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Chapter 12

It’s Monday and I am crying over Ben’s portfolio, the one thing that Simon missed, as it was under the bed. What did I do wrong? I ask myself pathetically, gazing at his beautiful face, before asking myself what the fuck did I miss? I go over and over the lovely times, picking the proverbial scab. Getting together at Glastonbury – that’s probably the most painful. But then there are more recent things, the little things, domestic details, the way he’d kiss my shoulder just before nodding off, that wonderful closeness I thought we shared when I went over his lines with him. Was the whole thing one great big fucking lie?

Then I go over and over the lovely times with Poppy, which are far, far more, as we’ve known one another for more than twenty years. I gaze at Ben’s face in his book, then tear out the pages with another howl of grief. I have always scoffed at idiotic men in boys’ films throwing things at walls, but now I’m just as bad as them, chucking crockery about, left, right and centre.

How long has it been going on? How much have they been laughing at me? I recall all the times I’ve confided in Poppy with my insecurities about Ben and feel so sick I wish I could vomit, but sadly I’m cursed with the constitution of an ox. She told me I was stupid to be jealous of him. But it never occurred to me to be jealous of her with him.

Why would I have? She was my best friend, the person I trusted implicitly – so all of those ‘silly insecurities’ as she put it, are magnified somehow into something so horrible I cannot imagine I’ll ever trust anybody again. I take little comfort in the fact that I was right all along about the lying scumbag. I think about her squealing when Ben dive-bombed her at my mother’s house. My mother’s house. Was he groping her under the water then? After we’d just shagged? Maybe they’ve been laughing at me since Glastonbury. Maybe it’s been going on since Ibiza, even before Ben and I became an item … Maybe … Fuck, is it too early for a drink?

I scour the flat and eventually come across an old encrusted bottle of ouzo that I brought back from a Greek island-hopping holiday with Poppy about eight years ago. That’ll do. ‘Cheers, old buddy.’ I toast her with heavy irony. My own thoughts are too grim to suffer alone so I switch on the telly.

‘It’s all about natural beauty,’ says some cunt who is trying to pretend that the redhead on the box isn’t wearing any make-up. Yeah right, her eyelashes would be white were she truly au naturelle. Some people are better looking than others and that’s that. Then I remember that Poppy is naturally far more beautiful than I am and start sobbing again. How could I ever have been arrogant enough to think that someone as gorgeous as Ben could be satisfied with me? Of course Poppy is far more in his league.

I take a huge swig of ouzo and take a look in the mirror. I look gratifyingly hideous: greasy-haired, blotchy and red-eyed. I start to make gurning faces at myself, just to prove that I am the ugliest person in the world. I take all my clothes off and slouch, sticking my belly out and making my entire body look grim beyond belief. It gives me weird satisfaction. Yes, I am ugly, ugly, UGLY … I sit down on the floor and get stuck into the bottle.

There is someone at the door. Poppy has been calling my mobile so I’ve switched it off. Ben, the cunt, hasn’t even bothered. I’ve told the hedge fund people they can shove their job where the sun don’t shine. No bridges burned there then.

‘FUCK OFF,’ I shout down the speakerphone.

‘Bella, let me in,’ says Damian, sounding more Welsh than I’ve ever known him sound. ‘I’ve brought your art stuff for you.’ I quickly put on a horrible old greying towelling dressing gown and let him in.

If anything, Damian looks even worse than I do. His brown skin has taken on an ashy pallor that has turned it almost green, and his deep, mournful eyes are red and swollen. It speaks volumes that, today of all days, he hasn’t bothered with his habitual shades. He is staggering under the weight of my canvases, paints and easel.

‘Let me take those,’ I say, trying to relieve him of his burden. Everything crashes on the floor and we both start laughing uproariously. As we stoop, simultaneously, to pick it all up, we both start crying.

‘Oh Christ, Damian, I’m so sorry … You’ve been with Poppy for years.’

‘Yeah, and she’s been your friend for your whole life, just about. As … HE has mine …’

‘D’you want some ouzo?’ I brandish the crusty bottle.

‘I’ve brought some Scotch with me.’ Damian holds up an Oddbins carrier bag. ‘Don’t mind, do you?’

‘Fuck no, bring it on,’ I screech wildly, picking up some of my art stuff and dropping it again.

‘Shall I get some glasses?’ he asks, as I stumble about, too pissed already for two in the afternoon.

He pours us each a huge whisky and we sit down cross-legged on the floor, among the mess of my art stuff and broken crockery debris. Bright shafts of sunlight illuminate the sorry scene. I feel like a right old wino drinking whisky in my repulsive old dressing gown, but perversely it feels right, somehow, to wallow in the squalor.

‘So do you know how long it’s been going on?’ I ask, dreading the answer.

‘No fucking idea. Simon met me at the airport and gave me the news. Great timing with the stag-do comedown, but it was good of him. It would have been worse to hear it from anybody else.’

‘So what did you do?’ A tiny part of me is hoping he’s killed them both and chopped them into pieces.

‘I wanted to punch the fucker’s lights out, but he’d disappeared like the cowardly little shit he is. Pops was waiting for me at home. She just looked up at me with those big green eyes and said sorry, but I couldn’t bear to look at her, so I packed a bag and went to stay with Simon.’

‘What are you going to do about the flat?’ I light a fag from the butt of the one I’ve just finished.

‘She can pay the fucking rent on her own. I never want to set foot in it again. Knowing Ben, he’ll probably move in with her. It didn’t take him long with you, did it?’ Seeing my eyes fill with tears again, he adds, ‘Oh sorry Belles, I’m not thinking straight.’

After a bit, I say,

‘Believe it or not, I thought he was sweet and vulnerable …’

Damian laughs bitterly, showing gleaming white teeth and pink gums, the only bits of him that currently look remotely healthy.

‘He didn’t give you that shit about the poof and the Paki, did he?’ he asks, downing his drink in one and pouring another. ‘For fuck’s sake, the cunt could have spared you that. He decided years ago that it would help him pull susceptible women. For the record, we both had very nice, middle-class childhoods with many privileges. And no bullying whatsoever.’

‘Did Poppy know?’ I ask, sadly. Damian thinks for a while.

‘Yeah, I told her. We used to laugh about it. Oh, fuck, Bella, what am I going to do without her?’ He starts crying again, great, heaving sobs convulsing his entire body. ‘I’ll never again meet someone as beautiful, intelligent, fun-loving …’

‘… treacherous, poisonous, backstabbing,’ I finish for him, and we both laugh madly.

‘I remember when we first met, I thought I’d never seen anything quite so beautiful in my entire life,’ says Damian, looking away from me, out of the window.

‘That was on Koh Phangan, wasn’t it?’ I say, remembering all too well, but realizing Damian just needs to talk for a bit. It’ll be my turn soon enough.

‘Yeah, full-moon party.’ Damian lights a fag and takes a deep drag. ‘The sun was just starting to rise, and there she was, dancing in the sea in a tiny crochet bikini, looking like some sort of golden hippy sea goddess with her hair all wavy round her shoulders.’ I wish he’d stop going on about how fucking gorgeous she is but I bite my tongue. It must be worse for him, after all.

‘We’d all been up all night and most people on that beach were pretty wrecked, but Pops was entirely lucid. Smart and funny, full of quick comebacks and double entendres. I wanted to fuck her right there, on the beach.’

‘You did, several hours later, didn’t you?’ I interrupt, hardly able to bear much more of this Poppy eulogy.

‘Couldn’t believe it when she came back to my hut with me.’ Damian goes all misty-eyed again, then angrily bangs his fist against the wooden floorboard.

‘Sorry Bella.’ He slumps forwards with his face in his hands as I recall Poppy telling me all about her holiday. She’d had a gap between finishing one job and starting the next (though the next was all lined up, of course), so decided to take herself off for a month, travelling around South East Asia on her own, as she thought she hadn’t explored it thoroughly enough on her world trip. The Thai island of Koh Phangan was only one of the many stops on her itinerary, and, from what I remember, Damian was only one of several notches on her bedpost that month, though she recalled him fondly enough to me when she got back. It was only once they’d been seeing each other properly in London for a couple of months that she started to get serious about him. I decide not to share this information.

To my relief, Damian gets angry again. He gets up and starts pacing around the room. ‘I should have known something was up. She’s been a fucking bitch ever since she got that fucking job. And I’ve been giving up all my bloody weekends to hold her hand and comfort her when we go to see her father.’

I look up in surprise. It’s most unlike Damian to utter such an ignoble sentiment. He sees my look and gives a snort of laughter.

‘Of course I didn’t really resent that. It‘s been horrible seeing the old lad deteriorate. But it would have been nice to have had a little loyalty in return, don’t you think?’

I nod and he looks even angrier.

‘If she wanted to fuck my best mate, couldn’t the slag have had the decency to dump me first? How long have they been shafting us, Bella, HOW LONG?’

We sit there going over and over it all afternoon, finishing the whisky, moving back to the ouzo, smoking so much that Damian has to go downstairs twice for more supplies. We veer jaggedly from pain to anger to booze-enabled black humour, back and forth, over and over. And it really helps. I know that I’m only delaying the evil moment, but for now Damian and I are on another planet, anaesthetizing ourselves with hard liquor, each the only one that knows what the other is going through. Soon it’s dark.

‘Thanks for this afternoon, Belles, it’s really helped,’ says Damian.

He leans over to hug me and before I know what’s happening we are kissing passionately, devouring one other with a hunger bordering on the insane, tongues that have spoken to one other for years as friends now exploring one another’s mouths with mounting excitement. Damian fumbles at the belt of my horrible old dressing gown and I help him, laughing shakily as our fingers fail to obey our brains. I grab the bottom of his T-shirt and drag it over his head, marvelling at his smooth brown chest. He is much slighter than Ben, but by God is he male and fit and gorgeous. Damian pushes my dressing gown off my shoulders and we resume kissing, torso to torso, hands running up and down each other’s arms, shoulders and backs, stroking faces, necks, hair.

I don’t know how long the kiss lasts, but by some kind of mutual understanding, whatever it was that overcame us slowly starts to ebb away. When we pull back to look at one other, tears are pouring down my face.

‘Don’t cry, sweetheart.’ Damian kisses them away. ‘I think it’s probably best if we stop now, don’t you?’

I nod and lay my head against his chest. His heart is thumping as loudly as mine. He gently puts his arms around me and we lie like that amongst the broken crockery and art stuff and ashtrays, until we’ve both fallen into a deep, troubled sleep.

When I wake up it’s still dark and Damian is nowhere to be seen. My head is throbbing, my mouth tastes vile and my shoulder is hurting from sleeping in a funny position. I sit up gingerly.

‘Water?’ asks Damian, emerging from the kitchen with a pint glass. He’s put his black Stussy T-shirt back on and I wrap my dressing gown more tightly around me.

‘Thanks.’ I take the water from him and down it in one. I can hardly look at him. He lights a cigarette and goes and stares out of the window, over the treetops of West London.

Fuck, I think miserably. I’ve now blown it with one of the few good friends I have left.

‘Bella,’ he says awkwardly, turning round to face me. ‘I don’t think anybody but us need know what happened earlier. Do you?’

‘Oh no, I quite agree, I … Actually Damian, what the fuck did happen earlier? I mean, I do remember, I wasn’t that pissed, but …’

‘We both just needed a bit of comfort, that’s all.’ Smiling, he comes and sits down next to me on the floor. He puts an arm around my shoulders, and kisses the tip of my nose.

‘You know I love you as a friend.’

‘Thanks.’ I smile up at him, relieved. ‘You too.’

‘Well … what are friends for? Thanks Belles, for helping me get through one of the worst days of my life.’

‘Well, I think we’re pretty square on that front,’ I laugh. ‘Thank you too. Listen, it’s far too late for you to go back to Si’s now. Do you want to stay for the rest of the night? It’s far more comfortable in my bed than on the floor. But no funny business, OK?’

‘No funny business,’ Damian agrees, as we make our way to my bedroom.

Things get a lot worse before they get better. Once the hangover kicks in and reality bites, I realize I have never been so unhappy in my life. I mope around my flat for days on end, not answering the phone, getting stupidly cross at the rubbish on daytime TV (especially the ads that imply you need to start wearing incontinence pads in your thirties), counting the minutes to 6 p.m. when I can open some wine as, even though my life is, effectively, over, I don’t want to end up in The Priory. I cannot be arsed to shower or wash my hair, though I do clean my teeth as it just tastes too horrible not to. I cannot imagine being arsed really to ever do anything again.

I also spend a hell of a lot of time crying. I’ve always been a bit of a soppy fool, weeping at weddings, old movies and the like, but now absolutely anything can set me off. Happy things, sad things, indifferent things. Old episodes of Friends that I’ve seen a thousand times before, news stories about cruelty to children, radio adverts with particularly moving jingles – all are given equal precedence in my unstoppable weep-athon.

Poppy has been calling incessantly, which is one of the reasons I’ve turned my phone off. She’s also emailed several times, but all the fucking bitch can say is ‘Sorry’. No explanation, nothing to make me feel better, nothing to answer the thousands of questions rattling round my brain. She can fuck off and die for all I care.

One day, I am lying on the chaise longue, morosely watching Jeremy Kyle and wondering if I should appear on it, when the doorbell rings. I try to ignore it, but my uninvited guest is tiresomely persistent. Eventually I get up off my bum and answer the bell.

‘Open up darling, I know you’re in there,’ barks an unmistakeable voice. It’s Jilly Templeton. For fuck’s sake, this is the last thing I need. Reluctantly I buzz her in.

‘Hi Jill, what brings you here?’ I ask charmlessly.

‘Your mother called me from Paris. She’s worried about you, and quite right too.’ Jilly gives me a hug and recoils in disgust. ‘Ugh, you stink. Really, Bella, you needn’t let your standards slip quite so drastically. As far as I’m aware, nobody’s died. Or have they? It certainly smells as if something has,’ she adds, unnecessarily in my view. She’s looking disgustingly fit and fresh in straight-legged white jeans, strappy wedges and a little turquoise vest top with contrasting lime green lace trim. She’s deeply tanned, presumably from her illicit trip to Buenos Aires.

I shake my head, feeling mutinous.

‘Then it’s time to snap out of it. Yes, your Ben was a gorgeous hunk of manhood, but frankly they’re all shits, and as for that little madam … Really darling, you’re better off without them.’

At this I start crying and, briskness evaporating, Jilly hugs me again, trying to hold her breath to avoid smelling me. ‘There there poppet, I’ve been there, it’s horrible, I know it is, but you’ve got to get on with your life. And you can start by getting into the shower.’

Her bullying has the desired effect. Getting the grime out of my hair and stale sweat off my body is blissful. As I shower, I suddenly think of the pregnant, battered homeless woman I gave the money to and feel slightly ashamed of my pathetic levels of self-pity.

When I emerge, Jilly has cleared away all the mugs, glasses, dirty plates and ashtrays that have been littering my sitting room.

‘Right, I’ve made some inroads, but it’s a beautiful day out there and you and I are going for a walk,’ she says. ‘Put some make-up on, there’s a good girl, I don’t want to be seen with you looking quite such a fright.’

We walk down Portobello Road and she’s right, it does make me feel marginally better. I’d forgotten about the real world, the market traders and the tourists and the well-heeled locals with shades on their heads. In the last week or so I’ve only ventured as far as the shop on my corner for trashy magazines, Diet Coke, wine, fags and the most basic of foodstuffs (I have developed a taste for Heinz tinned ravioli with grated cheddar on top). As we approach the Electric Brasserie, Jilly looks at her watch.

‘G and T time, I think,’ she says, and we nab one of the outside tables. It’s surprisingly pleasant sitting out here in the sun, people-watching.

‘I’m going to tell you a little story,’ says Jilly. ‘I’ve never told you about Mr Templeton, have I?’

‘Nope. He was the last one, wasn’t he?’

‘No, he was number two. The last one was Mr Al-Saud, whose name I decided against keeping for obvious reasons. Ghastly,’ she shudders. ‘But loaded. Anyway, Mr Templeton and I lived the life of old Riley at Cap d’Antibes. We had the cars, the yacht, the villa. I assumed it was all coming out of his pocket, but it was all on the never-never. He was a bloody swindler, after me for my money, can you believe?’ she asks, looking so affronted it’s hard not to laugh. The waiter brings our G and Ts and we each take a sip.

‘That’s better,’ says Jilly. ‘Anyway, one evening I was dressing for dinner – Mr Templeton was away on business, or so he would have me think, when I heard a sound coming from the ground floor. I went down to investigate, and there were all these men in balaclavas pointing guns at me. Of course I told them they could have whatever they wanted, but they tied me up and pistol-whipped me. When I woke up they had gone, but I was bleeding from my head. All I could see was red mist,’ she adds dramatically.

‘My God, how horrible,’ I say, thinking why are you telling me this now?

‘Yes, v horrible.’ She leans in closer over the table, drawing me in. ‘But the punch line is that Mr Templeton had set it all up. They should have killed me. Life insurance.’ She taps the side of her nose and I look at her, aghast. ‘It was meant to look like an armed robbery gone wrong, but when I spoke French to them they panicked that they might be killing one of their own – the Frogs don’t care so much about Johnny Foreigner. So you see, darling, you don’t have the monopoly on betrayal.’

‘No, I suppose not. Your story does put things into perspective a bit. Bloody hell Jilly, how …?’

‘Good, good,’ she says briskly, taking my hand and turning the focus back to me. She’s awfully good at this. An unlikely counsellor, but an effective one. ‘So how are you going to get on with your life? Don’t you have a job you should be going to?’

‘I don’t think I’ll ever be working through that agency again,’ I sigh, remembering how I’d told them exactly what I thought of their poxy jobs. ‘I’ve almost run out of money, so I guess I’ll have to start looking for another temp agency.’ My heart falls into my shoes at the thought. ‘What I’d really love to do is start painting again though.’ And to my surprise, I would. I am actually capable of feeling enthusiastic about something. Result! So I tell her about Alison and her offer.

‘Well, that’s just wonderful, darling! What a fantastic opportunity! You mustn’t let a little thing like money stop you. That brother of yours has pots of it, hasn’t he? I’m sure he’ll tide you over, and you can pay him back when you’re successful. As they say, “success is the best revenge of all”!’

And suddenly the future doesn’t look quite so bleak.