Material Girl (31 page)

‘FINE!’ I shout, standing up. ‘I’ll eat my cereal in the bedroom and go to bed! Lovely spending the evening with you, Ben!’ I holler, my hands shaking my bowl with rage.

He puts his plate down on his lap and throws his fork down on it. ‘Jesus Christ, here we go! I had my evening all planned out, you don’t tell me that you’re coming home, how the hell was I supposed to know? If you had called and told me I could have made more food, and I could have told you the football would be on. You know I don’t like surprises …’

‘It’s not a surprise, I live here! And it’s my flat too, what if I don’t want to watch the football?’

‘Scar, for Christ’s sake! It’s one night!’

‘That’s right, that’s exactly right! One night that I am here and everything is just too much trouble! Anything to do with me is just too much damn trouble!’

Ben sighs. I hear Gary Lineker say, ‘… and now over to our commentators.’ Somebody blows a whistle. Ben picks up his plate again.

I storm out and into the bedroom with the remainder of my cereal, grabbing
InStyle
from my bag in the corridor.

Two hours later, with no sign of Ben even at half-time, I wander up the hallway. Gary Lineker is talking about the match. The room is dark and Ben is drinking a cup of tea. The only light is the blue haze from the television.

‘Did we win?’ I ask quietly, hanging in the doorframe.

‘No. It was a draw,’ he says evenly.

‘Oh no, what does that mean? Are we out of something? Or does there have to be a … replay?’ I walk around the coffee table to the sofa and sit.

‘No, it’s fine, it was only a friendly.’ He takes a gulp of tea.

‘A friendly?’ I ask, incredulous.

‘Yeah,’ he says innocently, nodding his head.

‘With who?’ I ask.

‘United Arab Emirates’ he says.

I bite my tongue. I didn’t come back in here for an argument. I might not apologise this time, for the first time ever, but I won’t start another row.

‘Are you excited about the zoo?’ I ask, shifting in closer to him on the sofa. I rest my head on his arm but he doesn’t move it to let me under.

‘Excited?’ he asks, sounding confused.

‘Okay then, not excited, but we haven’t spent a day out together for ages and …’

We pause, as if God hit a button.

After thirty seconds, God presses play.

‘I don’t know. Look, Scarlet, do you really want to go, because the weather is going to be bad and I wanted to buy a new magazine rack from IKEA, and …’

‘I’ll see if we need tickets – let’s try and go early!’ I say, jumping up and walking into the kitchen as fast as I can. God presses pause again, and there is a moment of heavy silence in our little flat, but then God presses play, for Ben at least, and he turns the volume up on the TV.

In the kitchen I am trembling. I hold my hands out in front of me and as I see them shake it makes me want to cry even more. When did I get so pathetic? When did I get so scared? But I am determined: there will be no tears.

‘I’m going to bed,’ I shout.

I hear a muffled ‘Night’ from the other room.

Thursday. I decide to walk to Ealing Common station this morning for a change, and because I am wearing comfortable wedges that allow me the luxury. Still high, just with a better grip and straps that hold me in. Plus, I am ludicrously early. I wonder how much I could actually achieve in a day if I were to go to bed before eleven o’clock each night, as I
did last night. I was even awake before Ben left this morning, although I stayed in bed, one leg tucked over the duvet, my pillow doubled up beneath my head, and I didn’t say anything when he came back in the room to swap his cufflinks over. All of Ben’s cufflinks are Everton blue, I don’t know what could have prompted the swap. I could hear him rooting around in his drawer, whistling quietly to himself, some Aerosmith song that I hate. Isn’t whistling the sign of a carefree heart? I’ve never been able to whistle. I just put my lips together and blow, like they tell you to, but nothing ever comes out except air. My heart isn’t quite carefree enough to allow power ballads.

I walk past the common and cross the North Circular at the traffic lights. There are a few houses dotted along the other side of the road. I think that they must all be double-glazed, being this close to the noise and the dirt and the smog that burps and wheezes out of the constant stream of traffic circling inner London twenty-four hours a day, every day. There are yellow and orange ‘For Sale’ signs dotted along by open, expectant garden gates. Every other household seems to want to move, and I’m not surprised.

There is one white sign that stands out. It has been carefully hammered into the lawn outside a perfectly ordinary three-bedroom ex-council-house semi. The nets look clean, the driveway is neat, the wheelie bin is tidy, and there’s a row of small multi-coloured flowers running up each side of the path to the yellow front door. At first glance, with the sign hammered in the lawn, I think this house must be for sale as well. But something makes me look and read it again. It says, in big black letters on white board, ‘WIFE WANTED. PLEASE KNOCK.’

I walk up the path and lift up the knocker, but decide at the last moment to ring the bell instead. I hear it buzz inside
the house, and it seems like a song being sung in somebody else’s head. Through the frosted glass in the door I see a man trot briskly from the kitchen at the back of the house. He answers with a smile, and a ‘Can I help you?’

He is in his late forties, early fifties perhaps. He is kindly average. His hair is dark grey and thinning on top, he is nearly six foot and one of his front teeth is very slightly discoloured, but not terribly so. He wears grey trousers and a blue shirt. There are toast crumbs on his chest.

‘Have you found a wife?’ I ask.

‘Maybe. I have a date on Saturday night.’ His smile is bashful, but full of pride. ‘I haven’t had a date on a Saturday night for twelve years.’

‘Where will you go?’ I ask.

‘I thought a drink in a nice pub on the Green, then maybe Thai? I have to broaden my horizons. There are a couple of them along the Broadway, my son recommended a good one, and I wouldn’t expect her to drive with me anywhere, not on the first date, so that seems like a good idea. And women like Thai, don’t they?’

‘Yes, they do. It can be healthy, and very tasty,’ I say, smiling and nodding my head.

‘I thought so,’ he says.

‘Have you ever had a wife?’ I ask.

‘Oh yes.’ He nods his head.

‘Where is she now?’

‘She died five years ago. Breast cancer.’

My eyes fill up.

‘What about the internet?’ I ask.

‘I thought of that,’ he says, smiling again, still nodding his head. ‘But I thought I’d be original, try the sign first.’

I gulp and bite my lip. ‘Good luck,’ I say, ‘I hope she likes Thai!’

‘I hope she likes me!’ he replies, and closes the door.

He had a nice smile. He is willing to try Thai food. He has hope.

Walking back down his path, leaving his gate slightly ajar for the postman, or other potential wives if this one doesn’t work out, I remember something that my mother used to say: ‘Hope, and beautiful shoes, will carry you forwards.’

I walk my route through Soho to the Majestic. I contemplate a quick detour into Grey’s, but decide against it. Maybe later. I try the front entrance of the theatre and the door swings open when I push it. Stepping through those doors feels like pressing a button on a time machine. There is something maternal about the entrance, it’s as if the curves of the building hug you as you enter. And there is something about this theatre that seems to muddy the time and the date as well. What’s happening outside doesn’t happen in here.

‘Morning, Gavin!’ I walk up the aisle towards him and smile.

My skirt is black cotton and sparkled netting layers that stops and flares at my knees. My shirt is light cotton and fitted, baby blue with short sleeves. It’s a contacts day today, with a streak of baby-blue eye-shadow across my lids and a lash of midnight-blue mascara on both eyes. My hair is pulled back into a dirty blonde ponytail with wisps escaping around my face, pushed back behind my ears. My earrings are tiny pearl hearts. My lip-gloss is called ‘Heartbreak Blue’. It’s more of a shine than a colour, it’s hard to describe, but then so is heartbreak.

Gavin looks up briefly and then back at the plans laid out in front of him on the front of the stage. ‘You look nice,’ he says, deadpan.

‘Oh, do I? Thanks.’

‘Making an effort for somebody special?’ he asks, as the
swing doors at the back of the room flip open and Tom Harvey-Saint breezes down the aisle like a catwalk model.

‘No,’ I reply, trying not to look at Tom as he sings the ‘La’s’ in ‘Loving You’ to attract our attention. I stare at Gavin, determined not to look around. But Tom screams a series of high-pitched notes, and my eyes dart towards him quickly.

‘Really?’ Gavin asks, rolling up the plans and walking away.

Tom irritates me for showing off and Gavin irritates me for seemingly deliberately catching me out. It’s as if he did it on purpose, just to prove a spiteful point. Or maybe he just feels like he loses everybody to the better-looking boys. Except he has Arabella, so what’s his problem anyway? Tom sniggers and exits stage left.

I run up the steps towards Tristan, who is sitting on a battered cream and green chaise longue, back and centre stage, hunched over a laptop that has wires like veins poking out of it and into the wings. His hands are locked together, his two index fingers pointing upwards and pressed together like a gun beneath his chin that is about to fire through the roof of his mouth. Every now and then he moves the gun down to the keyboard and taps something.

I stand a few feet away and wait for him to notice me. I check my watch – it’s only nine forty a.m., but that’s what early nights will do to you. I think Ben fell asleep on the sofa because he didn’t come to bed until after three a.m. He didn’t touch me, climbed in with a minimum of fuss, kept to his side and faced the wall. All the usual routine.

Tristan says nothing. I don’t want to walk around behind him in case he is looking at bizarre porn, and this whole non-libidinist thing was just a crazy but clever ruse to disguise something infinitely more perverse. Although what could
be more perverse these days than not having any kind of libido? Sex is the fuel in our fire.

I put my box down noisily at the opposite end of the chaise longue.

Still he says nothing.

I cough.

Nothing.

‘What are you doing?’ I ask innocently.

‘I’m worried, Make-up. I think it’s all going to go tits-up. I had a dream last night that Dolly breathed fire on the curtain on opening night, and the whole place went up in flames around us. This place has burned a few times before, as I believe I told you, we wouldn’t be the first. And then there was an almighty crash as the roof fell in, and it woke me up, but of course it was just Mum.’

‘Oh my God, is she okay?’

‘She’s fine. Just fell out of bed again.’

‘Oh my God! Tristan, I’m so sorry.’

‘That she fell out of bed? It didn’t even wake her up.’

‘But do you, you know, have to put her back in bed?’

‘No, Make-up, I just leave her on the boards all night and hope the mice will eat her. Of course I put her back in bed.’

He stares at his laptop.

‘Where’s your dad, Tristan?’ I ask.

‘He died. Why?’

‘Is that why you still live at home? To look after your mum?’

‘That and the fact she doesn’t charge me rent.’

I laugh and shove his arm.

He looks at me bewildered. I think he is serious.

‘So, what are you doing?’ I ask.

‘Right. Yes. As I said, this is all going to be a royal disaster, and my career is pretty much ruined before it’s even begun, but I’ve had this marvellous idea – I want to remake
Death
in Venice
, but with song, of course. And I’m going to use priests. There’s this wonderful choir I’ve found, up in Pickering in Yorkshire. All of them priests. I promised them I’d get them an audience with the Pope and they were completely up for it. Plus I played the non-libidinist card – it was the perfect crowd – and I think it endeared me to them. Kindred spirits. Of course they probably just assumed I was gay, but that’s fair enough, I assumed they all were too. Anyway, they’ve got a bus with a toilet and a hob, so I could drive us all out there, to Venice, but I’ll need money for somewhere to stay when we’re there. I can shoot the whole thing on mini-DV so it’s not like I need a crew. Just enough money to keep us all going in a hostel. Plus, you know, they’re priests so we should be okay with just the basics. If it comes to it I’ll have to get some of them to turn our water into wine.’

‘So what are you doing, trying to raise money? Or are you playing poker on one of those sites?’ I am still hesitant to look over his shoulder.

‘No. I’ve been banned from the good ones for over a year. Bastards. Now they’ll only let me play for Maltesers. Sometimes M&Ms …’

‘So what are you doing?’ I ask.

‘eBay,’ he says, nodding his head seriously.