The Lost Guide to Life and Love (27 page)

‘So
that
‘s where our host is. He doesn’t seem to be enjoying his party very much. Not very hospitable of him to hide away, is it? Not like him at all,’ said Nell and then, triumphantly, ‘Ah here we are.’

The library was, in fact, a huge wide corridor leading to a massive conservatory, where staff were bringing out trays full of food—proper food, not eyeball-type canapés. Looked promising. In front of the shelves of books—which looked suspiciously unreal—were two long bars. From one, waiters scuttled back and forth with the luminous drinks. From the other, barmen were pouring more conventional drinks.

‘Vodka?’ asked Nell, and I nodded. The barman poured two huge shots and passed them over to us. Another offered a range of mixers and, when I nodded, added a glug of raspberry juice. I took a sip.

‘Now that’s what I call a drink,’ said Nell, approvingly.

It was strong stuff. I realised I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and was glad to see a waiter with a tray of canapés.

‘Eyeballs or dead men’s fingers?’ he asked, offering tiny stuffed quails’ eggs and long narrow pastry cases filled with what turned out to be mushroom but which looked distinctly odd in the strange pale light of the library.

‘This is one of the oddest parties I’ve ever been to,’ I said to Nell. ‘The food so far is straight from a children’s party, the casino’s like something out of a Round Table fundraising effort, only with proper money, and as for the rest…’

I meant to sip the vodka slowly but the glass was empty very quickly. As was Nell’s. She’d asked me about the magazine and we talked about food, for which she clearly had a passion, strangely enough for a footballer’s wife. She also mentioned her children.

‘My mum’s with them tonight. So I should be having a
wonderful time and forgetting about them, but I can’t really,’ she said. ‘I miss them. Still, I’ll be home tomorrow. Let’s have another drink and work our way back round to the boys.’

We took our drinks, picked up a few more canapés and tried to make our way back to the room with the pretend flames where we’d left Clayton and Jojo. Maybe we could bring them back some proper food. I certainly needed some. I felt oddly light-headed. Light-headedly odd. As we passed through the hallway, a group of women were arriving. There were maybe six or seven of them, falling over each other and giggling. They’d clearly had a few already. They looked round boldly. They were a striking group, wearing a lot of make-up and clothes that were just a bit too short, too tight, too low. Like any group of girls out for a good time on a Friday night.

Two of them were reaching out for drinks from the tray, the others busy gawping around them. One of Maynard’s men was already moving towards them, surprisingly smoothly considering his bulk. But one of the women preempted him.

‘It’s all right, pet,’ she said, ‘Ramon invited us. Aye, all of us. We met down the Quayside and he told us about it. Look,’ she shoved a piece of paper beneath the muscleman’s nose, ‘he even wrote it down for us. Ravensike Lodge. That’s where we are, isn’t it? By, it’s a bloody long way. Cost us a fortune to get here. Are you not going to give us a drink, like?’

‘Wait here,’ said the muscleman. ‘Don’t move.’

‘OK, pet,’ said the woman, undaunted, ‘but we can have a drink while we’re waiting, can’t we?’ and she helped herself to a glass off the tray. ‘Come on, girls, don’t be shy.’

‘Oh no. I was afraid of that,’ muttered Nell.

‘Afraid of what?’ I asked, beginning to feel uncomfortable.

‘The local tarts have arrived. Daft things. They just want a footballer, any footballer, and this is the way they do it. In which case,’ she put her drink down, ‘I don’t think this is my sort of party.’

With that Ramon and another young footballer whom I didn’t recognise, appeared on the stairs. They looked at the girls, then at each other, and laughed. It didn’t seem a particularly nice laugh.

‘So, ladies, you made it!’ Ramon said.

‘Why, of course. You invited us, didn’t you?’

‘We did. Yes, we did.’

He nodded at the muscleman who shrugged his massive shoulders and went off. One or two of the other young men who had been drinking and talking football came over to the girls, who giggled delightedly.

Now I felt very uncomfortable. I looked for Nell but she had already disappeared. I tried to follow her but couldn’t and instead stood, staring, fascinated at the women, as they knocked back the drinks with terrifying speed. Soon they were surrounded by a group of young men. The noise level ratcheted up.

I realised I had to go to the loo. The Barbie doll girl was there, head down, leaning on the washbasin. For a moment, I thought she was being sick and then, when she stood up, I could see her reflection in the mirror and the telltale trail of white powder around her nostrils.

‘What are you staring at?’ she asked challengingly.

‘Nothing. Nothing at all,’ and I nipped quickly into the loo and bolted the door. What would Granny Allen say?

I waited in there until I heard her go out and the door slam. I washed my hands carefully and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked OK but I felt distinctly odd. Not quite drunk, but not quite sober either. Sort of dizzy and blurred round the edges. Partly the vodka on top of champagne and
whatever that green drink was. Partly the encounter with Barbie girl. Partly the strangeness of the evening. Suddenly, what had seemed fun now seemed frightening. Unpleasant. I realised, that, like Nell, I didn’t want to stay. I would find Clayton. Maybe we could go back to my cottage.

A horrible thought struck me. Had Clayton invited me because I was nearby and available, one of the local tarts? I didn’t want any footballer. I wanted Clayton Silver. And I wanted him not because he was a footballer, but despite the fact that he was. But that didn’t explain why Clayton wanted me. Maybe he didn’t see it like that. He probably had girls in every part of the country. Why had I kidded myself I was different?

By the time I left the loo, the noise level seemed to have soared. The music was louder, people were shouting. Lights were dimmer. Couples were entwined. As I tried to find Clayton, I found myself pushing past people. There was a man whose face I recognised from television, a footballer turned commentator. He leered at me.

‘So who are you?’ he asked, putting his arm between me and the wall so I couldn’t get past. I noticed the cut of his expensive suit but I could also smell the whisky on his breath, see the acne scars on his face, the spittle on his lips. As he bent down towards me, I ducked sharply underneath his arm and escaped, nearly bumping into Becca.

‘We’ve had enough,’ she said, ‘I think we’re going to go. Sandro’s just trying to sort out a car and a driver to come back to mine. Do you want to come too?’

‘I’m going back to find Clayton,’ I said. ‘See what he says.’

Now it was very important to find Clayton. How could I have wandered off from him? The memory of his kiss had long since faded. I wanted to be back with him, his arms round me. I so much did not want to be at this party any more.

I finally made it back to the room with the flames apparently flickering up the walls. In the menacing red glow, I could see Clayton standing there. I thought he might have been looking for me, but instead he was staring at Barbie girl, who was standing in front of him. Swaying slightly on her huge high heels, shouting strangely at Clayton, one of her long, scarlet-nailed fingers was jabbing at him as she tried to make a point.

‘What sort of a man…what sort of a so-called man runs out on his own son, eh?’ she was shouting, spitting almost. ‘This cheating bastard,’ she announced to the room in general, ‘this cheating, lying shit-face walked out on my sister and his kid. Never gave them a penny. Never bought the boy a present. Never even sent him a fucking birthday card! Clayton Mister Quicksilver footballer is as bad as all the rest. He’s earning thousands and thousands a week and my sister, my little sister and my nephew, his son, are living on benefits in a grotty flat. What does he care? Sod all! That’s what the great Clayton Quicksilver is really like. Just like all the rest.’

I looked at Clayton. I expected his furious denial. But it didn’t come.

‘For God’s sake, Chrissie, we’ve been through this,’ he was trying to say. If anything, he sounded bored. He certainly wasn’t denying it. It was almost as though he didn’t care.

And I felt a chill inside me. Could it be true? Could Clayton Silver turn out to be just the sort of irresponsible bloke I’d once feared he was? Please not. That bubble of excitement I’d felt when we’d arrived and danced together had gone flat and stale and was making me feel sick. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a young girl in the hallway, one of those who’d arrived in a group, giggling as two young men led her up the stairs.

Back in the flames room, people were standing in a circle, watching Clayton and Barbie girl.

‘Is this true?’ I asked the man standing next to me, who I realised was Jojo.

He shrugged. ‘I ‘ave ‘eard stories. But there are always such stories. It is part of being a footballer, no?’

Barbie girl was still shouting at Clayton, still jabbing at him. Then, as she swayed back and forth, she slipped, staggered and fell to the floor. Her skirt, already short, rode up to her hips. A few men laughed bawdily, mockingly. A couple of others reached down, helped her up, led her away out of the room. As she went, her arms draped round a man who could barely walk straight himself, she was still shouting over her shoulder. ‘You’re a bastard, Clayton Silver! A cheating, deserting bastard who can’t even acknowledge his own flesh and blood!’

I tried to get closer to Clayton. ‘Is this right?’ I asked. ‘Is this right what that…woman…says?’

‘You don’t understand,’ he said wearily. ‘It was a long time ago.’

And I lost it. Right there, in the middle of the flickering fake flames, the entwined couples, the gawping drinkers. Surrounded by skeletons and witches, and prancing devils, the eerie glow of the lights and the dizziness of the drink, I couldn’t tell any more what was real or not. It was all a nightmare, an absolute nightmare.

‘A long time ago! When it happened doesn’t make any difference. All the things you’ve said about your own father. How you missed him. How he let you down. How you would never do that to your son! And you did! You did!’ I remembered his sad eyes across the table, still hurt at the way his father had deserted him. He had sworn he would never do that and I had believed him, trusted him.

‘Tilly,’ he said, putting his hand up to stop me. But I was unstoppable.

‘I thought you were different, Clayton Silver. I thought, I really thought…’ I almost sobbed at what I had let myself think. But I’d been wrong, hadn’t I? I should have stuck to my original opinion of Clayton Silver—as a self-obsessed show-off. Just like so many of them, with more money than sense and certainly no sense of responsibility, not even self-respect. Why had I let myself be misled? Just because he had a nice smile and liked to invest in paintings, I’d built up a picture of the sort of man I wanted him to be, a picture I’d painted myself and wanted to believe.

‘She’s right,’ I said. ‘You’re a cheating bastard and a pathetic specimen of a man.’ I was angry with him, and angry with myself, furious and disappointed and hurting so much that it had turned out this way. A small thought at the back of my brain reminded me that Jake had been right after all. That was the final straw.

I turned and fled.

There was a chorus of whistles and catcalls and I could hear Clayton somewhere shouting, ‘Tilly! For God’s sake.’ But it was too late. I was running out of the hell-like room, out of the oak and antlered hall, past the drunk and laughing footballers, past the high-class tarts, past the waiters with their foaming cups of bright green liquid and their dead men’s eyeballs and dead men’s fingers and the awful awfulness of it all, out into the night where the cold air hit me like a slap.

I stood there in the light from the entrance hall, wondering what to do next when I heard Becca’s voice, ‘Tilly? Is that you? Do you want to come with us?’ I could just see her, standing in the mist by the open door of a waiting car.

‘Oh yes, yes please!’ I said, almost crying as I ran towards the car. Desperate to get away from Clayton Silver, and even more desperate to escape from the seedy, squalid, sordid world he’d lured me into.

I huddled in the back of the car, wrapping Matty’s tiny jacket round me.

‘What happened in there?’ asked Becca, concerned. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine. Fine,’ I lied.

‘Where’s Clayton? Aren’t you…?’

‘No.’

I knew I was being rude but I just couldn’t begin to explain. Not yet.

‘Ah,’ said Becca and, to cover my silence, started prattling on about the party, the tarts, the people, the drugs. She was worrying about the girls that she’d seen disappearing with some of the footballers. ‘I hope they’re all right,’ she said. ‘They seemed so drunk. They could hardly get up the stairs. Maybe I should have—Hey, Sandro! What are you doing?’

The car had lurched heavily. Sandro was peering through the windscreen and I realised he could hardly see where we were going as the thick fog swirled round the car. It muffled us, like a huge damp blanket pressing down. I pushed further into my corner and tried to get Clayton out of my head. But my head was full of him and the strange menacing scenes from the party. Halloween parties are meant to be scary. But this had been different. A very real unpleasantness.

The car bumped again and seemed to slither across the road. Sandro swore and rubbed the windscreen in front of him, trying to see where he was going. It made no difference.

‘Where are we?’ I asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Becca, her voice anxious. ‘We shouldn’t be far off from the main road and the turning back up to Hartstone by now.’ The car bumped and lurched. There was a sickening scraping sound. ‘But it doesn’t even seem as if we’re on the road. Careful, Sandro! You must be going into the ditch. Get back on the road! We’ll stop, see exactly where we are. Unless you’ve taken the wrong turning.’ She peered through the thick fog that seemed to be pressing down on us ever more. ‘I can’t see where we are. There doesn’t seem to be an edge…I don’t think we’re on the road. You’ve gone the wrong way.’ Her voice was getting increasingly anxious. ‘We’re not even on the road, we’re on a track. Stop so we can see. Sandro! Stop! Sandro!’