Unlike a Virgin (20 page)

So do it then, Gracie.

OK, then, I’ll do it.

On you go, then.

I stand up, but I can’t seem to move very quickly. In fact,
I can’t seem to move at all. I’m going to do it, though. Gracie Flowers, ten years later. Wish me luck.

Instrumental karaoke music begins to play. Anton must have put this on to fill the silence while I make my way to the stage. I don’t blame him as I’m taking for-bleeding-ever. I step around the chairs in front of me towards the stage. I can do this. I can do this. But as I’m walking and Anton is smiling at me, I recognise the music that’s playing. It’s ‘Amazing Grace’. He’s put ‘Amazing Grace’ on while I walk up to the stage. It’s the same song Ruth Roberts was singing at the singing competition when I went mad. Anton puts his microphone to his lips. Everything is in slow motion. His lips part to sing the first line. And I scream. I start really screaming. For someone who hasn’t made a sound since Wednesday I’m certainly making up for it now. I scream until my ears ring and I have to put my hands over them. But I don’t stop screaming. I’m panting the screams and I’m running for the door. The whole pub is staring at me, thinking I’m a nutter, but I don’t care. I just have to get away from this place. I run down the street. I can’t go home. It’s too close. I run and scream until I feel I’m far enough away, and when I stop I’m panting.

‘Grace?’ it’s a man’s voice. Someone from the pub has chased after me. ‘Grace! Grace!’ It’s Freddie. I look about me to find a spot to hide, but he can’t fail to miss me, seeing as Keith Moon is bounding in my direction.

‘Grace. What on earth happened?’

‘Oh,’ I start, but then I stop. I just made a sound. My voice. That was my voice. ‘Sorry,’ I say, and my shoulders suddenly release, as though they’ve been up by my ears for days. ‘Sorry,’
I say again. I’m speaking. I’m actually speaking again. Oh thank you, God! I smile. Freddie just looks at me as though I’m mental, ‘Sorry. I don’t sing in public. The last time I did, the same thing happened. I freaked out. I’m so sorry to scare your pub.’

‘That’s all right,’ he says. He’s looking down, his hands in his pockets, chewing the inside of his mouth. ‘I was just worried about you.’

He’s wearing a blue shirt. I wonder if it’s the same one he had on last night. As I hug Keith Moon I look at him. Freddie is a year older than me, so that would make him twenty-seven, and he’s a newly qualified lawyer. He was offered a job with a big bad-ass law firm, but he decided to work for a smaller company that specialises in human rights cases instead. Wendy, who loves the Bridget Jones books, says he’s her very own Mark Darcy. Freddie’s tall and broad with sandy-coloured hair and a sprinkling of freckles on his nose. He looks more like Prince Harry’s older brother than William does.

‘Sorry,’ I repeat. Oh, it’s such a relief to hear my voice.

‘No, God. Don’t worry. I wanted to apologise to you, Grace, for last weekend, when I asked you out. Danny had spoken to me, you see, about Canada.’

‘Canada?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought he was going to America.’

‘He said it was a job in Vancouver.’

‘Is that in Canada? I thought it was in America,’ I say, then I laugh. I must be delirious.

‘Oh, yeah. No. It’s … it’s in Canada.’

‘I thought he’d gone to America, but it’s Canada.’ It’s not funny so I should really stop laughing.

‘Near enough. That’s why I asked you out for dinner. I assumed that because he wasn’t there that night you must already have broken up. But still, I should have waited. I was drunk from the night before, perhaps. Um, it’s just I’ve always liked you, Grace. I feel very close to you. Or perhaps that’s wrong. I feel as though we could be very close.’

‘Freddie …’

‘Hmm?’

‘As if anything could ever happen between us. Wendy’s my best mate.’

‘And?’

‘What? Don’t you know?’

‘Know what?’

‘That she’s liked you ever since she first set eyes on you.’

‘Wendy?’

‘Yes.’

‘As in your mate, Wendy?’

Bit slow on the uptake is our Freddie.

‘Yes.’

‘No.’

Oh, this is painful.

‘Wendy?’

‘Yes.’

I can actually see Wendy. She’s left the pub and is jogging down the street towards us.

‘I’ve hardly ever spoken to her properly.’

‘That’s because she really likes you,’ I whisper.

‘Are you sure?’

I nod.

‘Wendy? I did think once she might have, you know, quite liked me, but then she slept with Martin and …’

‘So?’

Wendy is really close now, so I make that slash-your-throat sign to tell him to shut up, but it doesn’t work.

‘She’s a bit of a slag, isn’t she, Wendy?’

Wendy stops dead in her tracks behind him and her face crumples.

‘Wend!’ I cry.

Freddie spins round.

‘Wendy, that was unforgivable of me. I’m so sorry.’

Wendy, my lovely, mad, funny, happy friend Wendy looks so upset, but she attempts an ‘isn’t this awkward’ smile and then turns, with dignity, and slowly walks away.

‘She’s the nicest person on the planet,’ I hiss at Freddie, then I run after her.

‘Things, most definitely, are not going to plan,’ I tell my reflection seriously.

My reflection, realising the gravity of the situation, nods and splutters, ‘That’s a frigging understatement!’

I eyeball myself.

‘Right, Lady Luckless, you need to get back on track soonest. None of this four days off because your boyfriend dumps you malarkey. Regroup. Refocus. So, the plan is to sell, sell and sell some more. And sort out the … you know … the thingy quickly. Go to the pharmacist and get the tablets Wendy was talking about and get on with your life.’

I walk over to the stereo on my cactus-less windowsill. I need a song for today. A song that will make things better. A song of hope. I put the loo seat down and sit on it because I’m clueless as to what this miracle song should be. What would Dad play? Probably ‘I Will Survive’ loudly for a laugh. But I don’t have that on CD, and anyway, there’s nothing
worse than a cast-aside woman humming Gloria Gaynor through her tears as she leaves for work. Although maybe that’s the look I should be going for. Danny and his parents would have been loading that van for hours. The whole street would have seen. Perhaps I should just throw open my front door and perform a rousing rendition of the just-been-dumped classic, complete with sequinned boob-tube dress and a half-drunk bottle of gin. Maybe that’s the way to do it. People would say, ‘Isn’t that the girl who had a screaming fit in the pub last night? Her boyfriend moved out last week. She’s got a good pair of lungs on her.’ I wonder whether the old Gracie, the one who used to sing all the time, would do that. She probably would, too. She once sang the whole of a Grace Jones song called ‘Pull Up To The Bumper’ a cappella on the street in Brighton while her school outing coach driver made about twenty-seven failed attempts to reverse park his coach.

My dad and I used to sing everywhere. Literally everywhere. He would dance, too. I didn’t. I was always too embarrassed. I can dance, though. I can do a basic waltz, rumba and probably most other dance steps because I was weaned on ballroom dancing and went to dance classes from the moment I could walk. I loved dancing as a child, but then I found music, and from then on my instinct was always to sing. I was never too embarrassed to sing.

Songs. God, they can be perfect. A simple song. Three and a half minutes of instruments and voices, generally that’s all it is. Yet those three and a half minutes can show you the world in all its horror or glory; it can move you to tears or make you dance in the kitchen in your slippers. It can capture a feeling
you didn’t know you had, or a yearning somewhere deep inside of you. I know I sound like a plonker, but I’ve spent too many hours listening wide-eyed in wonder as I played the same song over and over not to sound like a plonker when it comes to music.

Dad and I listened to hundreds of songs in the bathroom during our mornings together, and I always experienced the same feeling of breathless anticipation between the moment the inch-wide button on the cassette recorder was pressed downwards until the song began. How would it start? With a guitar? A voice? A beat?

I must be careful not to spend too long in here. I’m used to Dan’s bladder curtailing my morning natter, but now there’s nothing to stop me blathering my way to being late for work. I close my eyes in the hope it will give me a musical brainwave. It doesn’t. Instead I hear someone knocking on my front door. I stay put, eyes closed, slumped forward on the toilet, wondering whether to answer it. Knowing that, with my hilarious luck, it will be someone saying, ‘Hello, so sorry to trouble you, but is that your Nissan Micra I’ve just smashed my car repeatedly into?’

‘Grace,’ I say sternly. ‘Answer the door. It may not be all doomage and gloomage. You have to believe good things will happen again.’ I gasp. ‘It might be Danny back!’ I run down the stairs.

When I’m at the front door, I remind myself that the odds of Danny being there are marginally more than nil. I arrange my features into an ‘ill, vague and baffled’ expression before opening the door – useful for dealing with people trying to sell, canvass or collect stuff.

‘Grace.’

My features relax into a smile. It may not be Danny Saunders, but it’s still one of my favourite people. Anton.

‘I’m so sorry about last night.’

‘No. No. No. I’m here to apologise. I put you on the spot. I, er, are you all right now?’

‘Fine. I just had a bit of a freak-out. It’s a long story. I’m so sorry.’

He smiles. I smile. I love this man.

‘So, by way of an apology,’ he says, handing me a plate, upon which sits a bacon sandwich.

‘Oh, thank you!’

‘Pleasure.’

‘Do you have a bacon sandwich every morning?’ I ask.

‘No, but I’d like to. If I get up and walk Keith early then I allow myself one as a treat.’

‘Well, thank you, and what’s this?’ I say, picking up a CD in a soft sleeve which is wedged between the two sandwich halves.

‘It’s another apology present. I was thinking about you not listening to the radio, because of its randomness, and I know you like the classics like I do, but I thought you might not have heard some modern music that’s just as great, so I made you a CD. I’ve called it “Modern Classics”. I wrote down the tracks and artists so it wouldn’t feel too random for you.’

He’s given me songs. The perfect gift. I stare at the CD.

‘Was that wrong of me?’

I don’t answer.

‘Do you mind me doing that?’

I look up at him and blink.

‘Er …’ I swallow. ‘It’s the nicest gift I’ve received.’ I can’t say ‘ever’, but I can confidently say, ‘For at least ten years,’ so I do.

‘Good,’ he smiles. ‘Enjoy.’

I watch him walk back to the pub. He’s such a special man. It’s almost as though he sensed me sitting up there in the bathroom searching for a song.

Dad liked singing Queen in Sainsbury’s, particularly ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’. If my life wasn’t currently in freefall without a parachute I would smile as I imagine him doing his Freddie Mercury routine under this very roof.

‘Oh, it’s you innit?’

‘Hi. I’m so sorry about the other day.’

‘S’cool.’

‘I brought you these, to thank you for getting my bag back,’ I say, handing her the bulging carrier bag I’m holding.

‘Sh-i-i-i-i-t!’ she says, smiling as she opens it. ‘Cheers.’

It contains ten big bags of Haribo.

‘Enjoy.’

‘What was up with ya?’

‘Oh.’ I sigh, then I shrug. ‘Oh, the usual. My boyfriend dumped me. You know the guy you met who looks like the bloke from the
Twilight
films.’

‘Sh-i-i-i-t.’

‘Actually, he didn’t do the dumping. His mum did it for him.’

‘Sh-i-i-i-t.’

‘And now he’s moved to Canada.’

‘Sh-i-i-i-t.’

‘Yeah.’ I nod. ‘And I’m pregnant.’

‘Sh-i-i-i-i-t.’

‘Yeah, that is a bit sh-i-i-i-t.’

‘Don’t have it,’ she says, shaking her head.

I think the EU might have something to say about her pharmacy etiquette.

‘No, I don’t think I should, either.’

‘Like my mate, Daz, right, she had a kid in February. Oh, man. It screams, like, all day. Screams. It’s mad.’

‘I thought I’d talk to him.’ I nod towards the Tablet Tardis. ‘Is he in there?’

‘Yeah.’

I knock on the pharmacist’s door, which he opens quickly.

‘Hello,’ I say, pulling a box of Ferrero Rocher out of my bag and handing it to him. ‘These are a little thank you for being so kind the other day when I wasn’t speaking. I wasn’t being rude. Like you said, I go a bit mute sometimes when things are bad. I’m a freak. Sorry.’