Upgrading (34 page)

“Is that why you moved to London?”

“Sloane spotting?” She freezes for a moment and then grimaces with embarrassment.

“What’s the matter?” I mouth.

“Shit, how embarrassing,” whispers Jane, trying not to giggle. “She turned round. Never mind. No, it’s just what Scousers do—move to London. It’s Liverpool’s biggest export, isn’t it? Its population.”

“So you came to London to make some money?”

She looks at me for a moment. “Er, no! Why do you assume everyone’s obsessed with money just because you are?”

“I’m not obsessed with it. I just want to—”

“Do anything you can to make a fast buck?”

“No, I’m just …” Yes, I suppose I do, that’s exactly it. Make some money quickly while I’m young enough and free enough to enjoy it. What’s wrong with that? Why is it worse than making a slow buck? But then I’m suddenly back in the Registry Office with Ana Maria. Poor Ana Maria, who just wants to stay in a country where they’ll let her clean toilets and scrub floors six days a week. I’m just doing Marion a small favour and in return she’s giving me a small amount of her money so that I can get a bit of leg up.

Jane is looking at me, curious, expectant. “Well I’m just fed up with being poor,” I say, exasperated at the simple prosaic truth. “With having to save up for things, do without things, feel guilty if I buy something, eat out, go on holiday. Work out if I’ve got enough to buy a new shirt. I’m fed up with watching the pennies. I want to have enough money so I don’t have to think about it.” OK, fifteen grand won’t do that but it’s better than nothing.

“And that’s the most important thing to you?” asks Jane.

“It’s not money itself, it’s what it can buy.”

Jane laughs loudly. “That old one. I don’t believe you just said that.”

“And perhaps like most clichés, it’s true. I want the freedom money brings you.”

“And a BMW and a house in the Cotswolds is freedom?”

“Not those particular things necessarily. But I want to just be able to go out and get them if I want them.”

“A very materialistic type of freedom.”

“Not at all.” A potent mixture of passion and two bottles of Frascati means that we’re both talking loudly now but I don’t care. “I might just buy a small house somewhere warm and sit under a tree all day.”

“Very ambitious.”

“Oh, right. A moment ago you were accusing me of being a shallow, materialistic yuppie and now I’m a slob.”

“You certainly sounded like it, Mr. BMW. Perhaps I was wrong, though—perhaps you just aspire to being one of the idle rich. Much grander!”

“Fuck off.” She stares at me, surprised but not offended. “It’s all right for you being a woman.” At this her jaw drops in horrified amusement. “Oh, shut up. You don’t
have
to work. You don’t. Even these days, it’s perfectly acceptable for you to marry some bloke and let him pay for you.”

“Ha! While I lie on the settee watching
Richard and Judy
or having coffee mornings.”

“If you want to.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“Or you could concentrate on bringing up the children, or go to art classes or write a novel or do gardening or work for a charity—”

“While my husband provides for me?”

“Yeah, because at the end of the day he
has
to. Don’t you see? Even now, you’ve got the choice. I
haven’t.
I’m going to have to sell space or do something equally soul-destroying and brain-rotting in an office until I’m sixty-five and then watch telly in the afternoon and follow my wife around Sainsbury’s carrying the shopping bag and telling her to hurry up.” I have to say it: “Like my dad.” This last comment takes the wind out of her sails.

“You could look after the children while your wife works,” she says, unconvinced.

I snort cynically. “You’ve been reading our features section: ‘Andrew and Amanda live in West London. Amanda, twenty-seven, works in PR while Andrew, twenty-eight, looks after the couple’s two children, Lily aged one and, er, Lysander aged four.’ Picture of floppy-haired twat in Breton top with baby sling standing next to people carrier. I used to have to share the lift every day with the gormless, horse-faced Sloanes who write that shit.” I see from Jane’s face that the two specimens behind me must have turned round again. “Oh fuck off,” I mutter and we giggle like kids then we sit back in silence while I play with the remaining penne on my plate and Jane watches me.

She says, “God, you’re gorgeous when you’re angry.”

“Now who’s being patronizing?” We both sit back enjoying the effect of the wine and food and pondering on this little outburst.

“I’d better be going,” she says at last.

“Sure,” I say, sitting up and looking round for the waiter. “Sorry if I was a bit aggressive there.”

“No, don’t be,” she says, reaching across for my hand. “I like it when people are honest. What do they call it? A frank exchange of views.” She smiles wickedly.

“We certainly had that.” I catch the waiter’s eye. He smiles and nods and begins to make his way over.

“You’re very good at that,” she says.

“Good at what?”

“The restaurant thing. Catching the waiter’s eye, asking him what’s good today. All that stuff. I’m crap at it.”

“You don’t have to do it, you’re a girlie,” I explain sweetly.

“Any coffee, dessert?” says the waiter as he takes our plates.

“What about some
zabaglione?”
I ask Jane.

“Ooh, I
love zabaglione,”
she says.

I look up at the waiter and he nods and smiles.

“One? Two?”

“Just one and two spoons,” I say.

“God, I feel quite pissed after that,” I say almost to myself as we leave the restaurant.

“I don’t,” says Jane immediately.

“You must be, a bit.”

“No, I’m not,” she says boldly, walking along a line in the paving stones as if to make her point. “I could drink you under the table, you wuss.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

We continue in silence for a while.

“You’re living with her now,” asks Jane.

Oh, shit! “How do you know?”

“Well, you more or less said, and then I rang Vinny and he confirmed it.”

“Good old Vinny.”

“Don’t blame him.”

I have to answer the question she hasn’t asked, “I’ve just got no money and it’s a place to stay. She says nothing. “It’s just made me realize how wrong the whole thing is,” I say truthfully.

“Well, like I said, I’m not keen on playing the home breaker. It’s your decision,” she almost whispers.

“I’m going to end it. It’s crazy. I’ll live at home if necessary till I get another job.”

“Vinny says your room’s still free in Fulham,” she volunteers and then seems to regret it. “At least it was when I spoke to him.”

“I don’t deserve you, Jane,” I say, stopping and turning her to look at me. I touch her neck and ear.

“No, you fucking don’t,” she says.

When we arrive at the Tube station I lean down to kiss her on the cheek but somehow she moves or I change my angle of approach halfway through and our mouths meet. She tastes of garlic and wine and she smells of perfume mingled with warm skin. I pull her towards me. After what could have been three quarters of an hour we disengage. She is blushing slightly and rearranging her hair. I’m just staring at her.

Then she says, “Thanks. It’s been really nice.”

“Yeah, I’ll ring you at work.”

“Yes,” she says, but not enthusiastically. “Ring me when you’ve sorted things out.”

It’s not late when I get back—just after eleven. Marion is on the phone. All over the settee are bits of paper—sketches of dresses, photographs, pictures from magazines. She has obviously made sure her Personal Shopper earned her dinner. I take off my jacket and get a glass of mineral water from the cabinet by which time Marion has finished on the phone. She is staring at me.

“Hi, babe,” I say and make to kiss her. She offers her cheek and I know I am in trouble. Then I know why.

“How was
Jack?”

How could she know?

“Fine. Why?” I mumble.

“Just wondered.”

“How was the Personal Shopper?”

“Don’t change the subject,” she says evenly. “We’re talking about
your
evening.”

“Oh, go on, then.” And she does. She walks over to the settee, shuffles about in the papers strewn over it for a while and then brings out a handful of Polaroid pictures. For a moment I think they must be something to do with the Personal Shopper but then she holds one up triumphantly, her eyebrows raised, quizzical and triumphant.

It’s a picture of Sloane Square Tube. I look at Marion. She looks down at the photo in her hand. I look at it again. It’s slightly blurred and taken at an angle but there we are: Jane, with me walking towards her, smiling. Marion holds up another—us kissing hello. Then another—us talking together, smiling again. And another—me pointing past the camera down the King’s Road. Finally we’re walking off together, Jane laughing.

“Where the hell did these come from?”

“Never mind. Why did you lie to me?”

I actually feel slightly sick—partly at being found out and partly at the thought of being spied on. They look like something from a
News of the World
exposé except that I’m in them.

“Oh, I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

“What wrong idea?” snaps Marion. “You’re fooling around.”

“I am not. Jane is an old friend from college, like I said. I just said she was a bloke to stop you worrying,” I lie fluently.

“Stop me worrying?”

“Yes. You’re so paranoid. I told you—she’s just an old friend. We’ve known each other since we were at college. She’s like a sister, that’s all. Look, you can see—I’m just kissing her on the cheek.” I have a quick shuffle through the pictures to check that
is
all I’m doing to her. Marion seems at least halfway convinced. She snatches them off me.

“Why haven’t I met her?”

“You haven’t met any of my friends. You’re always telling me you don’t want to.” My turn to make it up as I go along.

“She’s quite pretty, even though I don’t know
what
she’s wearing. Is it Voyage?”

“What?”

“Voyage? That looks like a Voyage number.”

“I doubt it. I expect it’s a Top Shop number.”

“Where?”

“Exactly. It’s where girls from Reading get their clothes.”

“Mmm. I see.” She stares so hard at Jane that her face puckers up. I wonder whether Jane is shivering on the Tube. Then she looks at it again at a distance and looks at me suspiciously. I shrug my shoulders. “Let’s just hear no more of it.”

“OK. I’m sorry I lied to you,” I lie.

Marion takes my face in her hands. “I don’t want you to lie to me, Andrew. A relationship based on lies is no relationship at all. I discovered that from my husband.” She looks up at the ceiling. “Both of them, come to think of it.”

What about the others? I wonder.

“I know,” I say, looking at the Polaroids. What I really want to know is who took them.

After breakfast the next day Marion goes out for a cranial massage and Ana Maria goes out to Sainsbury’s so I dive onto the phone and ring Paperchase in Tottenham Court Road.

“Jane?”

“Hello?”

“It’s me, Andrew.”

“Hello.” She sounds pleased to hear from me.

“I just wanted to check you got home safely.”

“Fine—just the usual onslaught from muggers and rapists but I ran faster.”

“I really enjoyed last night.”

“So did I. Erm, yes, of course, we’ve got them in red, blue and green but not black.”

“What’s the matter? Is someone there?”

“That’s right.”

“Can’t talk?”

“Exactly.”

“OK, so if I say I really, really like you and I love the way you put your hair behind your ear and your theories about James Bond and snuff movies and I want to see you again, you can just say, er, what can you say? ‘We’ll have them in soon?’”

“What size did you want? A4?”

“Say it.”

“I’ll have to have another look.”

“Why won’t you say it?”

“We’ve already discussed that but we might have them in soon.”

“That’s good enough for me. Shall we do something tomorrow night?”

“If that’s convenient for you but you, er, know, our terms and conditions.”

“I do—very well. I’m going to tell her tonight.”

“I’m very glad to hear that, Mr. Smith.”

When she comes back Marion decides to take me to get some new clothes. We go to Emporio Armani in Brompton Road. She doesn’t like the black formal suit I like mainly because I picked it out and said “I like this one.” Of course, Mark would have approached it differently but then he’s a professional and I’m an amateur. Soon to be retired amateur. In the end she buys me the one she likes plus a pair of swimming trunks because apparently we’re going on holiday soon. Then we go to the florist and while she is verbally assaulting the woman behind the counter I take the opportunity to talk to Chris, the chauffeur.