My Secret Lover

again.
    Perhaps he’s been trying to ring all
the time I was speaking to Joanna.
    If I want to be sure not to miss
putting the phone down on him again, I shall have to get call waiting.
    And caller ID.
     
    The reporter is walking towards the
camera across a dusty airstrip where there are helicopters taking off.
    ‘The message from Washington is that America is prepared to act alone on its "war on terrorism” whether or not its Nato
allies support it...’
    I wonder why they do that walking
towards the camera thing. I wonder how often the cameraman trips over because
he can’t look behind him.
    ‘Who do you think will win?’ asks
Michelle.
    ‘I don’t know if it’s a war that can
be won,’ I say.
    ‘Pop Idol. Dur!’
    I hate the way parents pick up on the
phrases their children use.
    ‘Gareth. Definitely.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because he’s got a stutter. Darius
is too cheesy and Will looks a bit gay to me. Not that I mind. Some of my best
friends are gay. But isn’t it a bit weird for a teeny idol?’
    Actually I don’t know any gay people
except for the couple who live next door to Andy’s mother, and then it’s only
pleasantries over the fence on summer barbecue nights.
    ‘Who’s gay?’ asks Michelle.
    I can’t remember either of their
names.
    ‘Kim,’ I say. ‘Joanna’s secretary.’
    ‘Well, I’ve joined
friendsreunited.com,’ says Michelle.
    It’s typical of Michelle to do
something new without telling me. She does it with diets too. She always gets a
head start on the Pounds Lost Bar Chart.
    ‘Friendsreunited.com?’
    ‘It’s this website where you can get
back in touch with—’
    ‘I know what it is, but we are in touch with everyone we knew at school. We never moved away or got exciting
careers, and nor did anyone else. I saw Sophie Fitt in Safeway the other day...’
    ‘I thought she went to New York with that actor.’
    ‘Well, she’s back. Her step dad’s got
prostate trouble.’
    ‘She always thought she was
somebody.’
    ‘So, who have you been in touch
with?’ I pretend not to be interested.
    ‘Do you remember Declan?’
    ‘Where’s Declan these days?’ I yawn.
    ‘West London,’ Michelle says, like
it’s a move up. ‘Probably Wormwood Scrubs. For God’s sake, don’t get involved
with Declan.’
    ‘That’s what my mother used to say.’
    ‘Boys called Declan are invariably
bad. Anyone else?’
    I am interested, damn it!
    ‘There’s Andy.’
    She hesitates before saying his name,
like she’s being sensitive about my feelings.
    ‘Which one?’
    ‘Not sure. He remembers so much about
me, I didn’t dare ask. He says I turned him down for a snog at the Cricket
Pavilion Disco and he never got over it.’
    ‘That was Sandy Andy.’
    ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘Well, it wasn’t Randy Andy.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘Because you never turned him down.’
    ‘Stop!’
    ‘And it wasn’t Handy Andy, either.’
    Michelle blushes.
    ‘And it wasn’t Andy Pandy, because he
was a pouf. So, by a process of deduction...’
    ‘Sandy Andy,’ says Michelle, with a
wistful look in her eye as if he’s a long-lost first love when in fact she was
always vile to him.
    ‘He’s a personal banker down the
NatWest,’ I tell her. ‘And he’s married to Mandy.’
    ‘Cheeky bugger,’ says Michelle.
‘Which Mandy?’

13
     
    ‘In these stressful days, it is very
good to relax with a football,’ says the woman who’s doing the demonstration.
    The lights are dimmed. I’m trying to
visualize myself floating with the help of the background whale music.
    Frankly, the football doesn’t work
for me. Does she mean lying with it against the small of your back, like a
hot-water bottle, or kicking it around the garden?
    I open my eyes.
    She actually means putting your feet
in a washing-up bowl filled with hot water and aromatherapy bath salts.
    I think she’s Swedish or Swiss or
something. Herbal remedies are far more plausible sold with a foreign accent.
If this woman came from Liverpool, I very much doubt whether I would be
circling the Herbal Foot Bath on my order sheet and imagining that my life’s
problems are about to be solved by a simple credit-card transaction. And a trip
to Homebase, because I wouldn’t want to use the same bowl I wash salad in.
    I wonder whether Fern actually
realizes that this is really a Tupperware party but with no Tupperware.
    My mother got straight into
Tupperware after my father died.
    ‘I was never allowed before,’ she
used to