by Louise Voss
‘Hope they don’t sell our phones on eBay as soon as we’ve gone upstairs,’ Kath mutters as we tip-tap on our stiletto heels up the wide staircase. I’m so nervous that I think I might throw up, and I grab a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter. Katherine takes one too. ‘Sip it, don’t gulp,’ she instructs me under her breath. ‘Don’t look so bloody nervous.’
Easy for her to say. The buzz of voices and music gets louder, and I’m reassured that there is the unmistakeable sound of party conversation. I was half expecting it to be all orgy and no chat.
We are shown into a huge room on the first floor, and I look around, trying to take it all in. Everyone is young and beautiful under their masks, and I remember Katherine telling me that you had to send proof of age with the ticket-purchase money, as over-forties were as forbidden as camera phones.
‘No grey chest hair or moobs here,’ Katherine says approvingly. It’s pretty dark in the room, the lighting artfully flattering and subtle. Small groups of people are dotted about, chatting and laughing and looking far more at ease than I feel; a whole variety of expensive perfumes and aftershaves clash in a fragrant cloud in the air above our heads. The only sign that this might not be a normal cocktail party, apart from the masks, is a couple standing by the window kissing; the man has one hand right down inside the girl’s short skirt, and the other is kneading her breast. One of the waiters goes up to them and has a discreet word in the guy’s ear, pointing towards a room off the main area. There is a plaque next to its door reading PLAYROOM, and the couple heads towards it, not looking remotely sheepish. I can see the man’s erection making a tent of the front of his trousers that he isn’t even trying to disguise.
‘Can’t wait to get in there!’ says Katherine, her face flushed in the peachy-red light and her eyes sparkling with lust, enhanced by the sequins on her mask.
‘I know, right!’ I agree. I do feel turned on too, but somehow my heart is sinking, and for a moment I really wish I was at home in my onesie and fluffy slippers, watching a DVD. The idea of having sex – in public, with strangers – suddenly seems anathema to me.
‘Why did we think this was a good idea?’ I mutter, trying to sound jokey, but Katherine’s face falls.
‘Oh, come on, Becky, stop being such a bloody prudish killjoy,’ she hisses, and to my surprise she turns and walks away from me, over to where two men and a woman are already mentally undressing one another.
‘Cheers, Kath,’ I say to her retreating back. I lean against the nearest wall, feeling even more self-conscious. A lone man catches my eye and smiles at me. I raise my glass, and he’s over like a shot.
‘Hi,’
‘Hi.’
I’m tongue-tied. He’s very nice-looking but not in the way I usually like – too bland. I like my men to have something quirky about their appearance, and all his features are perfectly proportioned and unremarkable.
‘What do you do?’ he asks, actually leaning one hand against the wall, making a ladder over my head in that ridiculously predatory way men sometimes do. I can’t imagine why they think that endears them to women.
‘I’m a teacher!’ I say, in the same way that I would’ve said, ‘I’m a clown!’ or, ‘I’m an Elvis impersonator!’ ‘What about you?’
‘Male model,’ he says, so smugly that I almost laugh.
There’s a long silence as he scans the room for someone other than me to have sex with. I’m starting to feel actively physically repulsed by all this. Katherine is laughing and gesticulating with her new friends and, as I watch, one of the women leans across and kisses her cheek flirtatiously. My heart sinks. It’s only a matter of time before she vanishes into the Playroom, I can tell. I feel irrationally furious with her. Never again, I think, wondering wistfully if there would be any chance of a partial refund of the hefty amount that’s just been debited from my credit card for annual membership of this exclusive club. Internet dating – fine. Casexual.com – also fine, for when I want a bit of nostrings sex. At least you can choose in advance who you want to get naked with. Those first few hook-up dates were fantastic – really good, naughty fun. I think wistfully back to Jake and his smooth black skin and infectious giggle. Shame he didn’t fancy a repeat performance, it was lovely. Fraser was fun too, even if he was a drug-dealing twat. It was even exciting with Paul, though that was mainly because Kath was there to hold my hand – among other things.
But this? I don’t like this. Despite the posh house, the designer dresses, buff champagne waiters and young, beautiful, well-groomed people, this is still somehow just plain sleazy. I didn’t think I’d feel like this, but I do.
‘Sorry, I’m actually going to go home – headache,’ I say to the male model, to his obvious relief. Ducking under his arm, I head over to Katherine.
‘Can I have a word?’ I whisper in her ear.
‘Is this your friend?’ asks one of the men in the group. He’s short and hirsute, Turkish perhaps, with a big diamond stud in his ear. ‘Come join us, beautiful.’ He reaches out and strokes my hair, but I move my head away impatiently, and Katherine frowns. I take her arm and drag her away.
‘What is your problem?’ she snaps. I’ve only seen this side of her once or twice, when she’s tired and high, or perhaps after a particularly hideous day with her Year Elevens. ‘We’ve made all this effort, paid all this money, looked forward to it for weeks, you were really excited – then we get here, and you’ve got a face like a slapped arse.’
As if on cue, we both hear a brisk slapping noise coming from the Playroom, and some muted giggling. I’m torn between wanting to go and take a look – as several people are – and doing a runner.
Katherine’s face lightens, and she twines an arm around my neck. ‘Sorry, Becks, I didn’t mean to bite your head off. Please stay for a little bit longer? Come on, let’s go and check out the naughtiness – everyone else is.’
I allow her to take my hand, and she starts leading me towards the Playroom, along with the Turkish guy and his friend – but then I freeze.
‘Oh, no!’
‘What?’ Katherine stops too, and tries to follow my horrified gaze.
I cup my hand on the side of my cheek in a vain and instinctive attempt to disguise myself. ‘I’ve seen someone I know,’ I wail, quietly.
‘Not someone from school?’ Katherine looks equally distressed.
I risk a glance in the direction of the face I recognized. He is also drifting towards the Playroom with a girl; they are laughing at something behind their black masks. I’m sure it’s him. ‘What the hell is he doing here?’
Katherine stares after him. ‘Who is it? Someone you met online?’
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter … listen, I just want to get out of here. I’m sorry.’ Seeing someone I know was one of my worst nightmares about the whole thing, and now it’s happened, my skin is itching with the desire to run away.
I know what’s going to happen next if I don’t go now. The Turkish guy is going to suggest that we all adjourn to the Playroom together, a cosy little foursome.
I grab her elbow and pull her aside, out of the earshot of the two men, though I can feel them watching us.
‘I’m sorry, Kath, but I really am going to leave now,’ I said, finding it hard to get my breath. ‘I think you should come with me.’
Anger flashes in her eyes. ‘No fucking way. I’m staying. I paid nearly a week’s wages to come here. And I like it. I’m not going to pussy out like you.’
I take a deep breath. ‘All right. Just promise you text me when you get home safely, OK?’ I try to lighten the mood. ‘Tell me what you got up to tomorrow – I’ll come over for a debrief.’
Katherine shrugs. ‘Judas,’ she mutters. The diamond-studded Turk beckons us over, which I take as my cue to leave. I kiss her on the cheek, and push her gently in his direction, but like a kid in a sweet shop, I see her attention caught by another man, and she executes a sharp ninety-degree turn towards him. This one is a superior, rich-looking type
in a suit that cost more than a family car, looking as if he’d spent all afternoon in a salon getting exfoliated before he came here. Yuck. Even through his mask, I could see that he had squinty eyes, though, and I bet it galled him that he couldn’t throw money at that, get them fixed.
The feathers of my own mask are itching my forehead like mad, and as I walk out of the room I can’t bear it any more and tear it off, enjoying the feel of the cool air on my skin again, shaking my hair down and looking around to make sure he is not around. For some reason, I think about Amy. Right now all I want to do is go to her flat, hug her, apologize for our row and get far away from this world I’ve found myself in.
36
Amy
Friday, 26 July
Amy had to stop in the street and lean against a railing because she had black dots jumping around in her vision and her head felt like lead, partly from the speed at which she had hurried away from Orchid Blue’s offices to avoid being spotted by Gemma, and partly from the shock of recognizing the name on the list of people who’d been at the party. She noticed with a sense of irony that the building she’d stopped outside was a Harley Street psychotherapy practice, just a few doors down from the one her parents had booked her an appointment at, after her ‘breakdown’, as they referred to her split with Nathan.
She could do with a psychotherapist now. Someone to talk to. Anyone. The long list of things that Nathan had taken from her – self-respect, dignity, confidence, peace – included something else, something that had never been replaced: close friends. He’d gradually alienated all her own friends, and replaced them with new ones of his own – choosing mostly his male buddies, so that when she finally walked out on him, she never saw any of them again. Most of their colleagues had also taken his side after he’d poisoned them against her, spreading lies around the office that she had cheated on him so he’d thrown her out, broken-hearted – another reason why she’d left that place to set up on her own.
She had to talk to Gary. She pulled out her phone and started to gabble the moment he answered.
‘It’s me. I know I said I wanted a bit of space – but I need to talk to you. This is getting weirder by the minute, I’m finding out all this stuff, please can we meet?’ She told him, in a rush, about the sex party, but at the last minute decided not to mention the name she’d spotted until she could tell Gary in person. ‘I’ve got this list of the people who were there—’
‘A sex party?’ he said. ‘Becky?’
‘Yes. Her and Katherine. I’m in town. Do you get a lunch break? Can I come to your work? I’m really sorry to bother you but you’re the only one I can talk to …’ Her voice cracked, but Gary’s voice soothed her, pouring into her head over the sounds of cabs and panic and distant sirens.
She listened as he dictated the street address of his company, Digistar. It wasn’t too far away: the purple dustiness of the Metropolitan Line from Baker Street straight to Liverpool Street, turn right, walk five minutes towards Shoreditch, small side street …
‘Thanks, Gary, I’ll be about half an hour,’ she said gratefully.
All the way over to Liverpool Street on the Tube, Amy kept thinking about how to approach speaking to Gary. She hoped that he wouldn’t be difficult after the way they had parted. By the time she emerged out into the sunshine again she had decided that getting Gary’s work address and going there to see him remained the best option: neutral territory, with other people around. Much better than meeting up at one of their flats.
She was so distracted that she bumped into a Big Issue seller. He swore at her, then immediately regained his composure, looking anxiously around to check that nobody had overheard. Amy bought a copy of the magazine by way of apology, and checked that she was heading in the right direction.
Gary’s office was in a warehouse building down a small one-way street, a typical New Media trendy open-plan ‘space’, all on one floor, bare brick walls covered with enormous silkscreen prints of classic American movie posters. Amy took a seat in reception to wait for him, wondering if she should discreetly slip her high shoes back on again, then deciding she couldn’t be bothered. Instead, she took out the list again and had another look, making sure she hadn’t hallucinated the name.
Her phone vibrated, and the screen announced an email from CupidsWeb. Amy opened it just as Gary appeared out of a room off the far side of the office. She looked up and waved at him before reading the message, but he didn’t see her straight away. One of his colleagues had called over to him from another glass-fronted room off the main office floor.
When she looked back down at the screen, she saw the email’s sign-off first: Daniel.
One of Becky’s dates – the one she hadn’t been able to find any trace of. He hadn’t responded to either of the messages she had sent him. Until now.
She leaped up from the reception sofa as if she’d been scalded and, even though she couldn’t possibly have smelled it, the long-forgotten scent of Nathan’s aftershave flooded her senses, as though she had been drenched with a bucketful of it. Dropping the phone into her bag without properly reading the rest of the email, she ran straight back out of the door of the Digistar offices. She ran at full tilt back to the station, questions piling up one on top of the other until she thought she was going to vomit them all out right there on the street.
She stopped, her breath coming in harsh, hot waves, her feet in the pumps slippery with sweat. As she pulled her phone out of her bag, she realized that she had left the list of party attendees lying on the sofa in reception. She swore, and looked at the screen.
She opened and read the message more thoroughly. The shock of its contents made her knees buckle, and she had to sit down on the edge of the kerb to stop herself falling. As she read it over and over again, her hands shook so hard that she could barely hold the phone.
37
Becky
Monday, 15 July
Last night’s date with the most gorgeous man alive is all I can think about during the Year Nine parents’ evening. Through the blur of grubby school jumpers and the collage of mums’ and dads’ faces in varying degrees of smugness, concern or belligerence at their offspring’s progress – or lack of – as they shuffle up to my table in the hall and away again three minutes later, like some hellish parody of speed dating, the thought keeps rising to the surface: Call off the search.
I think Daniel could be the one. I do, really. I can’t believe my luck. I’ve found someone who seems to be absolutely perfect for me. I can’t stop grinning, and feel so benevolent towards humankind that I even tell Jayden Connor’s mum that he’s ‘a good boy really’. Her astonishment is hilarious.
It was one of those dates that just went on and on for hours. The waiters in the restaurant – yes, drinks turned into a lengthy dinner, at his suggestion and expense, at Retro, the fabulous French place that Kath and I planned to go to when we won the Lottery – were practically putting chairs up on tables around us as we moved closer and closer to each other until our legs were pressed together and our fingers entwined …
I wanted to give Kath the low-down at break time. He is a surgeon at a private hospital in Wiltshire. Two brothers, both married. Flat in town, big house near Salisbury, pony in the back field for his niece to play with when she comes to stay. Has been single for two years since his fiancée developed an eating disorder and ran away to ‘find herself’ in Australia. He never heard from her again but assured me that he’s over it now, and from the way he was gazing at me, I believe him. He’s funny, considerate, wealthy, independent. Said that I am his ‘ideal woman’. Loves his mum. Loves animals.
In the end, though, I didn’t tell her anything about him because she made puking noises over the Nescafé when I told her that I was in love, and pretended to block her ears. She’s such a cynic. We were going to go to the pub for a post-parents’ evening unwinder, so I thought I’d do it then – but she had another last-minute Casexual date.
Since we weren’t going out, I decided
to stay even later to finish marking my Year Eights’ Provence trip write-ups, and it’s almost completely dark now that I’ve finally got out of there. The playground is dusky with shadow and looks oddly still without a seething mass of boys milling around and punching one another. Why do they still call it a ‘playground’ in secondary schools? A fight-ground would be closer to the truth. Nobody’s around – all my colleagues jumped in their cars the second the last parent left, screeching off out of the school gates on two wheels in their haste to escape. Wish I had a car.
I walk to the bus stop but the red electronic board flashes at me that the next bus going my way isn’t deigning to arrive for thirty-seven minutes – I could bloody well be home by then. So, even though I’m wearing heels, and my bag is heavy, I decide to walk.
I am just wondering whether it would look a bit over-keen if I call him – we’ve been texting all day but haven’t spoken since last night – when my phone vibrates. It’s him! Joy soars through me. I change my mind about walking and sit down on the bus stop’s hard slatted bench. Although I wouldn’t have cared if it had been wreathed in barbed wire; I feel so euphoric that I don’t think I’d have noticed.
‘Hello!’
‘Hello, gorgeous. How’s your day been? I’ve been thinking about you constantly.’
‘Really? Me too – about you, I mean. My day’s been pretty long. Parents’ evening. I couldn’t concentrate at all! I just kept thinking about how brilliant last night was.’
He laughs, and it does something funny to the pit of my stomach. ‘I wanted to ask you something. What are you doing this weekend?’
‘Going on a date with you, hopefully,’ I simper.
‘Correct! And not just any date, but …’ He pauses.
‘What?’
‘Well. I hope you don’t think I’m being too forward, since we’ve only just met and all, but last night was so mind-blowing, just talking for as long as we did, and I feel like you’ve put some kind of spell on me, honestly, I do …’
I laugh delightedly. So this is what love feels like! It’s ace.
