I ignored the question and went over to Martha and Maud. ‘Speaking of George Michael, I wonder if you ladies remember seeing a man who looked like him? A couple of weeks ago, on Saturday the eighteenth of September?’
Both of them became intent, searching their memories. ‘On a Saturday night? Was it the karaoke night?’ asked Maud.
‘Yes.’
‘Did he sing?’
‘No.’
‘Well, I don’t remember seeing anybody looking like that, do you, Martha?’
‘No, more’s the pity.’
‘Who you looking for, Eleanor?’ called Phil.
‘Some bloke who looks like George Michael, imagine!’ Martha answered him.
‘Late twenties, early thirties, dark hair and eyes, goatee,’ I explained. ‘He was in here on Saturday the eighteenth of September, came in quite late in the evening, sat over on that stool.’ I pointed to where he’d been. ‘Do you remember anybody like that?’
Both Paul and Phil thought hard and shook their heads. ‘Why are you looking for this bloke?’ Paul asked.
I caught Hugh’s eye and gave him a warning look. ‘Oh, I made a bet with him for twenty pounds,’ I lied quickly.
‘What about?’
Damn. I hadn’t thought through the implications of this lie, nor the fact that Paul, Phil and Jerry were all regular denizens of the bookies’ and harboured a deep interest in all things gambling.
Someone scored in the game on the telly and there was a chorus of cheering.
‘On the football,’ I said. And then immediately kicked myself because both Paul and Phil chirped up, obviously interested.
‘Eleanor? Our Eleanor? Betting on the football? There’s hope for you yet! What did you bet?’
‘Uh ...’
Double damn.
‘It wasn’t the football, really, it was . . . it was . . .’
Oh God, was there any way I could make this lie credible?
‘What Eleanor means is that there wasn’t any science to it,’ Hugh said. ‘She just bet that Reading would draw in the next two games.’
‘And you want to find this guy to collect your twenty quid?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Wish we could help you.’ Paul and Phil went back to their game, chuckling.
What was this guy, invisible? Had nobody noticed him except for me? Surely someone would have observed our flirting - it wasn’t as if I did it often.
My eyes travelled to Horny/Angry.
With a sigh, I went to his end of the bar. It was desperate times, after all.
‘Hey, Norman,’ I said.
‘Eleanor,’ he said as his eyes fastened inevitably on my tits.
‘Did you happen to see a man with a goatee here a few weeks ago? Talking with me? It was Saturday the eighteenth of September,’ I added, though I doubted that days or dates meant anything to Horny/Angry. How could you keep track of time when every day followed exactly the same progression of alcohol consumption and mood changes?
‘Bastard,’ he muttered.
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Hugh, who had followed me to this end of the bar.
I ignored him. ‘What do you mean by that, Norman? Do you know him?’
‘Bastard,’ Horny/Angry repeated, and took a belligerent swallow of his pint.
I assessed him, trying to judge how far he’d gone into Angry mode. He was still eyeing up my breasts, which would normally mean he hadn’t crossed the line into far-flung rage yet. But maybe he’d expanded his repertoire to be both horny and angry at the same time.
‘Are you saying that this specific man is a bastard, Norman, or are you talking about the world in general?’
‘Fucking bastard,’ Horny/Angry said. He pushed himself off his stool and shuffled towards the men’s toilet.
‘What do you think that means?’ I watched him go.
‘At least he has an opinion,’ Hugh said, and we went back to the quieter end of the bar. I refreshed his Coke and sighed.
‘So much for that,’ I said. ‘Thanks for covering my arse with the betting story.’
‘You’ll have to tell people the truth sooner or later.’
‘I know. But I’d rather wait till I’ve got things sorted out more in my own head.’ I looked around the Mouse and Duck. ‘I guess I’ll have to pack this job in.’
The prospect didn’t quite give me the rush of joy I might have expected. Change was scary, I guessed, even if the change was leaving a dead-end job in a manky pub, and I’d experienced far too much of it lately.
It didn’t make me happy to realise I was someone who feared change, who gained comfort from one day being the same as the next, but there you go. If you couldn’t accept unpleasant truths about yourself when you were up the duff from an anonymous one-night stand, when could you?
‘So nobody remembers him here,’ Hugh said. ‘I guess the next step is trying to find this bloke’s phone number. What’s his last name?’
‘If I knew that, I would have tried the phone book before I humiliated myself trying to invent bets about Reading Football team.’
‘True. So the man didn’t tell you anything about himself, didn’t leave his phone number, didn’t tell you his last name. What a prince.’
‘He might have told me and I just don’t remember.’
‘It’s still not exactly hero behaviour.’
‘Hugh, stop slagging him off. This is the father of my child you’re talking about. Besides, you’re one to talk.’
‘I always leave my number, and ring. Always.’ Hugh tapped his long fingers on the bar, a complicated, agitated rhythm. ‘At least you know his first name.’
‘Um.’
Hugh stopped tapping. ‘What?’
‘I’m, uh, not sure if he’s really called George.’
He stared at me. I squirmed underneath his intense brown gaze.
‘You just called him George to yourself because you thought he looked like George Michael, didn’t you?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Jesus!’ Hugh clapped his hand to his head. ‘Could you possibly be even more foolish, Eleanor Connor?’
I thought about warning him again about glass houses, et cetera, but he did have a point there.
‘He might really be called George,’ I said.
‘Right. Okay. So, basically, we have to find this man and all we know about him is that, despite the fact that he resembles a pop star, he can sit in a pub completely unnoticed. And that his first name may or may not be, and probably isn’t, George.’
‘And he may or may not be a bastard.’
‘I think we can safely assume that he is. Do you know anything else about him? Any distinguishing marks, an accent, anything?’
‘He gave me multiple orgasms.’
Hugh winced at that. Served him right.
‘I don’t think that would help us in a general search, though,’ I admitted.
It was obviously half-time in the football game; Paul and Phil came to the bar for new pints. ‘Hey, El, you really don’t have this guy’s number and he owes you money?’ Paul asked.
I nodded. ‘And I could use it, believe me. Keep an eye out for him, will you?’
‘I’ve got a better idea,’ said Phil.
14
‘Hard to believe you’ve never been to one of these before,’ Hugh said as we shuffled through crowds of people towards our seats.
I surveyed the stadium, which was full of blue and white around me. Twenty-two thousand people, most of whom were wearing Reading colours, thronged the stands.
‘Hard to believe that you and Phil thought going to a Reading football game was a plausible idea for finding George,’ I said. ‘This place is huge and everyone looks exactly the same.’
‘Which is exactly why nobody will notice you staring at them.’ Hugh dug into the large bag he’d been carrying. During the bus ride from the station to Madejski Stadium he’d refused to tell me what was in it. Now he handed me a Reading scarf wrapped around something hard.
I unwrapped it. ‘A pair of binoculars.’
‘You can spend the game looking for George. Unless you’d rather watch the football.’
‘I’ll look for George. Where’d you get binoculars?’
‘My auntie Janice thought I should take up bird watching when I was thirteen. Put on the scarf.’
I wrapped the blue and white scarf around my neck. ‘I feel as if I’m being brainwashed.’
We reached our seats, and Paul and Phil, two rows ahead of us, smiled and waved. I’d never seen them so happy, even when they were drinking.
‘This is an astoundingly stupid idea,’ I said. ‘I’m only going along with it because I couldn’t think up anything better.’
‘It’s unbelievable that you’ve never been to a Reading football game before,’ said Hugh. He was wearing the obligatory blue and white striped shirt; he had the height and build to carry off stripes rather well, I noticed before we sat down.
‘I didn’t know you were so gung ho about it.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m not, I just think it’s important to support your local team. It’s being part of your community.’
‘Yeah, but that community is Reading. It’s not the world’s most wonderful place.’
‘It’s a place, and we live here, right?’
‘Yeah, but we didn’t choose to. We studied here, and then stayed because we didn’t have anywhere else to go. It’s not much of a reason to live somewhere.’
‘It’s not why I stayed.’
‘Why did you stay?’
‘I like it. I like how the town centre is all modern shops and then you look up and the buildings are actually all Victorian. I like how my house was probably built for a biscuit-maker’s family and had five or six kids living in it.’
‘It sounds grim to me.’
‘No, it’s not grim at all. I like being reminded that things change, however slowly. I mean, look at this place.’ Hugh looked around the stadium, and I took it in again. It was pretty impressive, much bigger than I’d expected.
‘This is all right,’ I said reluctantly. ‘But most of Reading seems like such a non-place to me. It’s most famous for its railway station and its jail. People are either stuck here or they’re passing through.’
‘And which one are you?’
‘I’m not sure.’ God, unless I moved, my child was going to be born in Reading. How depressing.
‘We’ve had some good times here, you and I,’ Hugh said. ‘And it’s the first place I’ve ever felt at home. My parents pulled me around so much after their divorce that I think this is the longest I’ve been anywhere. I mean, I’ve lived everywhere. London, Luton, Leicester, and that’s only the middle of the alphabet. Did I tell you about when I was ten and I had to commute to France every weekend because my dad was working there and he was damned if he was going to miss out on a single second of his contact time?’
‘That actually sounds fun.’
‘It was awful. The only part I liked was the ferry because I got some peace and quiet.’ Hugh looked around the stadium again, though he didn’t seem to be seeing it. ‘Reading is where I became an adult. That’s a good thing.’
‘I’ve always been impatient to get the hell out of most places,’ I told him. ‘I couldn’t wait to leave Upper Pepperton.’
‘You haven’t left Reading yet.’
‘I’m too damn lazy. Anyway, what if I went somewhere more exciting like London or Brighton, and it didn’t turn out to be more exciting at all? Reading, at least, is safe in its mediocrity.’