Stevie smiled at the hostess, gave her name and watched the girl’s green-lacquered fingernail trace a path down the list of reservations. It wasn’t really a members’ club, just somewhere that people who had decided they wanted to be fashionable paid to get a table. The hostess’s finger paused and she put a tick next to Stevie’s name. Simon’s name was slanted beside hers, unadorned by ticks: Dr Simon Sharkey.
‘Am I the first?’
The receptionist was signalling for a waiter to show Stevie to a table. She turned to reply and Stevie thought she saw a ghost of recognition flit across her face. The girl would work late too, Stevie realised, and for a moment she glimpsed a life not so different from her own: the high heels kicked off beside the couch, the calorie-counted snack eaten by the glow of the computer, the TV murmuring on, barely watched.
‘Yes,’ said the hostess, her smile wider than before. ‘You’re the first.’
The smile told Stevie that the girl couldn’t place her. But no one had ever admitted to guessing where they knew her from, even when Stevie told them.
By the time she had finished her second glass of wine Stevie knew Simon wasn’t going to turn up, but she ordered a third anyway. She didn’t bother to glance again at the bars on her phone. She had already checked them and knew that the signal in the club was fine. The door opened and two girls in short summer dresses entered. They were laughing, but the sound of their laughter and high heels was drowned by the heavy beat of the music.
Something had probably come up. Things had come up already in the time she and Simon had known each other, his job made that inevitable, but he had always phoned, or got someone to phone for him.
The two girls were buying drinks. Their skin and dresses were stained yellow for a moment and then shifted to pink, violet, aqua as the mood lights embedded below the bar’s glowing surface drifted through the spectrum. The barman turned towards the gantry, lifting a hand to his mouth to cover a cough, and as if in response, one of the girls also started coughing and raised a handkerchief to her mouth. The other girl said something that made all three of them laugh again.
Stevie glanced at the five-minutes-fast clock above the bar. Her friend Joanie had been more available since her split with Derek. There was still time to call her and arrange to meet for a drink. She would be full of outrage at Simon’s defection and that would help to put it in perspective.
On a video above the bar a rapper and his crew were making bad-boy gestures, while a group of skinny girls with inflated breasts and improbable rears, paraded behind them in high heels and bikinis. The rapper squatted low, his knees scissored far apart, and pulled the camera close to his face. Stevie thought he was repeating ‘ho’, ‘ho’, ‘ho’, ‘ho’, ‘ho’, ‘ho’, ‘ho . . .’ but the club was noisy and she might have been mistaken.
The understanding crease in Joanie’s brow would be too much tonight, Stevie decided. Maybe later she would be able to indulge in a post mortem, but for now she would leave her relationship with Simon on ice.
Stevie slipped her mobile into her bag and slid from her seat, leaving the unfinished glass on the table and trying not to care that she had been stood up. She had done her own share of letting-down in the past, and there was still the chance that something had happened at the hospital, something so quick and so urgent that there had not been time for Simon to ring her.
The barman’s grin was bright and consoling, the hostess’s smile sympathetic. Stevie’s smile outshone them both, but their pity embarrassed her, and it was an effort to make her eyes sparkle the way Joanie had taught her. She stepped from the bar into the warm evening haze of London in summer, and retraced her steps to the Underground station. This was their first broken date, but recently Simon had been prone to absences, even when they were together. Stevie had made a vow never to ask a man what he was thinking, but Simon’s long silences and distant gaze had tempted her to break it. Now she thought she knew what had been on his mind. She had been bored with the places where he liked them to meet. Simon, it seemed, had been tired of her.
Stevie swiped her Oyster card, pushed through the turnstile and took the stairs down to the Central line platform. A breeze gusted from somewhere in the network of tunnels, rippling the skirt of her dress, touching the sensitive skin of her thighs. She clenched her hands, enjoying the dig of her nails against her palm. When Simon phoned, she would forgive their thwarted date; tell him it had been nice, but it was time for them both to move on.
A train rattled into the station. Stevie waited for the doors to breathe open. The carriage was almost full and she had already taken a seat beside a teenage boy before she realised that he was bent under the weight of a summer cold. The boy coughed, not bothering to cover his mouth. Stevie considered moving, but stayed where she was and fished her phone from her bag. There were no missed calls. She switched it off, trying not to care. An abandoned Evening Standard was crumpled on the floor by her feet, the MP, the vicar and the banker splashed across its front page. Sometimes it seemed as if civilisation rested on a slender thread.
Stevie forced herself to smile. She had been looking forward to seeing Simon, to sitting across the table from him, both of them aware of each other’s skin and of what would follow later in the cool of his apartment; the doors to the balcony open, the curtains shifting in the breeze as their bodies moved together in the bedroom. Disappointment was tempting her to get things out of proportion. Simon might yet have a good excuse for not turning up, and even if he didn’t, all that had happened was a man she liked had let her down. It wasn’t as if anyone had died.
Two
They were selling toasters, fucking toasters, at six in the morning. Stevie slid a slice of white bread into each of the four slots and pulled the lever down gently, mindful of the model she had broken in rehearsal. Beside her Joanie chirped, ‘I like my toast nice and crispy, not burnt but well-fired. My husband Derek, he likes his golden brown . . .’
Beneath the studio lights Joanie’s skin had a golden-brown shimmer, enhanced, Stevie suspected, by some product Joanie had sold herself. Joanie was the best kind of salesperson, one who fell in love with the merchandise, and then sold it on with a sincerity that was impossible to fake.
Stevie said, ‘So with the Dual Action Toaster you can each have your toast the way you like it, and still sit down to breakfast together.’
‘Exactly.’ Joanie was beaming as if she had just discovered the secret to happiness in the crumb tray. ‘And we all know how important it is for families to eat together.’
Stevie said, ‘Especially in the morning.’ And Joanie grinned at her. They were playing what Stevie thought of as their retro-porno-roles: Joanie the experienced but well-preserved housewife, initiating Stevie (newly married, not sure how to keep both her man and her sanity) into the ways of the world.
‘Yes,’ Joanie said. ‘Especially in the morning. Derek’s shifts are unpredictable but when we can, we sit down together in the morning, even if it’s only for ten minutes.’
Derek had left Joanie for Francesca, a special constable he had been assigned to train, and Stevie wasn’t sure if her friend’s constant references to him on air were wishful thinking, sales technique, or an act of revenge. Joanie had once told her that Derek’s squad took turns to record the show. Joanie thought it sweet of them, Stevie suspected elaborate bullying. The tally on the LED board behind the cameras was climbing, but not quickly enough. The sales information appeared on-screen, Stevie read out the order number again, then the camera was back on her, and she was back on camera.