Best Man

by Matt Dunn

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  Praise for Matt Dunn

  ‘Funny, moving and a guaranteed page-turner. Brilliant!’ Mike Gayle

  ‘Fresh and funny . . . a must-read for anyone who wonders what really goes on inside a man’s head’ Heat

  ‘Both hilarious and touching’ Best

  ‘Funny and witty, a great read that gives us a look into the workings of the male mind’ The Sun

  ‘A well-crafted tale of when love goes wrong and love goes right – witty, astute but tender too’ Freya North

  ‘Frighteningly funny and sometimes just plain frightening . . . the most realistic perspective on the average man’s world view most women will get without hanging around in a locker room’ Chris Manby

  ‘Delightfully shallow and self-obsessed – that’s the male psyche for you’ Elle

  ‘An amusing insight into the minds of men’ Daily Express

  ‘A warm, open and damn funny book’ Lads Mag

  By the same author

  The Ex-Boyfriend’s Handbook

  From Here to Paternity

  Ex-Girlfriends United

  The Good Bride Guide

  About the author

  Matt Dunn is the author of five bestselling novels, including The Ex-Boyfriend’s Handbook, which was shortlisted for the Romantic Novel of the Year Award and the Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance. He has written about life, love and relationships for various publications including The Times, Guardian, Cosmopolitan, Company, Elle and The Sun.

  Matt was born in Margate, but eventually escaped to Spain to write his first novel in-between working as a newspaper columnist and playing a lot of tennis. Previously he has been a professional lifeguard, fitness-equipment salesman and an IT headhunter, but he prefers writing for a living, so please keep buying his books.

  Visit the author at www.mattdunn.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by Pocket Books, 2005

  This Pocket Books edition published 2009

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster UK

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Matt Dunn, 2005

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

  Pocket Books & Design is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster

  The right of Matt Dunn to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor

  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia Sydney

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-0-74349-551-6

  eISBN 978-1-47112-933-9

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Printed by CPI Cox & Wyman, Reading, Berkshire RG1 8EX

  For my parents, Sheila and Frank Dunn.

  Thank you for having me.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 1

  ‘So, as I was saying, we’re back at her place, and it’s getting to the Clash point . . .’

  ‘Clash point?’

  ‘Yeah, you know, “should I stay or should I go”, and we’ve been making the usual first date small talk – job, family, past relationships.’

  ‘Past relationships? I hope you gave her the abridged version?’

  ‘So somehow we get on to the subject of marriage and infidelity, and she tells me this story about a guy she knows from university. You know the type: the college Casanova, good looking, funny, a real ladies’ man, went out with most of the girls in his year.’

  ‘Bit like you then, mate.’

  ‘Piss off! Anyway, to everyone’s surprise, straight after graduation this guy marries the dullest girl on their course, moves out to the suburbs, does the whole two-point-four children thing. However, he works as an estate agent in London, and this gives him the perfect excuse to spend long hours in town while the wife stays at home to look after the kids.’

  ‘With you so far.’

  ‘He’s always kept in contact with his other female friends from college – most of them ex-girlfriends, of course. One by one he meets up with them in town for lunch or an early evening drink, when he pours his heart out over a bottle of Hard-done-by, telling them how he feels trapped in the marriage, has no life outside of work, and that the physical side has all but disappeared. They’re generally looking at him all misty eyed before they’ve even finished their first glass.’

  ‘Crafty bugger!’

  ‘Exactly. So, when the time comes to leave, he says that he’s just got to pop into a house round the corner and value it – five minutes, that’s all – he’s got the keys on him, and do they want to come and have a look? What woman can turn down the chance to have a nose around a complete stranger’s home, and so before you know it the two of them are strolling around the empty property, with him pretending to make notes while bemoaning the state of his marriage.’

  ‘What, “South facing reception room, I’d leave her if it wasn’t for the children”?’

  ‘That sort of stuff. And hinting how he wished that he and that particular girl had been closer at college, whilst she’s making all these “you poor thing” type noises. Anyway, the last room they get to is of course the bedroom . . .’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what do you think? She makes him an offer on the spot, which he gladly accepts!’

  ‘So what did you say when she told you this?’

  ‘I said what she wanted to hear of course: “What a bastard!”’

  It’s Friday afternoon, the sun is shining, and the three of us are sitting in our favourite drinking establishment in Chelsea, Bar Rosa, snacking on tapas and sipping that bottled Spanish beer that costs twice the price of normal lager yet has only half the taste. Nick hasn’t been focused on work all day, and I never need an excuse for an early finish, so we’ve shut the office and, on the pretext that we are his most valued clients, extricated Mark from his firm of stuffy accountants. As is traditional, we’re talking about my previous weekend’s date.

  ‘Too right,’ agrees Mark, absent-mindedly fingering his wedding ring. ‘What a bastard!’

  ‘What a lucky bastard, you mean,’ says Nick, enviously. In his mind, anyone getting more than their fair share deserves his jealous admiration.

  ‘Best of both worlds, if you ask me,’ he continues. ‘Don’t you agree, Adam?’

  Nick, sporting a ‘designer’ shirt with a pattern that could probably trigger epilepsy, nods expectantly, his lanky frame
perched awkwardly on a bar stool. Underneath his short dark hair, everything about Nick’s face is exaggerated, as if his features are competing for attention: big bushy eyebrows, a mouth that wraps a little too far round to the sides, and a nose that doesn’t quite point in the same direction as everything else.

  More high street than high fashion, Mark is wedged into the chair opposite, fatherhood and corporate life having broadened both his responsibilities and his waistline. At times, he looks like a man fighting a losing battle, his mousy brown crew-cut receding as the years advance, and his once good-looking face now rounder, and occupied by an extra chin.

  I scratch my head thoughtfully. ‘Well, no, actually. I can’t condone the infidelity aspect.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ says Nick, incredulously. ‘You go out with loads of women.’

  ‘Yes, but not at the same time. And I’m not married.’ I take a sip of my beer. ‘But I suppose it’s a pretty good trick.’

  ‘Not that you’ve ever needed tricks, eh?’ says Mark, reaching across the table to slap my face Morecambe and Wise style. I’m too fast for him, and knock his hands away with a mock-threatening and poor mock-cockney ‘Leave it!’, nearly spilling my drink in the process.

  Bar Rosa is run by a gay American couple, Pritchard and Rudy – better known to the three of us as Richard and Judy but, of course, not to their faces – and we’re here so often that they’ve become our good friends now. At that moment, Rudy appears at the other end of the bar, looking at his watch and miming surprise when he sees the three of us in so early.

  ‘Anyway,’ continues Mark, ‘that guy she was talking about doesn’t know when he’s well off.’

  Nick frowns. ‘How is he well off? Having the dutiful wife at home to look after the kids, or the extramarital shagging?’ he asks, not unreasonably.

  Mark looks at Nick, shakes his head, and sighs exaggeratedly. ‘So,’ he says to me, ‘going back to . . . what was her name again?’

  ‘Evelyn. Eve.’

  ‘Doomed from the start,’ observes Nick.

  ‘Sorry?’ says Mark.

  ‘Duh!’ says Nick, making that face where you stick your tongue under your lower lip, and reminding me instantly of when he was eight years old, when we first became friends. ‘Adam and Eve?’

  I do have a thing about girls’ names. You’ve got to sound right as a couple. No rhyming, joke names, celebrity, literary or, as in this case, biblical allusions.

  ‘Ah,’ says Mark. ‘Point taken. Was she attractive?’

  I feign shock.

  ‘Good kisser?’

  ‘Tongue like an electric eel,’ I say, repeating my favourite Blackadder line.

  ‘Good in bed?’ asks Nick.

  When I huff indignantly, Nick looks at me, incredulously.

  ‘So you didn’t?’

  I remove an imaginary bit of fluff from my sleeve. ‘Er, might have done . . .’

  ‘And?’

  I look at them both and shrug. ‘And what?’

  ‘And what was she like?’ Mark leans forward in his chair, causing me to shift a little uncomfortably in mine. I settle for what I hope will be an end-of-conversation reply.

  ‘Well, if you’ll excuse the pun, a bit of an anti-climax, actually.’

  ‘An anti-climax?’ exclaims Nick. ‘What were you expecting, the sword-swallowing abilities of a top porn star? How exactly did she disappoint?’

  ‘Jesus! What do you want? A blow-by-blow account?’

  ‘Please!’ says Mark, a little too keenly.

  I shake my head resignedly. ‘Well, she was just a little too . . . reserved.’

  ‘Reserved?’ exclaims Nick. ‘You mean she didn’t let you . . .’

  I hold up my hand to silence him. ‘Nick! Please!’

  ‘What?’ he says, gulping down a large mouthful of beer. ‘You can’t say something like that and then not give us all the facts.’

  I look for support from Mark, but he’s already nodding in agreement with Nick.

  ‘Well, let’s just say I kept looking down expecting to see a mortuary tag on her toe.’

  ‘Ha!’ smirks Nick. ‘That might have been your fault, you know.’

  ‘True . . .’ I concede, grinning back at him. ‘. . . But doubtful!’

  ‘You know,’ says Mark, lowering his voice conspiratorially, ‘speaking of climaxes, there’s one sure fire way to find out what a woman’s like in bed.’

  ‘Sleep with her?’ suggests Nick.

  ‘No. Well, yes, obviously,’ says Mark. ‘But, apparently, before sleeping with her, you can tell a lot about what she’s going to be like by . . .’ He pauses for effect. ‘By the way she sneezes.’

  Nick and I look at each other, and then back at Mark, before Nick does the honours.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘The way she, I mean, what she’s like when she . . .’ He reduces his voice to a whisper, despite there being nobody at the adjacent tables, ‘. . . orgasms.’

  ‘What?’ exclaims Nick.

  ‘Orgasms. Comes.’ Mark beckons us closer, as if he’s about to divulge state secrets. ‘For example, if she sneezes really loudly, with lots of facial expression and body movement, then she’s going to be the same way when she, you know . . .’

  Nick and I stare transfixed at Mark, who, sensing he’s got our full attention, ploughs on. ‘If she tries to hide it, or it’s one of those pathetic little “achoos” that hardly registers, or worse still, it’s no more than the “ach” part, then she’ll be afraid to let herself go.’ He leans back in his chair, obviously pleased with this little pearl of wisdom.

  ‘Thank you, Yoda,’ says Nick. ‘And in your vast sexual experience, is this a fact?’

  Mark opens his mouth to answer, but Nick cuts him off. ‘Oh, hang on, you’d have to have slept with more than just the one woman for a valid scientific study.’

  ‘Sod off!’ counters Mark, always the master debater.

  ‘Sneezes, eh?’ I say, mentally running through a quick review of my evening with Evelyn.

  Mark nods. ‘Apparently.’

  Nick stares at him, disbelievingly. ‘You’re making it up!’

  ‘No, if you must know, I read it in Cosmopolitan the other day,’ admits Mark, who then pales.

  Nick starts to laugh. ‘Cosmopolitan? Oh, so it must be true,’ he scoffs. ‘And what were you doing reading Cosmo anyway? Isn’t it a,’ he continues, emphasizing the word, ‘girl’s magazine?’

  ‘It – it was Julia’s copy,’ stammers Mark. ‘She’d left it lying around and I just picked it up. To be honest, it made a pleasant change from Accountancy Weekly.’

  ‘So,’ I say, raising one eyebrow, ‘your wife’s started reading Cosmo, has she?’

  ‘Better nip that in the bud, mate. And quickly!’ advises Nick.

  ‘And she’s just leaving it,’ I make speech marks in the air, ‘lying around?’ I shake my head slowly.

  Mark frowns. ‘Why? What are you talking about?’

  Nick and I are on a roll now. ‘Watch out, mate,’ he says. ‘Dangerous thing, a woman who reads Cosmo. Once Julia finds out there’s such a thing as a female orgasm . . .’

  I nod. ‘Let alone more than one type . . .’

  Nick looks at me quizzically for a moment before continuing. ‘Exactly. You’re in big trouble. It wasn’t left out by accident, you know.’

  I put a hand on Mark’s arm. ‘Was it open at any particular article?’

  ‘Any passages underlined?’ asks Nick.

  ‘Fuck off!’ says Mark, the panic rising in his voice. ‘Julia and I are very happy. There’s the small matter of another baby on the way, you know.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ I say. ‘Calm down. Just teasing.’ I turn to Nick, to give Mark a bit of respite. ‘But seriously, what about Sandra?’ Sandra is Nick’s girlfriend. ‘Does she prove Mark’s, sorry, Cosmo’s theory?’

  ‘Now I think about it,’ says Mark, before Nick can get a word in, ‘I can’t remember ever having heard her sneeze.’


  ‘At least not with Nick there,’ I add.

  Nick snorts. ‘Ha ha. Very funny.’

  ‘So,’ says Mark, clapping me on the shoulder, ‘another potential Mrs Bailey bites the dust,’ and I wince inwardly at the memories that phrase still brings. I was engaged once, a few years ago, although only for a few days. ‘I take it you’re not going to see her again?’

  I think about this for a second. ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

  Nick exhales loudly. ‘Why not?’

  I think about this for two seconds. ‘She just didn’t do it for me.’

  ‘Again – what exactly did you ask her to do?’ asks Mark. I yawn exaggeratedly and ignore him.

  Nick shakes his head. ‘What does a woman have to do to actually qualify for the position of girlfriend with you nowadays?’ he asks. ‘You can’t still be comparing them all to . . .’

  I give him a look that stops him mentioning Emma’s name. ‘No. Not any more. It’s just . . .’ I mull this over for a moment, as although it’s a question I’ve asked myself a number of times, I’m still nowhere near a definitive answer. ‘I guess they’ve just got to have that . . .’ I can’t quite think of the word, ‘thing, or whatever you call it.’

  ‘You want to go out with a girl with a “thing”?’ laughs Mark. ‘You’ve been spending too much time on those Internet sites again.’

  I pick a peanut up from the bowl on the table and flick it at him.

  Mark notices that his beer bottle is empty, and checks the clock on the wall. ‘Sorry, chaps,’ he says, adopting a haughty tone, ‘but time and tide wait for no man,’ adding, ‘and nor does the number 211 bus,’ when he sees Nick and I exchange confused glances. Despite living almost next door to a tube station, Mark insists on commuting in to the West End from Ealing by double decker, a journey which even Sir Ranulph Fiennes would think twice about.

  ‘Why on earth do you have to travel everywhere by bloody bus?’ asks Nick, the idea of any form of public transport so obviously abhorrent to him.

  ‘I like travelling by bus, Mr Small Penis,’ replies Mark, nodding through the window at Nick’s Ferrari, which is double parked on the street directly in front of Bar Rosa. ‘Much better than spending every morning stuck in a traffic jam, or playing sardines on the tube. Besides, statistically speaking, buses are the safest form of transport.’