On the night bus home there is only one seat, halfway down, behind the doors, next to a grey-haired woman whose eyes are closed and who rocks gently back and forth looking like she has moderate toothache.
James sits and grabs me on to his lap and we whisper about all the things we’re going to eat when we get home: fish finger sandwich on white bread with loads of ketchup, leftover cold roast beef with a pickle, buttered toast and Marmite, Hula Hoops while we’re waiting for the toast to pop …
Behind James sits a sallow pipsqueak in an oversized black hoody playing whiny crap out of shitty phone speakers. He nods his head and stares sullenly at us, sucking loudly on a McDonalds straw jammed into a large plastic cup. The music
speeds up and the lyrics ‘we balling, we jumping, we hit it from the side,’ screech out. This must be his favourite, as he decides to amp up the sound to maximum irritation. The old lady shakes her head in despair.
James turns round and looks at the guy; James can give good menace face when called for. The guy kisses his teeth, flicking a bit of spit on James, and says, ‘Yeah, maaate?’
I’m immediately sober. I whisper to James to come stand near the front, but he says no, the guy is out of line.
Christ, these are not times in which to be a hero.
‘Could you please turn down your music, there are other people on the bus,’ says James. Everyone behind us is staring silently. The old lady next to us has opened her eyes and given James a gentle tap of thanks on his arm.
‘James, please, he might have a knife,’ I whisper, resolutely ignoring the guy as I stand up and try to take James’s arm.
‘Yeah, cunt?’ says the guy in a high voice. ‘You fucking fat white cunt.’ He rips his straw out of his drink and flicks the end of it towards James’s face. A creamy streak of vanilla milkshake flecks James’s shoulder.
He must be high as a kite, or have a knife, or both, to take on someone 50% bigger than him with a McDonalds’ straw.
The audience is transfixed, waiting for my boyfriend to get sliced up on the N24.
We are now at the top of Tottenham Court Road, and
the driver has stopped the bus and opened the doors, waiting for this mess to sort itself out.
Two lone females get off the bus quickly, but the other rubberneckers have paid their entry price – they’re staying for the show.
‘Come on, James, this is where we get the 168,’ I say, hoping I’m not emasculating him, but desperately trying to remove him from the situation.
James looks at me with an expression that says don’t worry, then looks back at the guy and moves to stand up.
‘Yeah, cunt, do what your bitch tells you, YOU FUCKING PUSSY CUNT.’
‘James, please,’ I am now dragging him by his jacket, trying not to panic. The man I am falling in love with is about to get stabbed, and in two days’ time my tear-swollen photo will appear on page five of the
Evening Standard
, with a statement from Ken Livingstone saying that if he was still Mayor instead of Boris this tragedy would never have happened.
The spectators lean back. No doubt they’ve fast-forwarded in their minds and fear the arterial blood spray might spatter their Saturday night best ‘up-west’ outfits….
James stands to his full height and the guy stands up too, but before James can throw a punch the guy has thrown the milkshake directly in James’s face and run off the bus. James tries to grab his hoody as he pushes past but the guy
has gone before the first thick drop of beige gloop has even fallen from James’s chin.
There is a collective sigh of relief and a bloke who has had ringside seats says, ‘Nice one, mate.’
James turns to me and smiles. ‘No good deed goes unpunished …’
I laugh and lick him from the bottom of his chin to his top lip. James puts his hands on my cheeks and kisses me deeply. Someone behind us wolf-whistles. I can feel cold milkshake all over my nose from his nose, and we smile into each others’ open mouths.
‘If only he’d thrown a quarter pounder … a few McNuggets,’ I say. And James kisses me again: a kiss that says I have never met a woman who makes me laugh like you do.
‘You’ve cast a spell on me, witch,’ he says as we’re lying later side by side on his living room floor, bodies pressed together like palms in prayer.
I know what he means. I keep expecting this bubble we float around in to burst. Any day now he’s going to see me for who I really am: a jealous, selfish, scared, normal human being and not this fantasy.
I wonder, when this bubble bursts, who he’ll turn out to be.
‘What shall we do today?’ he says, as he’s lying in the bath the following morning and I’m washing the last traces of milkshake out of his hair.
‘How long have I got you for?’ I ask. One of the things that’s still infuriating me is his lack of letting me know where I stand with regard to our time together. I figure as we get closer this will change and is part of his general commitment-phobia. I’ve already said my piece about him being hard to make arrangements with, I don’t want to sound like a moaning cow.
‘I’ve got to meet Rob and the boys at 7pm in Covent Garden,’ he says, as if he’s checking in with his mum whether he’s allowed to go out. ‘But let’s do something cultural.’
‘There’s the Sophie Calle on at The Whitechapel?’
‘Paintings?’
‘No, I don’t even know how to describe her stuff – conceptual? She did this brilliant thing I saw in New York, she’d been dumped by this guy and he wrote her a ‘Dear John’
e-mail, and she got, like, a hundred different people to deconstruct it – a graphologist, a psychiatrist … She even filmed a parrot reading parts of it out.’
He wrinkles his nose. ‘Sounds mad. Same name as you, not surprised …’
‘Shut up, she’s brilliant. All these different perspectives just from this one letter.’
‘Why dwell on it like that?’ he says. ‘She should just shag a barman and get over it.’
We decide to go to the British Museum. I love that building and I want to pick something up at the gift shop for my grandma. James wants to pop into his office first. He’s working on his new project, ‘a move into women’s tights’ as he likes to put it. I haven’t been to his office, and as we head towards Piccadilly I realise that I still feel at arm’s length from large chunks of his life. His dad and brother live abroad, I’ve met his best friend, but our lives feel very parallel. I still talk to Nick’s parents and grandparents often, and I used to know exactly what colour pants Nick was wearing every day and that was before we lived together.
I think about it and I rationalise that this is the reason Nick and I split up. Too close = not enough distance: desire needs distance. Knowing every domestic detail breeds unsexiness; you become like brother and sister. Intimacy
can turn into taking someone for granted. Distance is fine, I think. Yep, distance = longing = wanting someone. Yay, distance!
James pulls in to a disabled parking space in St James’s Square.
‘Here we are,’ he says.
‘Did you get them to rename this square in your honour?’ I say.
‘Nah, it’d be King-Lord-Emperor-God James’s Square if I had my way,’ he says.
‘Still, a beautiful old-fashioned square … makes sense, with your taste in music,’ I say.
‘Ouch,’ he says. ‘Wait here, I’ll be two minutes.’
‘You’re not parking in the disabled bay are you?’ I say.
‘Soph, I’ll be two minutes.’
‘What if a warden comes, you’ll get done …’
‘You worry too much.’
‘God, you just skate along the surface of things, don’t you,’ I say.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing, hurry up.’ What I mean is this: you do exactly what you want and the consequences don’t really matter because you have loads of money to throw at stuff.
That
is why you look young for your age. Your money buys you freedom from responsibility. It protects you from having to grow up.
And then I think, Christ, I’m a sanctimonious idiot,
probably because subconsciously I’m pissed off that he’s seeing his friends tonight instead of me – what difference does it really make where he parks? The chance of someone needing this space in the next few minutes is 0.1%. It’s not like he’s strangling grannies.
He’s back a few minutes later with some files marked ‘L’Esteeme’.
‘What’s all that?’ I ask.
‘Oh, research,’ he says.
‘Can I look?’
‘If you like.’ I flick through a file and see the Executive Summary: the qualitative research shows that certain female demographics will be willing to pay between £120 and £160 for a pair of cashmere silk mix tights with built in anti-cellulite enablers.
‘£160 for a pair of tights, you’re having a laugh, aren’t you?’ I can’t imagine ever paying that for a pair of tights.
‘Ah, it’s all dollies, isn’t it,’ he says, ‘husband’s money.’
‘But that’s just insane.’
‘What, ‘cause there are kids starving in Africa?’ he says.
‘Basically, yes.’
‘There’s a big enough market for it, the BRIC countries, the Middle East …’
‘That sort of clientele must be liposuctioned to within an inch of their lives anyway. What do they even need anti-cellulite enablers for?’
‘There’s always someone younger and thinner,’ he says. Yeah, married to someone older and fatter.
‘You’re so smart, James, why don’t you put your talents to good use? You don’t even need the money, do you?’
‘I just want to see if I can do it,’ he says.
‘I’m sure you can. But wouldn’t it give you more satisfaction to do something for other people? You’re great with kids, why don’t you set up some sort of project … charity …’
‘Yeah, I probably will,’ he smiles, ‘that would be nice.’
I put my hand on his cheek and he purrs like a cat.
‘I love doing stuff like this with you,’ he says as we stroll the museum, arm in arm, making up stories about all the exhibits.
‘Here’s one for you,’ I say. ‘A coin of King James III, the ‘Old Pretender’, made by the engraver Norbert Roettier. Oh look, Norbert’s brother and Norbert’s son are also called James! How is dear Norbert these days?’
‘Norby’s good. He’s shacked up with a 34DD Latvian stripper in a loft in Chelsea Harbour,’ he says.
‘I trust she’s called James too,’ I say. ‘And another one … Saint James, James the Greater, no less … beheaded, oh dear … son of Zebedee! I thought you said your dad’s name was Victor.’
‘Zebedee Victor but people take the piss ’cause of The Magic Roundabout …’ he says.
In the Ancient Cyprus room we come across a terracotta fertility figure from around 1300 BC.
She has a head like a pretzel and is carrying a strange little baby in her arms.
‘Don’t fancy her much,’ says James.
‘What, just because she’s got four eyes?’
‘No, four eyes is fine, she’s dumpy,’ he says, ‘needs to lay off the mezze.’
‘Cock,’ I say. ‘She’s beautiful. Well, apart from her head. She’s a sign of new life, birth, wide hips.’
‘Yuk,’ he says. ‘Get her on the treadmill.’
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, I think. I might find that funny if I wasn’t on death row.
But I am.
So I don’t.
He texts me ten minutes after he’s dropped me off: Your company, as always, was amazing.
These ‘compliments’ are like olives when you’re craving a steak: even the plumpest Gordal olives stuffed with orange and oregano are still just olives. Actually, some of these compliments are more like stones. Not olive stones – larger, and shaped like sugared almonds but made out of rock. You’re a ‘good woman’, a ‘clever girl’, ‘great company’. Who wants to be ‘great company’? I’m not a hostess service, I’m his girlfriend.
When I get into bed that night, it feels like this particular stone is wedged at the base of my throat.
I am in a meeting with Devron to discuss potential new products from my New York trip.
This meeting was meant to take place two days after I got back, the morning after James’s ‘outburst’.
Luckily, Devron cancelled and then booked himself on a week long ‘Total Leader Journey’ course at Ashridge, costing Fletchers just short of £10k, followed by two weeks in the Maldives with Mandy, so we’re now in June.
‘How was your holiday, Devron?’
‘Killer. Me and Mands had an amazing time. Beautiful hotel, steak every night, caught up on my Dan Browns.’
‘You look very tanned.’ Apart from your eye area, where it appears you have fallen asleep on the beach on your last day with your Oakleys on at a strange angle.
‘85 degrees every day, Mands’s already booked us in for a month at New Year’s. How was your trip then?’
‘Very good,’ I say, taking out the document I’ve prepared for him. I’ve kept it short but it has all the key market
and product info, margin breakdowns and potential launch plans.
‘Nah, nah, nah, just topline, I’m big picture, E-S-F-P.’
D-I-C-K.
‘Okay. There are three things I want to look at for launch next autumn …’
‘Whoa, whoa, hold on. We only need one.’
‘I know that. I just want to be thorough – and we’ll need stuff for Christmas …’
‘Alright, alright.’ He nods rapidly.
‘Okay. So …’
He holds his hand up. ‘Sophie. Is this going to take long? Just Mands’s having a minor procedure, needs me to pick her up from Harley Street at 3pm so you’ve got ten minutes.’
This meeting was meant to be an hour. Still, less is more, where spending time with Devron’s concerned.
‘Fine. Number 1 – Cannoli, 2 – Frozen Custards, 3 – Compost Cookies. Cannoli are Sicilian …’
‘Yeah, I’ve had cannoli, Mands makes it. Pasta tubes, cheese, tomato.’
‘Cannelloni, right, same principle as cannoli, a tube shape with a filling …’
‘That’s cannoli. Mands is half-Italian, I think she’d know.’
‘The pasta’s cannelloni. Cannoli’s the pastry, same Latin root, “canna”, for “reed” …’
He looks at me like I’m talking bollocks.
‘Anyway, Devron, they’re amazing little pastries, filled with
ricotta and chocolate chips or pistachios. Rocco’s on Bleeker Street does a classic one, but there’s a new artisan maker on the Lower East Side, doing loads of innovative contemporary flavours: peanut butter and jam, apple pie, lychee …’
He wrinkles his nose. ‘Number 2?’