring-frequently part, decided that it was better she look the part than cook the part. So she showered and dressed, taking care to keep that at-home feel to her attire. Looking for a cardigan, she came across one of her infamous caftans. Amy, you can't, yes, I can, they're my friends and they'll think it's great. So she abandoned her at-home look and popped the electric blue Oxfam number over her head and was transported to her past life. Airy, summery, and carefree.

The doorbell rang to life at eight o'clock and a stream of familiar faces trailed in, all ecstatic to see one another again and wildly admiring of Amy's caftan and the lovely smell. Eight old girlfriends in your kitchen is a recipe for instant joy, Keith Floyd or no Keith Floyd. Their laughter rattled the neighbor's chandeliers and their elephant patter shook the floorboards (just as surely as did her antics with Orlando, Amy allowed herself fleetingly). The conversation was manifold. Like a perfume there was a base note of “Well, I never, did you hear about …” and a middle note of workaday exchanges, “Yes, I'm in publishing, you know” and then
the top note of hilarity and hysteria, “Oh, we're not really going out, it's just a sex thing.” Amy decided that her news about Orlando was not fragrant enough to be included in this general hubbub, it'd have to wait until a few bottles of red down the line.

The curry was declared a success and faxes of the recipe promised to at least three friends' offices the next morning and the gathering of the clan transported itself to the living room.

“Amy, I can't believe you've got this great career now, you were always the flakiest of us all and look at you—high flying and living the glamorous life.”

“Don't be silly, Alex, it's so unglamorous that you wouldn't believe it. Anyway I only earn about five pence a year.”

“Which is more than I get in publishing,” moaned Charlie.

“Yes, but at least you get to meet people with functioning brains,” said Zoe, who'd just started work in the City.

“I wish. Just lots of lecherous poets.” Charlie tossed her hair back and longed for an office full of stockbrokers to take her mind off books. “Who would be in your fantasy workmate league?” she asked Zoe.

“Definitely Ken Livingstone,” piped in Sally, “for sheer loveliness value.”

“Oooh yes, I'd be very happy to share my printer with Red Ken.” Charlie smiled.

“Oh, come on, girls, what about someone younger?” Zoe said, topping up each glass as though it were a party trick to fill each to the brim.

“Sting,” Alex thought. “Something about the English
teacher in him, d'you know what I mean?” They did and nodded agreement.

“Chris Evans. You always need someone anarchic in the office.” Charlie had made her choice.

“Yeah, but wouldn't it piss you off after a while?” Amy said, piling the plates up in the middle of the table.

“I think we need someone more decorative, too,” Sally decided, reaching over to take the last chicken breast before Amy whisked it away to the kitchen.

“Tom Cruise.”

“God, such a hackneyed choice, Alex, what about someone British?” said Zoe. “What about Rufus Sewell. Or whatshisname, the intense-looking one?”

“Which intense-looking one?” Amy was about to run to the kitchen as she knew what was coming next, but something glued her to her chair. She changed the CD as a compromise.

“Orlando Rock?” asked Alex. At which point the music stopped. Amy hiccuped in the corner.

“Don't go any further with that one,” she said. They were all looking at her now. What to say? She couldn't bear to hear anything said about Orlando in her own living room, it would be weird beyond belief. And part of her still had a longing to talk about it. To cast it to her friends like a Frisbee and see what they made of it all. She tried to play down the anticipation, which was just hanging there. “Oh, it's nothing really, just that, well, I was kind of seeing Orlando. I mean, I'm not anymore, so it doesn't really matter what you say about him. But, I just thought you should know.” She reached for her glass.