‘Ya. Right. Ya. How?’
‘Because why were the snappers bothering to stay up late outside a flash Parisian hotel in the first place? Because the photographs they might get could be worth something. Why might the photographs be worth something? Because the papers would pay good money for them. Why would the papers pay good money for them? Because those photos sold newspapers and magazines.
‘My point was that if any of the people that blamed the photographers – a profession I have no great love for, believe me – ever bought newspapers that regularly featured the royals in general and Princess Di in particular, and especially if they had ever changed from whichever newspaper they usually bought, or bought an extra one, because it contained or might contain a photograph of Diana, then they should blame themselves for her death, too, because their interest, their worship, their need for celebrity gossip, their money, had put those snappers at the door of the Ritz that night and set them off on the chase that ended with a black Merc totalled round an underground chunk of reinforced concrete and three people dead.
‘Me, I’m a republican; nothing-’
‘What, like the IRA? Right.’
‘No, not the fucking IRA. I mean I’m a republican rather than a monarchist. Nothing against her madge or the rest personally… well, anyway… but as an institution I want the monarchy dumped. I wouldn’t buy a piece of shit like the Sun or the Mail or the Express in the first place, but even if for some bizarre reason I’d ever been tempted, I’d have been less, not more likely to do so if there had been a photo of Princess Di on the cover. So I hadn’t helped kill her. My question to whoever might have been listening was, How about you?’
‘Right, I see.’
‘Right. Do you?’
‘So they sacked you. Bummer.’
I shrugged. ‘The papers got a little upset. Personally I think the Express and the Mail just didn’t like being called tabloids.’
‘But you found something else, right, ya?’
‘Oh, ya.’
‘Oh, you’re making fun of me. You’re terrible.’
‘Am I?’
‘Yes, I’m a big fan. You shouldn’t insult me. I thought I was doing quite well.’
‘What? You thought you were doing quite well?’
‘Amn’t I?’
I looked her down and up. ‘You’re funny.’
‘You think?’
‘Definitely. Another drink?’
‘Okay. No; you sit. I’ll get them. You haven’t let me buy anything yet. Please.’
‘If you insist, Raine.’
‘I do. Same again?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Don’t go away,’ Raine said, touching me on the arm again. She’d done this a lot over the last hour or so. I liked it.
‘Oh, okay then,’ I said.
Raine slid out from behind our table and insinuated her lithe, size six body into the crowd, towards the bar. Phil leaned over. ‘I think you’re in there, mate.’
‘Yeah, I think I might be, too,’ I agreed. ‘Who’d a thunk it?’ Shit, I was a bit drunk. I’d actually knocked back that last whisky. Mistake. I turned to Phil. ‘Can I have some of your water?’
‘Yep. There you go.’
I drank from his bottle of Evian.
We were in Clout on Shaftesbury Avenue, a big, coolly swish, third-generation pleasure complex designed for the discerning older clubber who might equally favour Home or be found in FOBAR (Fucking Old Beyond All Recognition, age-profile successor to FUBAR: Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition).
Phil and I were sitting in a booth in the Retox Bar, on Level Tepid. If you listened carefully you could just make out the thud-thud-thud from the main dance area on the floor above. From downstairs, where the main chill spaces were and quiet, relaxing sounds were the ambient noisescape, there was what sounded like silence. Well, maybe just the occasional quiet pop of yet another fried brain cell departing this world.
Above, you could hardly hear the person next to you if you hollered in their ear. Below, it felt wrong to do much more than whisper. Here, music played but normal conversation was perfectly possible. I must be getting old, because I preferred it here. Fucking right I did! Here was where you obviously got to meet pieces of class ass like Raine! Fucking yee-ha!
Calm down, calm down, I told myself. I tried breathing deeply. ‘I’ve been on a real fucking roll recently,’ I told Phil, shaking my head. Jo, Ceel – ah, Ceel, who was really in another category altogether, who was a whole world in herself, but who I saw so horribly seldom -… I’d lost track. Start again: Jo, Ceel… that Argentinian girl in Brighton, one or two others, Tanya – well, not Tanya, who’d baled out on me – but I still reckoned I was green-light with Amy if I wanted to take things further down that next-on-personal-playlist route, and… and now this Raine girl. A total fucking stunner with a Sloane accent and she seemed to be after my body! I loved London. I loved even the modest morsel of fame that I had. ‘I have, haven’t I?’
‘Yeah,’ Phil said, nodding wisely. ‘Don’t know what they see in you, myself.’
‘Me either,’ I agreed. I drank some more water and studied the floor at my feet. The floor of the Retox was some blond Scandinavian-looking wood. Pouring a whisky away straight onto it might cause unseemly dribbling, splashing noises, like you’d pissed yourself or something. Ah-hah; Phil had put his jacket down on the floor when Raine had slipped in beside us. Perfect. I hooked his jacket closer underneath me with one foot while he wasn’t looking.
‘Here you go,’ Raine said, setting my whisky down in front of me. It was a double. ‘Here; I got you some more water, ah, Paul.’
‘Phil,’ said Phil.
‘Ya. Sorry. Phil.’ Raine smiled at me and raised her glass; it looked like a G &T. I raised mine. ‘Down the hatch,’ Raine said, and drank deep. I put my glass to my lips and made a big show of drinking, but didn’t, keeping my lips tightly closed. I sniffed it, instead. I was getting paranoid about this, thinking that Raine was watching me drink. I made my Adam’s apple bob, like I was swallowing. I put the glass down on the table, keeping it covered by my fingers so the level wasn’t obvious.
‘Nice. Bit peaty. Is it an Islay?’
‘Ah, ya,’ Raine said. ‘Ya, that’s right.’ She wore tight leather pants, a couple of layers of pink and white chiffon blouse, and shades with a faint yellow-tint that made her look a bit like Anastacia. Mid-twenties, like her waist. Awfully good cheek-bones and a jaw line like David Coulthard’s, except smoother, obviously. Her nipples were kind of obvious through the chiffon – was it fashionable again? Looked good on her, anyway – and something about her bare shoulders reminded me of Ceel. Raine’s hair was blond and thick and she kept flicking it back off her face.
‘So, Raine,’ Phil said. ‘Ever sky-dived in La Mancha?’ He grinned inanely at her, then at me. I got the impression he was at least as drunk as me. We’d started mob-handed in the pub, gone on to the Groucho, then the Soho House, and ended up here, losing co-workers en route to pathetic excuses like food, prior engagements, life-partners, children; that sort of thing. I had the vague impression we’d had a good talk about the show during some part of this and come up with some new ideas and stuff for me to rant about, but I couldn’t recall any of the details at all. Luckily Phil usually did, and he normally took notes in tiny writing in the Useful Diary he always carried with him.
It was a Friday, so we didn’t have a show tomorrow; we were allowed to go out to play, dammit. Jo was absent for the weekend, with the Addicta boys in Stockholm and Helsinki. Also, it had been three weeks since I’d seen Celia and I’d been hoping there would be a couriered package for me immediately after the show and an Anonymous call on my mobile; in fact I’d spent the show, the day since I woke up, even the week, if I was being honest, looking forward to signing my name on a dispatch rider’s acknowledgment form; received in good condition, sign here, print here, insert time here… But there had been nothing, just an empty feeling.