Boyfriend in a Dress

‘Eh?’

‘I need an old woman, but I’d rather not pay for her, I haven’t got the cash. Is there anybody that you know – how old is your mother?’

‘Not old enough, I’m from Liverpool, remember.’

‘Of course, she’s probably younger than me.’

‘Pack it in.’

‘Okay, but you have to find me some old dear, preferably one without her own teeth, who’ll work for a hundred quid tops tomorrow morning.’

‘Not a problem, darlin’.’

‘You are a star.’

I go over the details with Tony for the next twenty minutes, try my best to discuss last night’s Liverpool game with him without sounding bored, make some more calls, and then head for the toilets to sort my make-up out. I catch Phil chatting to the boys at the end of the corridor, playing imaginary cricket shots and laughing. I don’t bother telling him to do what he should be doing: actual work. I’m done for the day.

At seven Phil and I wander up the road into Soho, dodging tourists and drinkers, completely oblivious to the pace at which everything moves around us, or the gulps of steaming pollution-filled air we are inhaling. It is still hot, but becoming bearable. The restaurant is cool inside, and Nim is already at the bar. I kiss her hello, and Phil looks like he wants to do the same, but she turns back to the barman.

‘What are you having?’ she asks over her shoulder, while gesturing with a twenty-pound note at the young French guy behind the bar with a mole on his cheek that looks like eyeliner. These are vain days. Everybody’s caking it on, and moisturizing themselves into a slippery mess that enables us to slide past each other down the street. I can’t remember the last time I saw a real spot on anybody I actually know. Strangers have them, but they don’t count. Hell, even Phil hides his blemishes now. I had to buy him blackhead strips from the chemist because he was too embarrassed to buy them himself. It used to be condoms. The world is spinning differently these days.

‘Dry Martini,’ I say.

‘Phil?’ she asks, as he shifts uncomfortably, about to reach for his wallet.

‘Oh, I’ll have a pint of Stella, thanks.’

‘Did you go to the gym?’ I ask, over her shoulder at the bar.

‘No, played some monkey-slapping game and then came over here.’

We sip our drinks, and I catch Phil staring as Nim takes her jacket off.

‘I don’t know how you work in a suit in this weather,’ I say as a distraction.

‘It’s not so bad, the blokes aren’t even allowed to take off their ties,’ she says, and sips her gin and tonic.

Phil is chatting to the guys from Nim’s office about last night’s Liverpool game. I could join in, but I’ve done my football talk already today. The boys wear make-up and the girls know the offside rule. Mostly due to the fact that the footballers seem to have got better looking, and the boys need to look like them to get a girlfriend. The icecaps are melting – the sea is the only thing today that is growing less shallow.

‘How’s work?’ Nim asks.

‘Shit – you?’

‘Boring,’ she says, and we move onto more interesting topics.

‘How’s Charlie?’ she asks eventually.

I turn my nose up, but say ‘fine.’ We move on again to more interesting topics.

Jules turns up late, and we are seated at our table.

Two hours later, we are lashed on some new cocktail one of the guys from Nim’s work has introduced us to. But it’s the tequila that really pushes us all over the edge – the implication that we got drunk by mistake on some new and peculiar concoction is a lie. We wanted to get drunk, so we drank tequila. There are no real mistakes any more, not where losing yourself is concerned. In every other facet of your life maybe, but the pursuit of oblivion is a knowledgeable one. Nobody is snorting that coke for you. Phil has completely forgotten about his mates, and is falling asleep at one end of the table, while Nim shrugs his head off her shoulder. The whole place is giggling in the end of the day heat, and I start to think about going home. We kiss our goodbyes outside, making the responsible decision not to go dancing on a school night, and Nim’s mates help me put Phil in a cab back to his grandfather’s house in some leafy south-west London road where car insurance is still affordable. I walk to the tube with one of them, Craig, who is a few years younger than I am.

‘So, Naomi tells me your boyfriend works around the corner from us.’

‘Yep, at Frank and Sturney, he’s been there for a few years, started there straight out of university – like you,’ I say, and hope to hell that this sweet, funny, young guy doesn’t turn out the same way.

‘Are you enjoying the job?’ I ask, at the same time as he decides to ask for my number.

We stop outside the tube and look at each other uncomfortably.

‘I don’t think so,’ I say, and he looks down at his smart City shoes, embarrassed.

I lean forward and catch him with a kiss, and he is surprisingly quick to react and kiss me back. As we stand on the street, kissing, I feel his tongue and his breath, and let it drag me back five years, out of London, into the country, onto a campus, surrounded by friends. It is a young kiss, not cynical, not dirty, but the kind of kiss you got at the end of the night back in the days of lectures, of drinking all day on a Wednesday, and taking your washing home to your mum.

‘That’s just because of the sun,’ I say, as I pull back and smile, remembering I have grown up since then. He smiles back.

‘Are you sure?’ he says, all of a sudden the confident young City thing, stepping into a new world of arrogance fuelled by an ever-growing bank account. He will turn out like Charlie, they can’t help themselves – it’s a breeding ground, almost a social experiment.

‘Yep, I’ve got … Charlie.’ The words ‘relationship’ and ‘boyfriend’ stick in my throat and refuse to come out. Neither my head nor my heart will let them.

I sit on the tube home, drunk, and try not to get upset. I only ever let myself get really upset when I’m drunk. My head flops from side to side, and the heads of all the other drunk people around me, opposite me, do the same. The middle-aged couple who came up to town to see a show squirm in their seats in the corner, and pray they won’t get leaned on, making mental notes not to come again until at least Christmas. It’s our city now, us drunk young things on the tube late at night, it stopped being their’s years ago, when people started to ignore the beggars instead of acknowledging them with a turned-up nose or an incensed disgusted remark. Nobody says anything any more. They are as much a part of life as Switch and internet shopping.

I phone Nim as I get off the train, staggering in the dark towards my flat.

‘Why are you crying?’ she asks straight away.

‘I’m just being stupid,’ I say as I wipe the tears away from my face, and try to stop them reappearing immediately in the corners of my eyes.

‘It must be something,’ she says, and I can’t help myself saying something stupid.

‘I’m alone, aren’t I!’

I hear Nim laugh slightly.

‘How melodramatic, Miss Ellis. Besides, you have Charlie.’

‘I don’t “have” Charlie at all. We just keep going, like the Queen Mum. But even she died in the end.’

‘Well, then do something,’ she says.

‘I will, thanks, hon, I’ll speak to you at the weekend.’

I fall through my front door, and into bed.

I should do something.

Amen to That (#ulink_6f19541d-a3c9-5631-8bab-58759eabf857)