Game Over Read online

  Naturally.

  ‘Always?’ I venture.

  Linda rolls her eyes. ‘Well, look at him.’ Fair point. ‘Women watch him in the street. Everyone fancies him, from Charlotte’s friends, to mine, to Sarah’s. Even Mum’s friends, come to think of it.’ Someone has thumped me very hard. Suddenly I’m sober. ‘It’s just the same with the women in London. I noticed when I visited him last summer hols. There was this constant stream of women dropping in on him. “Do you fancy a drink, Darren?” “Can you loosen this lid, Darren? – oh, you are so strong!” “Oh, a man who can cook – Darren you are very special.’”

  I don’t really like what Linda is telling me but her impressions are hilarious and I can’t help but giggle. Besides, she wouldn’t be telling me all this unless she was saying that I’m somehow different. Would she? Well, maybe she would. After all, she’s only seventeen. Perhaps this is her unsubtle way of telling me that she (and he) have seen it all before.

  ‘He is a good cook,’ I comment. ‘He made me cheese on toast last night and it was really special.’

  ‘Special!’ Linda is derisive and she’s within her rights, considering what I’ve just said. I catch her eye, which is clever of me, considering the speed at which she is rolling them.

  ‘Not you as well! I thought you’d be impervious!’

  ‘Me what?’ As soon as the words are out I regret them. She’s youthful; she’s likely to tell me.

  ‘You’ve fallen for him.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘Really, you haven’t fallen for him?’ asks Linda.

  ‘Really.’

  ‘What a shame, because I think he’s fallen for you.’

  Hallelujah, hallelujah.

  Linda picks up an apple and takes a hungry bite, shrugs and leaves me to my thoughts.

  Where is the cheese box? The fresh herbs? The avocado? The fridge is heaving but there is nothing I can eat. I’m faced with a dazzling selection from Rowntree and Cadbury. But fish fingers, Alphabite potato wedges and Heinz sauce were not what I had in mind for a romantic dinner for two. Where is the adult food?

  What am I saying? Romantic? I’ve never had romantic dinners before.

  Strategic, yes, but not romantic.

  Still, the end result is the same: sex. So it’s simply a case of semantics.

  I have to have sex with Darren. It’s obvious – why didn’t I think of it earlier? A surefire way to dispel any fanciful notions that I may be inadvertently harbouring. Having sex with Darren would bring him down to the same level as everyone else I’ve ever had sex with. He’s definitely not going on the show now, so there would be no concerns about a lack of professionalism if I slept with him. Nor would there be any possibility of seeing him again, which erases the possibility of tiresome consequential scenes. And as he is as sexy as hell, well, why shouldn’t I have a crack? I brush away my New Year’s resolution in the same way that every other year I sneak an extra fag or drink.

  Unaccountably, I’m nervous. I have expertly seduced the most dazzling and dull array of individuals. Darren must be like one of them. He must fit into one of my types and as soon as I identify the type, I can select the most appropriate strategy. I rule out anything obvious that I would try with my bimbo boys. I rule out anything dishonest that I would try with the less scrupulous dates I’ve bagged. I rule out anything that requires a fake identity – he knows me too well already. I look at my clothes. An ensemble of things I’ve borrowed from Shelly and Sarah, plus the one or two practical pieces that Issie insisted on stealing into my case. I look dreadful, so I rule out anything that is entirely dependent on my couture. I only have tonight, so I rule out anything that requires a long lead time. I had thought of cooking for him – such an act of selflessness, the candles and, if all else fails, the wine would have the desired effect. But having seen the contents of the fridge and also considering how notoriously difficult it is to cook in someone else’s kitchen, I rule that out too. Yet I’m leaving tomorrow. I really do have to catch an early train. Bale will go ballistic if I delay any longer, unnecessarily so in my opinion. Fi can handle the film crews until I get there.

  I look at my watch. It’s 9.15 p.m.

  It’s now or never.

  Never is not an option. I’ll have to wing it.

  I track Darren down in the front room; he’s listening to Radio 4. ‘Let’s go out. I assume there is a restaurant in Whitby that’s still open after nine?’ I challenge.

  ‘Plenty. Get your coat.’

  11

  Darren uses the term ‘restaurant’ much more generously than I would. You can, after all, buy food at a hot dog stand, but I doubt that A. A. Gill would repeat purchase. The ‘restaurant’ has about half a dozen assorted tables, which have between two and six variegated chairs scattered casually at each. There are tablecloths but they are plastic, red and white checked. There are flowers on each table but they too are plastic. There is music but it’s from a jukebox. However, the candles are real and the food is good, although the choice is limited – spag. bol. or nothing – so we have the spag. bol. Darren also orders a bottle of house red. Neither of us bothers to ask if there is a wine list. There are three other couples in the restaurant and one woman has brought her dog. Loose tits and tummies surround me. This is not the sort of place where I usually hang out. The only mercy is that I’m so far from home that no one will recognize me. I am amazed that Darren seems as comfortable here as he did in the Oxo tower. I couldn’t be uneasier. I’m terrified that the provincial drabness will rub off on me. That I’ll start to think wearing blue and green together is acceptable or that a good night out is getting trollied in a threadbare pub. Oh no, it’s happening already. I have to make my move quickly and get back to civilization before something irrevocable happens to me.

  The food and drink arrive. Darren is very quiet and my confounding lack of wit irritates me. I’m never stuck for words. Why now, when I want to be dazzling? I know the end result I’m looking for. Surely getting him to sleep with me can’t be that difficult? Right now it seems impossible. I sigh and gaze around the restaurant. I notice a couple of empty nesters asking the waiter to take their photo. I watch, amazed, as he doesn’t show the disdain or pity that must be filling his head. They grin and raise their glasses artificially. I’m just about to say something scathing when I notice that Darren is also looking at them and he’s smiling.

  Fondly.

  ‘Isn’t that marvellous?’ He nods at the ugly couple. He doesn’t seem to be aware of how dreadful they are, but instead starts going on about how great it is to see couples of that age happily married, still in love. I interrupt and point out that the couple are probably on a dirty weekend, and as Blackpool and Brighton were full, they’ve opted for Whitby. He smiles, ignores me and continues on about how he really believes in fidelity, friendship, familiarity.

  ‘And fucking,’ I add. Let’s cut to the chase.

  ‘Lovemaking is part of it. Of course, that’s important.’

  He means this junk and the strange thing is that, as he waxes lyrical, I almost begin to believe it, too. His optimism is infectious. It must be the wine. In the nick of time I recover.

  ‘Christ, you’re wet,’ I spit nastily. I’m not sure why I’m being nasty. Perhaps it’s habit.

  Darren refuses to take offence but smiles. ‘Maybe, but I prefer it to being a cynic.’

  ‘I’m not a cynic,’ I bite back. ‘I’m a—’

  ‘Realist,’ he finishes for me. ‘I take it that you don’t believe in everlasting love?’

  ‘Everlasting love!’ I snort my contempt. ‘There is no such thing. People use each other, wear each other out and then move on. You see it all the time. I bet you believe in the Loch Ness monster and Father Christmas, too,’ I snap. I look at Darren and his jaw is clenched. I’m not sure if he’s angry or upset. Turns out he’s both.

  ‘Why can’t you be civil? I’m doing you the favour here, remember. You invited yourself to my home. Has it been so awful for yo
u, being here with my family and me?’

  For a moment I’m floored. I sigh, sip my wine and answer honestly.

  ‘No, actually it hasn’t been awful at all. I’ve…’ I hesitate and then take a deep breath, ‘Really had a great time. You have a lovely family.’

  Darren relaxes immediately and beams at me. ‘I hoped you had but I couldn’t be sure. One minute you’re laughing and the next you’re—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, snarling, for want of a better word.’

  I sigh again but accept his observation. ‘I do believe people fall in love, or at least lust, or something. We are a very weak species, generally. But they don’t stay in love, again because we’re too weak. Someone always gets hurt. And in my view it’s better to avoid any messiness altogether.’

  ‘Aren’t you being a little bit extreme?’

  ‘I can’t see a middle lane. Just a tiny bit in love doesn’t seem to be an option.’

  ‘Now I do agree with you there.’ He pauses and then asks gently, ‘Do you remember the other night at the Oxo restaurant?’

  Was that just three nights ago? It seems a lifetime.

  ‘I asked you what really hurt you.’ I nod. ‘And then I realized it was none of my business and changed the subject.’ I nod again. ‘I wondered if you considered it my business yet? Because I’d really like to know what hurt you so badly that you shut down?’ He drops his eyes, not looking at me as he asks this question. He’s playing with the condiments.

  I’m amazed he cares and I want to explain it to him. I wonder if I can.

  ‘It’s just that I’m not prepared to accept the flotsam and jetsam of humanity.’ He looks up quizzically. The debris that passes for a relationship,’ I moan, weary with it all. ‘Look, it doesn’t exist. This exciting love thing that you are obviously searching for, it doesn’t exist. I know I’ve had sex with over fifty men and I’ve never made love.’

  I fall silent and wait for his reaction. He doesn’t look shocked or horrified by my confession. Which – irrationally – irritates me. I really want him to be disgusted with me. It would certainly be easier if he walked away now. Or I did. But I’m not sure I can. He’s waiting for a more thorough explanation.

  ‘In my experience, and as I’ve mentioned it’s wide and varied, people use each other and when they’ve finished using they leave.’ I pick up my knife and scrape the edge on the plastic tablecloth. I note the irony that a rather bad cover version of ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’ is playing in the background.

  ‘Who left?’

  The way his voice breaks between the words ‘who’ and ‘left’ means it is absolutely impossible for me to resist.

  ‘My father.’ Stupid angry tears well up from nowhere. I’m stunned. I’ve kept them at bay for twenty-six years. Why now? Darren sweeps the tear away with his thumb and for a nanosecond the palm of his hand is in contact with my chin. It blisters my skin and oddly soothes it in the same instance. I look at him and despite my years of experience, despite the fact that I’ve only known him for a few days and despite the fact that he is devastatingly gorgeous-looking – which should always be a warning sign – I want to trust this man. I think I do trust him. Which is dangerous. I have to get a grip.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry. Can we forget that?’ I push away my tears and his thumb. ‘It’s been a long week and what with you pulling out of the show, I’m under a lot of pressure.’ He looks hurt. Which is exactly what I want. I want him to feel guilty. I look around the restaurant, desperate for a change of subject. Unless Darren has very strong views on flock wallpaper or plastic flower arrangements, I’m pretty stuck. The evening’s gone AWOL. I had thought that by pudding (it’s packet trifle, so the term ‘pudding’ is perhaps philanthropic) we would be flirting and talking exclusively in doubles entendres. Instead I’m drenched in big stuff, emotions, feelings of betrayal and, more extraordinarily, feelings of trust and possibility. The stuff I arduously avoid.

  ‘You are lucky to have so many brothers and sisters,’ I comment. I admit this isn’t exactly a change of subject – we are still on the personal; but it’s his personal rather than mine. Which is a far safer zone. ‘All this hugging and kissing stuff you do to each other, I think I’m on an American chat show.’

  Darren smiles. ‘Aren’t all families the same?’ When I don’t answer he stops smiling and simply adds, ‘Well, it makes for interesting Christmases.’

  ‘Our house was always quiet. When he left he took-besides the regular income and the mock crocodile suitcases – the fire from the belly of our home. The rows stopped, for which I was grateful. My mother never cried or shouted again. But for that matter she never laughed or giggled either. She settled into an eerie calmness.’

  How had that happened? I’m on about me again. I look at my empty glass. Darren sees it as a hint and refills it. I don’t argue.

  ‘She cooked for me, washed and ironed my clothes, attended my parents’ evenings at school, ensured ends met. She was perfectly adequate in every way. But I’ve often thought that the day my father left, I lost my mother too. It seemed she decided that loving was too risky and settled into the sanitized safety of simply caring for me. Even looking back, it seems unfair. I’d never leave her.’ I wish I’d shut up. I’m boring myself, never mind Darren. I mean it’s hardly the most entertaining anecdote that I could have come up with, is it? Yet I can’t stop myself.

  ‘I’m not blaming her. I mean I understand where she’s coming from. But occasionally it would have been nice if she could have read a fairy tale and closed the book without sniping that the prince would have a new woman by the end of the year.’

  Darren smiles sadly and I force a wry grin back. ‘Side by side, we worked our way through Christmases and birthdays, holidays in Devon, O-levels, A-levels and finally university. Mum ironing and singing her anthems, ‘Does Anybody Miss Me?’ and ‘If You Go Away’. My formative years. She is a fine mum and I know she always did her best for me. But sometimes I wish that my father had left behind brothers and sisters to fill the rooms and disguise the sound of the hissing iron and the clanking radiators.’

  We both wait silently as the waiter lowers two cups of coffee on to our table. I’m sure it’s instant; it’s served in the type of teaset that you collect from garages and with a plastic carton of UHT milk. Still, the waiter presents it as though he’d grown the beans himself and he was serving it in a seventeenth-century silver service. I would be annoyed that he’s interrupted our conversation but I like people to be involved in their work.

  Darren asks, ‘Do you look like your mum or dad?’

  ‘I have two pictures of my father and, to my eternal disappointment, I am the image of that callous, deserting bastard. The pictures were taken in 1967 and 1975. The first is a wedding picture. I rescued the half my mother cut away.’

  Darren looks bemused. Of course, he comes from a family wrapped in bliss – how could he understand about wedding pictures being cut in half? I try to explain it for him. ‘Oh, don’t worry, it wasn’t a violent, passionate act. She was very calm about it. She wanted to keep the pictures of herself because she did look wonderful, so she carefully cut around her dress. I remember her using my round-ended scissors from a play weaving kit. She sat at the kitchen table for two days. She erased him from the wedding photos, the ones of my birth, all holiday snaps. Everything. It was a thorough, systematic extermination of all evidence that he ever existed. I stole the 1975 picture before she got to it.’ Darren doesn’t interrupt. I check he’s listening. He is. He’s put down his coffee cup. Deliberately I pick mine up. ‘That was the year he left us. It’s a picture of him helping to blow out the seven candles on my birthday cake.’

  How could he have left us, me – the very spit of him?

  ‘Do you miss him?’

  ‘Miss him? I don’t even remember him.’

  We both fall silent again. I determinedly chew the mints. Just to show that I’m not bothered. It’s difficult to swallow.

 
‘For years after he left I tried to imagine what his life was like. When I was in a traffic jam I wondered if he was in it too, or another similar one. When I listened to the radio I wondered if he listened to the same channel. But I didn’t know and I’ll never know because I know so little about him.’

  ‘You could trace him,’ suggests Darren gently.

  ‘I don’t want to. He’s made it clear where I fit into his life – i.e. I don’t. He never paid a penny in alimony or even sent a birthday card. He’s given me one thing in my life and I’m grateful for it. He’s taught me about loss. He’s saved me from ever having a broken heart.’ I try to grin. ‘I’ve turned my heart to steel. In fact, even my closest friends question if I have one at all.’ I’ve always believed this.

  ‘You have a heart to break, Cas, just like everyone else.’

  I’m indignant. There’s no call to be insulting. ‘I do not,’ I assert defiantly.

  ‘So what makes you think you are different? Your extraordinarily high consumption of sun-blush tomatoes? Because, besides that, you are pretty similar to everyone else.’

  ‘Am I?’ I ask, outraged.

  ‘A bit sexier maybe, a bit cleverer.’ He ambushes me with compliments. My outrage is melting and being replaced by pure delight. ‘You are just the same, Cas. You can fall in love just as easily.’

  Angry again, I retort, ‘No, I can’t. I’m not good on intimacy. I don’t like people. They are stupid and disappointing.’

  ‘Not everyone. You like me.’

  ‘You are so vain.’ And so right.

  ‘You want to cop out of the human race, then? You can’t just hide away, secure because you are not involved, not risking.’

  ‘I have. I am.’

  ‘Just because your father let your mother down it doesn’t mean you can’t find love.’