‘Yeah, well, you don’t have to any more.’
‘I know but . . . well, you’re away in London and our Joey’s there, too, and—’
‘What? Our Joey’s in London now?’
This was news to me. I felt weightless all of a sudden. Usually that would be a good thing as it would mean I’d lost so much weight I could float away, but this felt horrible.
‘Yeah, he’s working as a DJ. Didn’t I say?’
‘No.’
This was very bad news. So weightless, in fact, that I could float out of the front door and bump into my cheating, two-timing bastard of a brother at any time. No! I sat on the floor, hoping to root myself, weigh myself down.
‘Well, anyway, the house feels so empty without you.’
‘Bungalow. Dormer.’ I was feeling mutinous.
‘You never phone. You never write. You never seem that keen on coming back for a weekend or—’
‘I’m skint, Mother. I’m a student. D’you know how much the coach costs?’
‘We’d send you the money.’
‘I’m too proud,’ I lied.
‘You’re too lazy,’ she countered. Cheeky mare!
‘Oh what, so me and Our Joey have buggered off – quite apt for Our Joey – so you’ve moved my ex in to take our place?’
‘You always were such a drama queen, Jodie,’ she said, as if I’d never understand.
‘You haven’t answered the question!’
‘Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill, Jodie. I bumped into him in the Asda at Hunt’s Cross a while back and we got chatting in the two-for-one section.’
I rolled my eyes, which clearly didn’t translate over the phone. Oh the irony . . .
‘And one thing led to another and he ended up coming back for his tea.’
Blimey, she’d be telling me they’d ended up in bed together next.
‘We don’t get many visitors now and he seemed so upset. And, well, I didn’t think there was any harm in him just writing. I didn’t think he’d go and see you.’
At least she was saying sorry. And it did sound like she was feeling guilty.
‘I thought it might give you both some closure.’
‘Closure? Bloody hell, Mum. From Tammy Wynette to Oprah Winfrey in one fell swoop.’
‘Jodie.’
Now it was my turn to tut.
‘Anyway, you might have told me you’d got a new fella. You never tell me anything any more.’
Oh God. Oh no. Greg had told them about Stuart.
‘Well it’s very early days,’ I blustered.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Stuart.’
‘Is he from a good family?’
‘Mother, what d’you think this is? Pride and fucking Prejudice?’ Truth be told I had no idea what sort of family Stuart was from. He might have been raised by wolves for all I knew.
‘I know you’re upset, Jodie, but there’s no need to swear.’
‘I’m sorry. Greg shouldn’t have told you that. Greg shouldn’t have been here in the first place.’
‘He hasn’t got a Mum, Jodie.’
‘I know. I went to the funeral. We all did.’
‘I feel sorry for him.’
And how about feeling sorry for me? I wanted to say. But I knew it would sound petulant.
‘Mum, I’ve . . . I’ve gotta go.’
I had to do no such thing, but I just didn’t know what to say. The whole conversation was making me feel immeasurably sad.
‘Jodie, I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him to stop coming round if that’s what you want.’
Of course it’s what I wanted, and her saying it actually made me a bit weepy, but agreeing with her might have made me sound unreasonably bitchy. Or would it? I really had no idea what was the right thing to do.
‘Oh, Mum. You’re a grown-up. You can see who you like.’
There was silence at the other end and I wondered whether she, too, was upset. I heard the scratch of a cigarette lighter and guessed she was.
‘If I send you the money, will you come and see us soon?’
‘Course, Mum. Course I will.’
‘Oh good.’
‘As long as my ex-husband’s not gonna be popping in every five minutes for Rich Tea and sympathy.’
She chuckled.
‘Er, Mother? I think the words you’re looking for are, “Absolutely not, Jodie.”’
‘Absolutely not, Jodie. Oh you do make me laugh.’
‘I have my uses.’
‘What does Stuart do?’
‘I’ll tell you next time.’ Because of course I had no idea.
‘Oh, OK. Well, say hello to him from us. And don’t slag us off.’
‘As if. Bye, Mum.’
‘See you, love.’
‘Ta-ra.’ And I hung up. I saw a shadow move on the wall and turned to look behind me. Moth was hovering with a packet of Scampi Fries, a startled look on her face.
‘What?’ I said, embarrassed.
‘Jodie!’
‘What?’
‘Were you . . . married?’
Oh God.
‘I’m psychic.’ Stuart winked as we walked along the South Bank, eating some unpronounceable Vietnamese street food that we’d picked up from a bullet-shaped stainless-steel stall underneath one of the bridges. If I was to say he was wearing a navy duffel coat, I know it would sound like I was on a date with Paddington Bear, but I wasn’t. He carried it off. In fact, it made him look cool. Especially as it was teamed with battered jeans and Nike trainers. His eyes were twinkling and his cheeks were pink. It was a crisp day for May, and I’d managed to stain the faux fur wrap I’d put on to block out the chill with something red that had popped out of my spring roll.
‘Yeah, right!’ I joked back.
So he went for the counter attack.
‘All right then, I . . . I . . .’
‘OK, this had better be good!’ I teased.
‘I . . . got some post delivered to you, wrongly, and I took it round, only you don’t remember me doing it.’
He grimaced – could he get away with it? No. I rolled my eyes and asked him for the umpteenth time, ‘How did you find out my name? Tell me!’
He looked out over the Thames, lifted his arm and dropped a noodle in his mouth, slurping it up like something out of The Aristocats. He didn’t shut his mouth much as he proceeded to eat it, but I didn’t care. It made more of a feature of his oversized lips.
‘I made it my business. And when I make something my business, I always get what I want.’
He looked at me and winked again, sending a jolt of promise through my body, then he threw his head back and emitted the dirtiest laugh I’d heard in a long time. I was desperate to know how he’d found out my name. You see, whereas I had been ambling along with the misapprehension that my newly dumped neighbour thought I was a 100 per cent certifiable loon, I now realized he must have been madly in love with me and done something terribly romantic like . . . hiring a private detective. Called Clint. I could just see the scene now:
It’s late at Clint Machonohy’s office. The ceiling fan’s spinning but the room is muggy as Clint, a native New Yorker (in fact, he has ‘Native New Yorker’ playing on a scratchy turntable in the background), peers across his desk at Stuart Moses.
‘So, this broad you need to find the name of. Whaddaya know about her?’
‘Not much, apart from her address.’
Clint nods. That’s a good start. Then Stuart adds, ‘Oh. And the fact that she’s a psycho killer, bunny boiler, kiddie fiddler.’
Clint nods, impressed. Women like that certainly don’t come along every day . . .
‘I’ll find her, goddammit!’ Clint bangs an angry fist on his desk, causing the ice in his bourbon to rattle. ‘I’ll find her if it freakin’ kills me.’
Stuart nods, grateful tears in his eyes.
He must have done something like that to find out, mustn’t he? But he was pulling something from his pocket.
/>
‘Truth be told, I found this.’
And he handed me my bus pass. The one I’d lost a few weeks ago. It was so lovely to be reunited with it I felt like kissing it. I didn’t, that would have looked far too egotistical on a first date. Especially as I now realized that it wasn’t a particularly good photo of me. In fact, as I imagined seeing it through Stuart’s eyes, it was pretty hideous. The Mona Lisa may have bewitched many with her enigmatic smile, but I was going to win no suitors with my startled Goth look. I’d plumped for a – I felt – moody black and white passport-booth snap, which made my skin look albino white and my hair (criminally) dyed black. The smile was not so much enigmatic as, ‘Shit, I think I’ve just sat on a pine cone!’ What had I been thinking?
‘Where did you find this?’ I asked, conjuring an image of him breaking into my flat in the dead of night in a black balaclava with the bit between his teeth, desperate to find a keepsake to remind him of the woman who was clearly, and quite rightly, pervading his dreams. I imagined a mixture of the Milk Tray man and – less appealingly – the bloke with equally big lips in Jagged Edge.
‘Found it in the gutter, down by the bus stop.’
Oh. Well that wiped out that fantasy, which was probably a good thing the more I thought of myself as Glenn Close in Jagged Edge. In fact, she got drowned in the bath in the end. Or was that Fatal Attraction?
‘I meant to give it back to you the other day, but all that stuff with your ex kinda . . . got in the way. Knew it was you soon as I seen it.’
I pulled a face. ‘Oh God. And here was me thinking I was gorgeous.’
Again, the dirty laugh came, only this time he flung his free, non-street-food-holding arm round my shoulder and guided me down the esplanade.
‘Oh shut it, Treacle. You’ll do.’
Yikes. He called me Treacle. But with his big manly arm around me he could have called me anything and I’d probably have melted. Just as I was melting now. Funny how you can be freezing and melting at the same time.
Food finished and wrappers sensibly disposed of in a metal perforated bin, we walked almost as far as the Globe Theatre and sat in a pub overlooking the Thames. The view was nice but the design of the pub was a bit 1970s municipal car park, and over a few drinks – vodka and sodas for me, pints of Guinness for him – I realized that I fancied him. It was all a bit embarrassing really, all I could think of was that I wanted to go to bed with him. Hell, forget the bedroom, if he wanted to take me over this pub table I’d have welcomed it. In fact, if he wasn’t careful I was going to shove our drinks floorwards, jump over the table and pounce on him. It had been so long since I’d had any sexual urges about anyone that the feeling was both alien and all-encompassing, so I knew I had to get a handle on this and distract. Distract! I couldn’t exactly stick my fingers in my ears and sing, ‘La La La,’ loudly and gaily, but I could blurt out the first thing that came into my head, which I did: ‘Let’s play twenty questions!’
He had been in the middle of explaining the off-side rule, so he looked a little perturbed. His smirk said, ‘Women, huh?’ Then his mouth said, ‘Er, OK.’
So we played it. We each asked a question about the other and had to answer honestly. Several drinks were consumed during the playing of this game, as it was actually quite hard to come up with twenty original things we wanted to know. Repetition between players was allowed, but the offside was rule was not (whatever that was . . .).
I went first.
‘What are you like in bed?’
I didn’t really. Though it was the one I wanted to ask, natch.
‘So. Karen. The writer of the card. Your ex. What was she like?’
‘A bitch. My go.’
‘No. I’m not happy with that answer. Say more.’
Cue roll of eyebrows.
‘Er, I dunno. She was all right. She was a laugh. When she wanted to be. Moody, most of the time. She had big tits, blonde hair, most of it not hers.’ He didn’t look that impressed by the large breastage or extensions. Promising. He continued, ‘She’s a care assistant in a nursing home. Fuck knows how, all she cares about is herself. Enough?’
I nodded. He was right, she sounded a total bitch. ‘Your go.’
‘Did you always know your husband was gay?’
Er, OK. Good question.
‘No. No I didn’t. If I had’ve done I would never have married him. I’m not stupid and he hid it really well. He says he’s not gay. I don’t know if I believe him. It’s the thing that’s caused me the biggest, weirdest pain in my life and I just wanna draw a line in the sand and pretend it never happened. You’re not gay are you?’
‘Is that question two?’
‘Yes. Was that yours?’
‘Go on then. And no, course not.’
Relief.
Though he could’ve been lying.
Though that cheeky wink told me otherwise.
I continued, ‘Question three. Who’s Ricky?’
‘Well.’
He was struggling for the words. This was good. Some fellas would just clam up and say they didn’t want to talk about it. He was trying to be open. Promising.
‘Look, I ain’t supposed to tell you this, but . . . it’s Ricky Martin. The singer? She’s run off with him and they’re living la vida loca, por favor.’
Oh my God. GOSSIP!
‘You’re joking!?’
‘I am. He’s some knob from her work. All Brylcreem and nerdy glasses. I can’t stand him, never could, but apparently he’s a better listener than me.’
He could see my embarrassment that for one silly second I’d been taken in, so he said, ever so fondly, ‘You muppet.’
‘Your question three. Come on.’
‘Right. Right. OK, d’you still see your brother?’
I shook my head vehemently. And, God this was embarrassing, from nowhere I started to cry. I tried to stop myself but I couldn’t. A wave of despair had hit me; a sudden, sharp, breathtaking sadness. I felt I was plummeting down a big hole at breakneck speed and it was futile to try and claw my way out. Stuart reached across and took my hand.
‘Fuck, Jodie, I’m sorry.’
‘God, this is so embarrassing.’
His look told me otherwise. Blimey he must have thought I was a freak. Last time he saw me I threw up over him, now I was sobbing my heart out in a pub in broad daylight, though I have to say I was doing my utmost to cry as quietly as possible, and not too many people were looking over.
‘Change the subject,’ I gasped. So, bless him, he did.
‘Question four. Are we gonna go back to my place or yours?’
My answer was a bit too quick for anybody’s liking.
‘Yours. Moth’s not speaking to me coz I never told her about being married.’
He nodded, drained the dregs of his pint, then slapped his knees.
‘Are we right?’
Were we ever! We continued to play twenty questions in the cab home and even on the pavement outside his house. We played it on the steps up to the front door. Inside the hallway. On the stairs up to his flat. And we carried on playing it as we undressed each other and tumbled onto his futon. OK, so the questions got a bit fewer and further between as we actually got down to the business of ‘the sex’ – that was question eighteen.
Me: What are we doing now?
Him: The sex.
And we rounded off with question twenty after we’d both, miraculously, climaxed.
‘Stuart? Question twenty: How was it for you?’
‘Fucking amazing.’
I grinned like the cat who’d got the cream and waited for his question twenty. And waited. Er, OK, maybe he was trying to make it a good one. Final one and all that. Or maybe he hadn’t heard me. Maybe he needed a prompt.
‘Well go on then. Your last question.’
Silence.
‘Question twenty?’
It was then that I discovered Stuart Moses was a snorer.
That night I dreamed of Our Joey. He was doing
something he’d often do at Christmas to make the family laugh. He used to play a Liza Minnelli track called ‘Ring Them Bells’ and mime to it, dancing round the through lounge. It was about a girl who went all round the world, only to fall in love with the boy next door.
I looked around the through lounge and saw Mum chuckling and smoking, loving the campery of it all. Blimey, even Dad was tapping his foot and clicking his fingers. I turned my head round a bit more and saw Stuart sitting there, shimmying in his seat. Panic rose in my chest. Was he shimmying because the Liza Minnelli lip-syncing appealed to his inner gay?
‘Are you gay?’ I gasped.
He shook his head. But I couldn’t tell if he meant ‘no I’m not’ or ‘not now, Jodie, I’m really enjoying your brother’s song and dance routine. It’s blowing my gay mind!’
I looked to Mum, desperation exploding in me like an al-Qaeda bomb.
‘Mum!’
She tutted.
‘No, Mum!’
‘Jodie! Your brother’s performing!’
‘I know, but I need to know something.’
Mum turned and looked at me. ‘It’s true. Liberace was your father.’
In my dream, I already knew that, but it still made Dad look over and scowl.
‘What did you say, Sandra?’
‘Nothing, Alan!’
‘Mum, no, it’s not that.’
Mum rolled her eyes and swivelled her head in a very drag queen way – God, there was a running theme – then looked at me and issued a very impatient, ‘WHAT?’
‘Mother. I need to know. Is he gay?’
Another roll of the eyes and another swivel towards Our Joey.
‘Take a frigging wild guess, love!’
I knew I was dreaming. Mum would never say frigging.
‘No, not Our Joey, Stuart!’
Mum let out a coruscating laugh, so loud that Our Joey stopped lip-syncing to Judy Garland’s daughter and stomped his foot petulantly.
‘Er, I’m performing?’
‘Sorry, love.’
That was Mum. Then she did a kind of ‘as you were’ movement with her wrist and Our Joey carried on. Mum looked at me as she lit up another cigarette.
‘Jodie, relax. Not every fella you meet’s a big bender. Look at Barry Manilow.’
I now realized Our Joey was no longer lip-syncing to Liza, but to the big-nosed vamper. This wasn’t looking good. Especially as Stuart was now juggling suggestively with two nectarines and a banana in the direction of my boogieing brother. I jumped up and pushed Our Joey back against the fireplace.
All She Wants Page 21
