Best Man Read online

  And even worse is when they try and guess, which is what Samantha attempts to do before I’ve had a chance to answer her.

  ‘Don’t tell me . . .’

  ‘No, honestly, it—’

  ‘Leo, yes?’

  I sigh, and lie. ‘Yes, how did you know?’ I say, feigning curiosity. After all, she does look good in that dress.

  ‘Oh, it’s just a knack I have,’ replies Samantha, looking immensely pleased with herself.

  I try to change the subject rapidly, but it’s something she wants to hold forth on, and after a further half an hour my neck is aching with the effort of nodding every few moments as she comes out with yet another ‘fascinating’ astrological observation. It’s time to take stock of the evening, and I can tell that given the eye contact, body language and more importantly the amount of alcohol she’s consumed, my chances of sex later are pretty high. But even though her earlier feats of flexibility are still fresh in my mind, I decide it’s just not worth the effort of trawling through the rest of the date.

  By the time she gets on to Feng Shui, even a brief fantasy involving her in various positions on my furniture fails to rescue the evening for me. With a clarity of foresight that Russell Grant would be proud of, I can suddenly see my future, and Samantha’s not in it. I decide to invoke my escape clause, and excuse myself to go to the toilet where, from the sanctuary of the cubicle, I call Mark on my mobile asking him to phone me back in five minutes.

  Back at the table, and after a further ten minutes on how Samantha had her fortune told recently, during which I’m cursing Mark, who’s probably looking at his watch and sniggering, my phone finally rings. I apologize along the lines of Oh sorry, I should have turned it off, but I tell her it’s work, it might be important et cetera (fortunately, we haven’t had time or the opportunity to talk about what I do). Answering the call, I feign growing shock as I repeat Oh really, oh no, I’ll be right there, and all the while Mark is on the other end of the phone going You cheeky git, I keep saving you like this, what’s she like anyway – nice tits? Ow! I’m guessing Julia has just thumped him, and I hear her call him a sexist bastard as I end the call.

  I switch the phone off and turn to Samantha, a look of annoyance on my face as I explain. ‘The office alarm is going off. They can’t get hold of my business partner so I have to go and meet the police there. I’m really sorry,’ I say, calling the barman over so I can settle the bill.

  Her face drops. ‘Oh, that’s okay,’ she says. ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

  Oops. I feel a little guilty now. ‘No, thanks. It might take a while. I’ll get you a cab.’ And at least I do one decent thing, in a sea of indecent things, as I walk her outside, flag down a taxi and pay the driver to take her home. As we kiss goodbye, she presses a scrap of paper with her number scrawled on it into my hand.

  ‘Call me?’ she says, more of an enquiry than a request.

  I smile and nod, but as the taxi pulls away I make a mental note not to go to the gym on a Friday evening for a while. Callous? Maybe. But what was the alternative? Lead her on just to sleep with her, then never call her again? Or waste another couple of hours just to be honest over coffee and tell her? And tell her what? That I don’t want to see her again because she tried to guess my star sign? Would she have believed that? Would anybody? Come to think of it, do I?

  I think about getting a taxi myself, but walk instead, as tonight’s one of those warm, late-spring evenings when the Chelsea streets have a nice buzz, the cafés and bars just beginning to spill their exuberant clientele out on to the pavements. As I stroll back along the King’s Road, feeling slightly but pleasantly drunk, I find myself noticing how like me these people all are: thirty-something, probably with good jobs, nice houses, and, by the look of them, the same objective in life: having a good time. But as I look closer, I’m suddenly struck by a sobering realization. They’re all couples.

  Chapter 4

  Saturday night finds me driving towards Ealing, where Mark and Julia are having a party at their house. It’s been planned for weeks, but has turned into an impromptu engagement bash given yesterday’s developments. I’ve arranged to get there early, ostensibly to give Mark a hand but actually because, with only six weeks to go until the wedding, I’ve realized that it’s me who’ll be needing help if I’m going to do anything about Nick and Sandra.

  I drive one of those cars that give you more bang for your buck, as our American cousins say. You know the type: those normal saloons with huge turbocharged engines, oversized spoilers, and insurance premiums to match. It’s Japanese, a Subaru Impreza, or ‘Suburban Impresser’, as Nick sneeringly calls it, and I love it. It’s not as ostentatious as the Ferrari, but give me a twisting country road and most other cars, including Nick’s, become little more than a distant dot in the rear-view mirror.

  Although it’s not the best looking of vehicles, I do find it attracts a lot of attention, especially from those tall grey cameras mounted by the side of the road. And even though London’s current congestion levels mean that I can rarely get it out of second gear around town, at least it doesn’t constantly break down, unlike a certain piece of Italian engineering.

  Blipping the accelerator, I edge my way along the Fulham Road, cursing the heavy Saturday evening traffic. The crawl up past Earl’s Court takes an age, and I’m starting to worry that I haven’t left enough time for my pre-party pow-wow, but once I get past Tesco the road begins to clear, so I turn the stereo up and put my foot down.

  Accelerating off the Hammersmith flyover, I can feel my anticipation building for the coming evening. The conversation with Mark aside, I’m looking forward to seeing the other guests, a mixture of old friends and colleagues from years gone by, many of whom I haven’t seen since Mark and Julia’s wedding. Plus, Mark has taken the fantastic step of banning children from the event, which means young India, my goddaughter, has been packed off to her grandparents for the night, and the other guests, by now mostly married couples with kids of their own, have been ordered to get babysitters in. I’m therefore hoping for a throwback to the famous parties of old, where the last ones standing would usually be Nick, Mark and me, watching the sun rise through the beginnings of our hangovers.

  Mark’s house is one of those large Victorian red-brick places just off Ealing Common that would be described, in a good way, as a ‘pile’, bought just before Ealing became fashionable. Pulling into the driveway, I’m slightly dismayed to see that there are no other cars there, and am just about to dial Mark’s mobile when I see him arrive, piloting his ageing Renault people carrier expertly through the narrow gate and parking an inch away from the Impresser’s back bumper. His stereo is blaring heavy rock music through speakers normally used to the sedate tones of Radio Four, and he sits there grinning at me as the car shakes impressively with the sound. I shout at him to turn it down but he can’t hear me so I walk round and open his door, wincing slightly at the volume.

  ‘Hello, mate,’ he says, switching off the engine, which miraculously kills the music too. ‘Did you say something?’

  ‘Just “turn it down”. I’m surprised you’re not deaf.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I said, I’m . . . oh, ha ha! Very funny. What are you doing with such a flashy stereo in such a middle-aged man’s car anyway?’

  ‘Drowns out the wife and child shouting at me.’ He grins. ‘In Espace, no one can hear you scream.’ This is obviously a joke he’s used before and thinks is extremely funny, judging by his amused expression.

  I notice that Mark is sporting a black eye. ‘Crikey, mate. Julia’s got some left hook,’ I say, but he informs me it’s actually the result of a game of fetch with Max, his Labrador, the previous day.

  ‘They’ve got solid skulls, you know,’ he says, gingerly fingering his eye socket.

  Unloading the crates of beer and boxes of wine from the back of his car we stagger with them through the house, which I’m pleased to see for once doesn’t have the entire stock of T
oys [Я] Us strewn over the carpet. I follow Mark into the conservatory, where he’s set up one of those large plastic bins full of ice, into which I unload one of the crates, pausing only to open a couple of bottles, one of which I pass to him.

  I’m just about to launch into my concerns regarding Nick when a freshly scrubbed Julia appears, her short, spiky hair still wet from the shower. She’s looking radiant, I tell her, as she kisses me hello, simultaneously pinching both my backside and my beer.

  ‘Should you be drinking in your condition?’ I ask her, half seriously.

  ‘My condition?’ she says, patting her stomach, which isn’t yet showing any sign of their impending arrival. ‘It’s not an illness, you know,’ she adds, taking a huge swig from my bottle.

  As Julia busies herself in the kitchen, Mark and I pretend to be organizing the music, but in reality just use this as an excuse to drink a couple more beers out in the conservatory. Conscious that the clock is ticking, I prepare my opening gambit.

  ‘So,’ I begin. ‘Nick’s getting married, then . . .’ I leave the sentence hanging, to see what he has to say.

  ‘Yeah,’ nods Mark, unfortunately following it with ‘and speak of the devil’, as we hear the unmistakable sound of the Ferrari arriving with a roar and a spray of gravel. As Nick and Sandra breeze in through the front door, Mark breaks into a grin and heads off to join in the communal backslapping. Hiding my disappointment at a missed opportunity, I concentrate on cramming the last few beer bottles into the cooler, but what happens next makes me shudder, and it’s nothing to do with the tub full of ice in front of me.

  ‘Aren’t you going to congratulate me, Adam?’

  I look over my shoulder to see Sandra standing in the doorway, proudly sporting an engagement ring with a diamond big enough to be seen from space. I take a deep breath, fix a smile and turn round.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I say, walking over towards her. ‘Congratulations.’

  As I lean in to give her a peck on the cheek, Sandra turns her face quickly towards mine, and kisses me full on the lips. I pull away awkwardly, staring at her in disbelief, just as Nick comes bounding into the room like an eager puppy, Mark and Julia following in his wake.

  ‘Hello, mate,’ he says, putting his arm round Sandra and giving her a squeeze. ‘Mine’s a cold one.’

  After what’s just happened, it crosses my mind to contradict him, but then I notice that he’s nodding towards the cooler. Still a little stunned, I wordlessly pass him a beer, then have to hide a smile as he tries unsuccessfully to twist the cap off. It’s not that kind of bottle.

  As Mark heads off to answer the front door, Julia produces her new digital camera and ushers the three of us together for a photograph, the flash glinting brightly off the ring on Sandra’s left hand.

  ‘Look at that,’ says Julia, examining the screen on the back of the camera. ‘All this modern technology and I still manage to cut Nick’s head off.’

  ‘Probably best,’ shouts Mark from the hallway, as he lets some other guests in. ‘Don’t want to ruin a perfectly good photo.’

  ‘Oh well,’ says Sandra, taking the camera from Julia and squinting at the display. ‘At least it’s a nice one of you and me, Adam.’

  I grunt something intelligible in reply.

  As we make our way through to the front room, Sandra hangs back to wait for me. ‘Shame I didn’t spot you first, eh?’ she adds, in a whisper, before heading off to join Nick.

  By the time the party is in full swing, there must be fifty people milling about in the house; only Pritchard and Rudy haven’t been able to make it this evening, due to some last-minute staffing issues at Bar Rosa. As usual, Nick is holding court and bragging about his Ferrari, which he’s made sure he’s parked right outside the front door so no one can miss it, making the assembled estate-car- and people-carrier-driving dads insanely jealous. Sandra stands next to him, clutching his arm and showing her ring off to the throng of admiring wives and girlfriends.

  I take up a position close to the beer cooler, in order to minimize bottle-empty time, and watch the goings-on around me with interest, particularly because also at the party is my friend Mike and his new fiancée, Mel. Mike and Mel are always very nervous of me at occasions like this, because they know that I know that they met through an Internet dating service and for some reason they’re embarrassed about this.

  I’ve promised them that their secret is safe with me, but of course I’ve told Nick, which has the same effect as taking out an ad in the papers, so whilst they think the three of us have a secret from everyone else, in actual fact everyone else knows, but keeps this a secret from the two of them.

  Apparently this Internet dating is a hugely popular option for us over-thirties, and single women in particular, either those who still haven’t found Mr Right, those just looking for Mr Bit-of-all-right, or those newly divorced who find themselves back on the market unexpectedly. The advantage, Mike explained, was that you can get to a very intimate stage very quickly once you’ve set your sights on a prospective partner, via the innocent medium of ‘e-chat’, building up a profile of your intended through their keyboard dexterity without even having to go to the trouble of meeting them. Some people even go to the extent of buying a little web cam once they’ve agreed to go forward, he informed me, so they can clap eyes on the e-hunk or e-babe of their dreams.

  Mike admitted that this had helped him avoid several awkward dates, because his particular aversion, women of, shall we say, larger stature, was quite easy to spot once the albeit low-resolution pictures were beamed through.

  The amazing thing, it seemed to me, was that, given the fact that the whole process is accelerated, it means that once you’ve actually met the partner with whom you’ve been corresponding, you’re almost guaranteed to sleep with them on the first date. You may even have had email sex with them already, although apparently having to use one hand to type doesn’t give the same immediacy of relief as phone sex. Then, if the actual date proves to be unsuccessful, either due to bad sex or bad breath, you simply break off all future computer contact and your date disappears off into cyberspace again.

  So I of course kept badgering Mike as to how he was getting on, and when he told me he’d met Mel (who became known as Melanie.com to the rest of us) and that things were looking serious, no one was surprised when they announced their engagement some weeks later. The most amusing thing at gatherings like this was to watch them squirm when someone asked them how they met – you’d have thought they would have got that story straight first, and made up something more plausible than the standard ‘through work’ answer that Mel always goes with. Particularly because Mike’s a prison officer.

  But for me this sort of approach just takes a little of the romance out of it. Surely the tradition of courtship can’t be the same if you’re doing it through a modem? And the sad fact is, no matter how much time you seem to spend getting to know someone through the false intimacies of email, and how much you get to like their personality and sense of humour, it still all comes down to whether you fancy them when you eventually put a face to the fingers, and weeks of carefully typed flirting can be overshadowed by one fat arse.

  I go through the usual routine of circulating, chatting, drinking and having a pleasant time, particularly as I manage to avoid Sandra for the rest of the evening. Come ten o’clock I’ve lined up a selection of funky CDs and I’m starting to crank the volume up slowly in the hope that some brave soul will start the dancing. What happens, though, is the exact opposite, as the house starts to empty. I’m sure it’s not as a result of my musical tastes, and when I challenge the various couples as to why they’re leaving early it seems that they really must get home to relieve the babysitter.

  By midnight, even the (so far, but watch this space) childless Mike and Mel have left. Nick and Sandra are in deep conversation with Mark, who’s ominously holding his wedding photo album, and Julia is starting to clear up the plates and glasses from around the house. I put down my b
eer in disgust and head off in search of something stronger to drink, and am in the kitchen trying to find where Mark’s hidden his scotch when Julia corners me. She’s slightly tipsy, not having drunk much since she got pregnant, I guess, and pins me up against the fridge freezer, knocking off a couple of India’s crayonings – drawings being too kind a description – in the process.

  ‘Not pulled this evening, Adam? Losing your touch?’ I can smell the beer on her breath, mainly because her face is only a few inches away from mine.

  I manoeuvre away from her to lean against the cooker. ‘One of the advantages of being unattached is that you can choose whether you want company or not, and tonight the only thing I’m looking for is your tight-git-of-a-husband’s whisky. Besides, I didn’t notice that you’d invited any other single people.’

  ‘That’s because everyone we know nowadays is married. Or getting married,’ she says, putting her hand on my cheek, ‘except for poor old you.’

  I shrug her hand off. ‘And that’s a bad thing, is it?’

  ‘Now now, Adam! Don’t be so touchy,’ she says, resting her hand on my arm, although she’s the one being too touchy.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, pulling away from her again. ‘I’m just a little stunned about Nick.’

  ‘Yes,’ beams Julia, as she dumps a load of plates into the sink. ‘Good news, don’t you think?’

  I’m trying to think of a more tactful answer than a simple no as Julia pulls on a pair of rubber gloves and starts to wash up, but I can’t. ‘Well, no, actually.’

  Julia fixes me with a puzzled expression. ‘Why ever not?’

  I’m not sure that I want to get into this now, particularly not with Nick and Sandra in the next room. ‘I just think he might be rushing into it a bit.’

  Julia regards me quizzically for a moment. ‘Are you sure that’s all it is?’

  ‘What do you mean?’