How We Met (29 page)

‘It’s OK,’ she says, ‘I believe you.’

‘Bit OTT for the park – not to mention court this morning – but I thought, Sod it, I’ve lost some weight and it’s a special occasion and I knew Livs would approve.’ She smiles, sadly, at Mia. ‘How is she, do you thin
k?’ She walks over to the bench and pats it. ‘Oh, fuck the spray tan, come on, let’s sit on over here. Come and give us a hug. I’ve got something to show you.’

Ten minutes later, after mini Scotch eggs and ham sandwiches, Mia doubts this picnic can get any more bizarre, when Melody pulls an Ann Summers plastic bag from her handbag and says, ‘So, listen, I’ve been shopping. For mine and Norm’s porn weekend.’

Mia covers her eyes.

‘Oh, God, if it’s anal beads, I’m not looking. Anything with anal in the title, I say, “No. No, you can shove it up your arse.” ’

Melody sniggers.

‘It’s not anal beads, you fool. I do have some taste. No, look, isn’t it beautiful?’

And she pulls out a slender, sleek, gold vibrator.

Mia has never been into sex toys. Ever since she was a runner for a documentary about Swingers, sex toys bring up for her visions of fat ladies poured into PVC catsuits who have given over entire rooms to fluffy handcuffs, lubes (could that possibly be the most disgusting word in the world?), vibrators … It turns her stomach.

She looks through her fingers. ‘Beautiful is not the word I would use. Terrfiying is probably more like it.’

‘You’re such a prude! Talk to it,’ says Melody.

‘
What?
’

‘Say something: faster, faster, or slower, slower …’

‘Ugh! No!’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, faster, faster,’ says Melody and suddenly the vibrator starts twisting and vibrating.

‘Jesus, it’s like
The Exorcist
! Put it away, it’s foul, Melody, proper foul.’

‘It’s a voice-activated vibrator.’

‘It’s disgusting, that’s what it is,’ says Mia, horrified.

Melody giggles, unperturbed.

‘And I got this,’ and she pulls out a red-and-black basque.

‘Now that’s more like it. I can imagine you’ll look like a burlesque dancer in that.’

‘And this,’ and she pulls out some pink furry handcuffs.

Mia laughs, not really feeling qualified to say the right thing. ‘Wow, you’ve really gone for it. It’s like you’re actually, properly, making a porn video.’

Melody sighs, her round face serious all of a sudden.

‘I just want it to work out, Mia. I just want … For Norm to fancy me – is that so ridiculous?’

She looks at her friend.

‘No, it’s not ridiculous at all.’

‘I just want this weekend to be really special. I’ve lost eight pounds, you know.’

‘You look great,’ says Mia.

‘And I’ve planned it all, right down to the last detail.’

There’s a pause. They look up over the city, the river. Mia sighs and nudges her friend mischievously.

‘Hey, do you remember Five South Road days?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, you two, shaggers extraordinaire, at it constantly. The three-hour sessions to Sade – I knew the words to “Your Love Is King” off by heart and I didn’t even live with you. The chocolate ice-cream massages, the strawberries in the
shower
, young lady.’

Melody laughs. ‘Bloody hell, how did you know about that?’

‘I have my sources.’

‘Fraser?’

‘I’m not telling.’

In a studio near Old Street in London, Fraser holds a microphone over Tracey, their ‘Tena Lady’ model for the day, as she lies on her back in a leotard and tights and demonstrates pelvic-floor exercises.

‘When you going to show us yer salsa moves then, Fraser? Your warm-up exercises?’ whispers Declan, senior sound recordist and all-round pain in the arse, as far as Fraser is concerned. ‘It’s got to be more interesting than these exercises. I think I’d rather piss myself when I laughed.’

He has a point, thinks Fraser, Tracey doesn’t seem to be actually moving at all. It’s just, he’s getting a bit sick of Declan and John ribbing him about salsa lessons. The joke’s wearing thin.

‘The fantastic thing about pelvic-floor exercises,’ says Tracey, ‘is that nobody need know you’re doing them. You can do them whilst sitting at your desk, doing the washing-up, you can even do them at the bus stop.’

Fraser doesn’t think he will ever look at a woman at a bus stop in the same way ever again.

‘They should have got you to do the advert, Declan,’ says Fraser. He’s been working with Declan on and off for around three months now and, despite his best efforts, has decided he doesn’t like him. He was a snidey, miserable old sod with short-man syndrome. ‘You’re about the right age, aren’t you? For weak bladder control? Prostate problems?’

‘And you’re a cheeky little fucker,’ Declan hisses in his ear. ‘When I was your age, I was following Gorbachev around the globe, travelling to Angola to do documentaries for
Panorama
—’

‘I know,’ says Fraser. ‘You’ve told me several times.’

‘Right, Sound, we’re ready to go! One last time. Fraser, my man, can you just make sure that mic is really inside the bust … yeah?’ says Brett.

This is the part of the job Fraser hates the most, attaching mikes down strangers’ tops. Especially strangers like this – the model, or ‘artist’, as she likes to be known, is a wiry, bony-faced South African who looks like she’s not had sex in years. But he warms his hands and goes to thread the wire down nonetheless.

‘S’alright, I’ve got it.’ But John has got there before him, hand right down that Lycra front. Such a perv, thinks Fraser. SUCH A PERV!

The shoot drags on and on, not wrapping until gone seven, and Fraser knows he’s cutting it fine to get to his salsa lesson by half past. After shoving all his equipment in his car
, he sprints to the Tube, takes the stairs three at a time and then sprints down Oxford Street, but still only manages to burst through the classroom doors, looking as if he’s just committed a hit-and-run, by 7.40 p.m.: too late, it turns out, to stop Karen in her tracks.

So now, he’s standing in a cubicle, in the salsa-me-happy toilets – dank, freezing, pistachio-green bogs, which remind him of the ones at his primary school – with his head in his hands.

There’s a bang on the door.

‘Fraser?’ Karen shouts.

He backs closer to the wall.

‘Fraser? Come on. Open the door.’

That’ll teach him to be late. In just ten minutes of tardiness, Karen has not only booked them for another term of lessons, but a convention. A fucking salsa convention. Two weeks, dancing day and night, in a Marriott hotel in Nottingham.

‘I thought you’d like it,’ she says through the door; her voice is shaky. ‘I was going to pay for it, for you and me – it would be like a dirty weekend but with a difference: you and me, dancing the night away. Come on, Frase,’ she says, sounding slightly pitiful now. ‘Open the door.’

He unlocks the door.

He knows he has to face the music, as it were. Locking himself in the bogs was never really a mature response, it was just a response to the guilt that’s now consuming him, engulfing him. Enough’s enough with the salsa. Karen is getting serious. He has to come clean.

Tonight. He has to do it tonight.

He slowly opens the door. Karen is crying. She doesn’t know what she’s done wrong and he feels utterly wretched.

They end up going to Ed’s Diner: burger and chips in a red leatherette booth, on the corner of Old Compton Street. Karen got a two-for-one voucher from one of the many websites she subscribes to.

He watches as Karen picks at her fries, a look of baffled annoyance on her face.

‘But why don’t you want to carry on with the lessons?’ she says, in a hushed voice. ‘I don’t understand, I thought you enjoyed them.’

‘I do enjoy them.’

‘I bought you the shoes, too – not cheap, those weren’t, Fraser. Mind you, I s’pose I can put them on eBay. And you’d improved so much. Calvin was just saying before you got there tonight, how much you’d improved.’

Fraser sighs and looks out of the window. He feels like an eight-year-old who’s just announced to his mum that he doesn’t want to carry on with violin lessons.

‘Well?’ she says, when he doesn’t say anything.

‘I just, I’ve had enough.’ He shrugs. ‘I can dance the salsa now, can’t I? I’ve no interest in becoming World Leader of Salsa, Global Guru, Latin American Champion of the World.’ He was being facetious now and hated himself for it.

Karen puts down her fork.

‘Like Joshi, you mean? Is that what this is about?’

‘God, no.’

‘Are you jealous, Fraser? Because nothing’s—’

‘No. It’s nothing to do with Joshi.’

And in his agitation and self-loathing at not being able to just cut to the chase, he slams down his glass.

They continue eating in silence. Next to them – and isn’t it always the case? – a couple kiss passionately, mercilessly, clutching at each other’s hands across the table.

Karen puts her cutlery down, very slowly, very calmly. She says, ‘Oh, my God.’

‘What?’ says Fraser.

‘Oh, my God, I’ve worked it out.’

Fraser has always thought it a cliché when people have said, ‘
…
and then I saw the colour drain from his face,’ but thinks that when she repeats this story to her friends she will say just that because that’s what it feels like.

‘The salsa lessons. Learn to dance, it was on Liv’s List. It was on the List, wasn’t it?’

Fraser’s silence says everything.

‘So, what? What else was on the List? Our whole relationship? Go out with a barmaid?’ Her eyes are full with tears now. Fraser rubs his face.

‘No.
God, no, Karen. Not at all. You’ve got it wrong.’

‘Have I? What else was on the List? Shag a woman in her forties? Was our whole relationship just one big bet, Fraser?’

‘No, course it wasn’t … Why on earth would Liv have that on her List!’

‘Because if it was, and you don’t tell me, I will be so bloody angry, Fraser. I will never forgive you.’

Fraser has never seen Karen like this. Frankly, it’s frightening.

He looks her straight in the eye and then, very quietly, very quickly, he says, ‘Make a Roman blind,’ but he has hardly got the words out before she stands up, throws her lemonade all over him and without looking back, walks out.

He is left, lemonade dripping from his hair.

‘Ooh, in trouble mate?’ says the man from the couple opposite.

It takes all of Fraser’s strength not to punch him.

‘What’s that, Norm? I can’t hear you, mate.’

‘I said … I said …
Fraser?
’

Norm sounds desperate now and Fraser swears, loudly, and slams the steering wheel, as the line goes crackly again.

‘I’m here, Norm.’ He fiddles futilely with the volume on the hands-free, whilst still trying to keep an eye on the road. ‘Norm, answer me if you can still hear me. Norm? Woah, shit!!’ He swerves violently as a sports car tries to overtake him on the inside and plunges, car horns letting rip around him, into the slow lane.

Thank Christ, there’s nothing there, and Fraser cruises for a good few minutes before realizing his speedometer says 52 m.p.h., he is gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles have gone white and a car pulling a caravan behind him is flashing its lights.

He eventually calms down enough to pull into the middle lane, thinking, how ironic, how dark it would be, that in the pursuit of doing this List, which seems increasingly to be cursed, they should lose another life, and that life should be his. If truth be known, Fraser hates driving, especially on the motorway. It stems from
his poverty-stricken childhood where the family car was always a clapped-out joke with no MOT, and the humiliation that caused – in particular, the time his dad picked him and some mates up from Scout Camp in the Pennines and their Peugeot blew up on the hard shoulder.

If he never drove again he’d be quite happy, but he’s doing this for his best friend; he is pumped up with a martyred sense of duty as he gets up to a steady seventy-five miles per hour in the middle lane and manages to regulate his breathing. After the awful drive home from Billy’s birthday, it would have been too soon if he had never seen the M6 North again, but an hour ago, Norm rang him from the middle of the Lake District, where he and Melody were supposed to be on their dirty weekend, making their porn vid, to tell him that things weren’t going to plan. After a huge barney, Melody had wandered off into the Cumbrian night.

Norm sounded deranged, definitely drunk:

‘She could be fucking anywhere, Frase. She could be fucking drowned in the bottom of Grasmere for all I know … And we haven’t even done the bloody porn video. We haven’t done the TASK. When are we going to complete the task, now?’

In between some pretty dramatic shouting and the line cutting out because, as Norm kept reminding him, he was ‘IN THE ARSE-END OF NOWHERE’, Fraser tried to get a few facts straight.

Was she drunk?

Yes, very.

Was she wearing any warm clothes? Because it was September now, any balminess in the air had disappeared with August.

No, she was ‘in a basque, suspenders and a Chinese silky fucking dressing gown’.

Fraser tried not to laugh.

Had he tried her mobile phone?

Course, but there was no signal, because there were ‘just sheep and mountains and lakes, because they were in the arse-end of nowhere!’

So now, Fraser is on his way to the arse-end of nowhere to help his friend find his wife, with the distinct feeling in the pit of his stomach that he might have bitten off more than he can chew. Even in his inebriation and panic, Norm told him not to come. But Fraser believes this was false protestation, and he, after two years of grief-stricken misery, recognizes – more than anyone – false protestation when he sees it:
No, don’t come and pick me up from outside my house where I am sitting in a pool of my own vomit having lost my house keys
;
or
… rescue me from my house at 8 a.m. where I am a jabbering, drug-fuelled wreck.
Norm has picked him up and put him together again countless times, and now it’s his turn to be the big man, to be the saviour. He’s almost glad of the opportunity.