Altar Ego (30 page)

As if listening to the act hadn’t been humiliating enough, I now had to endure the encore.

‘Sweet lips.’

Sweet lips. God, I think I’m going to throw
up.

‘That was great,’ Julian purred.

‘You mean
you
were.’

Yep. Throwing up time
.

‘Really? Becky thought I was too passive in bed. “It’s lonely on the top”, she always said.’

Verballed! And by my own husband! I bit my hand so I wouldn’t call out
.

‘Yeah. She’s hard to please all right. She was always whingeing. About you, about the wedding, about marriage, about not wanting children …’

… About what a bitch my best friend turned out to be
!

‘I feel so comfortable with you, Kate. I was thinking,
we
should go on holiday together. Somewhere romantic. The Seychelles, Mauritius, Virgin Gorda …’

The Seychelles, Mauritius, Virgin Gorda
…
?! What? No Death Row? No famines? No tsetse flies?

‘I’ve worked so hard all my life, Kate, and for what? I’ve paid my dues. I want to enjoy myself. I’ve carried the weight of the world on my shoulders and now, well, it’s time to get a porter.’

A porter? Oh, where’d I heard that before?

‘And when we get back, well, I was thinking. Why don’t you move in?’

Move in? I knew it. Oh God, Oh God. They were going to move in together. My ribcage contracted around my lungs
.

‘Move in together? … Cripes. I hadn’t even thought about it.’

Yeah, right. Which is why you’ve accidentally left your espresso machine in the kitchen. Why your underpants are breeding in the drawer. Why your cat’s bowl is in my bloody bedroom. Why you’re pretending to be a nice person
.

‘Maybe even get married … Married men are mentally healthier and have less heart disease than single men. I’m at that stage in life where I need to be married.’

Married? I nearly bit through my wedding finger
.

‘I mean, neither of us is getting any younger,’ Julian added. ‘I definitely want children. If I wait much longer we’ll be in nappies together!’

Children?! … That made two fingers for urgent digital replacement surgery
.

‘Maybe yours could be the next ovary off the rank, Katie-pie?’

‘Well, to tell the truth, Julie-poolie, I have, of late, been hearing the old fallopian tubes calling …’

Katie-pie? Julie-poolie?
This time I ‘ughed’ loudly enough to attract Kate’s cat. It slunk beneath the bed and appraised me with a superior eye. I dislike the company of cats. And not just because of my allergy. I felt the tingle of dread in my nose. The need to sneeze animated the hairs on the back of my neck. My eyes watered in an effort to control it. I sniffed. I snuffled. I prayed. With cool malevolence the cat sashayed forward and flicked its tail in my face.

When I recovered from my nasal detonation, it was to see two heads, inverted, peering at my contorted form cloistered beneath their bed. It was now Kate’s turn to make the car-accident noise. Julian, white with anger, hauled me out by one denimed leg, leaving half my scalp behind.

‘Jesus Christ, Rebecca! What the
hell
are you trying to do? You could have given me a heart attack!’

‘Me too,’ chorused Kate, saronging herself in a sheet.

‘Oh God. Maybe you two
are
meant to be together. Two hypochondriacs. The two of you should get married and just move into a hospital.’ I sneezed and coughed with abandon, as I brushed dust balls off my clothes and out of what was left of my hair.

‘What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?’
Julian
yanked me on to my feet. I stared at his naked body in awe. One of the things I hate about men is that depression makes them eat less. He’s lost at least two stone since I’d last seen him in the flesh. And I liked what I saw.

‘Look, I had to break in. Kate, well, she’s turning you against me!’ I frantically groped for an excuse. ‘You’ve just heard the sort of things she says about me behind my back. I need to be in front of her at all times.’

Julian pressed the palm of his hand against my forehead. ‘This is psychotic. You need help. Why are you hounding me like this?’

‘Well, the thing is …’ I took a deep breath. ‘I want you back, Julian.’

‘But you were tired of me! That’s what you said. “I’m tired of you”.’

‘Yeah, well, now I’m rested.’

Kate, rummaging for knickers in her underwear drawer, screeched indignantly. ‘Shit a brick! You’ve been going through my things, haven’t you?’

‘I rifled the odd drawer, yes, but I didn’t read that diary entry on butt-fucking, so there’s no need to feel awkward.’

‘That’s it. I’m calling the police,’ Julian threatened. ‘I’ll get a restraining order!’

But I’d had enough. Though up against the wall, literally, the window was open. I Geronimo-ed out of it. Scrabbling at branches and clutching at drainpipes I
realized
that love, if done right, can definitely kill you. I managed the descent with only serious-to-middling injuries, watched, with veiled amusement, by Kate’s wretched feline, poised agilely on the sill. Exit, pursued by a cat.

33
Nocturnal Omission

POP LYRICISTS HAVE
been curiously silent on the joys of being the girlfriend of a famous rock star. Staggering home to find Zack’s house being ransacked room by room by an infestation of police explained why really.

A Detective met me at the door. ‘Are you Miss Steele?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is this yours?’ he boomed, holding up my handbag. The man was irrepressibly loud. His voice was loud, his tie was loud – even his silences.

I nodded.

‘Then I’m arresting you on suspicion of possession of a classified drug.’

‘What? Period painkillers? That’s the hardest drug
I
do.’

‘You have the right to remain silent. You do not have
to
say anything, but anything you do say may be taken …’

‘Hello? I don’t even drink coffee after seven p.m.’

‘… down. It may harm your defence if you fail to mention when questioned …’

My first fevered thought was that the drugs were Zachary’s. My second thought was to wonder exactly how tall Zack was
so I could order his body bag
. How could he have done this to me?

‘… anything you later rely on in your defence. Please accompany me to the station.’ The boa-constrictor grip on my arm kind of decided me. Besides, I was innocent. What did I have to worry about?

A terrifying interview with an officious custody sergeant at Marylebone Police Station, one strip-search, sixteen Styrofoam cups of cold coffee, three panicked calls to Zack in Amsterdam, a six-hour stay in a cell with the ambience of a gas chamber and a charge of possessing fifteen grammes of cocaine and I was not as enchanted by the British legal system as I’d previously imagined.

‘For the millionth time, I don’t do drugs,’ I insisted in the interview room. Although, after
this
experience, I was certainly going to need some.

The Detective smirked and folded his hirsute arms across his polyester-shirted chest. ‘Why don’t you plead innocent, lassie, and give us all a good laugh?’ He flicked on the tape-recorder for the inquisition.

‘How did you know drugs were even
in
my bag?’ I agitated. By now my blood pressure was reaching thermo-nuclear levels.

‘Tip-off. From a concerned citizen,’ the detective thundered in his ten-pack-a-day voice.

‘Oh my God.’ My stomach soured. ‘Am I going to go to
prison
?’

By some staggering oversight on behalf of legal aid, I’d actually been assigned a sober duty solicitor. She explained that, as it was a first-time offence, and as the amount of cocaine was only on the cusp of intent to supply, I might just get off with a fine. The only real punishment would be that imposed by the American Government. ‘Visas aren’t granted to anyone who’s been arrested, charged or convicted on a drugs charge,’ she clarified.

My twitchy apprehension suddenly crystallized into clear, cold understanding. ‘Let me guess, Detective. The “concerned citizen”…? Was it a man with an American accent?’ I don’t know why I was surprised. It was your standard Dastardly Villain behaviour. Honestly, Zack’s agent was like some creature from a horror flick who just won’t die.

I was in the process of being granted police bail when Zack barged into the station, straight from Heathrow. I hadn’t seen him for two months. He threw his arms around me protectively and pressed his mouth to mine, his skin warm as sun-kissed aubergine.

‘Now do you believe me … about Rotterman?’ I asked, as the custody sergeant, informed me that I’d be advised of a court date, and handed back my possessions.

‘That scumbag dropped the dime on you all right.’

‘He did it so I can’t go with you to America … and for the publicity, no doubt. If only you hadn’t signed that bloody recording contract!’

Zack signed resignedly. ‘Do you know a good lawyer?’ he asked facetiously.

The news that Zachary Phoenix Burne’s girlfriend had been arrested on a drugs charge had made the evening papers, which meant that groupies now knew our address. We arrived home to the incessant caterwauling of ‘Zack! Zack! Zack!’

By this stage of my life not only did I know all of the deadly sins but I could personally demonstrate at least six of them. A police record for narcotics abuse would make it seven. But the icing on the angst pie was yet to come. We made it through the blizzard of paparazzi bulbs and up the front steps. Once inside, I had my heart set on some analgesic sex. After two months, cravings for my particular hard drug were insatiable. But when I started tearing at Zack’s clothes with my teeth, he tenderly pushed me aside.

‘Later. I need your advice first, Beck. On the album sleeve notes. I have to get them in tomorrow.’ He began to read to me from his torturously scripted prose.

‘Zack, it’s only a CD blurb. It’s not the Rosetta Stone.’

‘I’m taking my career seriously now. You was …
were
, right. From now on I’m gonna …
going to
be a Serious Artist.’ I found myself jeering inwardly at Zack’s absurdities. What once entranced me, I now felt a great desire to mock. ‘I’ve lined up an Amnesty gig and a Landmine benefit,’ he boasted.

I buried my face in the kilim cushions. Oh great. Another selfless career-junkie. Another lover determined that on our evenings out together, I’d be the only one present with a full set of limbs.

I listened to Zack ring around to all the band members to rubbish Rotterman. When, with Born-Again certainty, he corrected the guitarist, ‘It ain’t “in-erestin’”, it’s in
t
erestin
g
,’ I knew just how Doctor Frankenstein must have felt.

To make matters worse, he then offered me a glass of Puligny-Montrachet ’88, proudly describing it as being ‘capricious in its affability’. I watched in amazement as he blotted his lips with his napkin in the recommended fashion and placed his knife and fork in the internationally approved twenty past four. He then set about cleaning up, complete with a lecture on dishcloth hygiene. ‘Will you stop fluffing pillows?’ I begged him. But it wasn’t until he took the batteries out of our vibrator to put in the television remote to watch
Newsnight
that I knew with grim certainty that I really had created a monster. What I’d created, in fact,
with
the white designer shirt cuffs, reuniting split infinitives and pretending not to like ethnic jokes, was another Julian. The old version. Great. Now I had Julian taking life too frivolously and Zack taking life too seriously. It made me miss his more monosyllabic days. I mean, here I was panting for some hot jungle sex while he preferred to ponder why the word ‘monosyllabic’ has five syllables. Hell. The guy was conjugating
nouns
, for Christ’s sake.

‘Do we have to talk all the time?’ I finally snapped. ‘Couldn’t we just have sex? … I mean, “words” are just those things we use to kill time until we fuck, remember?’ It was something he’d once said to me.

But when we did finally make love that night, the images crowding my mind were of Julian. It was going to be difficult, I mused, for a guy with an LL B, a Ph.D. and a D.Phil. to get used to being wanted for his body and not his brain …

The light snapped on. ‘You’re thinking of somebody else, aren’t you?’ Zachary accused me.

Zachary’s allegation and the lamp’s interrogative spotlight wrenched me out of Julian-land. ‘I’m not,’ I dissembled. ‘Don’t be silly.’ With the light banishing all furtive fantasies, I had sex as though under anaesthetic.

‘Oh God, what have I done?’ I silently addressed the ceiling. ‘And how on earth will I undo it?’

It was time to draw the line … Pretty hard though when you’ve already stepped over them all.

34
Cross My Legs And Hope To Die

A ‘HOSTAGE’ IS
the term for a woman who invites guests into her own house. Is there anything worse than spending a night making strangers feel at home – which is precisely where you wish they bloody well were?

Despite this, Anouska was throwing a summer party. ‘I’ve given up on dangerous destinations, by the way. I’m now concentrating on dangerous sports,’ she’d thrilled down the phone when she rang to invite me. ‘I’ve got Darius shooting rapids, wrestling piranhas and generally heading for an early death.’ A ‘sudden debt pay-off’, she called it.

After lunch, I’d returned to my desk to find a scribbled telephone message from Anouska. ‘PS. Party’s fancy dress. Theme – Kitschy-Kitschy-Koo.’ … Which is why, a few days later, I was sitting in the back
of
a minicab dressed as a garden gnome, a string of sausages on a pole draped over one shoulder.

Now the one thing that’s worse than actually attending a fancy-dress party, is realizing that you’re the only person who’s fancily dressed. As the front door opened, I shuddered to a halt, my eyes desperately scanning the famous, glamorous throng. But no. All the other women were in little black cocktail dresses.

Anouska sprinted across the living room to my side.