Venus Envy (11 page)

The tension drained out of me as I walked back into the office. No point being tense. Or excited. Everything was monochrome and it was going to stay that way for ever.

I arrived at my desk and stopped dead,

There was a single red rose laid aross my computer keyboard. And a note.

‘Can’t wait to see you again. Keep thinking of me. Your not so secret admirer.’

God, isn’t it good to be alive?

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It was wonderful. It was worth the wait. After he came back from Seville the next afternoon - bearing a bottle of Chanel No. I9 for me - Seamus acted like a dream come true. He sent Jenny off round the building so he ” could stand by my desk and talk. He smiled at me with that thousand-watt grin whenever the coast was clear.

,

And he sent me e-mails: ‘Can’t imagine why I didn’t think of this before.’

God, it was so weird to get little love letters in flashing neon, with ‘be’ blinking at the side. Blind copy. Nobody could see what he was saying. It was like James Bond.

“Meet me at the flat tonight. We’ll order in. P.S. Bring some clothes.’

He didn’t go over the top. No sly glances when there were others around. But whenever he passed my desk, and saw the single red rose propped in a plastic cup, he winked. A gorgeous, slow wink that made me want to squirm on my chair.

I could barely work. I was so excited.

‘Who’s the rose from?’ Kevin the postboy asked, crestfallen.

I could see Jenny hovering around, waiting for my reply. She kept glancing at Seamus, sealed inside the sanctuary of his office.

‘Tom Drummond,’ I replied, quick as a flash.

Jenny perked up. ‘Tom Drummond? Of the Carre four Trust? He’s a very eligible young man. Lucky you,

9o

Alexandra, you must be the envy of all the girls in the City.’

‘Oh, Tom’s just a friend,’ I protested, to Kevin’s great joy and Jenny’s disapproval. She gave my red rose an eloquent glance. Friends don’t send those. But what did I care for her sniping? I was going to see Seamus tonight.

He was waiting at the flat when I got in. Delicious smells wafted from the kitchen: grouse, buttered spinach, blueberry and raspberry slump with French vanilla ice-cream.

‘Take-away usually means Pizza Hut,’ I breathed. ‘Not when I’m eating with a beautiful girl,’ Seamus said merrily, spooning warm blueberries into my mouth. I was still only able to manage a few bites. I was quivering with excitement, like a teenybopper at a Boyzone gig. Waves of lust were pulsing through me. I stoked the fires with his very expensive plum brandy. ‘I’ve wanted to do that from the first moment I saw you … put something into your mouth.’

‘Hmm,’ I gasped. My nipples hardened up like I’d just stepped into a cold shower.

‘You’ve got such kissable lips,’ Seamus told me. Then he leant forwards and traced the line of them with his fingertip.

I got daring. I pressed my lips back on his fingers. Flicking over them with my tongue.

Seamus breathed in sharply and pushed his finger inside my mouth, so I sucked it, nervously because I’ve always thought that was kind of st.upid.

Seamus went crazy. Like someone had flicked on a switch. He jumped up from the table, grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the bed. So fast, I didn’t have time to stop it. To say, ‘Hey, slow down, baby.’ Or ‘Maybe we could kiss each other’s neck, very slowly.’ I didn’t want to spoil the moment.

He was in the throes of passion! You can’t ruin a

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man’s throes of passion. Or he throws you over. Like Justin Roberts, my ex-fianc6: I’m sure his darling wife Hannah never told him to cool it just a tad.

At least I wasn’t worried about my knickers. On the way home to change I invested in some new silky scraps. And a tube of KY Jelly from Boots. Buying that was half-cool and half-embarrassing - like, yes! I am having sex! But also, yes! I do need lubrication!

What the hell, I’ve told you my theory on orgasms. At least I was a bit turned on now. Maybe Seamus could be the one, I thought dreamily as he scrambled out of his clothes. Even in the height of lust, he still stopped to fold them carefully over the back of the chair. Maybe Seamus could be the man to make it ‘happen for me …

But it wasn’t going to be tonight. Fie didn’t last very long, but since sex isn’t the big deal everybody pretends it is, maybe that didn’t matter.

Afterwards he rolled me over on to my tummy and curled his arms round my neck, gazing romantically intb my eyes until I thought I was going to die of pleasure.

‘I’ve been waiting for you for ever,’ Seamus said, ‘never, never leave me.’

All that week was so perfect. Seamus gave me keys to his flat.

‘How’s that for commitment?’ I boasted over the spoils of the chocolate run.

‘Crap,’ said Bronwen through a mouthful of Walnut

Whip. ‘He just wants the sex on tap.’

‘Totally agree,’ Keisha said coolly.

‘You’re just jealous,’ I replied snippily. Seamus also gave me a mobile phone, so he could ring me without talking to Keisha. Keisha might start asking how Dolores and the kiddies were, just for the hell of it. She

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loved stirring things. I didn’t want anyone to get in the way of this marvellous romance.

‘I can’t believe he prefers you to Dolores,’ Gail said, annoyed. It was a triumphant thrill to have Gail jealous of me! What a change!

‘He’s trapped in his marriage. For the sake of the children,’ I explained eagerly.

Keisha snorted. ‘Oh, please, girlfriend. The guy is a class-A jerk. You need to get another pair of glasses, those rose-tinted ones are getting grimy.’

I ignored her. Seamus was typing out Yeats poems and ‘bc’ing them to me on the computer. We met most nights and sometimes at lunchtime. It was all so dramatic, I felt like my soul was on fire.

The best thing about it was, I no longer felt left out. I was Cinderella now and I was going to the ball! When you’re single, the whole world seems to divide into couples. They plague London, like pigeons or bluebottles. They stand in the doorways of pubs, lip locked on each other for hours. They neck in the cinema when you’re trying to watch a film. They even ruin nice Sunday walks in the park, sprawling on the grass with their cheap bottles of white wine, looking like the most romantic thing since Romeo and Juliet.

And they say ‘we’. All the bloody time. ‘What are you doing over the weekend?’ ‘We’re taking the kids to the seaside.’ ‘We’re going down to the country.’ ‘We’re going to stay in and have mind-blowing sex all day and night, broken only by declarations of eternal love, while you sit on your own moping.’ OK, I made that

last one up, but that’s what it sot/nds like.

Next to ‘we’, ‘I’ sounds so pathetic.

.Not very liberated, but that’s just how I feel.

But now i was part of a ‘we’. I could think about ‘us’. And my ‘we’ didn’t incorporate a criminal, a homosexual, a faithless fiance, or a cheating American bastard. So that was a nice change. Seamus gave me

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presents - perfume he liked, sexy lingerie. We ate on our own all the time, in sweet out-of-the-way places, or in the flat.

I was in heaven.

‘So what are you going to wear to the party, darlings?’ Snowy asked us on Saturday morning.

She’d come over with a bottle of vintage Perriero Jouet, ‘To get you in the mood.’ To show off, I thought sourly, but the other girls all loved it.

‘Purple dress from Granny Takes a Trip,’ Bronwen said simply. ‘Bovver boots.’

‘Nicole Farhi suit,’ Gail announced.

‘Alexander McQueen jacket, Galliano dress,’ Keisha said superbly, trumping everyone. For Versace, she

would bring out the big guns. And besides, Lennox Collins, the Star Boyfriend of the moment, would probably be there since he loved flash designer stuff. All the boxers got it for free. Keisha would spend three hours in the hairdresser’s this afternoon, just so she could shine next to the deep red suits Collins always wore to match his fiery red hair and blue eyes.

Tm going to be boring. A little Gucci silk number,’ said Snowy, in the smug voice that said it probably cost more than we made in a year. ‘And you, Alex? What will you be wearing?’

‘My new Joseph suit,’ I said proudly. Seamus had bought it for me, it was a funky thing in shiny brown leather with flat front trousers. I’d dropped five pounds since I started seeing him, through not being able to eat.

‘This’ll encourage you to keep it off,’ Seamus told me, grinning. I blushed. I knew I had been a greedy pig in the past, but that was going to change. Even on the chocolate run I now made the others get me a Halo or a Flyte. I was determined to get to Dolores-style levels

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of thinness, not that Seamus slept with Dolores, but even so.

‘You must make good money in your typing job,’ Gail said bitchily.

‘I’m getting a raise soon,’ I lied.

‘Hey, do you think a purple - er - hippy thing is

quite the right outfit?’ Snowy asked Bronwen. ‘Dick likes it,’ Bronwen said defensively.

Dick was the big love of Bronwen’s life. They’d been going out for two years now, and she longed for him to ask her to move in with him. We thought he was a total loser: he was as straight as Bronwen was screwy and a real user. Dick was a bank manager, with a nice, neat little flat in Bayswater and a shiny blue Volvo. He had Bron over all the time, cooking for him, cleaning his house and ironing his shirts like some sort of daily help, except that she had to luck the boss as well. Dick liked Bronwen to do more and more wild stuff, which she hated, but did anyway. He wanted her to go out to dinner in short skirts and no panties, or wriggle out of her bra while they were in a cab. She had to watch porno movies with him and ring him up from her office and talk dirty to him.

‘It makes me feel so filthy,’ she told me sometimes, tears prickling her eyes. ‘Really cheap.’

‘Tell him “to go luck himself,’ Keisha said furiously. Keisha wasn’t the best person to talk to about Dick, because she would a) suggest she call some Yardie gangsters she knew to go round and beat the shit out of him or b) get enraged with Bronwen herself for being such a wimp.

‘I love him,’ Bronwen sobbed. ‘We had such a fight. He told me he’d met this girl and he wanted her to come back with us. I said no way, and he said, how did I know I wouldn’t like it if I’ve never tried it?’

‘He’s sick. Please tell me you said no,’ I begged. ‘I did, I couldn’t face it.’

Keisha stormed off in disgust before she said something really bad.

‘I wanted to please him so much,’ Bronwen sobbed, ‘but I couldn’t do it, do you think I was being a selfish bitch?’

‘Is that what he said?’

‘He said it was his major fantasy. If I loved him I would do it.’

‘Oh, Bron,’ I said, pulling her close for a hug. ‘You can do so much better. You could have anyone. Look at all the boys that turn up here for you.’

‘But I don’t want them, I want Dick,’ she wept. What an appropriate bloody name, I thought but didn’t say. I mean, what could I tell her? Dick was as good for her as syphilis, but how could I advise her? One ex in prison, another living with a man.., at the time you know they’re screwed up, but only in your head.

And what woman listens to her head when her heart is talking?

Dick the dick was going to be there tonight. I hoped he would treat Bronwen properly, and not just use her as the antidote to his staid boringness.

‘I’m going to meet you there. I’m going round to Tony’s for cocktails first, and he’s bringing me into town,’ Gail said triumphantly. ‘I just wish I could get him to switch to organic champagne.’

She was going great guns with Tony. Evidently his income level was satisfactory for her: she liked the BMW and the townhouse and his plans for a country cottage next year. I was pleased for her. However much she bugged me, she was my sister. I wanted her to be comfortably married, since that was what she wanted. For myself, however, without those delicious butterflies and heart palpitations, it was all worthless.

‘Well, some dear friends are sending a limo for us,’ Snowy said sweetly. At which Gail looked a bit

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annoyed, since she couldn’t back out of Tony’s BMW

nOW.

We arrived at the hotel nicely lubricated. Snowy had delicately chewed half an ‘e’ with Bronwen, and the two of them were glassy eyed and giggling madly. They needed to be, I thought sourly, with these bloody Arabs leering at us on the back seat. The limo was long and white and tacky, big enough to have its own postcode, and four of Snowy’s friends, swarthy guys in very expensive suits, were sprawled across the leather. One of them laughed a lot and said, ‘Preeety, preety,’ all the time. Another one had his clammy hand parked firmly on Snowy’s knee, and even though you could see the sweat stain on her Fogal tights, she didn’t attempt to move him off her. A third was pawing at Bronwer and being slapped away like a bothersome fly, but Bron was high and didn’t scream at him to drop dead, like she should have done.

Keisha and I were left to deal with the last little charmer, a pudgy bunch of dough with a few dark strands combed across a glittering bald forehead. He muttered things in Arabic and giggled in a pitch so high you’d assume someone had sliced off his balls, except for the way he kept trying to kiss us. Although after my first squeal of repulsion he mainly tried to bother Keisha. The first time, she scowled, ‘Fuck off, Fatso.’ The second time, she poured her chilled champagne over his lap. So he sat there looking like

he’d wet himself, giggling madly and just staring at us. ‘Wanna share a cab home?’ Keisha asked me. I nodded fervently.

‘Oh, darlings, you’re so boorring,’ Snowy drawled, sniffing a thick line of cocaine off the back of Prince Charming’s hairy hand.

I was double glad to get out of that car. Snowy waltzed

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in with her retinue of leering men, smiling full-watt at the doorman as he scrambled to lift aside the rope for her. He checked my invite, probably a bit disappointed to find it valid, and then deigned to let us follow her.