Beta Male (22 page)

‘It looks like someone desperately wants you here and someone doesn't,' said the surprisingly astute gorilla, stamping my hand and admitting me into the cavernous downstairs bar.

As my eyes adapted to the low light, I could only make out people who probably weren't that keen on seeing me. Right at the bottom of the stairs stood Lisa. At first I pretended I hadn't noticed her, stooping to tie my shoelace, checking my phone to see if I had any messages and attempting to make it to the bar, all in one subtle, fluid movement. But she knew me – had known me – far too well to fall for any of these pathetic tricks.

‘Sam,' she said. ‘Hello.'

I tried to look surprised, but quickly gave up when I saw the pitying look on her face. We shook hands before realising this looked ridiculous and so had a kind of awkward hug instead, which looked even more ridiculous, so she turned the hug into a kiss on one cheek, whereupon I came back for a second cheek, which she hadn't anticipated and so pulled away, leaving
me hanging like a mutant goldfish, attempting to nibble the air near her earlobe.

How
are
you meant to greet your exes? You can't exactly shag them hello, can you?

Lisa, however, didn't seem overly concerned with social niceties. ‘Why did you never get back in touch with me after my text message last autumn?' she demanded, without further small-talk or air-nibbling.

Well, there were many answers to that question. One, as I have already mentioned, was that I didn't think it was fair for her to be jealous when she had moved on significantly more quickly than me. Another was that I was quite enjoying playing around with her friend at the time, partly to spite her. And the third – and most important – reason was that my life was far too complicated as it was without meeting up with Lisa alone. I had a sneaking suspicion that her marriage to Timothy James wasn't going all that well – he wasn't here with her tonight, for starters – and the last thing I wanted was to deal with the ex-sex that might have followed an encounter
à deux
. Ex-sex always seems like a good idea at the time – it's often the best idea ever at the time: all the excitement of an unexpected one-night stand with all the familiarity of someone who knows what you like – but all it does in the long run is re-open deep and festering wounds.

These were all truthful reasons, but I wasn't sure Lisa really wanted the truth so I simply lied and said that my phone hadn't been working very well. Lisa, it would seem, actually did want the truth, though, because she took my lame lie as an excuse to open deep and festering wounds of our own by revisiting our relationship, most of which was now over three years old, and mentioning every mistake I'd made. How could anyone have such a forensic memory, I wondered, as she pointed out all the bad things I had done and said, and all the nice things I hadn't done and said. This post mortem – made doubly painful by the fact I was still alive – came so out of the blue that I changed the
subject by asking her about her marriage, which was also a mistake because it set her off on another tirade about how the whole thing was completely overrated.

‘I think I've got bride depression,' she said, eventually.

‘And what's that?' I asked wearily, hoping that this, at least, wasn't my fault.

‘It's a new condition I've read about which affects newly-wedded women who put too much store on getting married. They plan the wedding itself for so long that they imagine married life to be an endless continuation of champagne, white dresses and dancing. Then reality bites and it's forty years of sharing the housework, fighting over the remote control and hosting joint dinner parties at which you embarrass, bore and infuriate one another in equal measures.'

I laughed, which made Lisa laugh as well. ‘I'm sorry, Sam,' she said, touching my arm. ‘I bet you're really glad you're not married to me.'

I shrugged. There wasn't really a right answer to that one. ‘Yes' was too hurtful. ‘No' was too dangerous. Anyway, there was a mountain of evidence – a ring, a wedding, a new name – to suggest we might just have left it too late. Fortunately, Lisa ploughed on before I had to say anything: ‘And I'm glad I'm not married to you, either. No, it's Tim for me. Till death do us part. Preferably his.' She laughed again, falsely this time. ‘No, I don't mean that. It's just that I still care about you, Sam. You're fun. You're nice, sometimes. And that's why I want you to be happy.'

‘But you didn't want me to be happy with Mary?'

‘I didn't say that.'

‘You warned me off her when I rang to ask you about her. It comes to the same thing.'

‘No, it doesn't.'

‘Are you jealous?'

‘A little.'

Ha
, I thought.
I've made her say it out loud.

She continued: ‘But mainly I warned you off because Mary's a bit of a psycho.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Well, she uses people. And she's a faker as well. I saw it on that course the vicar made us go on. You see, her father… '

Just as Lisa appeared to be on the verge of actually saying something interesting, I had to stop her. Over her left shoulder I could see Mary herself approaching, arm-in-arm with Stock Market Christian.

Stock Market Christian got to us first. ‘Brother!' he exclaimed, embracing me.

‘Brother?' I recovered quickly. ‘Brother! What on earth are you doing here?'

‘I was involved in a litigation case with Jess once and we stayed in touch.'

Jesus
, it was a small world of objectionable people in London. Maybe this sort of thing could only happen at engagement parties, where a hundred people's complex lives all cram together into one confined space, living proof of six uncomfortable degrees of separation.

Stock Market Christian continued: ‘I haven't seen you at church for a while, Sam. Where have you been?'

‘Oh, you know, praying, meditating, fasting. Christ
is
the Church, you know, and not just
in
church. He is everywhere.' I placed my hand on my heart. ‘He is here.' I placed it over Mary's breast. ‘He is here, too.' Mary smiled sweetly. Stock Market Christian scowled so I placed it over his firm pectoral muscle as well. ‘And here, too, of course.'

Lisa stood next to me, open-mouthed. ‘Sam, what the fuck are you playing at?' she demanded, when she was finally able to speak. ‘And don't even think about putting your hand on my tit.'

I lowered my hand and decided I'd had quite enough of Lisa's questions. All things considered, this was an excellent time to go to the toilet. Having kissed Mary chastely hello, I
started to work my way through the crowd, leaving Stock Market Christian to explain to Lisa the biblical significance of the FTSE's downturn: ‘We just have to pray extra hard that none of us is denied a bonus, even as Peter denied our Lord before the rooster crowed… '

I let the voice of hypocrisy fade out and focused instead on Alan, who was making his way towards me through the crowded bar, his arms outstretched in preparation for the biggest man-hug of our lives.

‘Mate,' I said, because that was all that needed to be said.

He mumbled something back, his voice muffled by my shirt.

‘I'm very glad you could make it,' said Alan after we'd held the hug a little too long and started to worry it might look a bit gay (surely, by the time you reach your own engagement party, you shouldn't worry about people thinking you're gay?).

‘Wouldn't miss it for the world,' I said.

‘And now you're here, I wondered if you might be able to say a few words later,' Alan continued. ‘You know how Jess isn't that keen on having you here and so on, but if you were just able to say a few nice things about her at her engagement party, I'm sure it would make everything okay.'

I smiled and accepted readily. The night might have started with a haranguing from an ex-girlfriend, and a vaguely awkward encounter with someone in a category all of her own, but it was finally picking up. Matt and Debbie joined us and enquired about Rosie, whom Alan said he was still dying to meet. Ed arrived late, with Claire, and was met with much good-natured joshing about whether she'd had to unchain him from Downing Street's railings. I also chatted to Alan's mum for a while and told her that she should give her son a break. On the other side of the room, I could see Jess surrounded by a group of friends, smiling and laughing. I would say some very nice things about her, I resolved. I had got fairly good at lying by now.

At half past ten, when the room was well lubricated and the party in full swing, Alan handed me a microphone and I
clambered onto the bar so I could see everyone. To my surprise, and slight annoyance, the first thing I noticed was Ed and Claire snogging in the front row.
What was that all about?
I decided to ignore them even though I could feel my face flushing. I had just started to say some pleasant lies about Jess – how we hadn't lost a friend but gained a new one – when I looked up and saw Matt's horrified expression. I knew that what I was saying was untrue, not to mention a little bit naff, but surely it wasn't
that
bad. I stumbled on with my speech and then looked up again. Matt wasn't looking at me. He was looking at the door. I followed his gaze. Rosie had just walked in, closely followed by Alan's boss, Amanda.

‘Sam Hunt, you're a lying bastard!' shouted Rosie across the bar. She didn't need a microphone.

‘I'm sorry.' I blustered lamely across the loudspeakers. ‘We appear to have a heckler. Perhaps security could deal with them. Security. SECURITY.'

But neither security nor wild horses could stop Rosie. Even as fear gripped my stomach, I found myself thinking how magnificent she looked, full of righteous anger and feminine determination. I would never meet a woman like this again, I thought. I never deserved to meet a woman like this again.

‘This man seduced me under a false name,' she cried out. ‘He pretended to be something he wasn't so he could move in with me. He stole money in order to pay an invoice – '

‘An invoice?' called out Mary from the middle of the crowd. ‘How much for?'

‘Five thousand pounds,' said Rosie.

‘You lying shit, Sam Hunt!' shouted Mary. ‘I thought you liked me. I thought you liked my family.'

The two girls looked at each other, momentarily unsure whether to fight each other or fight me, the lying shit. The sisterhood won. They started to push their way through the crowd, screaming hysterically, Mary brandishing her champagne flute as a weapon. In other circumstances, I might
have been amused to see two girls fight over me. Not this time. This was dreadful. This was Rosie. This was Alan's engagement party.

I put down the microphone with a quick apology and started to make my way through the crowd. I had to get out of there. But the crowd didn't seem inclined to let me leave. They wanted me to get my just deserts. Part of me wanted me to get my just deserts as well. Cathartic punishment. Start from the beginning again. Do it right this time.

Or maybe the crowd just wanted to see a fight. Strong arms reached out to grab me. Someone – I swear it was Stock Market Christian – even threw a surreptitious punch. The fact it was an engagement party seemed to have been forgotten.

In the confusion, someone else had been forgotten, too. Making her way to the bar, Amanda picked up the microphone and tapped on it twice to check it was working. ‘Hello and good evening,' she said. The crowd fell silent. Stock Market Christian stopped hitting me. ‘I won't take up too much of your time,' Amanda continued. ‘It would be nice to see you continue to lynch that man. He came to our office party this summer and behaved very naughtily, so I'm not all that fond of him, either. But if Sam's not up to making a proper speech, at least someone should.'

Everyone looked at me and then back at Amanda. She had clearly been drinking, but her eyes had lost none of their calculating intelligence. I had no more idea than anyone else what was going on.

‘Anyway,' she continued, ‘I think we're forgetting the real reason we're here, which is the happy couple, of course.' She gestured at Alan, who looked as white as a sheet. ‘Now, I know Alan fairly well, having had the pleasure of working with him for the past few years, just over the road here. So I can safely say that Jess is a very lucky woman, not least because – '

‘No!' shouted Alan. ‘This isn't true. I won't let you get away with this.'

‘What isn't true, Alan?' replied Amanda, calmly.

‘I
knew
it!' yelled a tearful Jess.

Amanda replaced the microphone on its stand as Alan made his way up to the bar to grab it from her. ‘Don't worry, Alan,' whispered Amanda. Her voice was no longer amplified, but those of us near the front could still hear her; the room stood in stunned, embarrassed silence. ‘Jess will probably forgive you. After all, she'll have to forgive herself for last night.'

‘And what's that supposed to mean?' said Alan, finally arriving next to her.

‘Oh, Alan. Did Jess not tell you about Sam?'

Some people have recurring nightmares in which they're naked in the middle of a crowded street, or stuck in an examination room without knowing any of the answers. Mine used to be standing alone on a stage in front of a packed audience and forgetting all my lines. But ever since the night of Alan's engagement party, the only thing that can make me wake up sweaty and screaming in the dead of night is the vivid and horribly real recollection of what happened after Amanda said those words.

I tried to shout back my case, of course. It was one thing to face one's deserved, cathartic comeuppance, quite another to be accused, publicly and falsely, of sleeping with your best friend's fiancée. But it was all to no avail. Why should anyone believe me? I had hardly revealed myself to be a model of propriety that evening. Amanda's accusations were passed around the room in a rapid chain of Chinese whispers that didn't even need embellishing. The party descended again into a cacophony of shouts and chaos. At one point I remember catching sight of Alan's tearful face and realising that even he didn't believe me. All this must have finally made sense to him.
That
was why I had never got on well publicly with Jess, he must have been thinking. We were hiding our secret lust.