by James Meek
Ritchie moved forward. He called Nicole’s name. His stomach hurt. I shouldn’t have eaten the plum, he thought. Nicole came out and walked towards him. Her eyes were distant. She looked at him as if she didn’t know him, as girls her age who didn’t know who he was would look at him when they caught him staring. Over her jeans and t-shirt she was wearing the light linen coat he’d bought her. He lifted his hands towards her and she walked past him, put her hand on the knob of the door latch, twisted it, opened the door an inch and turned her head back to him. Now he wanted her. Why should he wonder that the newness of her skin tempted him as it did? The idea of breaking up with her seemed to have been planted in his head by a traitor.
‘Do you need something from the shop?’ he said. He was astounded by his banality yet couldn’t help repeating: ‘Are you going to the shop?’
Nicole raised a hand to move her perfectly straight, precisely cut hair, which had dark streaks among the blonde, off her face and neck. The gold watchband was heavy on her hardly full-formed wrist, with the delicate tendons Ritchie loved to stroke. She had depleted, with speed and efficiency, the account he’d set up to service her wants: she didn’t like cheap things.
‘You’ve got to speak to my mum. She’s in the lounge.’ Nicole nodded down the hall.
A needle of terror pierced Ritchie. ‘How did she find out?’
Nicole slumped her shoulders and cocked her head. ‘Because I told her!’ She shook her face at him. ‘Don’t you talk to your kids? She’s known about you and me from the start. Anyway she’s in there now and she needs to speak to you.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Home.’ She blinked and waited.
‘I lost the phone,’ said Ritchie. ‘That’s why I didn’t call.’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Nicole. She opened the red crocodile-skin bag she was carrying and stabbed the contents with her fingertips. She found a mobile, the twin of the one he’d lost, and gave it to Ritchie.
‘Don’t you need it?’ said Ritchie.
‘I only used it to call you,’ said Nicole. She stepped across the threshold and considered him for an instant. ‘I saw us in the mirror,’ she said. ‘We don’t look right together.’ She left, slamming the door. Her scent lingered.
Ritchie stood staring at the peephole, turned round in the direction of the TV noise, closed his open mouth, turned back, shouted Nicole’s name, opened the door, saw the lift closing and shouted her name again. It seemed to him that events were taking place in the wrong order.
6
Nicole’s mother was on the sofa, watching television. She had her back to Ritchie when he came into the room. Her bleached, shoulder-length blonde hair was piled up on the headrest. She’d taken off her shoes and her bare feet were up on the glass top of the coffee table. She was drinking red wine and feeding from a bowl of salted almonds. The chat show host delivered a gag – Ritchie didn’t notice what, because he was watching Nicole’s mother’s scarlet toenails move as she flexed her feet – and she laughed along with the audience.
‘Hello?’ said Ritchie.
Nicole’s mother looked round, gulped the nuts she was chewing, put down the glass and stood up, smoothing her red skirt and, Ritchie thought, getting salt and nut grease on the fabric.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, grinning, leaving her hands on her hips. ‘Louise. Nicole said I should make myself at home. Where is she?’ She looked over Ritchie’s shoulder. She didn’t seem surprised when Ritchie told her that her daughter had left.
‘God!’ she said. She stepped back, clenched her fists and tapped them together under her chin. ‘Ritchie Shepherd! I can’t believe I’m this close to you. I was such a fan of yours in the old days.’ She blinked several times. She was excited and her breaths came quickly.
Ritchie invited her to sit down again and went to sit in another chair opposite but she called him back and patted the place next to her. Ritchie laughed, fetched a fresh glass and the bottle and sat down with her, keeping a foot of space between them.
‘I went to see you at Hammersmith Palais when I was twelve,’ she said. ‘You and your wife.’
‘She wasn’t my wife then.’
‘God, I fancied you!’ Louise laughed. ‘If you hadn’t been there with Karin, I would have tried to get backstage. I was a bit of a groupie in my time.’
‘You would have been too young for me.’
Louise smiled and looked off into a corner. ‘Yeah?’ she said, and twisted strands of hair round her finger. Ritchie swallowed and laughed carefully. Louise pretended to look stern. She hunched her shoulders and pressed her hands between her thighs.
‘You’ve been naughty, Ritchie,’ she said.
Ritchie could smell propositions before they arrived. He asked Louise why she’d come.
‘Oh, Ritchie,’ she said. ‘Nicole can’t see you any more.’
It seemed that Nicole had begun going out with a footballer from QPR’s youth squad. Bruce was eighteen. Everyone knew he was going to break into the first team when the season started. He was a lovely lad, Louise said, very gentle and polite, with a great sense of humour. She knew Ritchie would be upset; but he’d known it couldn’t last for ever, hadn’t he, not when he wasn’t going to leave Karin.
Ritchie, who disliked hearing his wife called Karin by people who’d only met her in the pages of celebrity magazines, agreed that he had known this.
‘Since Nicole’s dad left, and she was only five then, it’s just been the two of us,’ said Louise. ‘We’re like girls together, you know. We’re like sisters, best friends. We tell each other everything. And when she said she was going out with you I felt a bit funny. I couldn’t help thinking well, he is married, and she’s not really supposed to, you know, when she’s fifteen, and she didn’t go on the show so the producer could pick her out and say “She’s the one I want, she’s the best-looking, I’ll have her.”’ Louise put out her hand and cupped Ritchie’s cheek. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Ritchie. You’ve been sweet to her, you really have, all the things you’ve bought for us and everything. I was no angel when I was her age. I slept with men who had rings in all sorts of places.’
This released a parp of laughter from Ritchie. He grinned and swallowed. His upper lip stuck fast to his teeth and he prised it loose with his tongue. He didn’t believe he wouldn’t see Nicole again. Everything Louise was saying, it seemed to Ritchie, only concerned Louise; all he had to do was lower his head and plough through Louise’s wants and get to the other side, when Louise wouldn’t be there any more.
The rise and fall of Louise’s chest as she breathed became more pronounced and her eyes darkened and shone. ‘I was a bit jealous of Nicole for a while,’ she said. ‘I thought: I’m a fan of his. I’m his age, a good deal younger, in fact. I’m single, I’m not bad-looking. If he needs a bit on the side, why not me?’
‘That’s flattering,’ said Ritchie.
‘D’you want to see how big a fan I was?’ said Louise. She undid two buttons of her blouse, turned round so that her back was to Ritchie and peeled the blouse down over her shoulders. Ritchie found himself staring at his own face and his wife’s, etched together by a tattooist’s needle on a stranger’s clear white skin, between her right shoulder blade and the horizontal white strap of her bra. He thought of the child Nicole watching Louise undress in a bedroom in a stuffy flat in Acton and asking about these indelible faces. As Louise’s skin aged, would his and Karin’s image age too, he wondered, or would Louise die in fifty years’ time, an old woman with two immortals on her back?
Ritchie put his hands on Louise’s waist and moved closer. The tattoo artist had taken the image from the cover of their first album. When Ritchie squinted he could see that the words were there, in miniature. The Lazygods: Fountain.
‘That cover was my idea, you know,’ he said, and kissed the tattoo. Louise laughed. Ritchie moved his tongue over the inked image of his own face, plunged his hands inside Louise’s bra and squeezed her breasts.
The phone
in his pocket, the one Nicole had given him, started to vibrate. Ritchie stood up, pushed Louise away and took several steps back from the sofa while he took the phone out. He looked at the screen in terror. Ritchie calling, it said.
Louise turned herself round and watched him with eyes that had hardened. When he snatched his hands away from her he’d almost shoved her. Ritchie could see she wasn’t sure whether to be angry or to pretend to be angry as part of their game. She straightened her skirt and crossed her legs primly but didn’t close her blouse or pull her bra up to cover her breasts. She watched Ritchie sceptically with her head tilted to one side. The phone was still ringing. It seemed to Ritchie to have been ringing for minutes. He had an urge to ask Louise what he should do. He despised himself for being weak enough to consider it. He stood still, licking his lips, gripping the phone while it buzzed in his sweaty fist, staring at the woman he’d been on the verge of having. He felt his status diminishing with each moment of speechlessness. The hardness in Louise’s eyes was turning to mockery.
‘You look like you’re expecting bad news, Ritchie,’ she said. ‘Are you going to answer it?’
‘Not in front of you,’ said Ritchie. He hadn’t meant to sound curt, but it was too late.
‘Sorry!’ said Louise, and began buttoning up her blouse. The phone stopped ringing.
‘This isn’t the best time,’ said Ritchie, holding his hands out, still gripping the phone tightly, not moving towards Louise. ‘I have to deal with this.’ Louise got up, animated by all sorts of nervous, jerky actions, hooking her bag over her shoulder, fixing her hair, touching her earrings, checking her phone, biting her lip.
‘You’re a busy man,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how you found time for Nicole but I can see you don’t have time for me.’ Her mouth flexed in a joyless smile and she blinked. ‘Cheerio, then.’
‘Goodbye,’ said Ritchie. He gave Louise the full, wide, I’m-all-yours grin he gave people he’d met once when he was sure he wouldn’t see them again, and she left.
Ritchie sat down, took out Nicole’s phone, called his lost mobile and closed his eyes. It rang twice before somebody picked up. He could hear them breathing strangely.
‘Hello?’ he said.
‘Is that Daddy?’ said Ruby.
‘Oh,’ said Ritchie. He opened his eyes. ‘Hello, my little angel. Yes, I’m Daddy. It’s your Daddy. Where are you?’
‘I’m in bed,’ said Ruby. ‘Where are you?’
‘In London.’
‘Your voice sounds funny.’
‘Does it? Listen, Ruby darling, where did you find the phone?’
‘In the garden.’
‘In the garden!’
‘In the grass.’
‘Mmm.’ Ritchie stood up. ‘What do Mummy and Dan think about that?’
‘They don’t know,’ said Ruby. ‘It’s a secret. I’m hiding it under my pillow.’
‘What a clever girl you are,’ said Ritchie. ‘It’s not easy to hide things from Mummy, is it?’
‘I’m going to call the pizza place.’
‘It’s too late for pizza, darling. You should be sleeping. Where’s Mummy?’
‘Gone to play music.’
‘And where’s Milena?’
‘In her room.’
‘Has she read you your story and said night-night?’
‘Yes.’
‘So she thinks you’re sleeping?’
‘Yes.’
Ritchie was walking out of the flat towards the lift. He felt light and strong and aware, as he did before a difficult meeting with channel executives.
‘Ruby darling,’ he said, ‘that’s Daddy’s phone. I dropped it by accident in the garden.’ The lift was descending. The doors opened and he walked towards the street door. ‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Are you there, love?’
‘It’s not yours!’ said Ruby. ‘It says “Nicole” in the little screen.’
Of course, they taught her to read! thought Ritchie. They took her innocence! His throat tightened. He was overcome with tenderness towards his little daughter, tucked in bed with her feet halfway down the pony quilt, not understanding the evil forces of disclosure that the poisoned silver box held to her ear were summoning. Only Ritchie could save her from these cruel powers. The top of his nose tingled with sadness and affection as he got into the car.
‘Aren’t you sleepy?’ he said. He began to drive home, clamping the phone between his shoulder and his ear when he shifted gears.
‘No.’
Ritchie’s strength was not in foreseeing emergencies, but dealing with them when they came up. He could get her to open the window and throw the phone out; but what if she fell? He could ask her to take a heavy object and smash the phone to pieces. But did Ruby have heavy objects in her room, and if so, could she lift them? He could direct her to take out the SIM card but it was likely that her tiny soft fingers would fail to find purchase on the tricky catch over the battery compartment, she would become frustrated, there would be crying, and Karin would be alerted.
‘Ruby, you do know you’re Daddy’s absolutely favourite girl, don’t you?’ he said. ‘I want you to be super-brave and clever and do what Daddy asks you. Will you do that for me?’
‘OK.’
‘Because the phone you found is really very important and special and secret. And if you’re super brave and clever I’ll give you whatever you want. What do you want most in the world?’
‘I want to be on television.’
‘I can put you on television, darling, of course I can. And if you want that to happen, all you have to do is put the phone to sleep and hide it under your pillow and in the morning it’ll be gone. And – this is very important, the most important thing, darling – you must keep it a secret, and not tell anyone you found the phone, not even Mummy or Dan or anyone at school or Granny or Auntie Bec or anyone. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘So just put the phone to sleep, darling, and hide it under your pillow, and then you go to sleep.’
‘I want a story.’
Along the dual carriageway to the M25 Ritchie told Ruby the story of the lion and the mouse, how the lion didn’t eat the mouse when it was woken up, and how later the mouse saved the lion by chewing through a hunter’s net. When he finished he asked Ruby quietly if she was still awake. He asked three times, more gently each time, and when there was no answer he hung up and increased his speed.
Coming up the driveway of the house he saw the lights on in the studio, which was in an old stable block set away from the main building. He parked the car well short, trotted up to the front door of the house and went to Milena’s room, down the hall from Ruby’s room and Dan’s. He found Milena sitting in a tracksuit on her sofa with her knees up, drinking tea and watching TV.
‘Karin’s in the studio,’ she said. ‘She wasn’t expecting you.’
Ritchie grinned. ‘I felt like not staying away,’ he said. ‘Are the kids in bed?’
‘Oh, ages ago. They’re asleep.’
‘How were they?’
‘Fine. Dan wouldn’t eat his pasta. He said the shape of macaroni made it taste bad.’
‘I’ll just look in on them.’
Ritchie closed Milena’s door behind him – it had been open – and went to Ruby’s room. It was lit by a dim yellow night light. Milena had cleared everything off the floor, dolls, books and costumes together, and heaped them in a crate by the chest of drawers. Under the window the front of the doll’s house stood ajar and some of the miniature furniture it contained was stacked higgledy-piggledy in the back of Dan’s old Tonka dumptruck. Ruby had the quilt pushed down to her waist. Her mouth was slightly open. Ritchie could hear her breathing. It seemed to him that the penguins on her pyjamas were staring at him in a tough way. The phone had fallen on the floor. Ritchie went over to pick it up. A floorboard creaked loudly under his foot. He heard Karin’s voice. She was talking to Milena. He grabbed the phone, shoved it in his pocket, leaned down, stroked his daughter�
�s head and kissed her. The door opened and Karin whispered to him.
Karin was wary, but glad to see him. They went to bed early and made love before they went to sleep. The thought that he was cheating Nicole by loving his wife gave Ritchie strength. The thought that he had narrowly managed to save his family from terrible danger made him tender. It did not seem to Ritchie that he loved Karin any less because while he was thrusting into her he was imagining Louise and Nicole sitting next to the bed watching him with their skirts pushed up round their waists and their hands moving between their thighs.
Ritchie and Karin fell asleep wrapped in each other, which they didn’t usually do, because her hair tickled him and his body heat kept her awake.
7
Ritchie was at the Rika Films studios before eight next day. By mid-morning shivers of panic were rippling through the building. One of the acts, a band of fourteen-year-olds from Rotherham called The What, had shown such rapid improvement from the original audition that the team was convinced it had been swindled. As it stood the kids sounded too professional to be put on the show and they’d been brought into the studio early to get them to recapture their previous, possibly fake, hopelessness.
At the same time Lazz, Riggsy’s co-presenter, was refusing to come to work. Lazz had discovered that the blooper reel for the Christmas special, which was already in the can, didn’t include any funny on-camera mistakes by him, because he hadn’t made any. His agent Midge agreed that this showed a high level of professionalism on Lazz’s part, but said that his client felt the absence of footage of him giggling, stumbling over words or getting into trouble with props and animals might alienate him from his fan base by suggesting a lack of personal warmth; and that, if scripted blunders were not provided, his client intended to begin making mistakes at precise ten-minute intervals, with the cold, striving determination for which he was renowned in the business.
