Running in Heels (36 page)

WHILE MY GENERAL KNOWLEDGE LEVEL HAS
always been appallingly low (which I attribute to not being allowed to have a television in my bedroom), I've never thought of myself as stupid. I might have
said
I was stupid—as in, “I left the lights on in my car, I'm so stupid”—but all women say they're stupid without meaning it. But now, I mean it. What an idiot, what a bloody twit. I've got the cognitive abilities of a roast pigeon. I'm Ricki Lake–guest-level stupid. I'm
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
out on one-hundred-pounds stupid.

I feel depressed with how stupid I am—which disproves another long-held belief of mine—that only intelligent people get depressed because the stupid ones are too stupid to realize how stupid they are and get depressed about it.

Do I have any excuse? In my favor, I never met Alex when she was seeing Andy—a combination of having as little to do with him as possible, especially after the kiss, and Andy working in sunny Aldershot for the first year of his relationship with Alex, and then in the City. Not in my favor is that Helen Keller in a thick blindfold would have seen this coming.

I manage to thank Alex for introducing me to Robin and say that I'll be in touch. Then I drive home, muttering aloud. “Now what? I don't bloody know! You stupid idiot! Hell-
oo
! McFly!” (This last is an old favorite of mine and Babs, gleaned from
Back to the Future
, when the class bully raps the hero's dad on the forehead
to see if anyone's home. We call upon it in times of great stupidity.) By some miracle, having paid no attention to road signs or other drivers, I reach Primrose Hill alive. I loiter shiftily outside my own home until a woman leans her torso out of next door's bay window and inquires, “Can I help you?”

“No,” I reply, outstaring her until she retreats.

I return to my car in case she emerges to attack me with a Le Creuset. I'm getting to be as rude as Tony. What the hell am I going to say to Andy? Should I say anything at all? He doesn't
have
to know I know her. But he'll find out. Alex rang the flat before, what if he'd answered? I could tell her the phone's been cut off and to ring me on my mobile. I just…don't want them to meet. I'm scared. Although Alex, Sasha, whatever she calls herself, has never mentioned him. If she still loved him, surely she'd have said. If a woman fancies a man she'll crowbar his name into every conversation. But she never has.

But he's still mad about her, it's obvious. I don't want them to meet. Then, maybe the iconic memory of her will fade. But how can it when—bugger bugger bugger—the Evil Ex has become my friend? Oh god, Andy thinks she's still married! When—in a hideous quirk of fate—the Evil Ex turns out to be a fairy godmother. A kind, generous woman who has repented of her ways (of her last-minute ditch and switch of husband at least). It's so unfair. Evil Exes are meant to be full-fat evil. That way you know how to deal with them. You can hate with a clear conscience, you can wish them ill and hope the milk of life turns sour on them, safe in the knowledge they're evil and that's what they deserve.

I
know
she'll fall for him again. The follow-your-heart thing led her to a dead end. Seeing Andy will be like slipping into her favorite scuffed trainers after a brief and painful fling with a flashy high-heeled pair of red patent shoes—the soothing comfort of familiarity will be irresistible! I have the feeling I get watching
Jaws
, when the men are in the little boat in the middle of the dark sea, drunk and singing, and it's cozy and fun, and the fantasist in me hopes that in this version of the film the
shark will decide he's not evolutionarily advanced enough to hold a grudge against a bunch of humans and he'll swim away and no one will get eaten. I watch, knowing the worst is a certainty, but still
faintly
believing I might have the one dud tape for those sensitive souls who can't face reality.

It's not going to happen. Alex will get Andy as surely as Jaws gets his man-sized dinner. Only stubbornness has kept them apart. But I want Andy. I want him, because he wants Alex. I want him, because I know Alex will want him. I want him because Babs doesn't want me to have him. I want him because I triple can't have him. But most of all I want him because I'm in love with him. Not because he's reserved for another woman, but because I love him. Out of all the men I could have and out of all those men I couldn't, I love
him
. I'd love him on a desert island, I'd love him under clinical conditions, I'd love him if no one in the world wanted him but me. I'd love him—and this is the real test—if my mother approved. And she would. I really love him.

I imagine a neat future, where Andy and I wake up together and live together and love together and cook together—I'll be healthy by then—and have sex twice a day (the national average is twice a week but we're better than that) and I own a Pilates studio because I'm good at what I do and I
feel
good, the ugly tug of badness has gone and…the dream scrapes grayly to a halt because reality is tapping on the window: Excuse me, but what happened to Alex? She's your friend. Her pal Robin taught you Pilates, your lives must have crossed at some point. Alex and Andy must have met, and what happened
then
?

They've got to meet. I decide it's better to know the worst now, than to waste months in a fog of uncertain hope.

I sit in the car for ten more minutes trying to determine whether Andy is in before it occurs to me to look for his blue Vauxhall Astra. I scan the road and, oh yes, there it is, dissolving in its own rust, lowering the tone of the neighborhood. I could, if I were brazen, march in—it is my own home, after all—and declare that I do want to “have something” with him, sorry, Babs,
sorry, Alex, and could we sign a contract (a billion-pound penalty for transgression) to confirm that our exclusive relationship is, as from this moment, everlasting? I bite my lip, hard. After a good while spent biting, inspiration strikes. I'll call Robbie first.

I ruffle through my tatty old diary for his number—and it's a measure of how slack I've become that I haven't yet transferred all the details of friends and associates to my new business diary.

“
Chérie!
” exclaims Robbie, pronouncing it “cherry.” “What fun we had! You're still speaking to me. You must have liked my pants. Does this mean there's still hope?”

“It depends what you mean by hope, Robbie,” I say glumly. “If you mean hope for the polar cap and me personally—no.”

“You know why I'm in love with you, Nat?” replies Robbie. “You're weird. And I've got a baseball cap you can borrow. What's got you?”

I am about to blather out the pig's ear of a situation when something stops me. “Nothing,” I bleat. “Look, I”—eek, what to say?—“Last night was fun but it was a bit of a mess, so I was thinking about having a dinner party. Well, more of a supper party, very informal, fewer people, that's why it's short notice, uh, tonight, depending on whether my guests can make it. You're one of them.”

What? Why did I say
that
? Supper party!? I hate eating under supervision. I will Robbie to have an unmissable appointment with his wide-screen television.

“I won't ask why the urgency. I'll just say yes and set the video.”

“Great, great,” I say, wilting. “Well, look, it's…six now, so let me invite the other guests and if you don't hear from me in the next twenty minutes I'll, ah, see you at eight.”

“Fine by me.”

I bleep off, sense a shadow, and look up to see a huge face pressed against the car window. I'm about to scream, then realize it's Andy. With as much dignity as I can manage (having just opened my mouth in a large red and white screaming shape), I whir down the window.

“You've been sat in that car looking furtive for the last half hour,” he says. “Either I'm interfering with police surveillance or you're avoiding me.”

“You're interfering.”

Andy gives me a look. “So you've thought about my question and the answer is no.”

“Andy,” I blurt, “are you free tonight?”

“Depends. If it involves Sang Thip or your brother, probably not. Why?”

“I'll tell you in a minute,” I whisper. “Look. Go inside, I'll be in in a moment, I just have to make a call.”

His green eyes narrow, and my heart cracks right down the middle. “Wait,” I stammer. “I have thought about it. And,” I squeeze my hands into fists, “the answer isn't no. But”—I add hastily as his face widens in a smile—“I need a bit more time. I'm not playing games, but I'll know by the end of tonight. You'll understand.”

“I hope so,” says Andy, and stamps inside. I watch the door shut, sigh deeply, and call my final guest. I feel like Hercule Poirot assembling suspects.

“Alex!” I shrill, when she picks up. “Thank goodness! Where are you?”

“Natalie? Is that you? I'm on the bus—my car's in the garage. I'm on my way to teach a class. Do you want to come? I can squeeze you in if you want.”

“Oh no, no, I'd love to but I can't”—why does this never happen to Hercule?—“but Alex, tell me, what time do you finish teaching?”

“Eight. Why?”

“Alex,” I say, forcing myself not to sound frantic. “Please
please
would you come for dinner tonight? I know it's late notice, and it's a Tuesday night, and you'll be tired from teaching, and you'll have to get a cab, but I've got a surprise for you, sort of to say thank you for everything you've done, and—”

“Yes, all right.”

“I know it's a detour for you but you'll see why when you come and—”

“Natalie, relax. Be calm! It's cool, I said yes!”

Another dilemma. Do I warn my love rival of the presence of the man we're fighting over? I manage to croak, “Great. Just so you know, I'm inviting a few people.”

I can't bring myself to be gender specific.

“Now you've done it,” I mutter, and plod inside. I can hear Andy crashing about his room. It sounds like he's shifting beer barrels. I rap on the door.

“Yeah?” he shouts.

I twist the doorknob but it's locked. And he calls
me
a baby!

“Andy, I'm cooking you and Robbie dinner,” I bellow through the keyhole. “You and Robbie, and a friend of mine. Robbie's coming round at eight, and my friend, Alex, will be here about eight-thirty or nine. So why don't you have a shower and get ready?”

There's a clack and the door's yanked open. “You sound like my mum,” says Andy.

“Only because you're behaving like a teenager,” I growl, trying not to laugh. I think of Alex and succeed.

“What are you making? I just ate a salt beef sandwich.”

“Too bad,” I snap. “You'll just have to force dinner down, er…”

Good question. What
am
I making? Whatever it is, I have an hour and a half to make it. That is, after I buy it. I look blindly around for inspiration and notice Andy's footwear. I don't believe this! He's from London!

“What?” he says, catching my stricken expression.

I pause. Trying to arrange other people's love lives is like being an infant-school teacher without the perk of a zillion weeks' paid holiday. Can't adults do
anything
for themselves? Will I have to force their mouths together?

“Andy,” I announce. “If one thing stops me saying yes, it will be those foul offensive slippers. I'm sorry but even my granddad
would have rejected them as being too dowdy for an eighty-year-old. They're even worse than your nasty tartan dressing gown. I hate them. I hate everything about them, I hate the way they curl up at the toes, I hate the cheap plastic soles, I hate the fuzzy gray material, I wish Paws had peed on them, and just please please promise me you won't wear them at the dinner table, I mean”—by now I'm spluttering—“all you're missing is a pipe!”

I cringe in expectation of—I don't know what—tears? (Who knows how attached he is to those slippers, let alone the dressing gown?) What I do not expect is to be grasped by my shoulders and kissed, oh, what a kiss, hard and soft, fierce and gentle, a deep sexy kiss that shivers through me, warming me to the bone, a kiss to cling to, a kiss that I could live off, feed off, no words but so much said in one long delicious lingering—

“I know what I'm going to cook,” I cry, springing out of the kiss with a rude popping sound. “Linguine!”

Andy stands there, his eyelids heavy, his mouth still slightly open, his lips swollen, and a large obvious lump in his trousers. The slippers, I notice, are nowhere to be seen. Then I spy them, kicked off backward onto the floor in his room. It takes every last grain of willpower not to launch myself back at him. I suck my lips, the taste of him. “That,” I gulp, “that was
cheating
.”

Andy clutches his hair. “I'm going for that shower. Excuse me if I use all the cold water.”

I wait for the bathroom door to shut then run into the kitchen and spritz my face. I dig my nails into my palms to stop myself wailing. I want him.
Me
. I don't want Alex to have him. I don't care how nice she is or what she's done for me. It's too late, get a grip. I swallow the tears, and open the larder. No linguine, and an hour to go. My pulse is out of control. Any suggestions? Marks & Spencer's home cooking for fraudulent chefs still in denial to their pals? (who recognize the dark green flecks in the lettuce anyway). It would be an honor, but they'll be shut by now. A takeout? I couldn't, it's against my religion, if my mother wasn't alive she'd turn in her grave. My mother!

It would serve me right if she shouted my ear off and slammed down the phone. (“And after Sunday's palaver, you have the nerve to ask me for food for your dinner party! If you think I'm going to give you so much as a baked bean after what you said!” etc.) So when she picks up after one ring, I ask the favor haltingly, braced for a cool haughty rebuff. Moments later I replace the receiver with a sigh. What
was
I thinking? I faff about with knives and forks until there's a rap on the door. I open it to a long blast of sound: