It's Not Me, It's You

by Mhairi McFarlane

  ‘Bare minimum,’ Kurt replied, at normal volume. ‘Make a note. You get a better effect if people are helping without knowing they’re helping.’

  Delia had to discipline herself not to steal looks at Gideon. Kurt had only told her that there would be a ‘shock and awe’ stunt during the evening’s meal.

  Kurt and Delia finished fiddly starters involving jewel-like cubes of pickled vegetable and tendril sprigs of green and skidmarks of umami brown that were pleasant enough, though there wasn’t enough of anything.

  In truth, they were something of an anti-climax, what with plates being set down in front of them as if they were the answer to the meaning of life.

  Delia realised this was why she didn’t often go to fussy places: the expectation of huge waiting times and cost always led to slight disappointment that it was, after all, simply food.

  Delia stole glances at Gideon, still without food after twenty minutes or so, who was ignoring his friend in favour of yapping into his mobile. He was truly weapons-grade rude.

  They sipped their wine and made small talk, though Kurt was completely distracted by thoughts of whatever was to happen next. Ten minutes later there was a minor commotion by the door, and the maître d’ could be heard telling someone there had been a mistake.

  When he moved, Delia could see a moped driver holding a Domino’s pizza box.

  Gideon theatrically threw his napkin down, got up and strode over, handing a banknote to the delivery man. He returned to his seat with his pizza.

  Gasps. The whole room had downed eating tools and was staring at him in rapt amazement. The maître d’ looked as if he was watching a sinking ferry.

  Gideon calmly flipped the lid and started chewing on a large slice of pepperoni and ham. He offered it to his friend, and he dug in too.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Delia whispered to Kurt, and clapped a hand over her mouth. Kurt was beaming.

  The maître d’ approached Gideon as one might a large animal in the jungle, and said in hushed tones, but not hushed enough for a silent restaurant: ‘Sir, you’re not allowed to eat that here.’

  Gideon stared at him. ‘I simply got so blindingly peckish that I had to do something. Please tell the chef that if his service was faster, I wouldn’t have need of this fourteen-inch Meatilicious.’

  The maître d’ hesitated, obviously calculating the pros and cons between snatching junk food from the hands of a restaurant critic, versus going and alerting his superiors that the dining room now smelled of salami and melted mozzarella.

  The maître d’ plumped for diffusion of responsibility, and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Kurt glanced at Delia and winked again. She’d never seen him look so suffused with delight.

  Suddenly, in a whir of chef’s whites, a loutishly handsome man with ruddy face, dark sweaty hair in peaks and tattoos of dragons on his forearms came bursting out into diners’ view.

  ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing in my restaurant, Pizza Fuck?’ Thom Redcar shouted in a Welsh accent at an unperturbed Gideon.

  ‘What does it look like I’m doing? I’m eating. Though I’m not surprised the sight is novel to you, given the time it takes you to crank out two entrees.’

  ‘The fuck is this?!’ bellowed Thom, knocking the pizza to the floor. It splatted in a rather vomitous-looking mess and Gideon got to his feet.

  ‘It’s been tiding me through from the olives to the starters. Or as you probably call it, the fasting period.’

  Thom prodded a finger into Gideon’s Savile Row-shirted chest.

  ‘I’m not a fucking short order cook making you pancakes. What I create here is art.’

  ‘Yes, a still life. I bet Van Gogh’s Sunflowers was speedier than your red-wine-braised Dorset snails. What are you doing, asking them to make their own way here?’

  ‘What? Get the fuck out of here! You’re barred! For life!’

  ‘It feels like I’ve been here for a lifetime, so this isn’t a great privation.’

  Thom Redcar grabbed him by the lapels and bundled Gideon through the doorway accompanied by more gasps, Gideon’s friend waddling behind.

  Delia could see a photographer, crouching between the parked cars, capturing the stand-off. Their voices carried through the window.

  ‘Can I have my pizza please? My blood sugar’s dangerously low.’

  ‘You want dangerous blood? I’ll knock your front teeth in, you mincing streak of piss!’ Thom bellowed.

  Gideon straightened his spotted bow-tie. A spookily well-timed sleek car pulled up and Gideon and companion piled into it.

  ‘Yeah and take Downton Flabby with you!’

  Thom stood there, long enough for the photographers to get another few shots, one chunky hand aloft, two fingers presented to the retreating Mercedes containing Gideon and his plus one.

  He stalked back into the silent dining room, where the staff were rushing round, scraping pizza off the floor.

  ‘He said he wanted his pizza back. Can you put it all in the box and send it to him? Do it with a big red ribbon. Address it to Pizza Fuck, Evening Standard.’

  The staff nodded.

  ‘And put some pubes on it.’

  The staff looked taken aback, obviously wondering if they were going to be notified in gold leaf scroll of the identity of the local supplier.

  Thom glared at the other diners, as if they were in some way implicated, and crashed back through the double doors to the kitchen.

  An awkward low murmur of conversation restarted.

  Kurt muttered, ‘He’s gone off the script with that last one. I don’t think he wants to associate his gaff with rubbing your nasties on the produce.’

  A disquieted Delia grasped for conversation.

  ‘Looking forward to our trio of eggs,’ she said.

  Kurt was spending ten days back in Australia, and Delia was sure he could’ve powered the 747 with his glee at the success of the Pizza Wheeze.

  The carefully planned quotes from Gideon and Thom had been sent to favoured media outlets after the news hit the wires – the story going all the further because there were snaps of Thom squaring up to Gideon in the street.

  As luck would have it, a shocked onlooker with a perfect power of recall had been there to report the verbal altercation on the night, word for word. A few clientele had even filmed it on their phones.

  An immaculately attired, smirking Gideon had appeared on The One Show sofa to discuss whether the cult of celebrity chefs was getting out of hand and if modern service culture had forgotten the customer was always right.

  Thom gave pugnacious quotes about how the power of critics had got out of hand and there was no excuse for bad manners, which Delia thought was pretty rich from someone who put pubes on pizzas. (Gideon made sure to tweet a photo of the wreckage of his returned pizza, of course, to keep the fire burning. Delia did not zoom in.)

  They disagreed over how long Gideon was made to wait. Bizarrely, the media didn’t seem much interested in that detail. The Critic Whose Service Was So Slow He Ordered Fast Food was too good to finick about in the facts too much.

  ‘Doesn’t Thom mind this implying his kitchen keeps people waiting?’ Delia asked Kurt, before he left.

  ‘Apricity is booked solid until next Christmas, it’s not going to have any problems. Yet how many punters in the street had heard the name Thom Redcar before this? And now? There you go. Everyone knows Gideon’s a snipe. It’s pantomime.’ Kurt rubbed his hands together. ‘I can’t wait to sell the kiss and make up story. I’ve got a pictorial in my head, where Thom’s pretending to attack Gideon with a knife while he tucks into a stuffed crust. Think we should offer it to Observer Food Monthly.’

  Delia felt she was gaining layers of cynicism daily, until they would form a beetle-like hard carapace.

  Over the next week, Kurt’s absence caused a pleasant lull that saw Delia and Steph go for picnic lunches in the nearby parks. Though curiously, whenever they called Kurt’s mobile to leave messages, it didn
’t ring in that staccato international way of phones across oceans. She and Steph raised eyebrows at each other.

  Delia felt if she could’ve chosen her workmate out of a thousand people, she’d have chosen Scouse Stephanie. Steph kept tail combs in her bag for her wild hair, and used the handles to tap a drum beat on the desk, when there were no spoons to hand. (Delia had promised to see her new band, when Steph said they were ready.)

  For lunch, she didn’t fankle about with calorie-avoidance salads. She often brought what amounted to a whole cheeseboard with crackers and invited Delia to dig in. And when she laughed, she paused, her mouth fell wide open and she made a honking monotone ‘HURRRR!’ noise. Delia often found herself feeling very older-sisterish towards her.

  One afternoon during Kurt’s short sabbatical, they were sitting stretched out on the grass, nibbling a pork pie each, when Steph said:

  ‘Delia. Do you think it’s possible Kurt could hack our computers? Or do that thing where you can record the keystrokes?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why?’

  Steph looked agitated, picking at a stray thread on her lace-up shoes.

  ‘He knows about my private life. Or it feels like he does.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The other day he was asking me leading questions about who I was dating.’

  ‘Could be nosiness?’

  Steph grimaced. ‘He was dead pushy: “Do you like girls, or boys? Or both?”’

  Delia felt she was missing something. This sounded like distasteful lechery, not special intel.

  ‘When I didn’t answer, he said it was cool nowadays … Then he said Scouse girls were usually dressier than me. I was like, I’m a Wirraler.’

  ‘Rude bastard!’

  ‘We’re not all Coleen Rooney copycats. I said to him, you don’t look much like Crocodile Dundee.’

  ‘Hah, brilliant!’

  They laughed.

  Ah. Delia twigged. Kurt had sussed Steph was gay or bi, and Steph was fretting as to how. It hadn’t even crossed Delia’s mind. She supposed she was quite tomboyish. But so what, in every respect? Kurt was a creep.

  ‘Then he outright asked if I had a girlfriend.’

  ‘How dare he!’ Delia said. ‘As if you’d want to introduce them anyway. We’re hardly going to do plus ones at our work dos.’

  Delia gave her a supportive smile and the tension in Steph’s shoulders relaxed a little.

  ‘Yeah. I don’t seem that blatant dykey, do I?’

  They both laughed in release of the pressure.

  ‘No! He’ll probably ask me the same. He’s a perv. Don’t let it bother you.’

  Amid the sympathy and concern, Delia wondered if Steph had partly brought this up to broach her sexuality. It made Delia feel even more protective, if Kurt was being prurient.

  One confidence deserved another.

  ‘If he can see what’s on our laptops, I’m in trouble. Remember the freelance journalist I wasn’t meant to meet, Adam West? I accidentally left my client folder with him. He read and copied it before he returned it.’

  ‘No …?’ Steph said, pausing mid-pork pie bite. ‘Oops!’

  ‘Yep. In fact, it makes me think Kurt can’t be spying. He’d have let me go when it happened, if he’d read it on my emails.’

  Delia decided to leave the ransom element out, for now. Steph feeling she had to cover for Delia wasn’t fair.

  ‘I’ve got a friend who knows a lot about computers. I’ll ask him what’s possible,’ Delia concluded. ‘By text.’

  ‘There’s something off, about that office …’ Steph said, and as soon as she said it, Delia knew precisely what she meant. The receptionist Joy floated around the place like the ghost of a murdered housekeeper. It felt deserted and as if the walls had ears, at the same time – even when Kurt wasn’t there.

  In the balmy heat of a July day, Delia shivered.

  Mr Naan. Don’t laugh at me. Is it possible my boss can see what myself and my colleague are doing on our laptops, the ones we bring to the office? Delia (I asked for your phone number, so we could use a safe line)

  Hello, on a new channel! It’s possible but it’s not very likely. Have you left him alone with your laptops at the same time, both opened any dodgy attachments, or otherwise noticed any signs of malware? PN

  No & no, and I don’t think so. D

  Then short of carefully angled mirrors, I doubt it. PN

  Without the threat of Kurt suddenly descending on them, Delia even dared to book a Friday off work and invite Ralph to visit. It took some effort to persuade him. In fact, it was like heaving a water hippo through a swamp using shoelaces.

  Delia wouldn’t have had the conviction to be so emphatic with him, but their mother had let it drop that the chippy – or ‘award-winning fish bar of Tyneside’, as her mum described it to the neighbours – had been urging Ralph to take his holiday owing. Apparently he was resisting because he ‘didn’t have anywhere to go’.

  Delia insisted he could use Emma’s room while she was away in Rome. ‘I’ve changed the sheets, have someone to stay! Better yet, have someone to stay in your bed,’ she’d said before she left, while Delia rolled her eyes.

  On Friday morning as she was waiting for Ralph to arrive, Delia’s phone started to ring. Adam West. He wanted a meeting. She tartly explained she shouldn’t have to deal with Adam as she was off work.

  ‘Going anywhere nice?’ he said.

  ‘No.’ She hesitated, thinking humanising herself with her captor and thus making it harder to metaphorically murder her might be a smart move. ‘My brother’s visiting from Newcastle.’

  ‘Nice,’ Adam said. ‘Showing him the sights?’

  ‘Ralph said he wants to go to Madame Tussauds.’

  ‘A culture vulture, eh.’

  Delia thought of soft-natured Ralph coming into contact with a Stanley knife like Adam West, and gave a small shudder. There was a rap on the door and Delia went to open it, grateful for the excuse to end the call. Stony-faced Carl from downstairs was wordlessly holding out a Jiffy bag. It had her name on it.

  Delia thanked him, warily, remembering Emma’s warning.

  She didn’t know what else to say and he saved her the bother by turning on his heel.

  She ripped the envelope open. A bottle of Calvin Klein’s Eternity perfume tumbled out, along with a scrap of paper.

  Dee, I thought I’d send you a few things that might make you remember why we matter, so much. Here’s the first. Love you, Paul x

  She hesitantly unscrewed the lid and put her nose to the nozzle. It was strange how sense of smell seemed to hack straight into your brain’s memory vault, find a long-dormant recollection and activate the associated emotions.

  With the sweet odour, Delia was thrown back into the earliest, headiest days of dating Paul, and that time when they spent an hour crawling over each other on the old sofa to a Talk Talk album. She read the note again. She remembered how it had felt to think: this person is my future. What an effortless click they’d had. Snap, there you are, you’re now in the right place. How Delia had assumed finding a soulmate was going to be tough, then she’d tripped over one in her red wedge heels without even trying.

  She doubted Paul remembered the specific name of the perfume, only the label. He must’ve had to work his way through them in store, an assistant hovering, until he found it. Paul never shopped: Delia had to practically wrestle threadbare jeans from him.

  ‘I’m thinking about you’ – the most simple and yet powerful thing anyone, any gesture, could say.

  It made Delia wilt. She’d spent a lot of time wondering if she could take Paul back. Maybe she’d got this quandary the wrong way round. Could she give him up?

  When Delia saw the familiar unkempt ginger hair of her brother in the crowd at King’s Cross, she felt a lurch of protectiveness. He was wearing a huge rucksack on both shoulders, a Spaceballs t-shirt and a baggy hoodie: his off-duty Forbidden Planet employee garb. He looked deeply uneasy. He’d
not been to the capital for decades, since they were kids. He didn’t even travel into Newcastle much. Ralph never saw any need: the things he liked were at home. His friends, by and large, were fellow gamers.

  She felt even more protective when she heard some lads nearby say ‘Ed Sheeran’s let himself go’ and explode with laughter.

  Perhaps Ralph – she’d always wondered this, and it made her stomach contract – didn’t leave home much because his early forays outdoors had not been pleasant.

  At Ralph’s request, they went straight to Madame Tussauds, where Ralph was principally interested in dead Prime Ministers and the Chamber of Horrors. Delia tried to imagine explaining to an alien race why it was considered a leisure pastime to look at wax effigies of men who’d poisoned and dismembered their wives at the turn of the last century.

  Madame Tussauds’ pleasures exhausted, Delia was at a loss. Ralph submitted to her itinerary of principal tourist occasions, yet he obviously found the humid crush, the tsunami of other bodies pouring towards him on the pavements, difficult. Delia wanted to find a way to make it easier for him, but she feared you didn’t undo a lifetime’s loner habits in one weekend.

  ‘We should get some lunch!’ she said to Ralph as they crossed the bridge from the Southbank, hoping to appeal to his stomach.

  He nodded.

  ‘Anything you fancy? My treat,’ Delia said.

  ‘Whatever is good,’ Ralph said, and Delia could see him struggling manfully to look like he was having fun for her sake, and it made her sad.

  ‘Do you want my homemade fried chicken?’ Delia said, and Ralph’s eyes lit up. Ralph had always been the most enthusiastic consumer of Delia’s cooking. She knew that if she was honest and consulted his feelings instead of hers, he wanted to be indoors.

  Within an hour he was joyfully installed in Finsbury Park, large legs outstretched, playing his games on Emma’s giant telly while Delia prepared lunch.

  ‘Yes! The parallax error beheads you!’

  They ate at the kitchen table, piles of chicken in panko breadcrumbs, the ‘Glasgow salad’ of chips and ketchup. Delia had done a shop and stuffed the cupboards with Ralph-ish foods. Emma might think she had bulimia.