‘But she didn’t smell of oysters,’ Sean said. ‘Not a whiff.’
‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ Gil said. ‘But of course none of this is making any sense.’
‘You know, she could probably patent a breath freshener and make a fortune. Instant Oyster Stink-Away Breath Freshener,’ Parker said, laughing at his own absurdity.
‘You really have to get a life, you know,’ Rachel said. ‘It’s always money with you. So boring.’
‘But I want to know what happened after you kissed,’ Ginevra said.
‘I don’t remember,’ Sean said. ‘All I know is somehow we were back at my place. In my bed.’
‘As in naked, in bed?’ Parker said, his eyes lighting up.
‘Yes, but I have no memory of how we got there. Did we walk? Did we get a cab? Did she have a car? I’ve tried and tried, but I just can’t remember. All I know is that somehow, in what seemed like another blink of an eye, we ended up in my bed.’
‘And obviously she was worth it.’
‘For a while there, she was. She was unbelievable.’
‘There’s something you’re not telling us,’ Gil said. ‘Something important. Something that has nothing to do with oysters.’
‘Or oyster breath,’ Parker said. ‘Or oyster breath freshener.’
‘No.’
‘Well, are you going to tell us?’
‘If it’s something embarrassing, you don’t have to say anything, you know,’ Ginevra said quickly.
‘No, I want all of you to know,’ Sean said, turning his head slowly to look at all of them. ‘Someone has to believe me. I don’t believe it myself. Or I wouldn’t, if it hadn’t happened to me.’
‘I’m glad I don’t like oysters,’ Ginevra muttered under her breath.
‘Well, as I said, for a while she was worth it,’ Sean said, sighing deeply. ‘She was fantastic. Funny. Charming. Adorable. Had a great job, at Grey Advertising. And, as you’ve already figured out, completely amazing in bed. She did things to me that … I mean … when she did them I thought I was going to die of pleasure. Really. Sometimes I lay there, afterward, in her arms, listening to her breathing as she slept, thinking, if I did die now at least I will go to my grave happy. A happy, entirely satiated sexual glutton.’
‘In the pink, you might say,’ Gil said, chuckling.
‘Did her lips stay pink in bed too?’ Parker asked.
‘You really are disgustingly rude,’ Ginevra chided him.
‘No, it’s a fair question, after all,’ Sean said soberly. ‘And yes, they did stay pink. That was one of the odd things. One of the many odd things. Like she’d had the perfectly pink lipstick tattooed on, or something. Even though she hadn’t.’
‘But this isn’t really about indelibly pink lips,’ Ginevra says. ‘There was something wrong with her, wasn’t there. Something you couldn’t put your finger on, at first.’
‘Exactly,’ Sean says, looking at Ginevra curiously, wondering how she could have known that already. ‘Even early on, when sometimes I’d get a feeling that something about her was not quite right. It wasn’t anything she did, it was how she would make me feel sometimes. That I was there, only because she allowed me to be. That even when we lay awake at night, talking, you know, as lovers do, about everything and nothing, she wasn’t listening. Not really. She was there, and yet not. She’d gotten what she wanted, and that was enough for her. All the rest was lip service.’
‘Indelibly pink lip service,’ Parker joked.
‘Exactly,’ Sean said ruefully. ‘But I started to wonder if she was real. I mean, who she said she was. We’d talk, and do things, and see each other practically every night, but I had no idea, after nearly six weeks, what made her tick. There were few clues in her apartment. It was perfectly nice, but …’
‘But it didn’t have the girlie touches,’ Ginevra said. ‘The photos and the knick-knacks and the mess in the bathroom. No personality.’
‘Exactly,’ Sean said. ‘She was compulsively neat. Everything tucked away in boxes. No frills. Not like any other woman’s apartment I’d ever been in. It felt like she’d hired someone to put it together for her, that the details were totally unimportant. Sometimes I’d sneak over to her building at lunchtime and hide, watching and waiting for her to come out, with her colleagues, for lunch or for a walk or something, just so I could reassure myself that I wasn’t dreaming. That she was a normal person who went to a normal office and had a normal job.’
‘As if advertising is a normal job,’ Gil said, jokingly.
‘You know what I mean,’ Sean went on. ‘She’d come out with her friends or her colleagues, and she never saw me. Sometimes I thought she really did know I was there and was looking through me just so I’d know what an untrustworthy bastard I was.’
‘I don’t blame you,’ Ginevra said. ‘Not if you felt in your gut that something was off.’
‘It was,’ Sean said. ‘You all know how completely tone-deaf I am, but whenever we were apart, I found I was always whistling or singing that stupid folk-song the Irish band had been playing when we met. Like I was bewitched or something, and it was her song. Her reminder to me.’
‘Her reminder of what?’ Gil asked.
‘That I no longer had any will of my own. I couldn’t think straight, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t do anything except think of her. And sing that stupid song. Even though I hadn’t been paying attention to it at all that day.’
‘What are the lyrics?’ Ginevra asked him.
‘“If your arms were around me, you know I’d never leave,”’ he sang tunelessly. ‘“You know I’d never leave.’“
‘That’s profound,’ Parker said, trying to joke.
‘Isn’t it just?’ Sean said ruefully. ‘About as profound as a dog’s bark. I mean, dogs would bark when they saw her coming.’
‘A lot of dogs bark at strangers,’ Ginevra said.
‘No, these dogs would be across the street, and barking. Or down the street and around the corner and barking. At her.’
‘You mean these dogs wouldn’t have been close enough to feel threatened?’ Gil said. ‘Or even to smell her.’
‘But they still barked,’ Ginevra said, looking at Gil. ‘How odd.’
‘Very. She’d laugh and say dogs hated her. She preferred cats. “I have my familiar,” she’d joke.’
‘What was her cat’s name?’ Ginevra asked. ‘My friend Mrs Modeus jokes about her familiars, too. She has a cat she named Pandora, because it’s always causing trouble.’
‘I’ll bet Miss Amanda Walker calls her cat Lucifer,’ Rachel said.
‘How about Pluto?’ Gil offered.
‘Nixon?’ Parker suggested.
‘Who on earth would ever want to call a kitty Nixon?’ Gil wondered. ‘Then you’d have to say “Nixon, Nixon” every time you wanted to feed the poor thing. And hear that name. No way.’
‘Her cat’s name was Brenda,’ Sean said.
‘Which is a very sweet name for a kitty,’ said Rachel. ‘Maybe she couldn’t be all bad if she had a cat named Brenda.’
‘You’d think,’ Sean said. ‘As much as she doted on that cat, though, she hated dogs. Not just ’cause of the barking. Said she always had, ever since she was little.’ He paused. ‘Except I could never imagine her as a little girl. Being chased by some poor dumb pooch as she went door-to-door in her nice quiet suburban neighbourhood, selling Girl Scout cookies. She seemed to have sprung from some other place, fully formed. That’s what I thought the first time we were walking down the street and some dogs on the far corner started barking at her. Baring their teeth, ready to pounce. She called them devil dogs.’
‘Devil dogs. You mean like Ring-Dings?’ Parker asked.
‘Of course he doesn’t mean Ring-Dings,’ Rachel sniped. ‘All you ever talk about is what you can put in your mouth.’
‘Well, I’d rather think about junk food than oysters or spawn of the devil any day.’
‘What did you say?’ Sean asked Par
ker, panic-stricken. ‘What do you mean, “spawn of the devil”?’
‘I don’t know,’ Parker replied, shrugging. ‘It just sort of seems to fit. You mentioning her devil dogs, and all. And being “sprung from some other place,” as I believe you just put it. Maybe she was just that. The devil’s daughter. A succubus.’
‘But that is exactly what she was,’ Sean said in a voice so low everyone strained forward to hear him. ‘A succubus. Who came to me in the night. And when she did, she wouldn’t stop doing whatever until she had sucked me dry.’
‘You mean, um, literally? Can you give her my number?’ Parker asked after a long, uncomfortable moment, trying to joke again, and failing miserably.
‘Thanks, sweetie,’ Rachel said tartly to him. ‘I really appreciate that.’
‘You know I’m only kidding,’ Parker told her as he leaned over to try to kiss her.
‘No, I don’t,’ she said, pushing him away. ‘You can’t help yourself, can you? From saying stupid things like that. Especially in front of an audience.’
‘No, of course he can’t,’ Gil quickly interjected. ‘Which is why we all dote on him just the way he is. The dirty dog.’
‘Devil dog, you mean,’ Ginevra said. ‘Hopeless Ring-Ding.’
‘I like Drake’s Cakes, too,’ Gil said. ‘He’s the drake, and you’re the duck.’
‘Duck, duck, and who’s the silly goose?’ Parker asked.
‘Sean is, without a doubt,’ Gil said quickly, trying to dispel the odd tension that had infected them all, waiting yet dreading to hear what Sean was going to say next.
‘But what was it that she wanted?’ Gil asked.
‘Normally I’d be the last man to complain if a woman wanted to suck me dry, as it were,’ Sean went on, glancing briefly at Parker. ‘And there’s not a man alive who’d ever turn down or get tired of what she liked to do to me. But it wasn’t about sex. Sex was merely the means for her to get what she wanted. And what she wanted was to absorb my very essence. That’s what she meant to suck out of me. That’s what fed her.’
‘Are you sure?’ Ginevra asked quietly.
‘Yes,’ Sean said. ‘I’ve tried and tried to figure it out, why I started feeling so odd. So not myself. So thin, even though I was forcing myself to eat all the time. And the more I started to protest, the more she was into me. Literally. Until I realized that if I didn’t get away, she would have me waste away to nothing.’
‘And then what?’ Parker asked, frowning.
‘And then she’d find someone else,’ Sean said, his tone so matter-of-fact that his friends found it hard to dispute his unbelievable story. ‘I knew she was already looking. I caught her at it, at a party. When she was dancing. It was dark in the room, and smoky, and everyone else was dancing. I stood by the wall, leaning on it for support actually, and wondering how to get out of this mess. Nobody paid any attention to me. And then I saw her.’ He swallowed hard, then continued. ‘It was Amanda, yet not. It was as if she had transformed herself into what she really was – a sort of elongated form, all sinewy and boneless. Like Brenda, her cat. Her eyes glinted in the darkness and I caught her, her lips glowing all pink and her eyes sparkling, searching. Ready to wrap her tentacles around some poor guy and do to him what she’d done to me.’
‘What did you do?’ Ginevra asked quietly.
‘I got out of there. Went home. Packed a couple of suitcases. Got in the car, and drove. Drove till I couldn’t keep my eyes open, then slept at a truck stop. Got up, and kept driving. Called the magazine on Monday and said there was a family emergency, and I would check in soon. When I did, they asked me to go to Arizona, to do a story there.’
‘Why didn’t you call me?’ Gil asked. ‘You know I would have done anything to help.’
‘I know, and I’m sorry,’ Sean said. ‘I couldn’t tell you the truth, not then. I didn’t think you would believe me. So I asked Roger, one of the guys at work to get my mail and stuff, and leave a message telling you I was away, on an undercover assignment.’
‘I remember,’ Gil said. ’It wasn’t the first time you’d disappeared.’
‘Exactly. And then, after about two months, I called Grey Advertising and asked for her. The receptionist told me that no one named Amanda Walker was there. Never had been. No one named Amanda Walker had ever worked there.’
‘What about her apartment?’ Parker asked.
‘I asked Roger to go there and check the names on the buzzers,’ Sean replied. ‘Some couple was living in her apartment. They said they’d been living there for over two years.’
‘Well,’ Gil said. ‘That is some story.’
‘You believe me, don’t you?’ Sean asked, a pleading note in his voice.
‘I believe you,’ Ginevra said, biting her lip. ‘I’m just glad you got away.’
‘So am I,’ Rachel added, shuddering.
‘Me, too,’ said Parker. ‘But I wonder where she went.’
‘I don’t know,’ Sean said, closing his eyes. ‘I hope it’s far, far away. But I still see her, those pink lips curved into a smile, when I’m dreaming. And sometimes when I’m walking home, out of the corner of my eye, I think I see her turning a corner. Hurrying away. Off to suck the life out of her next victim. And I wonder if I’m ever going to be free of her.’
‘Well,’ Parker said. ‘I guess this means you won’t want to join me for dinner tonight.’
‘And what exactly were you planning on eating?’ Gil asked him.
‘You know,’ Parker replied, a wicked glint in his eyes. ‘Oysters.’
Chrissie Manby
Chrissie Manby is the author of nineteen romantic comedies including A Proper Family Holiday, The Matchmaker and Seven Sunny Days. She has had several Sunday Times bestsellers and her recent novel about behaving badly after a break-up, Getting Over Mr Right, was nominated for the 2011 Melissa Nathan Award.
Chrissie was raised in Gloucester, in the west of England, and now lives in London. Contrary to the popular conception of chick-lit writers, she is such a bad home-baker that her own father threatened to put her last creation on www.cakewrecks.com. She is, however, partial to white wine and shoes she can't walk in.
Saving Amsterdam
Chrissie Manby
There are some advantages to being single, Lisa told herself. She didn’t have to see the new Star Wars movie, for a start. She didn’t have to pretend to play badly at Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64 in case she beat him and sent him into a strop. She didn’t have to smell his socks or iron his shirts and get shouted at when she left the slightest crease somewhere that would never be seen. She didn’t have to put up with his tedious friends, or baby-sit the younger members of his family while he went ahead and had fun in the name of work. In short, she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to any more.
And she knew that she should have been happy by now. I mean, she told herself, it had been six months since he did the deed; ending their relationship and an entire life mapped out in Hallmark card moments with just a few simple words.
‘I don’t think I love you any more.’
Lisa stared at him as if she’d misheard. Any second now, she told herself, he’s going to break into a big smile and take me into his arms and hug me. Perhaps, that particularly mad bone inside her cried, he’s playing a last cruel joke before he asks you to marry him. But he didn’t break into a smile. And he didn’t ask her to marry him. He really did want to finish their relationship and he wanted her out of their shared flat as quickly as humanly possible. He’d help her pack, he said, seeing as he was such a kind and thoughtful bloke. Would she like him to drive her back to stay with her parents? Later her best friend would point out that the newly christened ‘Bastard Ex’ had made sure that Lisa finished his VAT return before he finished with her.
The shit. She didn’t see it coming. Not at all. She had believed him when he said that his unassailable miserableness was something to do with extra pressure at the office. Only that afternoon she had spent a fort
une stocking up the fridge with his favourite foods so that they wouldn’t have to leave the house all weekend if he didn’t want to. She only wanted to make his life easier. He repaid her kind efforts with twenty-four hours’ notice to quit.
She thought she would die from the misery. But some of her friends even muttered ‘a lucky escape’ to describe the agony that followed.
Six months on, she was, as they had predicted, getting through whole weeks without crying. Of course she was. And sometimes she would catch herself laughing in a strangely unfamiliar carefree way as though he had never been in her life and scraped the surface of her heart into mince with his carelessness. Sometimes she was the old Lisa. The Lisa who would have been sick with hilarity at the idea that she would ever iron a man’s shirts and claim to enjoy doing it. The Lisa who would have had little time for a girl who could no longer walk down certain streets in London because, even if she wasn’t likely to bump into the man who had left her broken-hearted, she was sure to see something that would remind her of him.
That was the worst part of being alone. Towards the end, he hadn’t been so much in her life that he left such a gaping hole when he finally went anyway. Perhaps subconsciously sensing that his love for her was on the wane, Lisa had been seeing more of her old friends in any case. But there were certain things that would always be inextricably linked to the best times with the beloved. Certain things that would take her back to the happy times at the beginning of their relationship when he still opened car doors for her and helped her to put on her coat. Things that would make it seem impossible that he had spent their last few months together sitting in front of the TV like a vivisectionist’s monkey with half its brain cut out while she lugged the shopping home from the supermarket on foot.
Yep, on a good day Lisa was well-versed in the reasons why she was better off without him. Towards the end, the man in the corner shop had known (and cared) more about her wild dreams and ambitions. But in the words of the song, there was always something there to remind her of the halcyon days when that hadn’t been the case. Stupid things.
Girls' Night In Page 36
