Love...Among The Stars: Book 4 in the Love...Series (Love Series) (27 page)

There's a blatant sexuality to this woman I couldn't hope to replicate with several shots of vodka and a very long run up. I have to take a couple of deep breaths after she's left the toilet.

When it comes time for us to sit down in front of the large crowd gathered in the hall, I make a point of placing myself between Jamie and Mary. I don't want to have to do all the talking today, and if Mary takes that jacket off again while she's sat next to him, Jamie's brain will no doubt freeze up, and I'll be a one woman show.

The bloody cameraman is back of course, zooming in on us individually every time we answer a question. If I was disconcerted by its presence on Saturday, you can imagine my delight at having it here now I'm thick with cold. But there's nothing I can do about it, so I have to soldier on.

The first few questions from the crowd are fairly easy.
What's it like to write half a book each? How do you cope with being in each other's pockets all day? Do you edit each other's writing?
The usual kind of stuff that we've answered many times before.

The one thing I do take note of is that Mary and Peter are far better speakers than my husband and I. They are smooth, witty, and both speak in a clear, confident tone that the audience laps up with every question answered. I guess being a sadomasochist must make you a good public speaker. If you don't get embarrassed when someone's slapping your boobs with a wooden paddle, I wouldn't imagine talking about your day to day life with a couple of hundred strangers is any problem at all.

I inevitably start to feel envious. The two eroticists are making Jamie and I look bad.

I can tell Jamie feels the same way, as he keeps giving me a pained look every time Mary or Peter say something cool and eminently quotable to the rapt audience.

Right, the next question that gets asked, I'm going to wow the crowd with my answer,
I think to myself, with badly misplaced determination. I can't really hope to compete with tattooed Mary and her bold sexuality (especially carrying a bad head cold) but my ego has woken up, and needs feeding.

I get the chance to make a fool of myself when a question comes from the audience that seems perfect.

'Do you argue much over what goes into the book?' a pleasant faced young girl asks from the front row. I can see Mary leaning in to speak into her microphone, so I lunge forward to get there before she does.

'
Somedimes
!' I spit down my
mic
. I can see Mary is a bit non-
plussed
by my eagerness, but she does sit back to let me continue. 'We
udually
made sure we're bode
habby
wid
whad
de odder
perdon
had
wridden
,' I tell the girl, sounding like I'm a half South African, half Caribbean, virus carrying lunatic.

When Mary answers a question the audience laughs and nods appreciatively. When I do it, they look confused and a little bit revolted.

Time for drastic action.
'
Excude
me, I
hab
a cold,' I say, and reach for the decongestant. I take a massive snort away from the microphone, put the bottle back in my pocket and lean in again. 'As I was saying,' I continue, this time with recognisable pronunciation, 'Jamie and I usually make sure we're both happy with what the other person has written. There are enough reasons to argue in a marriage, we don't need to add any others!' This time, my answer is greeted with laughter and a few appreciative nods. I smile indulgently. I am winning the crowd back.

'Who gets the last word on the final draft?' the girl asks me. I am delighted to note that her attention is entirely on me now. She isn't looking at Mary or Peter at all. I flick a quick glance at Jamie, who looks as pleased as I am. Time to really turn on the charm.

'What's your name?' I ask the girl.

'Angela,' she replies.

'Well Angela, let's just say that my husband has a way with words, but I have a way of making those words even better,' I tell her in a tone so smooth, it's a wonder I don't slide right off my chair and under the table. Jamie chuckles ruefully, and even Mary and Peter are forced to raise a smile. 'And let me just add,' I carry on, 'that writing together really is all about co-operation. You have to - '

ATCHOO!

The sneeze comes from nowhere, much like The Big Bang. And, just like The Big Bang, it is enormously explosive and travels at the speed of light.

Mucus splatters the table in front of me. The microphone is instantly covered in phlegm.

I look up at the crowd in horror, but only for a moment, because another gigantic sneeze is forcing its way out of my nose. This one is so apocalyptic that my head jerks forward and I head butt the microphone, sending a loud report echoing around the conference hall.

That isn't the end of it though. Another three
sneezes
blast out in quick succession, and by the time the third one has left my nose, my hand is covered in nasal slime.

The crowd looks horrified. And who can blame them? There's every chance they are trapped in a room with someone carrying the kind of disease they talk about in the news headlines. I may know I've only got a cold, but as far as they're concerned, any disease that can make your face explode the way mine just has, must be fatal.

All the sneezing has made me feel quite light headed, so I slump back in my chair and go delving in my pocket for more tissue, an apology forming on my lips to everyone gathered.

Now, as you know, the Law of Sod exists to haunt us at our every move. Well it haunts me, anyway. And what more perfect way can there be for the Law to raise its ugly head than right now, when I am in most need of something to wipe my nose with?

I am out of tissues.

I look at Jamie in pleading misery. He looks back at me with husbandly revulsion. 'What's der madder?' I say to him, my nasal walls inexplicably blocked again already.

Jamie points at his top lip. 'You, er, you have a little something here,' he says. His eyes then flick up to the screen behind us and his face goes white. 'You, um, might want to take care of it?' His voice is thin and reedy.

I quickly turn my head to look up at the screen, and thanks to the delay between camera and display, I get a brief, but oh so terrible, look at my face. There is a long gob of green mucus hanging from my nose like a fucking punch bag. As I whip my head back towards the crowd again, I feel it slap against my top lip. Of course, this brings my face back round so the camera - and by extension the crowd - can see my thick new nasal friend in all its shiny green glory.

I swiftly turn my head again to look back at the screen and stop everyone from having to gaze at my revolting excretion. This allows me yet another brief view of it myself. All the head turning has lengthened my nose baby to the point that it might well drop off any second, but I have no tissue to catch it with, so I can't let that happen.

There's only one thing I can do.

Have you already guessed what it is?

Are your toes curling as you imagine what I'm about to do?

I squeeze my eyes closed, take a deep breath, and inhale as hard as I can.

Oh, for the love of all things holy and right in the world, what have I become?

The mucus shoots back up into my head like a wet, slimy missile. Unfortunately I've sniffed a little too hard, and the bogie continues up through my nasal canal and back down the other side into my mouth.

I feel the clammy, sticky mass hit the back of my throat and unbridled disgust overwhelms me. As does the immediate coughing fit that directly follows.

'Laura? Are you okay?' Jamie asks, patting me on the back.

Nothing that a little light suicide won't cure, husband of mine.

There's nothing for it, I'm going to have to leave the stage as fast as my knobbly knees will carry me. For the last time I turn back to the crowd to try and issue that apology that still hasn't made its way out of my mouth, but as I'm choking on my own phlegm, it's not going to happen.

Giving the whole thing up as a bad deal, I get up from the table and scuttle off to one side to get out of the public glare. The cameraman, knowing full well that this will be the best thing he films today, pans to follow me off the stage, before panning back to show Jamie, Mary and Peter all looking off stage in stunned silence.

'Um, excuse me?' Angela asks the three of them. They all turn back. 'So, who does get the last word on the final draft then?' she asks, proving that writers are tremendously single-minded when they want to be.

Jamie points one finger in the direction I went off in. 'Er, she does?' he answers. I'm quite sure that neither Angela, nor the rest of the audience actually believe a word of this. I am quite clearly a woman with no control over her own bodily functions, so how the hell am I supposed to have the final say on what goes into a book? About the greatest contribution to the finished article I can provide must be an enormous gob of phlegm that I deposit between pages 93 and 94 before it goes off to the printers.

Of course I'm not privy to any of this - Jamie has to fill me in later. While he and Mr and Mrs Erotica are attempting to carry on with the show, I am back stage, coughing up my lungs.

By the time they wind the talk down ten minutes later, I have myself under control and wiped down. My face is flaming red though, partly because of the cold, and partly due to embarrassment.

'I wand do leave, and I wand do leave
right now
,' I tell my family as they join me back in the green room downstairs.

'That's a nasty cold you've got there,' Mary says to me in a sympathetic voice, coming over and laying one arm over my shoulders. 'I always have a cup of hot water with cinnamon and cayenne pepper in it. Works wonders.'

I refrain from asking whether she means I should drink it, or rub it over my genitals. It could be either. 'Thank you Mary. It wad
nide
to meet you and Peter.'

'Likewise,' she replies with an amused expression. 'I like to think we make the best impression at these talks when we do them, but I don't think anyone's going to be talking about us tonight.'

Oh do fuck off, you smutty bitch.

'No, probably nod,' I reply, offering her a weak smile.

'Time to go, I think,' Jamie says, replacing Mary's arm with his own. This feels much better.

He escorts me from the green room and up into the crowded foyer above. As we make our way to the exit, I can see people doing one of two things. They are either taking a step back with their hands in front of their faces, or taking a step forward holding out a handkerchief.

So, now I have a new resolution, Mum. At the slightest hint of a tickle in my nose, I will confine myself to the house until I am one thousand percent sure I am well again. That way I will be spared any more humiliation, and the world will be spared a light covering of my mucus.

Lub
you and mid you,

Your
bunged up daughter, Laura.

XX

Jamie's Blog

Sunday 10 October

Six days ago I get a phone call.
A very excited phone call.

'Jamie!' Craig bellows down the phone. 'I've got some great news!'

'Are you having your vocal chords removed?' I reply, holding the phone away from my head.

'What? No! What are you talking about?'

'Never mind, what great news have you got Craig?'

'I've got you invites to the premiere of Lost Lives And Broken Hearts!'

This means nothing to me. 'Is that a movie?'

'Well of course it's a movie!
A big one too.
They say it could go all the way to the Oscars! There will be loads of celebrities there. You'll love it.'

'And you've got us tickets to the premiere?'

'Yeah!'

'Why?'

'What the hell do you mean,
why
?'

'Well, precisely that Craig. Why?'

'Because it'll be great for your public profile!'

'I'm quite happy with my public profile thanks. It's nice and low.'

'Oh, come on Jamie. This is the kind of thing that can really help your career. It'll be a great night out as well.'

My idea of a great night out and Craig's are obviously vastly different. For me, I like nothing better than a meal in a nice restaurant with Laura, followed by some sex. I am a man of simple pleasures. Attending a film premiere with a bunch of famous types for me to feel awkward around sounds awful.

'Is that Craig?' Laura says, coming into the front room.

'Yep.'

'What's he want?'

'He says he's got us tickets to the premiere of some movie called Lost Lives And Broken Hearts.'

Laura becomes ninety percent eyeballs.
'What?!'

'You've heard of it?'

'Heard of it!? Jamie, they're saying it's the next English Patient! Or the next King's Speech!'

'Really? Can it be the next Bourne Identity instead?'

She rolls her eyes. 'Oh Jamie, you're such a philistine. Give me the phone.' It gets snatched out of my hand. 'Craig? It's Laura. Are you serious about this?'

Craig is
indeed
serious about this. He scored a load of tickets to the premiere from the agent down the corridor
who
represents the author of the book the movie is based on. I guess I should feel honoured that Craig wants to bring us along, but then I remember we're his best selling clients at the moment, so I guess it makes sense for him to keep us sweet.

Frankly, he could have kept me sweet by buying me a new game for the PS4 and letting me stay at home to play it, but that isn't the way things work in the glamorous world of show business. It's a little hard to schmooze someone when they're sat in lounge pants, playing Call Of Duty.

Laura continues talking to Craig in a highly animated fashion while I pick up the iPad and do a little
Googling
.

Okay, so the cast of this flick looks quite impressive. Ralph Fiennes is in it, of course. You can't have a potential Oscar winning film made in the UK without Ralph Fiennes in it. I think if they ever make a movie version of Love From Both Sides I'll kidnap him, concuss him with a dildo truncheon, and stick him in the back of every shot.

Oh look, Keira Knightley's in the movie as well. What a
huge
surprise. I wonder if she's playing an English rose, who learns a valuable lesson about love while in the aftermath of personal tragedy?

Those are the two main stars, but any British Oscar contender worth its salt must feature a couple of people who have been given a title by the Queen. And indeed, Dame Maggie Smith and Sir Ian McKellan are playing Keira's grandparents. There's nary a mention of Keira's mother and father in the IMDB credits list though, so I think we can safely assume that this is the personal tragedy I was referring to earlier.

The rest of the cast is the usual collection of British thespians. You always recognise a few from the TV shows they're more famous for being in, and there's always one cast member who you thought was dead, but inexplicably isn't. In Lost Lives And Broken Hearts, it's Ian Lavender from Dad's Army. I was convinced Private Pike had popped his clogs, but I think that's just because every other member of the cast has gone to meet their maker, and I was killing him off by association.

The plot of the movie sounds dreadful.

Not in a badly written way, just in a 'this is pretentious rubbish and I'd rather be watching something with Bruce Willis in it' kind of way.
It's
set in the sixties, a time period that popular culture still has a strange fascination with. Keira plays a sexually repressed young woman, who finds love with travelling musician Ralph Fiennes. She then discovers Ralphy boy is not everything he's cracked up to be, what with his burgeoning drug habit and casual approach to female equality. What follows is a domestic drama of such po-faced sincerity it's enough to make you chew your own foot off. According to IMDB, Lost Lives & Broken Hearts is based on the book of the same name by a rather odd looking small man of Sri Lankan descent called Sanjapat Hathiristipan - or 'Sanja' to his mates.

Sanja is seventy years old, and a product of the upper class boarding school system, thanks to how fabulously wealthy his parents were when they emigrated to the UK in the fifties. The old boy has written two books - this one, and a non-fiction piece about the Sri Lankan civil war. He must have been delighted when Warner Bros picked his drama to be their Oscar contender for the year. I know I would have been.

I wouldn't usually be caught within a hundred miles of this kind of film, but judging from the excitement in Laura's voice as she speaks to Craig, that perfectly reasonable stance is about to change.

'Okay Craig! We'll see you on Thursday!' Laura ends the call with our agent and gives me an animated grin. 'Isn't that great Jamie? I might get to meet Ralph Fiennes!'

'Yes.'

'And Keira Knightley!'

'Yes.

'And the one who's not dead from Dad's Army!'

'Yes.'

She folds her arms. 'You seem less than enthused.'

'Yes.'

'Oh, what's your problem? Not many people get to go to these things, you should be pleased.'

I too fold my arms, so we're both taking up defensive positions. 'Right Laura, let's just analyse this for a moment, shall we?'

She sits down in the armchair and regards me carefully. 'Okay.'

'This is going to be a star studded event, no doubt followed by the national media, correct?'

'Yes, I suppose so.'

'And we are the Newmans.'

'What do you mean by that?'

I hold one hand open and start ticking things off on my fingers. 'Vomiting at a job interview, ordering nasal discharge in a coffee shop, stealing a Chinese baby, the beach whore swimsuit, the breakdown at work - '

Laura holds up her hand.
'Whoa, boy.
What's the point in all this?'

I grimace. 'We are
awful
in public, Laura. If there's an opportunity for one or both of us to make fucking idiots of ourselves in front of complete strangers, then we'll grasp it with both hands and damn the consequences. We are the 21
^st
century equivalent of Laurel and Hardy. I've lost count of the amount of times I've had to apologise to someone I've never met before.' I look at the ceiling. 'It's like we're cursed. Someone up there really hates us, and likes to make us suffer as much as possible for their own sick entertainment.'

'You're being melodramatic.'

I start counting off on my fingers again. 'Covering a woman in dog piss, death by pedalo, mucus explosion during a speech - '

'Yes yes
yes
! Alright, you've made your point.'

'Can you imagine what minor hell awaits us if we go to this premiere? What ample opportunities exist for us to look like utter bell ends? Not just in front of complete strangers this time, but celebrities and the bloody paparazzi?'

'No-one's going to be paying you and me any attention,' Laura counters. 'We're nobodies.'

I lean forward. 'Well, we won't be nobodies when I sexually assault Keira Knightley by accident, or you end up elbowing Sir Ian McKellan in the face, will we?'

Laura opens her mouth to argue, but I can see the cogs whirring in her head as she comes to the sad but inevitable conclusion that we are a couple of
prat
-falling lunatics once we step out of the front door, and that attending this event may end in disgrace, injury, and possible criminal charges.

'See what I mean?' I tell her. 'It's far better that we just decline the offer and watch the bloody thing on Sky News.'

The edges of Laura's mouth sag. Then they go straight again as determination replaces disappointment. 'I want to go anyway,' she says.

'What?'

'I want to go anyway, Jamie. We
can
act like normal human beings. We don't have to end up with egg on our faces wherever we go.'

'Yes we do. It's our thing.'

'No!' She stamps her foot. 'I want to go! I want to meet Ralph Fiennes in a brand new evening gown!'

'Why would he be wearing an evening gown? He's not Eddie Izzard.'

'Me, you idiot! I'm wearing the evening gown!'

'Oh, I see.'

The look of determined resolve hardens. 'We're going, Jamie. We're going, and we're going to have a lovely time, with no problems, issues or cock-ups.'

I let out a loud bray of cynical laughter. My wife has taken leave of her senses.

However, she also has a look on her face that tells me that if I don't go along with her on this one, I will not be receiving any blow jobs for the foreseeable future. I will also never hear my one word birthday present again. I do hate being such a two dimensional man, but I sadly have no choice in the matter. Even at the risk of making a fool of myself on the national news, I will do anything if it means I can still have a pair of woman's lips wrapped around my penis at some time in the near future.

Laura smiles. She knows exactly what I'm thinking. Damn her for knowing me so well - and for looking so fantastic in black lingerie.

I suck air in through my teeth. 'I'll have to get a bloody tuxedo,' I say unhappily.

Laura comes over and puts a hand on my thigh. 'And you'll look
very
sexy in it, baby.' The voice is husky. I feel as if I'm a dog that's about to get a treat for being a good boy.

I'm not complaining.

In the end, I rent a tuxedo from a local place in town. There are only ever going to be a few occasions in life when I'm called upon to wear such a silly outfit, so I really don't see the point in buying one.

Having said that, they do make you look good. Even I had to admire the dashing image I cut, standing in front of the rental shop's mirror, looking like a low rent James Bond.