‘OK, I’ll think about it.’
‘You’re my hero,’ said Zach, holding a hand in the air.
Reluctantly, I high-fived him back.
Later that night, Rory called me from Nigeria again to retract what he’d said about not having to wear anything special for drinks at the House of Commons. Apparently there was a dress code, women had to wear dresses, and would I mind very much wearing one?
‘I have to wear a dress?’ I said, down the phone. ‘Are we going to a drinks party in 1929?’
Rory apologized and said it was ridiculous, that he didn’t mind what I wore at all and I could come naked, as far as he was concerned, although it would make him furiously jealous of all the men who would stare at me. ‘And indeed of all the women.’
‘Hang on, I thought it was drinks with friends?’
‘It is.’
‘Who are all these people? And how come there’s a dress code?’
‘It’s work friends,’ Rory told me, before reiterating that it was all ‘terribly absurd’ but he didn’t want me to feel out of place.
The result of this conversation was that I arrived at Westminster tube station that Thursday evening in a yellow dress and pair of block heels I’d panic-bought from Zara. Yellow seemed a cheerful idea at lunchtime, but now I felt like Homer Simpson and the shoes were already rubbing my heels.
I crossed the road and walked through a set of black gates, then down a slope to the entrance Rory had told me about. After showing my driving licence to a surly policeman, I found him waiting at the end of the security belt.
‘You look like a daffodil!’ he said, kissing me on the cheek.
It wasn’t clear if this was a compliment or not. ‘I hope it’s all right,’ I replied, wriggling my right foot to relieve the pressure of the new blister. ‘But how are you? How was your trip?’
‘Oh fine, fine, official business,’ he said, ushering me into a vast stone hall with a vaulted ceiling like a cathedral.
‘Wow, look at this place!’ I wanted to stop and gawp but Rory was hurrying us along the paved flooring.
‘So what’s the deal tonight?’ I asked, trying not to hobble. Hobbling isn’t alluring, Florence; ignore the throbbing on your heel and keep up.
‘Deal?’ he said over his shoulder.
‘You said work friends, so who exactly?’
‘There’ll be various of us, I expect, I won’t know everyone.’ He led me up nine steps (an uneven number, bad) and through a door into a corridor which smelt like school, a powerful combination of Pledge and stew.
‘OK, but who will you know?’ I persisted.
‘Just a couple of people from the office, a chap called Noddy and another colleague called Octavia. It’s a networking thing.’
‘Networking? Rory, I thought you said it was drinks with friends?’
He stopped in front of a door, through which I could hear bar noise, and put his hands on my shoulders. ‘It’s various friends, a few of them, just at a work event. OK?’ He kissed me on the forehead and took my hand. ‘Come on, I can’t wait for you to meet them.’
It was as he led me through the door that I noticed a sign outside it which said, ‘A Conservative Future wine reception’.
A political drinks party! He hadn’t said anything about that. What if I said something dim? What if I met someone who asked me to tell them the philosophical differences between Labour and the Conservatives and I had to admit I wasn’t sure? Who was the current home secretary, the one with the loud handbags, or the man who looked like a frog?
He pulled me through the stifling room, past people chatting and laughing in huddles. ‘Hello, hello, lovely to see you,’ he said, smiling broadly at them all as we passed, before tapping a tall man on the back.
‘Noddy, there you are.’
The giant swung round and grinned. ‘Hello, old bean, how are we?’
‘Tremendously well,’ Rory replied, releasing my hand to shake his. ‘Noddy, I’d like you to meet Florence. Florence, this is Noddy, one of my oldest school friends.’
‘Hi,’ I said, and tried not to wince when this man – Noddy? Could I really call him that? – crushed my palm with the strength of a Trojan. He had a square face and the bleached teeth of an American film star.
‘Florence, good to meet you.’
‘You too.’ I couldn’t call him ‘Noddy’. It was too ridiculous. I retrieved my hand and let it fall by my side, limp as a washing-up glove.
‘Who’s here?’ Rory asked. ‘Have we missed anything?’ He reached for two glasses of white wine from a passing waiter and handed me one.
‘No. Nothing to report. The PM might look in later. Didn’t you say that, Octavia?’ Noddy turned to a blonde woman beside him.
I felt immediately intimidated by Octavia because, quite apart from her very short black dress and cascading hair, she was wearing Ferrari-red lipstick. Every now and then, inspired by a celebrity photo, I tried a red lipstick in Boots but they all made my teeth look yellow, which was why I stuck to Carmex.
As if she could sense my wariness, she smiled at me with her red mouth but not her eyes. ‘Octavia Battenberg, how do you do?’ she said, extending a hand. She also had scarlet nails.
‘I’m good, thanks,’ I said, smiling back, hoping that my eyeliner hadn’t started running. What kind of name was Octavia Battenberg? Where were all the normal people?
‘Hi, darling,’ Octavia said, leaning into Rory and kissing him on both cheeks.
‘Hello, Tav, how are you?’
‘Extremely well. And yes, apparently we might be graced with the PM later but nobody’s entirely sure.’ She spoke in a posh drawl, as if ejecting every word was an effort.
‘Do you all work in the same office?’ I asked.
Octavia looked from Noddy to Rory, then me. ‘Sort of. We’re all fighting for the same team, if you know what I mean?’
I didn’t, but I didn’t want to let her know that, so I nodded. ‘Yes, totally.’
‘Do you work in politics?’ she asked.
‘No, for a bookshop in Chelsea.’
‘A bookshop! How adorable.’
‘How can bookshops possibly survive these days?’ interjected Noddy. ‘I buy all mine from Amazon.’
‘It’s where we met,’ said Rory, sliding his arm around my waist and pulling me into him. ‘I went in to collect something for my mother and there she was.’
‘Darling Elizabeth, how is she?’ asked Octavia, placing one hand on Rory’s arm.
‘She’s terrific. I’m off down there next weekend, as it happens. I’ll send your best wishes.’
‘Please do. And to your father,’ said Octavia, before switching her attention to me again. ‘Have you met Rory’s parents? They’re divine.’
‘No, er, no I haven’t.’ My blister was getting worse and I could feel a bead of sweat running down my stomach. This situation was intolerable.
‘Oh look, there’s Jacob,’ Octavia suddenly said to Noddy. ‘We must go and talk to him. Lovely to meet you,’ she said unconvincingly to me before blowing Rory a kiss and snaking her way through the room with Noddy behind her.
‘How do you know her?’ I asked, trying to sound light, as if I didn’t care about the answer.
‘Our parents live near one another so we grew up together. Isn’t this fun?’ He grinned at me as he said this, his eyes alight as if he actually meant it. ‘Come on, let’s have another glass of wine and I’ll introduce you to more people.’
He led me through the room, stopping every now and then to say hello to someone. Several congratulated him on being approved for the party list. One man, whose capillaried face was so maroon it matched his tie, clapped Rory on the back and said he was looking forward to working with him. I swallowed another glass of wine, ate several cheese straws and pretended to laugh at their obscure political jokes.
Just as Rory whispered that we could ‘run away’, a man I vaguely recognized stepped in front of us. He had wavy white hair and a pair of tort
oiseshell spectacles perched on the end of a bulbous nose. ‘Rory Dundee, I believe?’
‘Absolutely, Secretary of State, a privilege to meet you,’ replied Rory. More hand-shaking.
‘And who’s this?’ asked the man.
‘This is my girlfriend, Florence,’ Rory replied.
‘Ah, good man. We all need a Florence in our lives.’ He leant towards me and winked.
But I was too stunned at being called a girlfriend to care about the pervy old dinosaur. He blathered on to Rory that the party was very lucky to have him and expecting great things while I stood there mute. In my head, there was a big neon light flashing: ‘GIRLFRIEND, GIRLFRIEND, GIRLFRIEND.’ Rory had called me his girlfriend, which meant I, Florence Fairfax, had a boyfriend. Other women seemed to bang on about their boyfriends all the time and now I could be one of them, although obviously I’d try to be less irritating about it.
I practised various lines in my head: ‘My boyfriend Rory works in politics’ or ‘My boyfriend and I went to the cinema last night.’ It sounded weird. Good weird, not bad weird. It had all just been very quick. A few weeks ago, the only man in my life had been Marmalade. Maybe Eugene, on a good day. Now I had Rory.
‘You know when you know,’ Jaz had told me at a NOMAD session some months before. Although that was just after she’d started dating the cheat who had a family in Solihull so she’d been wrong. Did I know about Rory? I glanced up at his face as if I could measure my feelings by examining him.
‘That goes without saying, Secretary of State,’ he said, nodding enthusiastically at the dinosaur. ‘Anything the party needs, I’m your man.’
I wasn’t sure I did know quite yet, but I had a good feeling about him. I just needed to pluck up the courage to tackle the ‘Cowabunga!’ thing.
We went back to his place in a cab, which meant I could slide my horrible shoes off in the back as we slid through dark London towards Pimlico. I hadn’t been to his flat yet and was intrigued. I wondered what his bedroom was like. Neat, I presumed. I couldn’t imagine Rory had a bedroom with bad linen and thin pillows.
‘Did you enjoy that?’ he asked, as he traced his fingers up my thigh. That alone was enough to set me off. Even if his bedroom wasn’t tidy, I told myself, I was about to have sex and should be too excited to worry about shirts on the floor.
‘Yeah, it was… interesting.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, pulling a guilty face. ‘I know it was probably more work than you’d imagined. But I’m glad you were with me.’
‘No, no, it was fun, seeing behind scenes. And girlfriend, huh?’ I said it while smiling coyly at him. I didn’t want to scare Rory out of it, to take it back.
He grinned. ‘I blurted it in the moment but I wanted to say it. I thought about you all trip.’ Then he leant over and pulled my face towards his, his fingers under my chin. ‘Will you be my girlfriend?’
I almost laughed at the corny absurdity of it but reined myself in. It would ruin the moment. Instead, I nodded very slightly and he closed his mouth on mine. Every nerve in my body danced at this, and my irritation about Octavia and her perfect lipstick vanished.
When the cab pulled up a few minutes later, I opened the door and tiptoed across the pavement in my tights.
‘What are you doing?’ he said, climbing out after me.
‘Sore feet,’ I said, sensing that blisters were on the list of Bodily Things That Aren’t Very Sexy To Discuss, like moles and ingrown hairs.
He led me up a short path to his front door and reached into his suit pocket for the keys. ‘After you, madam,’ he said, pushing it open.
I wiped my damp feet on the doormat and blinked in the dark as Rory closed the door behind me. It was a house, not a flat, and I seemed to be standing in a hall with a chequered stone floor which led to a flight of stairs.
He dropped his post on a table beside us and stepped more closely behind me. ‘Hi,’ he whispered into my neck.
‘Hi,’ I whispered back, shivering as Rory ran his hands down the side of my body. I tried to turn around but he held me in place.
‘Don’t even think about it, stay right there, please, hands on the table.’
I laid my palms on it as he crouched down behind me, his hands running up my legs, and I suddenly wished I’d worn stockings instead of an 80-denier pair of opaques from M&S. Mia always wore stockings, claiming that they were more comfortable. I found this a dubious excuse and suspected it was simply another maxim that women told themselves because they thought men preferred stockings to tights. Stockings seemed unpractical – what if one fell down? Say what you like about a thick pair of opaques but at least they kept your bits warm.
Rory didn’t seem to mind the tights. He peeled them down with my knickers and I lifted each foot in turn so he could remove them. At the warm sensation of his hands on my bare skin, I dropped my head back and sighed. Then he stood, running his hands back up my legs as he did, one thumb brushing between them when they reached the top.
Next, pressing his erection into me, he reached around my waist and tugged the drawstring of my Homer Simpson dress.
‘Shall we go upstairs?’ I whispered. There was a mirror above the table decorated with wedding invitations and a newborn baby card which announced that Araminta had been born three weeks earlier. I couldn’t concentrate on sex while looking at a photograph of little Araminta in a woolly hat.
Plus, now my dress was untied at the waist it hung around my body like a Victorian nightie. I wanted to pull it over my head and feel Rory’s skin against me again. I wanted his hands and his mouth over every bit of my body. And I wanted to touch him. I felt lazy standing there, my feet on the cold floor, my hands on the table, as if I wasn’t pulling my weight.
‘We’re staying here,’ Rory replied, pulling the skirt of my dress up again so his hands could feel underneath it, running over my hips and up to my bra. He yanked the cups aside and pinched my nipples hard, making me gasp. As he pinched, I instinctively pushed my bottom out into his groin. OK, maybe the hall was all right for a moment. I just wouldn’t look at Araminta.
Rory dropped one hand back down to between my legs, lightly brushing the tips of his fingers back and forth along the skin there. I groaned, desperate for him to rub me harder and for this to be more of a joint activity. I reached behind to the crotch of his trousers and tried to undo the button at the top but, one-handed, facing away from him, it was impossible. Luckily, his hand found mine and he undid his flies so I could take hold of his penis. Making a circle with my fist, I lightly traced my fingers up and down it.
‘Harder,’ he moaned into my hair.
How hard? I was uncertain. It seemed a delicate thing, a penis. I didn’t want to pull on it as if I was ringing a church bell. I tightened the grip of my thumb and forefinger and Rory sighed again into my hair, which I took as a good sign.
‘Harder,’ he urged so I made the circle of my fingers smaller yet again. Could one break a penis? Please can I not break this, I thought, as I moved my hand up and down. It would be just my luck to get a boyfriend and then immediately snap his most precious part.
After a few moments, Rory moved my hand off him, lifted up my dress and pushed into me. It felt rough at first, so I shifted slightly, leaning further forwards on the table, his hands on my hips, the folds of my dress halfway up my back. This angle was better, and Rory sped up, back and forth, back and forth until the table was banging on the wall in front of it in time with his thrusts and my necklace was swinging from my neck like a pendulum.
‘Oh my God, oh my God,’ he started repeating, faster and faster until his body froze, glued to mine, suspended in the moment. ‘COWABUNGAAAAA!’ he groaned into my shoulder as we both remained rooted in place, my body bent at a right angle so my head was resting on my arms.
The trouble was, there never seemed to be a good moment to broach this.
Ruby, Mia and I were all at home the following night. This was rare for a Friday. Normally, it was just me lolling on the sofa with a
book and they stayed out until late, returning home at two or three in the morning when the mingled fragrance of frying bacon and cigarette smoke wafted upstairs to the attic and woke me. But as Ruby had dumped Jasper, and Mia wanted to discuss her hen party, we were staying in. Ruby, in an astonishing first, had offered to cook but changed her mind later that evening and said why didn’t we get a Deliveroo instead.
‘I haven’t got my phone on me,’ she said, looking from Mia to me as we sat around the kitchen table. It was a cunning ploy she’d pulled before since it meant one of us had to order via our phone, thereby paying for the delivery.
‘I’ll get mine,’ said Mia. She went back into the hall to find her bag.
‘How was it?’ I quickly asked Ruby.
She frowned back.
‘Ending things with Jasper?’
‘Done,’ she replied, flicking a hand in the air. ‘Although do you know what he said?’
I shook my head.
‘How did I know I hadn’t given it to him? Ha! As if I’m the one who’s been shagging everybody between the age of eighteen and eighty in London.’
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Fine. Amazing. I didn’t even cry.’
‘I mean down there.’
‘Oh. Better. On these very strong antibiotics which mean I can’t drink so—’
‘Why aren’t you drinking?’ asked Mia, breezing back into the kitchen.
‘Having a night off,’ Ruby replied, putting a finger to her lips at me.
‘Seriously?’ Mia said, opening the fridge. ‘I’ve brought back a bottle of champagne to try. Although not champagne, technically. Sparkling English wine. Hugo says we should think about it for the wedding.’
‘Go on then,’ said Ruby.
‘That was difficult. Flo?’
‘Yep, please.’
Mia reached into the back of the glass cupboard for the champagne flutes which had been my parents’ wedding present. They were almost never used. Drinking from glasses that Mum would have unwrapped at the start of her marriage gave me a pang of wistfulness but Mia soon interrupted that.
The Wish List: Escape with the most hilarious and feel-good read of 2020! Page 12
