‘Is there an ex in your past, then, Cas?’
‘No,’ I say without hesitating.
‘Then again you’re not on the cusp of marriage.’
‘Nor am I ever likely to be.’
‘Then how did you know the show was going to be such a success? How did you know both Brian Parkinson and Abbie would fall? And, for that matter, all the other couples that we’ve already recorded?’
‘I didn’t know, absolutely know, but I thought the odds were with me.’
‘You are so cynical.’
We have fast become confidantes. This is entirely due to the copious amounts of alcohol we’ve consumed; still, I am quite unable to resist the illusion of companionable intimacy. Whilst I talk about work Fi is more keen to discuss her dearth of men in relation to my plethora. On one hand it is odd; after all, she is an extreme beauty. She’s also got that exotic twist of a Scandinavian parentage. If I were male I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. The matter is cleared up when she admits to me that secretly all she desires is a large family and a log cabin. Men can smell women who want commitment further away than they can smell those who wear Poison perfume. The odour is just as overpowering and off-putting.
Fi is looking through Tatler’s ‘ Little Black Book’. She throws it aside and picks up London Guide to Restaurants. She isn’t looking for somewhere to eat but she’s looking at the photos of the chefs. She fancies the idea of bagging a creative, temperamental kitchen diva. I’m sceptical.
‘I’d stick to the methods which are proven,’ I advise.
‘Like what?’ asks Fi grumpily.
‘Supermarkets or the company telephone directory. I don’t know. I never have any trouble meeting men.’
‘Yeah, you’d get lucky in a convent.’ She throws the guide to one side. ‘But it’s such a waste. You are never even grateful.’
I stare at her. Surely that is the point.
‘Why are you so eternally unimpressed?’ she asks. It is the drink that has given her the confidence to ask this. ‘Your first!’ She’s fallen on some inspiration. ‘Tell me about that.’
She’s looking for insight. I don’t normally indulge. But a bottle of Merlot has magically appeared from nowhere and we’ll have to talk about something as we drink it. Fi’s stories have dried up pretty quickly. I feel obliged to entertain.
‘My first.’ I cast my mind back through the numerous tangled sheets and emotions I’ve shagged my way through. ‘Maybe if he’d been faithful I could have believed in fidelity, even after my father’s rather poor attempt as a role model.’
‘He wasn’t, then?’
‘What do you think?’
‘The odds are definitely against it,’ admits Fi. She pours some wine into my glass. ‘What was he like?’
‘Beautiful,’ I admit. ‘I mean, I was just like the next seventeen-year-old. OK, my parents had gone pear-shaped, but you know I was seventeen. I was hopeful. I hadn’t been sitting at the dining-room table sticking a fork into my hand to see how much pain I could sustain, like some psycho.’ I sigh. ‘He was twenty-six. He was beautiful and shallow. And married, as it happened.’
‘No.’ Fi is shocked. I grin wryly. I remember being shocked. Now disreputable behaviour never shocks me, it doesn’t even disappoint me – I see it as an inevitability.
‘Yeah. Slipped his mind to tell me. Until his wife turned up on my mother’s doorstep. To quote the great Holly Golightly, ‘Quel Rat.’
Fi sits silently, trying to take it in. It’s true it’s not the conventional first lover story. That’s meant to take place in the back of your parents’ Volvo or at someone else’s house whilst you are babysitting. It’s meant to take place with some acne-ridden youth who is equally inexperienced and as smitten as you are.
‘Which made me a paramour at seventeen years old,’ I joke. But really it was no laughing matter at the time.
‘Inadvertently,’ says Fi, loyally.
‘Still.’ I inhale deeply.
‘Still,’ she admits, taking a large swig.
I’d cried for months and when I stopped crying I started hating. It took several more months for the hate to cool and when it did I was left in a pool of icy resentment. ‘So I figured I should try and turn it to my advantage. No more shocks. No more surprises. I decided to have a very low expectancy threshold on what should be gained from a relationship. I don’t think unconditional love is a possibility, never mind a probability, which guarantees no disappointment.’
Fi is concentrating on what I’ve just said as she taps out the tune playing on the jukebox with her fag pack.
‘Sounds a bit extreme. Couldn’t you have just dated someone your own age and sort of – she pauses – ‘I don’t know, muddled along like the rest of us?’
I raise an eyebrow and she shrugs, perhaps realizing how unappealing the alternative is.
‘I did date someone my own age next. He was a fop. Lovable, I guess.’ I think about it, perhaps for the first time. ‘Yes, certainly. But his willingness to please, at first a novelty, quickly became tiresome. Why don’t we value those who most deserve to be valued?’ I turn to Fi, but she’s concentrating on drawing a loveheart on the table with drips of wine. ‘Answers on a postcard please. Before I knew it I’d sort of fallen into a series of one-night stands, mostly with married men or commitment phobes and, on one occasion, a homosexual.’
This gets her attention. ‘How did you know? Did he make you dress up and do funny things with strap-ons?’
‘No, Fi, he had an opinion on my wallpaper.’ I run through my sexual misadventures in my head and it could be the alcohol but this reminiscing is making me decidedly morose. I rouse myself into my more acceptable, tough, public persona. ‘Just take it from me it’s easier to enjoy the moment and not expect anything more because really there isn’t anything more. I heartily recommend the married man.’ I swallow and then refill both our glasses.
‘Doesn’t it bother you that someone else is getting the best bit?’
‘The best bit?’ I’m genuinely challenged to understand what Fi means.
‘The companionship, the stability, the history, the future.’
‘The dirty washing, the belching, the rows, the incessant football results.’
‘But it doesn’t make sense. You suffered first-hand because your father had a mistress. Why would you want to inflict the same pain on someone else?’
To be fair this is a pretty good question. Especially considering the units we’ve consumed on empty stomachs. It is a question I’d asked myself, once upon a time. The first time I fell for a married man it was purely accidental. I didn’t really expect it to happen again. I did hate the very idea of ‘the other woman’. Women who are compliant in this perpetuation of misery repelled me. After all, if there hadn’t been a Miss Hudley, there wouldn’t have been a deserting father and a deserted mother.
A deserted daughter.
The problem is, of course, you can take out Miss Hudley but a Miss Budley or a Miss Woodly would replace her. The choice is clear to me: become a Miss Hudley because the alternative role is worse – become the deserted wife. My mother’s face, worn and weary with clinging to her pride whilst losing her husband, her home, her name and her identity, burns into my consciousness. Fear flung me into relationships with men committed to someone else. It was safer. I should have been struck by lightning when I broke the taboo the first time. I sometimes wish I had been. With alarming ease I’ve broken every rule and never been punished – in fact, I’ve often been rewarded. It seemed that what I was doing was sanctioned. Whilst I collected compliments and Cartier, tenaciously avoiding commitment or Kleenex, my friends who hoped for the Happily Ever After were discovering that the road to fairyland was long and winding. And often heartbreaking.