by Mina Ford
‘I don’t want Sam seeing my bum,’ I sobbed, tears of shame pouring down my face as six strangers caught me full frontal. ‘I know him.’
Mercifully, my examination is brief. Hospitalisation isn’t necessary and I’m soon sitting in an ice-cold bath, still stinging, shivering with misery and howling at the four of them, who are sitting in a row along the edge of the bath smoking fags.
It’s absolutely the last time I ever chop chillies then help roll on the condom.
‘I’m so pathetic,’ I hiccup. Snot streams down my face and blends into what’s left of my lippy.
‘You’re not,’ the four of them chorus dutifully.
‘I am.’ I shudder. ‘I can’t hold down a job and I can’t even shag around when I want to without fucking it up. You lot are so lucky. Complete whores, the lot of you.’
‘And damn good at it too,’ George preens.
‘Thanks,’ huffs Janice.
‘I’m the David Brent of sleeping around,’ I whine.
‘You’re not.’
‘I am. I’m a human bloody contraceptive.’
Sam looks as though he might be going to laugh, but Janice, bless her, silences him with a stiletto to the shin bone.
‘You think you’ve got it bad,’ she tells me. ‘Think how I feel. Poppy told me tonight that she’s getting bloody married. Before me and everything.’
‘Well, she has got a boyfriend,’ I tell her. ‘That helps.’
‘She’s been with Seb for six years,’ George points out. ‘And they are the perfect couple.’
‘Aren’t they fucking just?’ she says bitterly. ‘And you haven’t heard the worst of it.’
‘What?’
‘She’s asked me to be her bridesmaid.’
‘Oh God.’
‘I know. Isn’t it pathetic? I wouldn’t even invite her to my wedding and she goes and asks me to be her bloody bridesmaid.’
‘God,’ I say again. ‘Poor you.’
Then for some reason I burst into tears. Great, snotting, gulping tears.
Janice looks guilty.
‘Come on, lovely,’ she reassures me. ‘Try not to cry. Shagging around will come much more easily with practice.’
‘Well, she can practise on you if she likes but she’s not having a go on me,’ George pouts. ‘I’m not a ruddy merry-go-round.’
‘No,’ I snipe. ‘You’re more like a short stay parking space.’
‘She wouldn’t want to have a go on you, would she?’ Janice scoffs. ‘You’re a poo pusher, for fuck’s sake. A mincing little fudge packer. Sorry, David. No offence.’
‘None taken.’
‘And you fancy Phillip Schofield,’ I point out.
‘You don’t?’ David looks as though he’s going to laugh.
‘She’s making it up to get back at me,’ George says. ‘Because I can sleep with you and she can’t.’
‘I’ll shag you if you like, Katie,’ Sam says kindly.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I snap. ‘I’d rather shag Neil Kinnock.’
Sam looks a bit hurt but soon bounces back.
‘Who was that bloke anyway?’
‘Friend of mine,’ Janice says. ‘From work.’
‘Not any more,’ David points out.
‘Shit, you’re right,’ Janice realises. ‘And he’s on good terms with my boss. Bloody hell, Katie, you know how to pick them.’
‘You introduced us.’ I bristle with indignation. ‘You picked him for me. Even though I told you not to try and matchmake.’
‘You’ll have to ring and apologise,’ she bosses.
‘I can’t. How can I? He won’t want to talk to me. Not after what happened. I’ll be about as popular as a screening of Deep Throat at a royal wedding.’
‘You can,’ Janice says. ‘And you will. You better bloody had, anyway. I’m not losing my job because of you.’
‘Thanks, Janice,’ I say. ‘I’m choked.’
Chapter 7
Isn’t it weird how something actually pretty OK can come out of such gloom and doom?
The smell of stale fags has barely left the living room when duty friend Poppy rings to say that the catering at my party was ‘divine’. I’m surprised. I don’t even remember Poppy actually being at my party, which shows a) just how rendered I was and b) how significant she is in my life. But she wants to know if I’d mind divulging the name of the firm. And when I tell her I did it all myself in an afternoon, her voice goes all wobbly and she suddenly bursts into tears.
‘What?’ I raise my eyes heavenward. For God’s sake. It’s me who is supposed to be upset, isn’t it? I’ve got no job, no one to shag and a sore bum. Whereas Poppy has coins aplenty, courtesy of a rich, if slightly boring boyfriend, and a very small bum. Shouldn’t I be the one grubbing for sympathy here?
‘We’ve had a dizz…’
Cherrrist. Out with it, love. I haven’t got all day.
Actually, I have, but it’s not much fun listening to someone else blub down the phone.
‘Dizzz. Dizzzarrster.’
‘Oh dear,’ I faux sympathise, hoping cruelly that Seb has up and dumped her from a truly great height. ‘What is it? Anything I can do?’
‘The ccccc…’
‘Cunt?’ I supply hopefully. God. He must have done something really horrible if Perfect Poppy is actually attempting to use the C word.
‘NO.’ She sounds shocked. ‘Caterer. The caterer we were going to use for our wedding’s gone bloody bust. Everything’s ruined.’
‘Is it?’ I smile down the phone, hoping she can’t hear it in my voice.
‘I don’t suppose…’
‘What?’
‘Don’t suppose you fancy giving it a go, do you, Katie? I’d pay you, of course. It’s just that we can’t get anyone else at short notice. Mummy’s tried everyone. She’s even gone on the internet.’
‘I don’t know.’ I hesitate. Frankly it all sounds a bit bloody much. I mean I know Sam says I’m a brilliant cook, but knocking up a bowlful of biryani or two for my mates—especially when it means I get to trough a good half of it—is one thing. Churning out miniature marzipan bridegrooms and serving teeny tomato tartlettes on silver platters to two hundred horsy strangers is quite another. Just how the fuck does one go about that sort of thing? What if I muck it all up? The happiest day of two people’s lives will go skittering straight down the pan.
Buggering, buggering hell.
‘I wouldn’t worry too much,’ Janice reassures me when I ring her. She’s having a sunbed because she’s just seen a photo of Jasper’s permatanned dead wife. ‘Half of them will be bloody bulimic anyway,’ she adds. ‘Lucky bitches. So they’ll be barfing it all up again before you can say salmon-en-croute. You’ll probably be able to do a second sitting with their leftovers.’
Sam, of course, persuades me it’s a terrific idea.
‘It’s your perfect opportunity,’ he enthuses. ‘It’s for someone you know, and there’ll probably be loads of people there to impress. So you can make more contacts and—’
‘OK, calm down,’ I say. ‘We don’t all want to work in PR, you know.’
‘But you’ll do it?’ he says eagerly. ‘Go on, Simpson. Give it a go. You’ll be brilliant. I know you will.’
‘Well…’
‘Well?’ He tousles my hair.
‘OK,’ I say gingerly.
‘Fantastic.’
I smile weakly. I don’t really have any choice but to do this. My overdraft is snowballing. And I simply don’t have a frugal mentality. If I want something, I convince myself I need it. So I buy it. Immediately. If I don’t find a way of making money soon I’ll be forced to put Graham and Shish Kebab on the streets.
Janice thinks it a great idea and magnanimously offers to let me cook a dinner party at hers as a sort of dry run. As usual she has a hidden agenda. I have to pretend she’s done all the work herself. How else is Jasper going to be able to see what a suitable wife she’ll make? Anyway, she huffs, when I point out t
hat that would be false advertising (she’s the only person I know who can chargrill a Pot Noodle), the offer is there. I can take it or I can bloody well leave it.
I take it. After all, I’ve got no one else to practise on. And Janice and Jasper are apparently getting on very well. They’ve done restaurant dates and the theatre. He’s even taken her to the opera, where she betrayed her roots by falling fast asleep, bored to tears, and dribbling down the lapel of his suit. And she’s holding out on the sex front. Doesn’t want him to bugger off. So they’ve done breast touching, and even a bit of breast looking, but that’s about it.
‘I’m reeling him in gently.’ She laughs. ‘I’m being all mysterious. Anyway, I’ll talk to you tomorrow. We’ll decide what you’re going to cook.’
George says I should at least go to a wedding beforehand. After all, it’s been ages since I attended a reception. And, as luck would have it, he’s been invited to one next weekend. He doesn’t really want to go because it’s rumoured that the bride is a money-grubbing, social-climbing, bottom-feeding bungalow dweller who’s found herself a nice piece of rich, and is consequently getting ideas above her station, but now he thinks of it, David’ll be away so why don’t I go along with him. Save him having to go on his own.
‘And it might give you some ideas,’ Sam says enthusiastically.
I allow myself to be steamrollered into the whole thing. And the following Saturday, I pour myself into gold lamé and meet George in Bierodrome in Upper Street for cherry beer and chips with mayonnaise before stumbling down the Holloway Road where we buy him a pair of size eleven sparkly red mules and jump, giggly on beer bubbles, onto a tube bound for South Kensington.
The reception is being held in a large house off Eaton Square. Wobbling along the terrace of identical white mansions with squirly black numbers painted on wedding cake pillars outside, we identify the spiddly spoo strains of jazz filtering into the busy street and follow the sound up steps, through a front door, down a long panelled hallway and into a big, striped, tenty sort of thing attached to the back of number twelve. Girls in great pumpkins of ballgowns and chaps in DJs are twirling each other around in a blaze of flaming scarlet silk, soft emerald velvet and shimmering midnight-blue satin. Silver horseshoes and golden streamers are liberally scattered among the corks and coffee cups discarded on nearby tables and a girl with what George calls a common mouth and air hostess orange make-up is dressed as a giant pavlova and waltzing with someone’s granddad over by the stage.
George seems to think introductions are superfluous to requirements.
‘No point being polite,’ he chirrups happily, lighting a banana-coloured fag and trolling over towards the booze. ‘I already got all the delicious gossip. Groom’s Zachary Faulkner. Father’s a zillionaire. This is his house. Or one of them, I should say, darling. Bride’s your average slapper in slingbacks. It’s the blessed union of Nice ’n’ Rich and Cheap ’n’ Nasty, sweetie. Belgravia Boy and his Basildon Bride. Isn’t it fantastic? His parents are furious. Look, over there. British Bulldog smoking cigar, and Tweedy Stick Insect sucking lemon. Black tie wedding theme was the bride’s idea, of course. I mean who does that these days, darling? So tacky. Oh, and that’s the bride’s parents over there. Pink Liquorice Allsort Hat and Shiny Brown Suit. See?’
I glance over to where a drab, sad-looking couple in their fifties sit, bewildered and obviously leagues out of their depth. No one’s even bothering to talk to them. It seems so sad. It’s their own daughter’s wedding.
George springs into action. Spotting a full, opened bottle of champagne sitting unattended on a nearby table, he gleefully points over at it. ‘Are we having that or not?’ he asks mischievously.
‘Having it,’ I reply as he swaggers over to swipe it, wrapping his greedy little hands round the golden foil neck and joyfully glugging straight from the bottle as he clacks over to a table occupied by a solitary woman with a cleavage like a builder’s bum and a couple of pubescent bridesmaids, all pearlescent pink ruffles and train-track braces. I follow, shuffling over in ridiculous slut shoes that make my squashed feet feel like sides of vacuum-packed ham. Feeling more than a tad silly, I concertina my gangly limbs into the spaghetti-sized gap between tent pole and table.
Unfortunately, because I’m slightly uncomfortable, I drink. A lot. And because I know I’m never likely to see any of these people again in my life, things get out of hand pretty quickly. Our stolen bottle of champagne is drained with Formula One speed and I’m soon feeling as excited as a kid at a birthday party as golden froth jostles and pops alongside bubbles of possibility in my brain. Perhaps I really can make a go of this catering lark.
It isn’t long before I’m slurring my words, scanning the room for potential shags and drunkenly grabbing the disposable camera someone has thoughtfully left in the middle of the table. We finish the film taking silly snaps of each other flipping V signs and showing our pants, and it’s not until I get up to find out where the Ladies is that I remember why I’m here. The caterers. I’ve got to talk to the caterers.
Shit-arama.
Where’s the bloody kitchen?
‘Stay,’ I instruct George, who is far too busy downing the contents of every abandoned glass on our table to even notice I’m going anywhere.
The house is a mizz maze of passageways. Just how many rooms does Belgravia Boy’s family need? In my search for the kitchen I totter into about ten living rooms alone, chocka with antiques and invitingly plump sofas, and decorated in every colour of the rainbow. Sweetshop pink. Emerald and gold. Soft candyfloss. Pure blue. Stinging yellow. Hot orange. This lot clearly take their lounging very seriously indeed.
I find a loo—all Regency striped wallpaper and lavatorial humour cartoons on the walls—and I’ve just about given up hope of ever locating the kitchen—perhaps Belgravia Boy and his family eat out every night—when I go over the heel of one of my sparkly slut shoes as I totter down the final twist in the back stairs. I end up in an enormous room filled with gleaming stainless steel. A tasty-looking bloke in head-to-toe Armani is huddled over the butcher’s block, ruffled blond head in hands. Well, I think that’s Armani he’s wearing anyway. I’ve never been much of a one for recognising labels, unless you count the ingredients on the side of food packets, so I can’t be absolutely sure. I’m one of those people who always reads captions in magazines which describe Gwyneth Paltrow as ‘elegant, as ever, in charcoal Prada’, or Madonna as ‘radiant in shocking-pink Voyage’ and wonder how the buggering hell the writer can tell, just by looking. I look at the adverts in glossy magazines and read Versace as Versass. So the expensive-looking suit could just as easily be a Paul Smith. Or a Hugo Boss. It could even be Man at sodding C&A. Who knows?
Who cares?
Still, it might do me good to have a talk to him. He may well have some useful tips. After all, catering a posh bash like this, he must be fairly experienced. And although I usually find networking about as appealing as VD, I’m pissed enough not to care. So I go for it.
He glances up as I hoop-la, arse over tit, onto the gleaming floor, an ominous ripping sound coming from my crotch.
‘Whoopsy.’
I bend down to check out the size of the hole.
Humungous.
Serves me right, I guess. What’s a gangly great lummox like me thinking of, cramming myself into trews that make even my lanky lallies look like great jambons? ‘I say,’ I say, cursing myself the moment the words leave my mouth. Who actually says that? ‘Finished for the day?’ I garble, whipping cigarettes out of my trouser pocket and tearing off the cellophane in as seductive a manner as is possible for a person whose fingernails are encrusted with chipped Barbie-pink polish and chewed to fat stumps. I’m more twelve-year-old than temptress but hey, I’m off my tits on champagne. Who gives a toss?
‘Bloody well hope so.’ He shrugs. ‘I’m shagged out. And I’m still not even allowed to get pissed.’
‘What?’ I ask, shocked. If catering weddings doesn’t involve a few f
ree glasses of bubbly then perhaps I should seriously reconsider. Every job has its perks, doesn’t it?
‘Even though you’ve doled out all the grub and done the washing up? Surely they’ll allow you to let your hair down for the last hour?’ I say.
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ He looks confused. I’m not surprised. I bet he’s bloody knackered.
‘I was thinking of starting up a catering business actually,’ I admit, flopping down onto the bench beside him and offering him a fag. ‘Any tips?’
He shrugs. ‘Not really.’
Great. Clammed up like an oyster. Obviously isn’t sharing any of his secrets so readily. Still, he’s probably used to catering for all manner of glamorous dos. From the way he’s dressed, he probably did Brad and Jennifer’s wedding. He’s probably bezzie mates with the Beckhams. The last thing he’ll want is some upstart like me nicking his ideas off him.
Still, I could always get him drunk. He’d sing like a canary then.
Or I could shag him and get him to dish.
Better still, get him drunk and shag him. Then I can’t fail.
Or is that a bit too sluttish for a beginner?
‘Shall I nick you some champers?’ I say wickedly. ‘You could drink it in here. No one would know.’
He flashes me a lopsided grin. ‘Go on then. But don’t get caught. She’ll murder me if she catches me boozing.’
‘Tricky bride?’ I say sympathetically.
Well, that’s OK. There are bound to be a few difficult customers once in a while. I’d expect that.
‘You could say that.’ He winks.
I smile. Normally, I don’t find men in suits attractive. For some reason, I’ve never been able to imagine a man in a suit possessing such a thing as a penis. Don’t know why. It’s always been the way with me. I imagine they’ll be completely smooth underneath. But this chap is different. Not my usual type—he’s blond, for one thing, whereas I usually prefer them dark and brooding. But he is male. And he looks as though he’s got a pulse. And after the disaster with Max, who am I to play fussy?
