Still Thinking of You (3 page)

4. Introducing Jason and Mia

‘So, you must be the gorgeous Natasha. I can see why you lured Rich away from bachelorhood,’ said Jason, beaming. ‘I’m Jason, but the gang call me Scaley. You can, too, if you want.’

‘OK, and you should call me Tash,’ she grinned. She wondered if Jason’s nickname was something to do with his acne-pockmarked skin or whether maybe he could swim like a fish.

‘As in Scalectrix,’ he explained, as though reading her mind, which she sincerely hoped he couldn’t. ‘I like fast cars and gadgets and stuff.’

‘Mostly, he likes fast women,’ interrupted Rich, who was suddenly at Tash’s side. ‘How are you, buddy?’ The boys gave each other a manly, back-slapping hug, and Tash ‘aahhhed’ to herself. She always found guys hugging guys heart-warming. It was probably the reason she had so many gay friends.

Tash immediately liked Jason. He burst into the sitting room and dramatically lifted the atmosphere. There were no more lulls in conversation, just plenty of chat and laughter. Jason was reputedly a massive hit with the women, and Tash understood why this would be the case. He was not in the slightest bit good-looking, as Tash had expected – he was very short, eyes a bit close together, poor skin – although he
was
totally charismatic, as Rich had promised. He was fun, sharp and confident, and he seemed to have an unlimited supply of gripping anecdotes. She liked his delight in his life, his work and his flat – a flat that was crammed with big-boy gadgets. He didn’t seem to take himself – or, for that matter, anyone else – at all seriously.

‘Mia’s late as usual, I suppose?’ asked Jason, pausing after amusing everyone with a story about presenting to a new client who, unfortunately for Jason, turned out also to be an old shag. It was clear that Scaley was good at laughing at himself, which guaranteed that no one else ever laughed at him, only with him. ‘Rude bint, that Mia,’ commented Jason with a playful wink. ‘Have you had the pleasure yet, Tash?’

‘No.’

‘Should be interesting.’

Before Tash had a chance to digest Jason’s comment, the door bell rang, and she went to answer it.

‘Hi. Mia, right?’ Tash beamed at the woman stood at the door.

Tash and Mia swept their eyes up and down one another, quickly appraising. Mia was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She
was
wearing make-up, but it was the sort of make up that men didn’t notice; powder, lip gloss, a bit of mascara. Her hair was glossy and cut into a style that somehow carried an expensive price tag. Her nails were manicured, but painted with a clear finish, no colour. She was a large girl – not fat, just broad and tall. There was something Amazonian about her. She had big, brown eyes that showed she was fun, clever and, if necessary, cunning. Her skin was creamy, flawless. A good-looking girl, definitely. More ‘well put together’, more ‘makes the most of herself’, as Tash’s mum would say, than ‘total beauty’, as Rich had said. But, lovely all the same.

Mia spotted Rich, who was behind Tash, and her face split into the broadest Julia Roberts–style smile. Mia’s loveliness was immediately further enhanced by sexy, loose lips framing white, straight teeth. Ah, thought Tash, got you. Mia was the college goer. Men often confused that with ‘total beauty’.

‘Richie, my Action Man,’ Mia cried, ‘how are you?’ Mia swept past Tash without so much as a nod. ‘I’ve brought you a bottle of Merlot, your favourite and mine. Aren’t I clever?’ She hugged Rich, and plonked a huge kiss on each cheek.

Mia walked straight into the sitting room. ‘Don’t get up,’ she instructed, as she bent to kiss the air that swirled around Kate, then Ted. ‘Ms Monopoly, Big Ted, you two look absolutely amazing.’ Her grin spread and was genuine. ‘We all have ancient nicknames,’ she added, presumably to Tash, although she didn’t look at her as she spoke. ‘Games and toys. Don’t worry if you don’t pick them up; they are
very
private. Don’t feel you have to use them.’

Tash was relieved to hear that. She couldn’t imagine calling Ted ‘Big Ted’ and, while it was clear that Kate wasn’t a fish-and-chips sort of girl, it sounded a bit rude to call her Ms Monopoly.

‘Scaley Jase, have you been waiting for me?’

‘All my life,’ beamed Jason.

Mia couldn’t harness her grin. She found it difficult to disguise the fact that she liked to flirt with him. They’d dated for nearly three years at uni. If quizzed, they’d both dismiss the ‘ancient history’ as ‘totally juvenile’, yet neither had ever dated anyone else for longer than three months since. Mia flopped into the chair Tash had been sitting in, and picked up Ted’s sparkling water. She took a huge glug, then announced, ‘Big Ted, water is a big girl’s blouse of a drink. You should be ashamed. I thought it was G & T.’

‘I’m driving.’

‘Would you prefer a G & T, or something else?’ asked Rich.

‘No, I’m on a health kick. This suits me.’ Rich poured another drink for Ted. ‘I’m knackered. I’ve been on a ten-mile bike ride this afternoon. Well, I’m not going to let my fitness levels drop,’ announced Mia.

‘Mia did the London marathon, in April,’ explained Rich. ‘She made an incredible time, three hours thirty-five.’ Tash smiled and nodded. ‘This is Tash,’ added Rich, as he put an arm around her. Tash felt her skin melt comfortably into his.

‘I guessed. Hello. Have you done the marathon?’ asked Mia.

‘God, no, never appealed to me. I prefer flinging my body around an aerobics studio to keep fit.’

‘Really? You’ve done it, haven’t you, Rich?’

‘Yeah, it was hell. I did it in 2000.’

‘And Kate and Ted did it in 1998. The first time I did it, didn’t you? I’ve done it three times now. I’m addicted. Lloyd did it way back in 1994, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, and again in 2001 with me,’ said Jason. ‘Jesus, I thought I’d die.’

‘Never appealed to you, though, hey, Natasha?’ said Mia.

‘No,’ confirmed Tash.

‘Well, it’s not for everyone. It takes a lot of commitment; it’s a lot of hard work. Shall we eat?’

5. Polite Small Talk

Things didn’t turn out exactly as Tash had hoped. The tuna steaks were seared to the right side of blue, the chocolate soufflé rose to the required height and the Brie was served at room temperature, as she knew was tastiest. Yet, despite all this, something stopped the evening from being a success. For a start, Tash was disappointed that Lloyd wasn’t there. She’d wanted to meet the entire gang. Tash had quizzed Rich as to why Lloyd was not there, and he had muttered something about Lloyd’s diary being chock-a-block, but during the evening it transpired that Lloyd hadn’t actually been invited. Everyone agreed that this was best; he wasn’t himself since he split up from Sophie.

‘He’s not a particularly amusing guest at the moment,’ commented Jason.

‘Surely that’s when our friends need us the most,’ said Tash, ‘when they are feeling crap?’

No one answered, but they swapped looks which suggested that they all knew more on the subject than Tash, and Tash conceded that they possibly did.

Kate changed the subject by asking, ‘Has anyone seen Freddie Walker recently?’

‘Funnily enough, I had lunch with him just the other day,’ said Mia. ‘He’s terrific; doing very well. Managing partner at his firm, you know.’

‘What is it that his firm does exactly?’

‘Oh, I’m not sure,
exactly
. Something in the media. Very glamorous. He’s done terrifically well.’ Everyone nodded their agreement.

‘Have you heard from Miles Beaumount?’ asked Ted.

‘Yes, I met him at the Beeb about a month ago. Some business we’re talking through together,’ said Jason, but he didn’t expand.

‘We had Clara and Marcus over for dinner on the 8th,’ said Kate.

‘Are they well?’ asked Rich.

‘Yes, great,’ confirmed Kate and Ted in unison. ‘Expecting their second.’

Tash stayed silent. She didn’t know any of the people that were being mentioned, and none of Rich’s gang knew her friends, so it seemed pointless mentioning them. Nor did Tash join in when Ted asked her if she knew the statistics behind gun crime in the London area. She had nothing much to say on Kate’s topic either, namely that, in her opinion, some Tibetans had lost patience with the Dalai Lama’s message of peace. When Mia asked her whether she agreed that Sir Ludovic Kennedy was a bigot, she was stumped. She didn’t know who he was. She mentally scanned her memory to see if his name was tucked away anywhere. Had he been mentioned in her history A level? Was he a dictator, a theologist? It transpired that he was a broadcaster with views about gay TV kisses. She hadn’t read Robin Cook’s diaries, which the former cabinet minister had kept in the run-up to the war in the Gulf. She thought such exposés were sophisticated kiss-and-tells and quite undignified. Instead of saying so, she just said that she preferred reading novels. Tash could have kicked herself. She knew that she hadn’t come across as clued up on anything important. She wanted to be a credit to Rich, but feared that she was behaving like a high-interest overdraft.

Kate noticed Tash was being left out and said, ‘Let’s talk about something else. We are clearly boring Tash.’ She smiled. ‘Tash is a retail merchandiser, you know, Mia. She’s very interested in clothes.’

‘Fascinating,’ said Mia, but she appeared disinterested. ‘I don’t know much about clothes, I’m afraid. I never really have time to follow fashions.’

Mia wasn’t particularly trendy, but nor was she unfashionable. Enjoying clothes had been considered frivolous when Mia studied for a degree at university, and it was then that Mia made up her mind on personal grooming and many, many other important matters. As an undergraduate, Mia soon learnt that girls who expected men to pay for drinks, girls wearing make-up or girls caring about beautiful shoes were all seen as signs of patriarchal domination. Mia did not want to be dominated by the patriarch. She reacted by sleeping with men she didn’t care for and not with the ones she thought she might care for; this behaviour made her feel, if not powerful, then certainly less vulnerable. Mia never admitted, especially not to herself, how much she envied women who let men buy their dinner or those who got excited about a new lip gloss or somehow just knew what length skirt was a ‘must-have’ each season.

Mia wore a lot of black because it slimmed down her thighs, and no one ever looked inappropriate in black. She considered shopping a chore. It promised all manner of wonders and delivered only disappointment. Mia bought whatever her personal shopper in Selfridges told her to buy (her personal shopper was inspired by the very windows that Tash dressed – both women would have been disgruntled if they’d known). Taking the advice of a personal shopper was far easier than trailing endlessly up and down high streets, forging through crowds of silly teenagers. Her personal shopper ensured that she had an outfit for every occasion and, while her outfits rarely earned Mia notice, they at least never caused her any embarrassment. Some people could get it so wrong. As someone who had never bothered to develop an individual style, getting it wrong was something Mia avoided.

‘What did you study at university that led to such a career?’ asked Ted.

‘English,’ replied Tash.

‘Where?’

‘Brighton.’

‘How old are you, Natasha?’ asked Mia.

‘Twenty-seven.’

‘Where is your family from?’ asked Kate.

‘Salford, just outside Manchester.’

‘Is your father in textiles?’

‘No, he was an engineer. He’s retired now.’ Tash was confused. She felt as though she was being interviewed for a job, and she shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She wanted Rich to rescue her, which was odd because up until that moment she’d never believed in knights in shining armour, but, then, she’d never come across fire-breathing dragons before either.

Jason played Sir Lancelot. ‘Are you planning on having babies, and if so will you have mine?’ he asked, laughing. ‘Leave her alone, poor girl.’

‘Is this a Jamie Oliver recipe?’ Kate asked Rich, changing the subject. Having found out what they needed to know, no one directed another comment at Tash for the remainder of the evening.

6. Mia’s Bomb

Kate and Ted left just before midnight, as they didn’t want to irritate their new baby-sitter by returning too late. Mia and Jason stayed for another hour, only stumbling out into the warm summer night after Jason, Tash and Rich had drained every bottle they could find, bar the cooking sherry. Abstemious Mia had looked on with distaste, although in truth she was more envious than repulsed.

‘Isn’t this the type of night that makes you want to stay up and watch the sunrise?’ Jason asked, flinging his arms wide. He spun around on the path, nearly losing his footing and slipping on to the road. ‘Life is fucking fantastic. Fucking electric. Fucking bright and sparkly, and so fucking full of love, isn’t it? Who’d have thought it? Old Rich, ready to settle down.’

Mia glared and didn’t answer. Even if she had drunk the cooking sherry, she was unlikely to have agreed.

‘Tash seemed a totally cool honey,’ commented Jason. ‘Don’t you think?’

‘She didn’t have much to say for herself,’ replied Mia with a cold honesty she reserved for her old friends.

‘Great legs.’

‘For God’s sake, Scaley, do you ever think with anything other than your penis?’

‘Not if I can help it,’ grinned Jason, ignoring Mia’s irritation. ‘Listen, I’m going on to a private club that I’ve just been given membership to. It’s up in Soho. Do you want to come?’ He was sure if he could only get a glass or two down Mia then she would relax a little and perhaps become more of her old self.

‘What, and hang out with a whole load of inarticulate drunks instead of just one inarticulate drunk? No, thank you, Scaley.’

‘It will be fun,’ said Jason, with persistence. Mia threw him a look which expressed her doubt. She spotted a cab about twenty metres up the road. Thankfully it was for hire. She shot up her arm. ‘Call me when you sober up. We can discuss the plans for the stag.’

‘What will you have to do with the stag?’

‘I’ll probably have to organize it. You can’t be trusted.’ Mia saw Jason’s look of puzzlement. ‘Why shouldn’t I organize it?’

‘Er, because you haven’t got a penis and, even if you had, you wouldn’t think with it,’ laughed Jase. ‘Left to you, we’ll spend the afternoon Jimmy Choo shopping.’

‘I loathe shopping.’

‘You don’t know the first thing about strip joints.’

‘That’s why the Internet was invented,’ argued Mia. ‘I am one of his best friends. I don’t like you implying that I’m not the right person for the job of arranging a stag do, simply on the grounds of my gender.’ Mia hopped into the cab. ‘I would offer you a lift, Scaley, but I can’t risk you puking in the cab. Goodnight.’

Mia flung herself back on the seat and barked her address at the cabbie.

‘Nice night, luv?’ he asked.

‘Not really,’ she said as she snapped closed the partition, making it clear that she didn’t want to talk. Why should she have to chat to the cab driver? She was paying for a service; she didn’t need another new best friend. Besides, his views were bound to be ill informed and bigoted, derived from tabloid press. She could do without them.

Mia slipped off her shoes and massaged her feet against one another. She rubbed her eyes and nose.

What was wrong with her?

Recently, in the past six months or so, she had been consumed by overwhelming feelings of anger, resentment and, she might as well admit it – at least to herself – jealousy. Tonight had been torture. Rich had always been a confirmed bachelor. She’d thought they’d be company for one another as they edged their way towards old age. Now look at him. He was gaga. And over what? A very ordinary girl that he’d known for about five minutes. It wasn’t that Mia wanted Rich in the way Tash did, but she knew well enough that a married friend was a lost friend. She would have to kiss goodbye to those weekend breaks that she, Rich and Jase took from time to time. There was no way that Rich would still be her date for corporate events, now that he was about to turn all pipe and slippers on her. She resented the fact that, from today onwards, any confidences she shared with Rich would automatically be shared with Tash, too. Tash wasn’t her friend.

But it wasn’t just Rich’s engagement that had upset her.

Recently, whenever she looked around,
everyone
seemed to have it better than her. Of course, Ted and Kate had it all; everyone other than the Beckhams had reason to envy
them
. They were very happy, extremely rich and, most desirable of all, they had three children. OK, Jason wasn’t sorted in the same way, but he didn’t seem to want much more from his life than regular, uncomplicated lays. His ambitions were easy to fulfil. Even Lloyd seemed better off than she did. His marriage might have broken down, but he was with someone else now and he was at least a father. Christ, her life really must be crap if she was jealous of a shag addict and a weekend dad.

She hadn’t always felt like this. She used to think that she had it all. In fact, she used to think she
was
it all. She was born into a fiercely intellectual but still loving family. She had an older brother and an older sister whom her parents exerted most of their parental expectations upon, and therefore she was left pretty much to her own devices. She was encouraged and praised in both her sporting and academic achievements; she’d secured a place at one of the best universities in the country to read French and Economics. Her big breasts and grin had seized her numerous admirers. Her first-class degree had guaranteed her a job in the fast track of the Foreign Office.

Yet.

Mia might have a PhD and an important job in the Foreign Office, but that didn’t keep her warm at night, did it?

Her biological clock was more of a biological time bomb, about to violently shatter if she couldn’t force a solution soon. If she had to pinpoint one thing that she most resented about Tash it was not her flippancy, her inability to look at the serious issues in life or her insistence on concerning herself with insubstantial matter such as heel heights. It was not her beauty or even her success in finding a man to marry.

It was her youth.

Tash was six years younger. Six years. And she was in a relationship, about to get married. Right now, when Mia was deafened by her biological clock ticktocking towards midnight, all she wanted was a bit more time.

For several months now it seemed that everywhere Mia looked she saw nothing but pregnant women, or women with babies, or tiny children. Of course, that was life, and all around her people were living. Life was teeming out of every school gate, every play park. Life was springing and zooming and buzzing in every skip, hop and jump that she saw countless children execute. Life was radiating from their sticky hands and faces as they devoured ice creams on street corners and in buggies. She saw life in tantrums and spats and squabbles.

It took every ounce of restraint for the normally steely Mia not to cry at the sight of a bawling baby. She felt compelled to pick them up and hush and comfort them. It was only the fear of being arrested that restrained her. It was physically impossible for her to walk past a heavily pregnant woman. It was embarrassing. She found herself talking to all manner of pikey mums-to-be, striking up inane conversations about the weather or the efficiency of supermarket checkout queues, just so she could ask the question, ‘So, how long have you to go?’ Then perhaps she’d be invited to feel the baby kick, and as she reached out to stroke their blooming bumps she wanted to implode with awe.

And jealousy.

Mia sighed. She was a self-confessed control freak. She cycled to work because she couldn’t handle the anxiety of dealing with late trains, let alone the idea that someone else was in the driving seat. A few years ago she had experimented with growing her own vegetables. She’d gone so far as to put her name down on the council waiting list for an allotment because she could not tolerate the thought of eating food that someone else had grown or, more specifically, eating food that someone else had doused in pesticides. As it happened, she wasn’t particularly green-fingered and would probably have starved if she hadn’t found a small, local, organic greengrocer whom she vigorously bossed and cross-examined as to all his methods of production. Mia liked to know when and where the consumer durables she bought were made, what her boss and her employees had written in her appraisals (however painful), how much her friends earnt, ate and exercised. She liked to know who was having sex with whom, and how often, and how good it was. She did her best to influence all of the above, but the one thing she couldn’t control was time. She longed to turn back the clock, but she could not.

There was a time when Mia had been much more relaxed. When she had thrown parties and had not felt the need to calculate number of canapés and glasses of alcohol per head, nor the cost of said canapés and alcohol, let alone the projected cost of broken glasses. At uni she had a reputation for throwing the wildest parties. They were not planned several weeks in advance. They were spontaneous events, conjured up in response to the question, ‘What shall we do tonight?’

Mia settled back in the cab and couldn’t help but smile at the memory. As soon as she offered to throw open her room for a bash (well, hers and Kate’s room, technically), then it was all hands on deck. Kate was always in charge of catering, which in those days amounted to little more than a speedy trip to Tesco’s to buy a trolleyful of crisps and garlic bread. Jase and Rich would run around campus spreading the word and inviting all and sundry. Ted and Lloyd would move furniture, dragging the beds out of the way to create room for a makeshift dance floor, and Mia would buy the booze. She always bought crates of beer and a vast number of bottles of wine. Obviously some people would bring litre bottles of screw-top wine, but Mia liked to provide her guests with something that cost at least a few quid a bottle. She’d insist that she wouldn’t clean her toilet with most of the cheap plonk proffered, but in fact she was simply generous, something she didn’t feel needed talking about.

She must have thrown a dozen or more similar parties in the four years she was at university. Every one of them was a monumental success. Friendship and fun and difficult-to-define comfortable familiarity had drifted through each event. Everyone had oozed such uncomplicated optimism and unfettered enthusiasm for life. They had a real belief in the brilliance of their futures.

Mia closed her eyes, telling herself it was because she was tired and not because she was trying to blink back tears. She acknowledged with a profound irritation that she had found parts of this evening a strain. She was aware that she no longer found it easy to be entirely relaxed with the old gang. She no longer thought it was a natural state of affairs if they all knew everything there was to know about one another, which was at once a disappointment to her and also a direct result of her own actions. She had not confided her longing for a baby to anyone. At uni the gang had forged their way through well-mannered small talk, progressed to intimate revelations, moved on to huge debate and finally completed the circle so that their conversations relaxed into an almost continuous discussion on the story line of
Neighbours
. Now, they seemed to have regressed back to the small talk, only it was no longer always well mannered.

Mia gave up the line of thought. It was too depressing. Instead she started to run through the list of names she liked for babies. It was her favourite game.