Kissing Toads (3 page)

Of course, it wasn't really a
party
: no canapés or paper hats and only a couple of rounds of free drinks to get the ball rolling. It was held in a neo-gothic bar in Soho called Nick's Cave with glittery spiders' webs on the walls and lurid green cocktails with ice cubes shaped like skulls. I arrived to find about half a dozen people waiting, all of whom assured me how much they'd miss me, even though two of them worked for another show and barely knew my name. A Serpent's Kiss was pressed into my hand: it looked and tasted like lavatory cleaner.
Cheap
lavatory cleaner. I sipped it nervously. There was no sign of Kyle.

Dick Ramsay turned up late, already drunk. For those of you who don't watch investigative TV, he's a former news anchorman with an OBE, a toupee and a booze problem, two of which were in evidence that night, one causing lopsided hair, the other lopsided vision. He bought a bottle of champagne, put his arm round me and told me how invaluable I'd been and how difficult I would be to replace. Then he told me about my replacement. ‘Smart girl – brunette – great legs – Cheryl? Cherie? Very bright, very clued-up, good with people.' So much for being invaluable. Cheryl/Cherie was relatively new in the line-up of assistants – I couldn't recall her right name even when I was sober – and had made an impression on the men by wearing very short skirts (favourable) and on the women by having perfect hair (unfavourable). Her personality, if any, had passed me by completely. I realised to my horror that I was becoming bitter and cynical, infected by the petty jealousies of media life, and decided on a wave of something like relief that the producer was right, Kyle was right, it was time I got out. I polished off the Serpent's Kiss with the resolute air of Socrates swigging hemlock and moved on to champagne.

At least, I reflected, Cheryl/Cherie had the decency not to come that evening. Then I saw her, lurking in a corner, distinguishable by her outthrust legs and the scantiness of her dress which, at the beginning of December, must constitute a health hazard – to others if not to her. Glancing round, I saw various familiar faces gathering in the green-tinted gloom of the Cave. Someone placed another cocktail at my elbow. In the poor light, its colour appeared suspiciously close to purple. A Screaming Mandrake, I was informed. I drank it down. What the hell. By way of variety, it tasted like oven cleaner.

Nit-pickers might point out that it's unlikely I've ever drunk either oven or lavatory cleaner. Not knowingly, anyway. That is mere quibbling. Anyone who has ever cleaned their loo – or failed to clean their oven – knows what I mean. Combine the smell, the colour, the location, the germ-zapping, grease-dissolving acidity, add alcohol, and
voilà
! The killer cocktail. I could feel it strip my stomach lining while my friendly bacteria expired in droves.

I'd finished the Screaming Mandrake and was partway down an aptly-named Goblet of Fire when Kyle arrived. There was a fleeting, treacherous second when I was pleased to see him, when I thought he might have come to say something – anything – that might turn the misery of my situation inside out. I was drunk, and hope, as always, triumphed over experience. Then I saw the girl trailing from his left hand – the girl I'd last seen dressed only in a shirt – now wearing an ensemble of ripped frills and tousled hair which merely served to enhance her general flawlessness. My stomach plunged so violently I actually felt sick. I was vaguely aware of eyes swivelling in my direction, and suddenly my former colleagues seemed like a ravening mob, avid for my humiliation. Then someone squeezed my arm – Dick Ramsay, of all people, surveying me with bleary kindness, murmuring something supportive. I didn't catch the words, but it didn't matter; I got the meaning. He might be an old soak who would make a pass at anyone remotely female and who had slagged off three wives, five leading politicians, and about twenty close friends in his memoirs, but, I thought confusedly, he was a good person
underneath
. Tears started, but I blinked them back. It occurred to me I was even drunker than Dick.

Across the room Kyle caught my eye and gave me a cheery wave. Yuk. I forced a smile; I don't know why. I suppose because you do in these circumstances; you have to maintain a facade of politeness and amiability for pride's sake, for the benefit of the audience. I've never been much good at pride, but I made the effort.

In due course Kyle came over and I was formally introduced to Tatyana, Taty for short, presumably to match the frills. She gave me a distant, slightly wary greeting which told me everything I needed to know about how Kyle had explained my initial reaction. It had been a casual affair, I'd taken it too seriously: the bunny-boiler syndrome. A film that was intended to discourage male infidelity actually provided them with a useful label for any ex angry at her maltreatment. Taty obviously thought of me as a potential stalker and tried to edge away without letting go of Kyle's hand – I could see the strain in their mutual grip. But Kyle was determined to show everyone that he was cool, I was cool, we were both totally cool about everything, and any rumours of his bad behaviour had been grossly exaggerated.

I played along. For pride's sake. Or merely to avoid embarrassment. I retained just enough sobriety for that.

‘We've had some good times, haven't we?' Kyle was saying (cheerily). ‘Remember Kosovo, when that sniper shot at us?' In fact the target had been at least two hundred yards away, and the sniper in question had missed, but who was I to spoil the Muldoon legend? He continued with more improbable reminiscences before expanding them to include Dick, recalling an awards ceremony when Kyle was a rookie and the two of them had got smashed with Sir Robin Day. It was a story I'd heard often, but now, apparently, I'd been added to the cast list, even though the incident had happened well before the start of my TV career. But I didn't argue. I was concentrating on staying sane.

At some stage Kyle, at his most lavish, ordered a round of drinks (it was a gesture he tended to avoid unless he could put it on expenses), and I found myself confronted with the Cave's pièce de résistance, a Slayer Special – about five kinds of alcohol with a range of additives, producing a garish rainbow of green shading through orange to scarlet and crimson. I sucked on the straw as if it were a milkshake. Kyle was still being cheery while Dick's clasp on my arm had progressed from comforting to alarmingly affectionate. Then the producer clapped for silence, someone switched off the music, and I realised to my horror that he was going to make a speech.

I tried to blend into the sofa cushions while he launched into a eulogy that wouldn't have sounded out of place at my funeral – what a great person I was, a terrific team player, pouring oil on the troubled waters of high-stress TV reportage, etc. etc. At the end everyone clapped and, at Kyle's instigation, sang ‘For She's a Jolly Good Fellow'. I ached to drown him in his own hypocrisy. Then came the leaving present. Automatically, I pulled off the wrapping paper. It was a set of six cut-crystal wine glasses, expensive-looking and very beautiful – if you like cut-crystal. (I don't.) But I knew where I'd seen them before. Kyle had picked them up on the cheap during an earlier trip to Eastern Europe as a wedding present for a couple who'd split up a week before the ceremony. The glassware had been hanging around his flat for months – did he think I wouldn't remember?

I gulped down my milkshake, battered by alternate waves of emotion and inebriation. The room was spinning slightly, in slow motion, and the music was back on, hammering at walls, ceiling, eardrums. Kyle leaned over to whisper to Taty (or possibly, in view of the noise level, to shout in her ear). She pulled his face towards her and kissed him, a tongue job, as blatantly hurtful to me as a spit in the eye. They got up to leave. She dived towards the Ladies, finally releasing his hand in the process. He bent over and, lips still wet from hers, began to kiss me too. My mouth fell open in shock – there was tongue contact – he pulled back, grinning, pleased with himself, as if the kiss had been an act of real generosity, a kindness to the girl he had just dumped.

My pride, such as it was, went by the board. I don't remember picking up the box of cut-crystal, only the crunch of breaking glass as it hit the floor at – and partly on – Kyle's feet. Toes must have been crushed; I saw his face tighten in sudden pain. The music should've stopped – there should've been a frozen silence, but of course there wasn't. I was hazily conscious of people staring, uncertain what had happened. I stumbled to the door with Dick Ramsay and the producer hurrying in my wake.

Outside, I threw up on the pavement, in several colours of the rainbow.

  

When Roo didn't phone the morning after her leaving party, I knew something awful had happened. I'd been expecting her call from ten a.m., perhaps even nine-thirty, since Roo does the early-rising thing, and when I hadn't heard by midday, and all I could get was her answering machine, I had this terrific sense of foreboding. Or maybe I mean afterboding, since whatever it was must've happened already. Some people say I'm insensitive, but actually I'm very telepathic with my friends, except, of course, when they bore me.

I'd had the bodings about Roo, on and off, from the moment she got mixed up with Kyle Muldoon. Kyle is the kind of undesirable guy whom too many women consider madly desirable: sweaty armpits, scruffy clothes, body hair, lots of male charismo and machisma and the attitude problem of a gorilla with an attitude problem. He was always turning up late for dates or not at all, embarrassing her in front of her friends, taking her for granted, shagging around on the side (I couldn't prove that but I just
knew
, on account of being telepathic). I had a guy like that once, when I was a teenager – only not quite so sweaty and with less body hair, because, well, I had Taste, even as a teenager – but once was more than enough. You make a mistake, you learn, you move on, but Roo didn't learn, or
wouldn't
learn – she got hooked on her mistakes, going for the same type over and over again. With Kyle, she said it was love. ‘No it isn't,' I said. ‘It's just lust that's got out of hand.' But she only smiled and shook her head, and after that I kept the bodings to myself. Mostly, anyway.

When you care about someone, like your best friend, you'd do anything to stop them being hurt, but if they're as obstinate as Roo, and set on a suicide course, there's nothing you
can
do. Except be there. Roo's a very gentle person but she has this stubborn streak, especially when it comes to the wrong men. There was Micky Treherne when she was at university, and Lee Harrison at school, though fortunately neither of them lasted long. I'd had hopes of Robert Clifton. She went out with him for over a year, and he was just getting ready to propose when she finished it.

‘Why?' I said – a cry from the heart. ‘He's well off, he's good-looking –' well, quite – ‘and he adores you.
Why?
'

‘It doesn't work for me in bed.'

‘Use your imagination!'

‘I can't.'

And that was that. Roo's an imaginative person in some ways, honestly, but when it came to sex, she couldn't replace Robert with, say, a swarthy pirate with a cutlass behind each ear, or Tarzan in a bulging loincloth, or a whole queue of barbarian raiders in ripped sheepskin and codpieces with metal studs. In bed, she was stuck with reality. How sad is
that
?

Anyway, I was all set to Be There the morning after Roo's leaving party, but she wasn't calling, she wasn't answering, and I didn't like it at all. When I'd done my face, fixed my hair, changed my mind about my outfit – you never know when you're going to run into the paparazzi – I left the house, grabbed a taxi and raced round to her place. I'd rung three times before she opened the door, looking worse than awful.

‘My God,' she said carefully, as if speaking too loud or moving too fast might cause the top of her head to fall off. ‘Come in. My God.'

‘You look worse than awful,' I said.

Roo doesn't suit hangovers. She's medium height and medium slim, with the kind of fair skin that bruises easily when nothing's happened to bruise it, and soft dark hair that goes feathery at the ends. She's pretty in an old-fashioned way that would appeal to men's protective instincts if they still had any. That day, there were smudges under her eyes from exhaustion and residual mascara, her complexion was raw oyster and her hair looked as if she'd been sick in it. (She had.) Even her specs were bleary. I sat her down, tried to work out the coffee machine, gave up and made instant. While she drank it, Roo told me about the previous evening.

‘Dick Ramsay brought me home,' she said. ‘He kissed me, even though I must have tasted of sick, and I remember I straightened his toupee, and told him he was a really wonderful human being – God, I was drunk – and he said we must do this again some time, only probably not the part where I vomit. Then he left.'

‘Sure? I mean . . . he didn't, like,
stay
 . . . ?'

‘Of course not!' Indignation revived her.

‘Well, you think he's a wonderful human being, and you're on the rebound, and he's famous,' I pointed out.

‘I
don't
think he's a wonderful human being, I just
said
I thought he was a wonderful human being. And I'm not going to rebound on to anyone yet, if ever. And—'

‘I know. You don't care about him being famous.' I'm resigned to Roo's impracticality by now. Almost.

‘I'm single,' Roo went on dejectedly. ‘It isn't bad to be single. I'm going to be single and like it.'

‘You're
always
single,' I said. ‘You're so single, you're even single when you're attached. Look at you and Kyle. You never did couple things. He was never bloody there.'