by Haley Hill
‘I tried to match them years ago. But she was having none of it.’
Mandi giggled. ‘Good to know you don’t always get it right.’
‘What, the matching or the –’
‘All of it,’ she said and then walked away, glittering and shimmering as only Mandi could. But something else caught my eye. Something was shimmering a lot more than the rest of her. I peered closer. It was her left hand. A ring.
‘Mandi,’ I called after her, but my voice was lost in the buzz of the party. I stepped forward to follow her, but inadvertently collided with a girl who was walking at speed.
‘Look where you are going, will you?’ a voice said with familiar disdain as its owner swept past towards the toilet door.
‘Victoria?’ I asked after I’d recognised her perfect contours in a backless white jumpsuit.
She span around. ‘Oh gosh, Sorry Ellie. I didn’t realise it was you.’
She looked me up and down, clearly unimpressed with my fifth-hand eBay purchase. ‘Is the zip-up look coming back already?’
I forced a laugh. ‘It’s white and it’s a dress. Anyway, why are you in such a rush?’
‘Some imbecile thought chocolate hearts would be a good idea at a White Party,’ she said, turning around and pointing at her bottom. ‘I only sat down for a second. And now it looks like I’m incontinent.’
I tried not to smile.
‘And it’s not just me. One of your Barbie brigade has sat on one too.’
I frowned, wondering if this was this Mia’s parting shot: a strategically placed chocolate heart on the seats of those who had offended her. As the host and therefore enabler of crime, I knew it was up to me to check the posterior of all those who could be on Mia’s hit list, so I left Victoria to sponge her bottom in the Ladies and began to move stealthily around the party.
After receiving several protests, a few propositions and some alarmed looks, and aside from what appeared to be one genuine incontinence problem, I found most bottoms to be clear. However, I had yet to assess Mandi or her underlings. Once I had located Mandi, in full matchmaking mode between Mr Marbella and one of the micro-minis, I crept around behind her. Just as I was about to zoom in on her sacrum, my mission was thwarted by a tug on my arm.
‘What on earth are you doing?’
The hairs on the back of my neck pricked up. I turned around to face a man decked out in a white tuxedo and grinning widely. It was Robert.
‘You again?’
His grin widened further.
‘You’re always creeping up on me.’
‘Always? I’m always creeping up on you?’
‘Well the last two times, yes. And since there have only been two times in the past five years, then I think that constitutes always.’
‘Okay, I’ll approach from the front next time.’
‘That is the socially accepted method,’ I replied. ‘If I were a feral animal you would have received a nasty bite.’
‘Or a pan of brussel sprouts,’ he said with a smirk. ‘Though, it appears that, you too prefer the approach-from-behind method. I’ve been watching you look at people’s bottoms for the past half-hour. What’s that all about? Is it a new matching strategy?’
‘Long story,’ I said with a flick of my wrist. ‘Anyway, what are you doing here?’
He stepped towards me, taking my hands in his. ‘I’m single and I want to meet a beautiful girl …’ He looked me up and down, frowned a little and then gazed into my eyes ‘… who is wearing a white dress.’
I brushed him off. ‘Well off you go then. There are hundreds here.’
He leaned back towards me, zooming in on my chest. ‘Did I mention my preference for a retro zipped cleavage feature?’
‘Go,’ I said, waving him away. ‘But watch out for the chocolate hearts.’
He glanced back over his shoulder, still grinning. ‘Is that supposed to mean something?’
I waved him away again. ‘It’s not a riddle. They look like poo if you sit on them.’
A determined recruit, who I think was Minky, must have noticed Robert was alone, so grabbed his hand and swept him away. Seconds later, he turned back to point at her bottom, which was exhibiting a substantial chocolate smudge. I quickly relocated Mandi, keen to resume the investigation.
‘Right, let me check your bottom. Then we’ll talk about your ring,’ I said as I turned her around.
‘What?’ she asked, startled. ‘My bottom ring?’
‘Ah ha, just as I thought,’ I said in the manner of a TV detective. ‘You have been targeted.’
‘Are you okay?’ Mandi asked, her face expressing genuine concern.
‘You have chocolate on your bottom,’ I declared as if it should make perfect sense to her.
‘I know. I sat in some earlier. A real nuisance.’ She didn’t seem bothered at all. ‘But what about my ring? Surely you don’t need to look at that?’ She backed away from me.
‘On your finger dopey. The ring on your finger.’ I grabbed her hand. ‘Ah ha there we go.’ Still in detective mode, I examined the pretty, emerald-cut diamond sparkling on her finger. ‘Since when were you engaged? Why didn’t you tell me?’
Mandi went mute. Her silence seemed to be amplified by the sudden hush from the terrace. The lounge music had been replaced by the faint tinkering of piano keys and I looked around to see Robert brandishing a microphone and standing next to the piano. The guests stared at him, expressions ranging from bafflement to wonder. The pianist continued with the unwavering integrity of a seasoned professional. I imagined him, on the Titanic, committed to finishing his piece before quietly dismounting in search of a lifeboat. My daydream was broken by the sudden realisation that the pleasant melody – that everyone was now bobbing their heads to – was in fact the intro to Chris de Burgh’s “Lady in Red”.
Robert shimmied around the makeshift stage looking like the hired entertainment, before belting out the first verse as though he were Pavarotti at the O2 arena.
The traders exploited the opportunity and moved in to close the deal with the micro-minis. Following their lead, the entrepreneurs held out a hand to the TV production girls. Soon everyone was slow dancing. Joanna pushed past Greg the chiropractor to collar an unclaimed twentysomething with over-gelled hair. Mr Mills and Boon struck a pose next to Mia while she rolled her eyes repeatedly with the precision of a Swiss-watch mechanism.
Roaring out the chorus, Robert moved across the floor like a pro and I blinked twice. The evening had somehow transformed from sophisticated roof terrace soiree to bizarre cruise ship karaoke.
Tracking across the crowd, his eyes searched out mine while he crooned something about a lady in white who should have been dancing with him. The blush began at my neck and spread to my face quicker than ink through water. At the point when I was radiating more heat than Mr Mills and Boon’s torso, Victoria emerged on the makeshift stage, seemingly having bullied one of the Mandi clones into swapping outfits. She moved towards Robert and slipped her arm around his waist, the skimpy dress skimming her braless breasts. As he continued to warble something about a beauty by his side, Victoria pressed her cheek against his, but his eyes were still locked on me.
Mandi scrunched up her face and turned to me.
‘Isn’t that your ex-fiancé?’
I nodded.
She laughed. ‘Bloody hell, for a matchmaker, you really know how to pick them.’
‘Well at least I don’t have chocolate on my arse.’
She giggled. ‘And at least you haven’t agreed to marry a Cockney barman.’ She looked down and began fiddling with the diamond. ‘The clarity is terrible.’
‘You love him though, don’t you?’
She twirled the ring round on her finger. ‘Is love enough?’
‘It’s something,’ I said, just as Robert fell to his knees and delivered his final line in a stage whisper.
‘I love you.’
I shuddered as though a stream of Arctic air had funnelled towards me. Fo
r a brief moment I imagined Nick standing in Robert’s place, though the white tuxedo was doing neither of them any favours. I shook my head to clear the image then turned back to Mandi.
‘Love is something, Mandi. Hang on to it with everything you’ve got.’
Then the crowd erupted into applause, the duo lapping it up as though they were the prom king and queen.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Victoria slipped from Robert’s grasp and into the pool. Her arms were flailing and her head went under. She was drowning. I jumped in and swam towards her. She grabbed me, but as she pulled herself up, she pushed me down. My head was submerged. I held my breath and tried to wriggle away, but she was too strong. Eventually, my muscles relaxed and my airways dilated, letting the water fill my lungs, gurgling as it did. My nerves twitched. Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle.
I woke with a start, my heart racing as I gasped for air. I quickly realised that I was, in fact, alive and in my bedroom, rather than the subject of a sensational “Pool Party Tragedy” newspaper headline.
Gurgle. Gurgle. Gurgle.
When my breathing and heart rate had normalised, I noticed that the sinister rumblings were coming from my ensuite. I peered around the doorway to discover that, while my subconscious had been fighting a premature and unjust death, my lavatory had been decorating the bathroom tiles with a sludgy sewage residue.
I grabbed my phone, typed a quick search for plumbers into Google and scanned the list. When I’d discounted Putrid Plumbers for the unsettling claim that no hole was too deep, too dark or too dirty, I settled on Pete’s Plumbing. It promised old-fashioned plumbing at old-fashioned prices. I hoped old-fashioned meant pre-war rather than pre-immigration. Pete answered within one ring and said he’d be there within the hour. “Prompt Pete promises punctuality”, as the small print of his ad said.
After I’d pulled on some old jeans and a t-shirt that I wasn’t opposed to getting sewage on, I washed my face in the kitchen sink. Then I collapsed onto the sofa and thought back to the surreal events of the night before. What was Robert doing there? And Victoria, what was she up to? And the chocolate hearts, I would have to get to the bottom of that. I rested my head on the arm of the sofa and gazed out of the window, frustrated to find that the grey morning fog was thickening rather than clearing. On a quest for clarity, I reached for my phone and began scanning the post-party texts and emails.
There was a text from Robert at 01.23, who, or so it seemed, was now communicating exclusively via Chris de Burgh lyrics. After I had scrolled down through his poignant extracts, I began to feel nauseous. All my flat needed now was a pile of vomit to complete its Tracey Emin-style display of bodily fluids. The next installment came at 02.14 via which he informed me that he had never seen the dress I had been wearing. Then, there was something about my highlights, and he concluded with the rather extravagant declaration that he had been blind.
Had there been a full moon perhaps? I deleted it and moved on to the next, hoping the complete works of Chris de Burgh hadn’t been transcribed to text.
It took me some time to finish reading the deluge of emails from the overexcited recruits, who had whipped themselves up into a who-hooked-up-with-who frenzy. I then moved on to deal with complaints about clothing damage caused by the irresponsible placements of chocolate hearts. Finally, I noticed two suspiciously similar texts from Caro and Cordelia. They had both booked an impromptu flight back to London in order to “pop by and see how I was”. Concerned that perhaps they knew something I didn’t, I quickly checked my body for any tumours, growths or other signs of impeding death. Confident there was no immediate cause for concern, I moved on to a text from Victoria, which comprised a list of strange questions about Robert, then a bizarre text from Joanna referencing our “male screening process”, and then finally, and the only one to make any sense, was a text from Prompt Pete informing me that he was on his way.
‘So do you or don’t you screen your men?’ Joanna asked after I had called her.
‘What for STDs?’
‘No, for singleness.’
‘Singleness?’
She huffed. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘If you’re asking if we check our clients are single, then yes of course we do as far as we can.’
‘But your men don’t want relationships.’
‘My men?’
‘Men don’t want relationships.’
‘All men?’
‘Yes. All men.’
‘All the men you meet, you mean?’
She huffed again.
‘Okay so what happened?’
‘When?’
‘Last night.’
She sighed. ‘I met a guy.’
‘And?’
‘We seemed to get on really well.’
‘And?’
‘He walked me to the station.’
‘And then?’
‘And then nothing, he didn’t ask for my number or anything. So, he’s obviously not looking for a girlfriend, is he?’
I sighed. ‘That really isn’t much information to go on.’
‘I bet he’s not even single.’ She huffed. ‘You say all your clients are single. I bet he’s not.’
After harnessing the collective detective skills of the Mandi clones, I tracked down the man in question. His name was Alex, he was ten years her junior and a broker. He was a friend of one of the traders. I gave him a ring.
‘Joanna, who’s Joanna?’ He sounded hungover and baffled.
‘The girl you walked to the station.’
He sniffed. ‘Oh yeah, her.’
I heard a knock at the door, which I suspected to be the plumber arriving promptly, as promised. I opened it and ushered a round jolly-looking Pete towards the bathroom.
‘Hang on a minute, it’s coming back to me.’ Alex paused and then laughed. ‘Yeah, yeah. So how much do you wanna know?’
‘All the gory details, please.’
‘All right,’ he said.
He went on to explain that he’d been chatting up a girl he liked for most of the night, but she’d wandered off chasing “some white-linen-clad knobend”. Then, at the end of the night, “when the twat in the tuxedo started singing”, Joanna had caught his eye, smiled at him and held out her hand to invite him to dance.
‘She seemed well up for it, so I wasn’t going to say no.’
‘Okay,’ I answered while I attempted to sign “blocked toilet” to Pete.
‘But, then she started grilling me.’
‘Grilling you?’ I asked, wondering if it was a new kind of dance move.
‘Yeah, all these questions about my job, relationships, ex-girlfriends, pets, properties, investments, pension.’
I cringed. ‘So, what did you say to that?’
He laughed. ‘I told her what she wanted to hear.’
‘Which was what?’
‘That I’m solvent, single and looking for love.’
I sighed.
‘Oh come on, I’m not going to tell my life story to some girl I’ve just met.’
‘All right, so what happened then?’
‘We snogged and when the party was over, I offered to walk her to the station.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she was up for it. And she wasn’t bad-looking either. Not my usual type. I normally go for really hot girls.’
‘I’m sure you do.’
‘But you know what they say: if you’ve got an itch that needs scratching.’
‘You should go to the clinic?’
‘What?’
‘Nothing, sorry. Carry on.’
Pete started waving a plunger around and pointing down the toilet. I nodded.
‘And on the way home, she was all over me,’ he paused. ‘Kept grabbing my cock.’ He paused again and then laughed. ‘She wouldn’t leave it alone.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, she was like some cock-hungry nympho, couldn’t get enough. What more was I to do than offer my services?’ His laughter pea
ked with a series of short breaths, and then ended with a sniff.
‘Okay, and then?’ I wanted him to stop saying “cock” and get to the point.
‘So when we were at the station, she dragged me into an alley, pushed me up against the wall and … are you sure you wanna hear all this?’
‘Yes, go on.’
‘Then she started sucking my cock.’
And another one. ‘What, just out of nowhere?’
‘I sort of saw it coming.’
I forced a laugh.
‘And then just as I was about to.’
‘See it coming?’
‘Yeah, she turned around, bent over and then shoved it up her…’ He cleared his throat ‘… up her, you know, her …’
‘Her what?’ I took care to avoid the loudspeaker button. Prompt Pete looked perplexed enough as it was.
‘Her behind.’
I laughed. He was happy to say “cock” but he wouldn’t say “arse”.
Prompt Pete raised his eyebrows before plunging his instrument down the toilet.
Alex continued. ‘She was well into it, loved it, kept screaming for more, she…’
‘Okay, enough, I get it.’
‘You asked.’
‘And then what? She just went home?’
‘Yeah, then she went home. I went home. Everyone happy.’
‘I don’t suppose you’d want to see her again?’
He let out a long guttural laugh. ‘Er. No.’
After I’d gladly hung up the phone – it was far too early in the morning for bottom sex, I sat down on the edge of the bath. I watched Pete continue to plunge his tool down the toilet, an act that did nothing to remedy the images flooding my mind. Was it me or had the world gone mad? How could Joanna think this would or even could lead to a relationship? Clearly it was my job to explain this to her, though usually I would delegate such a task to Mia. I wondered if I had it in me to tell her how it was.
Pete continued plunging until he cleared the blockage, and then sat back, letting his tool flop to the floor.
‘Any chance of a cup of tea love?’ he asked. ‘I’m parched.’
While Pete drank the tea, and tucked into my chocolate biscuits without washing his hands, I filled him in on the story. After all, he’d already heard most of it anyway.
