by Rosa Temple
‘Please tell me he’s not a married man.’ There, I’d blurted it out and quickly gulped down a mouthful of a vodka cocktail, looking into my glass and avoiding getting the evil eye from Anya.
‘I said I couldn’t talk about it and I meant it,’ she said waltzing out of the kitchen. I followed close behind into the living room and sat beside her on the sofa.
‘Does he have kids?’ I couldn’t stop there.
‘One or two,’ she said, putting her glass down on the coffee table.
‘One or two? What kind of answer is that?’
‘Look, he has kids, okay? Vot more do you vont?’ Anya looked up, glassy-eyed. ‘His marriage vos over long before he and I ever …’
‘Bumped uglies?’
‘It’s not funny and it’s no longer up for discussion. Trust me, Madge. You don’t need or vont to know.’
What could I do? The only thing I always did when I knew she was hurting and trying not to show it on her face – I put my cocktail down and reached out and hugged her. Anya pulled away.
‘I know you think I’m mad but I love him, Madge.’ She put her hands over her face and I held her again. She barely moved and didn’t sniff once. I didn’t know how she did it, how she’d come close to tears and not start to cry. I admired her control and wished I had even a morsel of it but it wasn’t right that she never cried.
‘Anya,’ I said. I cradled her slim face with my hands. ‘I’m sorry I brought it up and I promise I never will again. I’m sure you know what you’re doing. Look, why don’t we just ignore that elephant for now. Why don’t you just help me organise the best launch come rebranding party this century has ever seen?’ I picked up my cocktail and handed Anya’s drink back to her. ‘Now, I need a list of celebs to invite. Can you get Tom Hardy? He’d carry a man bag, I’m sure. I also need you to recommend a model or two. I’m looking for someone to be the face of Shearman. I finally convinced Anthony to go along with the name idea.’
‘That’s vye you look different,’ Anya said.
‘What?’
‘Because you are. You’re fucking amazing, Madge. Seriously. Vere has this person been all your life?’
And I could feel the change in me. It excited me and made me feel as if I could do anything. Working for Anthony had sparked off something new and Anya could see it. She was the only person in the world I could tell that, yes, it was true, I had fallen completely in love with Anthony.
It had been growing inside me for weeks and lasted long after the initial attraction to him, the one I always felt whenever someone as good-looking as him walked into a room. Anthony was more than a good-looking man to me. Much more. But while every bone in my body told me that Anya was making a big mistake by taking up with a man with children and a broken marriage, the very same bones were telling me that, just like Hugo, Anthony and I would never be.
With Anya’s so-called dinner consisting of just a bowl of popcorn, the majority of which I consumed, I was several shades of drunk within an hour. Anya, now in an armchair, was squinting with one eye and trying to focus on me with the other from across the room while I was sprawled on her sofa on my tummy, an empty glass in my hand.
‘Madge,’ Anya slurred. ‘You still haven’t taken your present. Your car has been sitting in my garage since for ever.’
I looked over at her and frowned.
‘The keys are in the dashboard,’ she continued, her head lolling to one side. ‘Drive it home tonight.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ I said and pulled myself up. Swaying from side to side, Anya and I made our way to the garage, giggling and trying to keep each other upright.
Anya pulled open the car door in a grand ‘ta-da!’ motion. Immediately my knees buckled and I crash-landed over the bonnet of the car with my arms akimbo. The outline of Anya, with a hand on her cheek, gradually began to fade away. Before passing out I heard her say, ‘Never mind. I’ll have it delivered to your place. You remember how to drive, right?’
At some stage, a bit later, I somehow or other made it to one of Anya’s bedrooms where I fell asleep and dreamt of being in love. But I didn’t dream of Anthony. I dreamt of Hugo.
My dream was a tangle of memories and one that saw me wearing one of Hugo’s T-shirts, a cigarette burn over the logo on the chest, while Hugo was out hunting down some food. I had spotted his old drum kit in a room off the kitchen and sat on the stool. I picked up some drumsticks and started making an awful din until Hugo came back with French bread, juice and two cans of sardines.
He manoeuvred me away from the kit and started to play the drums. He was magnificent. I’m sure I smiled in the dream. I took off the T-shirt with the burn holes and threw it aside. I rested my hands on Hugo’s shoulders, pressing my naked body against his back. He stopped playing, picked me up and carried me back to the bedroom.
Chapter 11
I woke up on Saturday morning with heavy eyelids and a thunderstorm of a headache. I was sure there was a time when I could handle a liquid supper with Anya but the thrumming in my eardrums and the dry feeling in my mouth were telling a different story.
Anya was already up and in the kitchen. She looked as if she’d just returned from having a spa weekend, whereas I couldn’t feel my teeth.
‘Drink some coffee,’ Anya said. ‘You look awful.’
‘Well thanks a lot,’ I replied. ‘I’m getting too old for this. I need to start eating well and cutting down on the booze.’
Anya looked at me as if to say, I’ll believe it when I see it. She had a meeting with her agent and I had a meeting with a slice of toast and two cups of coffee before heading out to the garage to claim my flashy car from her garage. Its tasty leather interior beckoned.
‘I can drop you off at your agent if you’d like,’ I said to Anya, getting into the driver’s seat.
She got in beside me after clicking a remote to raise the garage door. Anya looked at me as I battled to get the car started. When it finally succumbed and purred into life, I sat and looked around at the controls. I gripped the steering wheel and looked ahead at the drive in front of me. How long had it been since I drove? Too long to count but I was sure I had this.
‘Mirror, signal, manoeuvre,’ I kept saying over and over again. Each of my driving instructors had drilled that into me. It was going to be a breeze. I slightly eased my foot onto the accelerator and pulled out slowly onto the driveway. Anya tried to clutch the door handle on her side without letting me see. I pressed a little harder with my accelerator foot and the car lurched forward and came to an abrupt stop.
‘On second thought, I think I’ll take a taxi. It’s getting late,’ Anya said looking at her wrist although she wasn’t wearing a watch. ‘I’m sorry, darling.’ She got out and lowered the garage door before tapping my window as I furiously tried to get the engine to restart. I couldn’t get the car window open so we started shouting to each other through the glass.
‘Vill you be all right?’ Anya yelled.
‘Yes, just fine. You go and I’ll call you later.’
‘Vot vill you do if it doesn’t go again?’
‘It will.’
She waved and trotted off down the drive.
I looked menacingly at the controls and started yelling at my new car to behave or else. Another attempt to get the engine to ignite seemed to work by some miracle and I had it – success. The engine hummed back to life and I was off. I thought I could pick Anya up on the way but she must already have jumped into a taxi.
I took myself off on a tour of London. To be honest, I didn’t initially intend a tour of London; I would have liked to have gone straight home but I had no idea how to navigate my way back there from Anya’s place, not without satnav. I thought that if I just kept going and looking out for familiar landmarks I’d make it. But I was wrong.
The day was quite mild – autumnal and not too windy – so I decided to lower the top. After driving around the same block for twenty minutes trying to work
out what to press to automatically lower the roof, I finally got it right. All I needed was a pair of sunglasses to complete the look. I scrabbled around in my handbag, keeping one eye on the road, swerving to avoid parked cars and a lunatic cyclist, until I’d found them. I managed to put my sunglasses on and stay in a more or less straight line without hurting anyone so I didn’t know what all the tooting was about behind me.
A while later and after having remembered that I should have checked the petrol gauge, I found myself approaching Clapham. I had been travelling south of Anya’s instead of west. I thought of Anthony, then, because he and Inez lived in Clapham. A second into that thought and there he was, on the opposite side of the road, waving at me. I waved back and started pulling in to my left to park while still looking over at Anthony. His face fell and I heard a scream.
I put the brakes on hard and looked ahead of me. I found that I was on top of a zebra crossing at a very weird angle and the scream I heard was from Inez. She had been crossing over to join Anthony and I was about to mow her down. Immediately I knew that Anthony hadn’t been waving at me. He’d been waving to his fiancée and I had nearly killed her.
Anthony rushed over and the stream of drivers who had stopped behind me had begun tooting their horns and overtaking me on the zebra crossing. Inez just stood in front of my car looking as if she wanted to stab me through the heart.
I jumped out.
‘I’m so, so sorry,’ I told her, close to tears. ‘I didn’t see you.’
‘Well that’s the thing about driving,’ she said allowing Anthony to hug her to him. ‘You’re supposed to look where you’re going.’ Her cheeks were flushed and she wilted into Anthony’s chest like a timid leaf, but her eyes were boring into me with venom.
‘I don’t know what to say.’ I looked at both of them. ‘It’s new. I’ve only started driving it today.’
‘Well, no harm done, Magenta,’ Anthony said. He inspected Inez, stroking her hair and kissing her forehead before ushering her back to the pavement. ‘Where were you off to?’ he asked me.
‘I was just driving,’ I said. ‘Just going out for a spin.’
‘Here?’ said Inez. ‘Who do you know in Clapham?’
At first I was lost for words. Did she think I was a stalker? ‘I was just trying out my new motor,’ I finally said.
‘And very nice it is too, Magenta,’ said Anthony. ‘But I think you ought to move it.’
Behind was a long queue of cars waiting to get around my car. I’d caused a traffic jam and my cheeks grew hot.
‘We were just going to that bistro to have lunch,’ Anthony said. ‘Why don’t you park up and join us?’
Inez’s eyes nearly popped out of her head.
‘That’s all right isn’t’ it?’ Anthony turned to look at her. She smiled brightly.
‘Maybe Magenta wants to keep on driving?’ she said.
‘Actually, I’m a bit shaken up; perhaps I will join you,’ I said. ‘I’ll just park over there.’
‘There’ was a space just opening up beyond the zebra crossing so I jumped into the car, shoved it into first and zoomed into the space. I’d parked with the back jutting out but at least it wasn’t blocking the road any more. I crossed over the road to join Anthony and Inez knowing it would piss her off and somehow not caring. I liked to be in Anthony’s company. What was wrong with that?
While Anthony and I bored Inez senseless about the upcoming new-look company and launch party, a sprinkling of rain had begun outside. I hadn’t noticed and neither had Anthony who insisted we do dessert and coffee when all they’d really intended to do was have a light lunch before going to pick out some bedding.
Inez couldn’t wait to leave and had a wide grin on her face as we stepped out of the restaurant.
‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ she asked me as we began to walk in the opposite direction of my car.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. Then I slapped my head. ‘Oh yes. My car. Well, I should go back for it, I suppose.’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ Inez said. ‘It’s raining and you left the top down.’
‘Shit!’ This time I slapped my hand to my cheek. ‘I’ve got to go. See you Monday, Anthony, and thanks for lunch.’
I sprinted across the road. The car was already wet inside. I fired on the ignition and pushed the button that had opened the top – only that button wasn’t closing it. I looked in the wing mirror and saw Anthony and Inez just standing there. Shit and double shit. I puffed and panted but no matter what I tried, I couldn’t get the damned thing to shut. It was impossible. Another look in my mirror and I saw them both walking towards me.
‘Anything I can do?’ Anthony asked me.
‘What? Oh no. I’m fine,’ I said with the biggest smile I could muster.
‘But you’re getting wet,’ said Inez as she unfolded a pink umbrella and put it up over her and Anthony.
‘Oh well, a little rain never hurt anyone,’ I said.
Mirror, signal, manoeuvre. I drove off as fast as the speed limit would allow and never looked back.
I got home an hour later and called Anya to ask if the car came with a manual. Then I rang around for an appointment to have my hair done. It looked like a sodden haystack.
Chapter 12
With just three weeks before the launch party of the new Shearman man bag range to go, Anthony and I were completely ready. I’d taken to updating the company’s online profile. I added Twitter and Instagram accounts to the online catalogue and website. I gave the whole site a much-needed facelift so that it resembled something from the current century.
Our Twitter account had gained followers, including Tom Hardy who couldn’t come to the launch but wanted a free man bag just the same. Our Instagram account was bulging with snaps of the ranges of our new bags modelled by a host of hunky model types Anya and I both knew and who did the photo shoots for a chance to have cocktails with supermodel Anya Stankovic.
Market research had shown that the numbers of sales for men’s accessories was on the increase, especially for bags. Pre-orders of our new stock was rising significantly since a review in The Guardian and HQ magazine, which I managed to wangle through the wonderful journalist friends I had.
Well the HQ contact was an old drinking buddy of mine who owed me a favour; I’d saved his reputation after a long night at a Soho bar at which he went too far with a certain celebrity friend of mine, but which I managed to keep out of the tabloids. It involved a lot of drunken negotiations and promises I could never keep and prompted my short-lived desire to become a hostage situation negotiator for MI5.
Yes, we were on the road to success. I could feel it.
‘We’re going to have to get you kitted out for the launch party, Anthony,’ I told him over morning coffee in the kitchen at work.
‘Kitted out?’ Anthony gulped his black coffee and looked panic-stricken.
‘Well it’s black tie so …’
Anthony looked down at his suit. ‘This is as smart as I’ve got,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve never had to do black tie. You’ll have to come with me. I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘Of course. Why else would you have a PA?’
Our trip to a smart tailor on Bond Street the following day was interesting to say the least. Anthony didn’t have a clue. He relied on me and the sales assistant for everything. He had to check the labels of everything he had on that day to know his size. It was obvious who had been buying him all the snazzy suits he wore to work.
When he stepped out of the changing room in his fabulous dinner jacket and crisp shirt I gulped – as discreetly as I could. He looked amazing. I knew that the artist in him – who had inhabited a ramshackle house in a remote town in Italy and lived to paint pictures of the sea – would never have been seen dead in something like that once upon a time. But he’d been removed from that life and had been plonked into this one – and he certainly looked the part.
‘I picke
d out these,’ I told him, showing him an armful of bow ties to try on.
‘Which do you think?’ he asked.
‘I think this one.’ I held up a mahogany-coloured bow tie for him. He took it and looked at it, amused.
‘I have no idea how to do this up.’ He laughed. ‘Should we get one with elastic?’
‘No way,’ I said in utter shock. ‘Here, let me show you.’
As Anthony faced the standing mirror, and with the sales assistant looking on, I showed him how to do up a bow tie. I stood in front of him and began. Anthony lifted his chin and I could feel his breath on my face.
‘Is that it?’ he said, looking in the mirror and feeling the tie as I went behind him.
‘Not quite yet,’ I said tipping up onto my toes to reach around his broad shoulders. ‘It’s not that quick. There’s an art to these things.’ I continued to the final stages and made sure that each side of the bow was even. I caught the scent of coconut in his hair and looked up at the neat way it waved down the back.
‘There,’ I told him, stepping away. ‘Perfect.’
‘You really are,’ he said. At least two beats of silence went by. ‘I mean the perfect PA. How did you learn to do this? No, don’t tell me. Your boyfriend, right?’
‘Wrong. My father actually.’
‘So will he be coming to the party?’
‘Who Father?’
‘No, I meant your boyfriend.’ Anthony looked at his reflection and then, timidly, his eyes met mine.
The sales assistant walked away, probably feeling like a spare part.
‘I don’t have a boyfriend,’ I said.
‘Oh? I would have thought …’
‘Well you thought wrong. I’ve invited my model friend, Anya Stankovic, the one I told you about over dinner. You should have heard of her, but if you haven’t, she’s a top model and she gets papped wherever she goes so it’ll be good publicity for us.’
‘You know so many people. You and I are so different. You’re like this socialite, party girl and I’m ….’ He turned back to face the mirror. ‘I’m just playing a part.’
