Kissing Toads (8 page)

‘What's the matter?' she demanded as I dragged her away. ‘She seems very nice.'

‘She isn't
nice
,' I explained. ‘She's chatting you up. Don't you read the tabloids?'

But of course Roo didn't.

For Christmas, we usually go home. Home as in Little Pygford, which I still think of as ‘home' on a subconscious level, even though home is really me and Alex. Probably one of those Freudian things which I can never figure out. Geoff Harker used to come until he remarried, and Pan's always there, and Mummy cooks, and Pan and I argue, and it all follows a safe familiar routine. But this year I was going to the Russos – Alex's father, his current wife, assorted siblings – in the big country house where I had no intention of getting married. I didn't like leaving Roo, though she said she would be all right. After intensive doses of VivaTV, all she really wanted to do (she said) was sleep. I spent the holiday getting cosy with Alex's family, discussing wedding plans, and deciding
not
to have his two nieces as bridesmaids, since they were very badly behaved and clearly had no idea what a privilege it would be to dress up like flower fairies and feature in a leading magazine. The older one used my make-up when my back was turned and I found the younger peacocking round in my shoes and my favourite evening scarf, which is handmade cobwebby lace and much too delicate to be touched by children. I pointed out to their mother that they were aspiring vandals in need of discipline, but she just said they were such darlings, they loved dressing up like grown-ups, just got a wee bit unmanageable when the nanny wasn't around. Some parents have
no
sense of responsibility. That lace scarf would have been frightfully expensive if I'd had to pay for it.

When I have children I intend to make sure their nanny teaches them to behave perfectly
all the time
, not simply when they're under her eye.

Among other things the two hooligans got a puppy for Christmas, a tiny bundle of white fluff with round dark eyes and black button nose – utterly adorable, but prone to pee and poo all over the place. Their father said the girls would have to train it themselves, which didn't augur well for the future of their carpets. Alex was very taken with it. ‘It's a bichon frisee,' he told me. ‘Pure pedigree: its great-grandfather (or great-great) won Crufts.' Personally, I would have given them a mongrel with plenty of Rottweiler in the hope that it would grow up and eat them.

We had dogs when I was a child, but they were Labs and retrievers who knew to poo in the fields when out for walks or in the garden where Mummy and the assistant gardener could clear it up. I loved them, but that was in the country. Dogs in the city require a lot of effort (Alex's sister and the brats live in Bayswater). And small dogs, though cute and attractive accessories, have to be walked and trained just like big ones.

In January, we went to stay with friends who have a ski lodge in Zermatt. I don't ski much – I'm not supposed to risk injury: no TV presenter looks good on crutches – but the weather was fabulous and I sunbathed at the bottom of the piste, moisturised and UV-screened against wrinkles and skin cancer. Alex skis well, having learned when he was in nappies, and looks good in the gear. I had some great new kit too, though I didn't intend to spoil it with overuse – tight Lycra pants and padded jacket, cream with pink ribbing. There were paparazzi around and the pictures of us both looked almost too gorgeous to be true. Snow-sports suit Alex: they add a flush to his golden skin and rumple his black hair. (I won't let him wear those woolly hats that make everyone look like a nerd.) Skiing puts him in a good mood, though he was sulking a bit about my trip to Scotland.

‘You're jealous,' I said, ‘because I'm going to be hanging out with the sexiest, most famous rock star of all time.'

‘Of course I'm not jelly!' Alex will use these abbreviations. In every relationship, you have to compromise with the other person's irritating little habits. That's one of his. ‘Anyway, they say he's got positively bloated since he came off the drugs. Like,
gross
.'

‘That girl in the kiss-and-tell piece didn't mention it,' I pointed out.

‘She wouldn't, would she? No one wants to admit they slept with a whale. Besides, that happened at least five years ago – it just took her ages to decide to sell her story. He's probably put the pudding on since.'

Alex always calls flab ‘pudding'. If he thinks I've put on a pound or two he'll pat my thigh, or my tummy, and accuse me of ‘growing pudding'. It's a bit irritating but it does make me avoid over-eating and try to go to the gym regularly.

‘He's married again,' I said. ‘Some model. Spanish, I think.'

‘He must be absolutely rolling in it,' Alex said, with the unmistakable envy the mildly rich always feel for the filthy rich. ‘Honey-money. There'll always be beautiful models queuing up to marry him, even if he's wallowing in lard and plugged full of collagen to puff up his wrinkles.'

Alex thinks he'll never be fat, never be old. His problem, of course, wasn't sexual jealousy; as Brie had said, he simply felt neglected.

‘You'll have to come for a visit,' I said placatingly. ‘So you can see for yourself.'

Secretly, I was feeling a bit Alexed out.

I do love him, that goes without saying, but you can have too much of anyone, no matter how beautiful they are. It's like doing one of those diets where you only eat one kind of food – bananas, or cabbage soup: after a week of it you never want to see another banana or liquidised cabbage leaf again. I'd had an intensive diet of Alex all through Christmas and skiing, hanging out with each other non-stop, and although of course I would want to see him again very soon I needed a break to appreciate him. I felt a bit guilty about it, so I determined to be extra nice to him first, not objecting when he wanted to watch awful stuff on TV (
Airport
and reality hairdressing), or ate peanut butter and Frosties for breakfast, or sat around cuddling a giant pink fur rabbit, christened Harvey, which was his long-standing security blanket. I was nice to him in bed too, doing all his favourite things, like tickling his scrotum with an ostrich feather and letting him suck my toes. (I won't list the rest: they're even more embarrassing.)

I've never really got the toe thing. We all walk around barefoot some of the time, and your soles get hard and dusty, and no matter how many pedicures you have feet are still – well,
feet
. There to be stepped on and kicked around; not major erogenous zones. Whenever Alex goes down on me, as in that far down, I worry about hygiene issues and have to go and wash them before he can resume. I don't mind not being turned on, but it's no fun when sex is actively stress-making. But I controlled myself, and let him lick away, trying not to wonder what my toes tasted like. Nothing – nothing on earth – will make me reciprocate.

(The good part is that Alex is nuts about my shoes. He's the only man I know who gets a hard-on for Jimmy Choo stilettos.)

When it comes to sex, men fall into roughly two categories. There are those who like sex the way a chocoholic likes chocolate: it's a delicious indulgence, they crave it, they savour it, but they know, for all the strength of their craving, that it isn't essential to life. And then there are the guys who fuck to live, to feel alive – the intense types for whom sex is bread to the starving. The sort who never waste time on the outer limits of your body (like your toes) but zoom straight in on the principal target areas, and have got inside your bra and twisted your knickers into a thong before you've even offered them coffee. Ben Garvin was like that – but I don't want to think about him. No point in dwelling on mistakes. When I want someone to think about there are always Viking raiders and leopard-print Tarzans and so on. Anyhow, Alex is a chocolate guy; he dips into sex like it's a box of Belgian truffles, lingering over every flavour. It's lovely to feel desired and lingered over like that, even if it
does
make things rather long-winded sometimes.

I'm supposed to be a sex symbol, and sexy women are women who like sex. You can't possibly be sexy if you don't. I read
Lady Chatterley
when I was a teenager (the dirty bits, anyway) and what struck me was how, when poor Constance wasn't getting laid, she went all wan and droopy, but when she started humping the gamekeeper she became sleek and opulent again. Mind you, this is a man writing, saying that if you don't fuck you're not a Real Woman, which is what any man
would
say, though they don't usually take a whole novel. It left me with the impression that if I didn't shag regularly my tits would droop – a worry that has lurked at the back of my sex life ever since. So I make sure Alex and I do it a lot. He feels replete, my tits stay full and bouncy, and I can catch up on orgasms later, by myself.

In Scotland, I would have to go without; I flirt, but I don't do infidelity. Too risky. When you're a celebrity, there's always someone watching. But it was only for a few months. There would be chances to visit – my tits wouldn't start sagging just yet. And privately, in the inmost corner of my Self, I really was looking forward to it.

  

Working for VivaTV wasn't one of the highlights of my life. In fact, if your life can have lowlights, that was it. (Or them.) Ongoing lowlights, every day. The producer was a plump, pasty-faced woman who ate too much sugar to counteract the constant fear of losing her job. She passed her stresses on to me, shouting when she didn't need to and changing her mind every ten minutes, and I, willy-nilly, passed them on to the researchers, though I tried not to. Some writer or other once said: ‘Most men lead lives of quiet desperation', which may or may not be true, but of one thing I am sure: most women lead lives of vocal desperation. The studio environment seethed with it. On location, we seemed to spend too much time standing around outdoors, waiting for our prey to emerge from office or home, or filming alfresco activities like bicycling poodles, pro-celebrity streaking, and a performance artist who claimed he was turning into a tree. The winter, instead of being merely damp and chilly, was cold, with falls of rather gritty snow and the kind of wind that blows through the hollows of your bones. I had borne far worse in Eastern Europe – but in those days I had Kyle to keep me warm.

‘I hear you used to work on that Dick Ramsay show,' one of the researchers said brightly. ‘Isn't this a bit of a comedown?'

‘I'm changing direction.' Downwards.

‘Did you know Kyle Muldoon? I think he's dead sexy.'

‘Dead,' I said. Dead in the water. The winter got inside me and I thought it would never get out.

Then came the day when we were covering the haunted house. Our producer was keen on hauntings; I'm not sure why. Ghosts are notoriously camera-shy so any item about the supernatural is basically an item about nothing, with extra padding and creepy music. I suppose the producer felt an item about nothing is an item where nothing can go wrong. We'd done a haunted laundrette (the spin-dryer activated itself), a haunted school (the teacher fainted after her pupils microwaved a voodoo doll), and even a haunted swimming pool (two near-drownings and a plague of frogs). After all that, a haunted house seemed a little mundane, but Dylis (the producer) assured us it was a classic specimen, not simply ghost-ridden but historic, half-timbered and incredibly photogenic. Apparently, among other manifestations, it had a poltergeist who was given to throwing things (they call them apports) like eggs and crockery, causing considerable damage and reducing the two younger children to hysteria. Dylis was so excited by this she told us she was sending a psychic researcher along to analyse the phenomena.

We arrived on a suitably stormy afternoon to find the family in residence: middle-aged dad, youthful mum, sullen teenage daughter by first marriage, two boys from second. The storm broke, causing the electricity to fail, which would have been brilliant if the camera had been rolling. (We staged a re-enactment later with someone throwing a switch.) Then the poltergeist joined in, yanking a rug from beneath the feet of our reporter, who claimed she had injured her back in the fall and would be suing for damages (she wasn't sure whom). I retreated into the kitchen for coffee with mum, refusing sugar – just as well, because it was salt; poltergeist again – and heard with a sinking heart that the psychic researcher had arrived. Great. All I needed now was Madam Arcati with hennaed hair sensing vibrations from the otherworld.

It wasn't Madam Arcati. For one thing, the researcher was youngish (thirty-odd) and male. If anything, he looked like an elf: pointy face with high cheekbones, slanting eyebrows, ears that looked pointy even though they weren't. He had dark hair worn rather long, pale skin, leaf-green eyes. His name, he said, was Kristof Ashley. ‘Call me Ash.'

‘My God,' said the researcher who fancied Kyle, ‘he looks like Johnny Depp,' and collapsed on the spot, remaining useless for the rest of the day.

I was not thrilled. I don't like pretty-boy types, and besides, everyone else was enraptured by him, so I felt it obligatory not to be. It was clear Ash took himself much too seriously, a major defect in anybody, particularly if they are dabbling in the paranormal. He questioned the family in detail about their ghostly experiences, and listened with evident absorption to the reporter's account of her accident, transforming her from a litigious fury to a simpering ingénue. He even examined the offending rug, for all the world like an investigator from CSI. It was what we were paying him for, but I felt my annoyance mounting. Ten to one the rug had just skidded on polished floorboards.

But he was great TV. He didn't gush, preferring the significant silence to excessive speech, but when he stood in the Jacobean gloom of the drawing room, looking pensive, with what little light there was striking the planes of his cheekbones just
so
, that was all we needed. ‘There is a distressed spirit here,' he pronounced at last, though the phantom, not surprisingly, had been quiescent. ‘With a little understanding, it can be pacified. There will be no more disturbances.'