It was about two or three weeks after the “I wish” conversation in Starbucks. Somehow Jess had managed to keep her trap shut—an impressive achievement for someone whose usual conversation technique is to describe everything as, or even before, it happens, using as many words as possible, like a radio sports commentator. Looking back on it, it is true that she had occasionally given the game away—or would have done, if any of us had known there was a game.
One afternoon, when Maureen said that she had to get back to see Matty, Jess stifled a giggle and observed enigmatically that she’d see him soon enough.
Maureen looked at her.
“I’ll be seeing him in twenty minutes if I’m lucky with the bus,” she said.
“Yeah, but after that,” said Jess.
“Soon enough but after that?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“I see him most minutes of every day,” said Maureen.
And we forgot all about it, just as we forgot all about so much that jess said.
Perhaps a week later, she started to show a hitherto concealed interest in Lizzie, JJ’s ex-girlfriend.
“Where does Lizzie live?” she asked JJ.
“King’s Cross. And before you say anything, no, she isn’t a hooker.”
“What is she, a hooker? Ha ha. Just messing around.”
“Yeah. Totally excellent joke.”
“So where is there to live in King’s Cross, then? If you’re not a hooker?”
JJ rolled his eyes. “I’m not telling you where she lives, Jess. You think I’m some kinda sucker?”
“I don’t want to talk to her. Stupid old slapper.”
“Why is she a slapper, precisely?” I asked her. “As far as we are aware, she has slept with only one man in her entire life.”
“What’s that word again? The prick one? Sorry, Maureen.”
” «Metaphorically»,” I said. When someone uses the phrase “the prick one”, and you know immediately that this is a synonym for the word “metaphorically”, you are entitled to wonder whether you know the speaker too well. You are even entitled to wonder whether you should know her at all.
“Exactly. She’s a metaphorical slapper. She dumped JJ and probably went out with someone else.”
“Yeah, I dunno,” said JJ. “I’m not sure that dumping me condemns a person to eternal celibacy.”
And thus we moved on, to a discussion about the appropriate punishment for our exes, whether death was too good for them and so on, and the Lizzie moment passed, like so many moments in those days, without us noticing. But it was in there, if we’d wanted to rootle around in the rubbish-strewn teenage bedroom of Jess’s mind.
On the big day itself, I had lunch with Theo—although of course while I was having lunch with Theo, I had no idea that it was going to be a big day. Having lunch with Theo was momentous enough. I hadn’t spoken to him face-to-face since I’d come out of prison.
He wanted to talk to me because he’d had, he said, a “substantial” offer from a reputable publisher for an autobiography.
“How much?”
“They’re not talking money yet.”
“May I ask, then, in what way it could be described as substantial?”
“Well. You know. It has substance.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s real, not imaginary.”
“And what does «real» mean, in real terms? Really?”
“You’re becoming very difficult, Martin. If you don’t mind me saying so. You’re not my easiest client at the best of times, what with one thing and another. And I’ve actually been working quite hard on this project.”
I was momentarily distracted by the realization that there was straw underneath my feet. We were eating in a restaurant called “Farm”, and everything we were eating came from a farm. Brilliant, eh? Meat! Potatoes! Green salad! What a concept! I suppose they needed the straw, without which their theme would have begun to look a little short on inspiration. I would like to report that the waitresses were all jolly and large and red-cheeked and wearing aprons, but of course they were surly, thin, pale and dressed in black.
“But what did you have to do, Theo? If, as you say, someone phoned up and offered for my autobiography, in some kind of indescribably substantial way?”
“Well. I phoned them up and suggested they might want it.”
“Right. And they seemed interested?”
“They phoned back.”
“With a substantial offer.”
Theo smiled condescendingly.
“You don’t really know much about the publishing world, do you?”
“Not really. Only what you’ve told me over this lunch. Which is that people have been phoning up with substantial offers. That’s why we’re here, apparently.”
“We mustn’t run before we can walk.”
Theo was beginning to annoy me.
“OK. Agreed. Just tell me the walking part.”
“No, you see… Even the walking part is running. It’s more, you know, tactical than that.”
“Asking you to tell me about walking is running?”
“Softly softly catchee monkey.”
“Jesus Christ, Theo.”
“And that sort of reaction isn’t softly softly, if I may say so. That’s noisy noisy. Tetchy tetchy, even.”
I never heard any more about the offer, and I have never been able to work out the point of the lunch.
Jess had called an extraordinary meeting for four o’clock, in the vast and invariably empty basement of the Starbucks in Upper Street, one of those rooms with a lot of sofas and tables that would feel exactly like your living room, if your living room had no windows, and you only ever drank out of paper cups that you never threw away.
“Why in the basement?” I asked her when she phoned me.
“Because I’ve got private things to talk about.”
“What sort of private things?”
“Sexual things.”
“Oh, God. The others are going to be there, aren’t they?”
“You think I’ve got private sexual things I only want to tell you?”
“I was hoping not.”
“Yeah, like I have fantasies about you all the time.”
“I’ll see you later, OK?”
I got a number 19 bus from the West End to Upper Street, because the money had finally run out. We’d got through the bits and pieces of money we’d picked up from chat-show appearances and junior ministers, and I had no job. So even though Jess once explained that cabs are the cheapest form of transport, because they will take you wherever you want to go for free, and it’s not until you get there that money is needed, I decided that inflicting my poverty on a cabbie was not such a good idea. In any case, the cabbie and I would almost certainly spend the journey talking about the unfairness of my incarceration, perfectly normal thing to want to do, her fault for going out looking like that and so on. I have preferred minicab drivers for some time now, because they are as ignorant of London’s inhabitants as they are of its geography. I got recognized twice on the bus, once by someone who wanted to read me a relevant and apparently redemptive passage in the Bible.
As I approached Starbucks, a youngish couple walked in just ahead of me, and immediately went downstairs. Initially I was pleased, of course, because it meant that Jess’s sexual revelations would have to be conducted sotto voce , if at all; but then as I was queuing for my chai tea latte, I realized that this meant no such thing, given Jess’s immunity to embarrassment; and my stomach started to do what it has done ever since I turned forty. It doesn’t churn , that’s for sure. Old stomachs don’t churn . It’s more as if one side of the stomach wall is a tongue, and the other side a battery. And at moments of tension the two sides touch, with disastrous consequences.