Lo and behold and dressed as, for some reason, a McDonalds employee, David came tripping into the party. Just before I caught sight of him Katy tried to prepare me. “He’s very nervous about meeting you, Wendy.”
“Why? I’m not…”
“Because you already know him.”
I stared at her, at her glaring white eyes in all that green paint.
“It’s David Moore. Aunt Anne said that…”
“What’s he doing here? What are you doing with him?”
“Nothing yet. He’s managing the store I’m working at, and…”
Then, coming through the crush of people, was David.
“This is kind of embarrassing for me, Wendy,” he said.
Even in a stripy apron and a baseball hat he looked wonderful.
“Fuck you!” Suddenly everyone was listening. “What are you planning to do, David? Sleep with everyone in my family?”
“Wendy,” hissed Katy.
“I don’t care. He’s outrageous.”
“It’s not like that,” he mumbled.
“Like shite it’s not. You’ve been manoeuvred into this, you dope. Who’s put you up to this?”
David shook his head. “No one, Wendy. I just met Katy recently. Coincidentally.”
“She’s a child!”
Katy was furious now. “You can be such a bloody old puritan, Wendy.”
“No, I can’t!”
“Who was it wouldn’t let me read Aunty Mandy’s book when it came out?”
I turned on my heel and went looking for Aunty Anne and Serena.
I hunted through every floor of Serena’s house, and every room was brimming with her arty friends, most of whom I didn’t know. The bathroom had been turned into Cleopatra’s, a sign on the door said so, and I stormed into find all these men standing around another man, who lay in an enamel bath filled with milk.
“I’m looking for Serena,” I said, trying not to notice they all had their knobs hanging out.
“She’s not here,” said the man in the bath. I’m teling you, Michael—you piss on me and you’ll curdle the milk. I’ll never speak to you again.”
I left them to it.
I wished Joshua was there. When we first got the invitation he’d bolted upright and said he couldn’t make it.
“It’s your daughter’s sixteenth birthday party!” I couldn’t believe him, but this was the way he was going. Forgetting things and sloping off. Danger signs.
“It’s not her actual birthday,” he said crossly.
“No—but it’s the day Serena—your brilliant mate Serena—has organised her bash. You’ve got to be there.”
“I can’t.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Business.”
Usually I would leave it at that. His funny business had caused ructions before. There was meant to be a truce now, because last time we argued, he said his business connections, all his investments and the money they brought, were all that gave him a sense of self-respect. I shut up and listened to him. For the sake of his own bruised self respect in these days of being kept by his heiress wife, I listened and maybe I shouldn’t have. It was all too easy for him to make me feel guilty for supporting us. I had to let him go away from time to time, to fix his shady connections.
“Katy’s going to be disappointed.”
“I’ll take her out to dinner for her actual day. Just me and her.”
“What about me?”
“Do you want to come?” he asked, looking blank.
Oh, I’ve made it sound as though we were in one of those rough patches just then. Bits of it were, in fact, rough as a bear’s arse, but it wasn’t all like that. We were lasting, we were. But he was forgetting things and sloping off.
And then Mandy’s new book appeared, with a perfunctory note and a ‘For Wendy’ in a plain white wrapper and, it turned out, it was all about a marriage and a woman whose husband starts forgetting things and sloping off.
Aunty Anne and Serena were sitting on the top stairs at the very top of the house. Serena was dangling the woollen strands she had taped on her homemade cat o’ nine tails and was listening to Aunty Anne going on.
“Hey, Wendy. I was telling Serena about the fortune I made out of all those horse ornaments that belonged to your mother. We dined out on that, remember? Horses everywhere, she had.”
I said, “Tell me you didn’t set it up.”
“Here it comes,” said Serena.
“Katy with David. Tell me you didn’t set that up.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you fucking smirk,” I shouted at Serena. “I’m sick of you poking your beak in.”
“No, you look here,” said Aunty Anne.
“Yes?”
“I got Katy that job. I set it up. And yes, I did call on David because I knew he was here.” She looked at me levelly out of eyes which were now quite slanted and narrow. “There’s nothing wrong with calling in old favours.”
“What favours did you ever do him?”
“Leave them alone, Wendy,” said Aunty Anne. “If you interfere with Katy’s life, she’ll hate you forever.”
I glared at them.
Aunty Anne went on. “Anyway, what does it matter to you? Why are you so bothered about David?”
Serena shoved her oar in then. “Everything’s all right between you and Josh, isn’t it?”
“Oh, you’d love that, wouldn’t you? To get your teeth into Josh after all this time.”
“Go home, Wendy,” said Serena. “If you can’t get into the party mood, you should never have come out tonight.”
“Right,” I said. “I’m fucking going.” Then I said, “And you do know, don’t you, that you’ve got four hairy blokes in leather harnesses getting into your bath and pissing on each other?”
Serena barked with laughter. “Good!”
So I ended up over the road at Mandy’s flat, with her and her mate, the production assistant to the new, midget James Bond. While she cooked up her carrot soup, Mandy and me sat on her bare mattress on the floor.
“I’m up at five tomorrow to go to Pinewood!” said the friend dismally. Then she found us a photo of the new James Bond.
“She looks like a proper bull dyke,’ said Mandy. “Fantastic.” Then she started on about her
