My Fake Wedding (Red Dress Ink (Numbered Paperback))

by Mina Ford

  She gets straight down to business. ‘If you have any personal belongings in the office, can I suggest you take them with you now, because I’ll be giving strict instructions to Marsha that you are barred from the building with immediate effect. Got it?’

  ‘B-but you can’t.’

  ‘I can, I’m afraid. I’m the big boss now.’

  She’s taking the piss.

  ‘I could become a freelancer if it would help…’

  ‘Freeloader, more like,’ she scoffs. ‘No thanks, love. This isn’t a cost-saving exercise. I’ve already hired someone else on a higher salary to do your job. It’s your attitude that’s the problem.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘You’re about as reliable as a condom with a pin stuck through it. If it wasn’t for your vast personal phone bill I’d be hard put to know whether you actually bothered to come into work at all.’

  ‘But I won’t have an income.’

  ‘No, honey, you won’t.’ She treats me to a cyanide-dusted smile. ‘But this is a profit-making organisation, not a charity. We don’t think much of paupers in here, sweetcakes, so you’d better sling your hook before I call Security. Oh, and I’m off to the editorial meeting now. You can see yourself out.’

  And with that, she spins on her heel, leaving me all alone in her office. I pull a lump of hour-old chewy out of my mouth and chuck it on her chair. That’ll be a nice treat for the old bitch’s Prada later on.

  The first thought that crosses my mind as I step over the threshold of her top floor office and make my way to the lift is that at least I won’t have to face David. The editorial meeting must have started by now, so he’ll be safely ensconced in the boardroom.

  And, much to my relief, he’s not at his desk. As Melanie and Serena watch me pack up my highlighter collection and emergency Kit Kat supplies, I feel strangely detached. I’m upset, yes. Of course I’m upset. I’ve just lost my job. But a tiny part of me feels relieved. Relieved that the decision has been made for me. I don’t have to decide to leave and find out what I really want to do. Now, I’m going to have to look for another job. I really don’t have any choice in the matter.

  I feel oddly elated as I leave the IBS building for the last time. Here I am, in the middle of the morning, with absolutely bugger all to do.

  How fanbloodytastic is that?

  Of course there’s only one thing I can do.

  Shop.

  But first, I need to make a pit stop at McDonald’s in the King’s Road.

  I’m walking past Whistles when I see David the Gay Homosexual strolling along past the Body Shop on the other side of the road. A hot wave of shame rolls over me and I duck into a shop so he won’t see me. As I do so, a niggle of doubt gnaws away at my brain. Is he really gay?

  Or was the thought of having to poke me so utterly repulsive that he had to pretend?

  ‘Sod you,’ I say out loud.

  ‘Sorry? Can I help you?’ asks the lemon-lipped shop assistant.

  ‘No,’ I say without thinking. ‘You’re a shop assistant, not a relationship counsellor. Frankly, I doubt it very much.’

  I leave the shop without another word and trot towards the golden arches feeling glum. Bloody David. Who the hell does he think he is, strutting down the road, gayness unashamedly on display, completely spoiling my day of freedom?

  The bastard.

  I clatter into McDonald’s and order a Filet-O-Fish and a Big Mac Meal. Who needs men when there’s junk food to be had? Eh? After all, if brown can be the new black and staying in can be the new going out, who’s to say that McDonald’s can’t be the new sex?

  Huh?

  ‘What drink would you like with that?’ asks the acne-riddled assistant.

  ‘Fanta. No. Coke.’

  I forget all about David and losing my job and concentrate on the matter in hand: chuffing down my burger in double quick time. When I’m through, I turn my attention to retail therapy. I take a trip to Lush to drool over jewel-coloured slabs of soap, piled up like Lego bricks, and fizzy bath bombs, heaped on the counter like scoops of sorbet. I spend a fortune on bottles of violet-scented bath oil and orange juice flavour shower gel. I buy blue and white swirled cakes of bubble bath the size of bricks and cutely packaged talcum powder shakers. When I’m done there, I hotfoot it to Georgina von Etzdorf to choose a velvet scarf to see out the winter in. I can’t decide between black and sugar-pink or black and mint-green so I buy both. I deserve it, after all. This is no time for economising. Then it’s time for some more toiletry sniffing in Boots before selecting several CDs, scented candles, Whittard mugs, a jumper from Kookai and four complete sets of underwear.

  It’s not until I get home that I realise just how much I’ve spent. Totting it all up, I estimate that I’ve probably shelled out over six hundred quid on mere fripperies in an afternoon. All for the sake of cheering myself up.

  And now I’ve lugged it all home, I suddenly don’t feel quite so cheerful any more.

  In fact, I’m downright miserable. I look at myself in the mirror, making my ‘come to bed’ face, just to see how pathetically sad I must have looked when I was trying to pull David last night.

  Holy fuck.

  Do I really look like that when I’m pouting?

  The poor bastard must have thought I was constipated.

  I call Janice’s mobile. She’s just leaving work.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I just lost my job.’

  ‘You think that’s bad,’ she humphs. ‘You should have seen the mothballed selection I was faced with at that sodding custard cream fest last night.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘At the Evergreen Club.’ She sounds mildly irriated. ‘Honestly, Katie, after standing me up I’d have thought you could at least pretend to be interested.’

  ‘I lost my job.’

  God, she can be so insensitive at times.

  ‘So you said. But presumably you got laid last night to make up for it.’

  ‘No, actually.’

  ‘You didn’t?’ She brightens.

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s all right then. I mean I thought my evening was bad. I turned up expecting a few dashing war veterans and what did I get?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Soggy Nice biscuits, dribble and card games.’ She sounds disgusted. ‘I’m going to have to think again.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘But at least I didn’t lose my job,’ she says. ‘You must be really pissed off.’

  ‘Thanks, Janice,’ I say. ‘I can always rely on you to make me feel better.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ All irony is lost on her. ‘I have had a bit of good news, by the way.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I just got put on a really prestigious account at work. For breakfast cereal.’

  ‘Is that good?’

  ‘Really good. This giraffe-legged no-burn called Thalia sucked off one of the client’s sons and got found out. She was lobbed out faster than you can say fuckwit. And I got her job.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘Means I’ll have less time to look for a husband, of course. But maybe now you’ve got bugger all to do, you could look for me.’

  ‘Oh, cheers.’

  ‘Well, you could, couldn’t you? Go to a few parties and pick someone up on my behalf. Or you could have a look on the internet. Anyway, gotta go. I really haven’t got time to chat all day. I’m very busy and important now.’

  And with that, she hangs up.

  In the face of a distinct lack of sympathy from my girlfriend, I try the next best thing.

  I ring George.

  Unfortunately, he’s ecstatic. He’s in love. Lurve. The world has turned into a giant pink marshmallow in the space of an afternoon.

  ‘I met someone.’

  ‘Oh.’ I bristle. I still can’t help seething with jealousy whenever George declares himself to be in love. After all, David isn’t the first gay man I’ve tried to bag in my lifetime. As I’ve already said,
I’ve always had a thing for George. I’ve tried begging. Told him I wouldn’t be offended if he wanted me to put a paper bag over my head and pretend I was Beppe from EastEnders. And he still declined.

  Ungrateful bastard.

  Luckily for me and my green-eyed monster, George’s liaisons are nothing if not brief. He imagines himself to be in love at least twice a week, before realising that he has nothing whatsoever in common with the other person apart from sexual orientation. Consequently, he’s had more brief flings than I’ve owned knickers. And then some.

  ‘So have you done it yet?’ I ask him.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ I echo. ‘God. It must be serious.’

  ‘I only met him at lunchtime. In the park.’

  ‘Hasn’t stopped you before.’

  ‘Ooh,’ George shrieks. ‘Cutty sark. What’s with you?’

  ‘I met someone too,’ I confess. ‘At work.’

  ‘Is he nice?’

  ‘He’s gay.’

  ‘Oh, Katie,’ he says sadly. ‘You haven’t gone and made a holy show of yourself again, have you?’

  ‘I’m afraid I have,’ I quaver. ‘And now I’ve lost my job too.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ He sounds sympathetic. ‘Well, that’s all very sad but I’m afraid I can’t stop to chat now. I’ve got a hot date to get ready for. He’s taking me to Quaglinos for dinner.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I listen obediently for a good half an hour as George tells me just how great life is now that he’s found that certain someone number four hundred and fifty-three. He’s still talking as I put the phone down as gently as I can and turn to my last resort.

  Sam.

  Usually, I don’t bother troubling Sam with my tales of torture. And I don’t really know why I’m bothering now. He’s bound to be out with one of the tampon-thin fuckwits he calls girlfriends. I wouldn’t mind but they’ve always got such stupid, sugarpuff names like Coco and Indigo that they get right on my tits before I’ve even met them.

  I’m pleasantly surprised. He’s alone. ‘Come round,’ he says.

  Sam lives four streets away, in Calbourne Road. He opens the door of his new house, looking scruffy and dishevelled. There’s a paintbrush in his hand and the end of his nose and his fringe are coated in duck-egg blue paint. He looks so familiar and so…so ordinary and Charlie Brown-ish somehow, that I completely forget myself and burst into torrents of tears.

  ‘TTFN?’ he asks kindly.

  TTFN stands for tea, toast and fags NOW.

  ‘Or perhaps you’d prefer a pizza?’

  I nod, miserably.

  ‘Although you might want to wipe that blob of Big Mac sauce out of your fringe first.’ He grins. ‘And then you can help me paint my new office. I’m doing it blue.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘I do believe I saw a smile. Just a small one. But it’s a start.’

  ‘Just ring for a pizza.’ I grin despite myself and march into Sam’s kitchen, where his precious collection of tube signs is stacked against one wall while he paints the other.

  ‘I will.’ He goes straight to the kettle. ‘When you’ve told me what’s wrong.’

  ‘I tried to shag a homosexual.’

  ‘Another one?’

  I nod miserably. ‘Stop fucking laughing.’

  ‘Oh, Katie.’ He cracks up. ‘When will you ever learn?’

  ‘Oh, take off your teacher’s cap,’ I strop, sitting down at the table and accepting the hot cup of tea he’s offering me. ‘You’re not so cool, you know. Look at the pathetic excuses for humankind you go out with. Sorry, did I say go out? I meant hump and dump.’

  ‘I don’t mean to hump and dump them.’ Sam looks momentarily depressed. ‘They just always end up being really boring, that’s all.’

  ‘Funny how you only notice that after you’ve slipped them a length, isn’t it?’ I tease him. ‘After you’ve got them to give your pork sword a good battering?’

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘Yes it is. You’re such a roll on, roll off, roll over and piss off merchant. Anyway, if they’re all so boring, perhaps you should try a different type. Like one who is slightly more intelligent than your average jellyfish. There’s always Janice. Want me to give her a call?’

  Sam looks terrified.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I say. ‘Janice was serious about changing her policy. She’s after a capital injection not a hot-beef one right now so you should be safe for a bit.’

  ‘You need to find yourself a proper boyfriend,’ Sam tells me later. ‘A straight one. Someone who’ll take care of you. Then you can forget all this one-night stand nonsense and perhaps you’ll actually be happy.’

  ‘Men are pants,’ I remind him.

  ‘No they’re not.’ He flips over to the football.

  ‘Channel flicking,’ I say pointedly.

  ‘You shouldn’t be so harsh.’ He laughs, flicking back to East-Enders for me. ‘We’re not all like Jake, you know. Some of us are actually quite nice.’

  ‘Yes, and most of you are like periods,’ I quip. ‘Hang around like a bad smell when you’re not wanted then when it actually comes to a matter of life or birth, you’re off like a stripper’s knickers. No thanks. I can do without you. All of you.’

  When Sam finds out I’ve lost my job, he tries to make me tell Mum. After all, he says. I need all the support I can get. ‘Or at least Dad then.’

  ‘You’re not telling Jeff,’ I say firmly. ‘No bloody way. He already thinks I’m crap. And he’ll probably tell my mum. She’ll be devastated if she knows I’ve been fired. Things like that don’t happen in our family.’

  Actually, that’s the problem with my mother all round. She’s so bloody nice. I can’t tell you how much I’ve longed over the years for a mother like Janice’s. One who wears Asda ski pants and can’t even remember who the father of her children is. I’d even settle for one who went on at me all the time. You know the sort of thing. Nagging at me to lose weight, get a better job, more qualifications. Life would be so much easier. Just my luck to have it really hard. When I fuck up—through spending too much time in the Union bar and not enough in the library, for instance— I get a pat on the head and ‘I’m sure you did your best’ in reassuring tones. She has so much faith in me it hurts. I’m in a constant state of guilt.

  Sam assures me that he won’t tell Mum or his dad, as long as I agree to have a long, hard think about what I want to do for a living. Perhaps even go to a temping agency to get some other skills.

  ‘So it’s a toss-up between looking like a complete prat in a businessy type suit and women’s tights and disappointing my mother, is it?’

  ‘If you put it like that.’

  I opt for the first. I promise to think about it.

  And thinking about it is bloody well all I intend to do for the time being. After all I’ve been through, I think a good few weeks of lounging are thoroughly in order.

  ‘So what do you think?’ Sam looks at me expectantly.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘What do you think you’d like to do?’ he asks me.

  ‘You mean I have to think about it now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But I want to watch Buffy.’

  ‘Well, you can’t.’ Sam takes the TV remote and firmly flips the off button. ‘You’re going to have to take control of your life, you know. The sooner the better. There must be something you’d like to do.’

  ‘I can’t think of anything,’ I say honestly. ‘But I don’t want to work in a bloody office again. Your average tights and handbag environment is all just a bit bloody much for me. And being the new girl is horrid. No one bothers to show you where the toilets are and you always end up making your own tea because everyone else’s tastes of fish and has a skin on top.’

  Sam throws back his head and roars with laughter.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re so funny.’ He tweaks my ear. ‘I can’t believe you’ve come this far without having a clue what it is y
ou want to do.’

  ‘It’s not funny.’ I look glumly down into my teacup. ‘What usually happens to people like me, Sam? Who helps them?’

  ‘I’m very much afraid,’ Sam pulls me towards him and gives me a brotherly hug, ‘they generally find they have to help themselves.’

  ‘That’s what I was worried about.’ I turn my attention to a copy of GQ on the coffee table. ‘Bloody hell. Look at the state of her. More highlights than Match Of The Day.’

  Sam gently takes the magazine away and looks at me.

  ‘Come on, Simpson. There must be something you enjoy.’

  ‘There isn’t.’ I shake my head sadly. ‘The only things I’m good at are drinking, smoking and sleeping around. And I’m not even very good at that. Yet.’

  ‘You’re good at cooking.’

  ‘Am I?’ I look round in surprise.

  ‘Course you are,’ he says. ‘That Malaysian curry you cooked on Janice’s birthday was nothing short of stupendous.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I’m pleased. ‘But where’s that going to get me? I don’t want to be a housewife.’

  ‘You don’t have to. Ever thought of being a chef, say? Or a caterer?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say honestly. ‘But then I lounged around for too long and it just didn’t happen.’

  ‘Well, what about it?’

  ‘I haven’t got any experience,’ I mope. I’m feeling really sorry for myself now. ‘God, Sam, why is it all so bloody hard? It’s not my fault I find it hard to apply myself. And no one consulted me before they dragged me into a world where I have to work for a bloody living. I think I’d have done far better in a trust fund type situation.’

  ‘You could get some work experience in a restaurant for a few weeks,’ Sam suggests, his face earnest. ‘Ever thought about being a waitress for a bit? Just to earn some money and see what’s around?’

  ‘The only thing I’ve thought about waitressing is that it’s a dreadful, menial, badly paid job,’ I say. ‘God, Sam, I’ve had more fun treating a vicious bout of cystitis.’

  ‘What about setting up on your own?’ Sam suddenly brightens.

  ‘As what?’

  ‘As a caterer.’ He grins. ‘I can even use you for some of my client launches.’

  ‘I don’t have the money to set up.’

  ‘You could get a loan.’