My Secret Lover

the door.

55
     
    ‘What is the matter with you?’ asks
Michelle as she opens the door.
    ‘Nothing’s the matter with me,’ I
hand over three bikinis I’ve bought for my goddaughters.
    ‘Who is he then?’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘The new man.’
    ‘How did you know?’
    ‘You’ve got lipstick round your mouth
and a white mark on the back of your trousers.’
    ‘That’s just yoghurt,’ I say.
    ‘Just yoghurt? On your dry-clean-only
trousers? Must be love!’
    ‘It’s just a date,’ I say, trying to
play it down.
    A date! It’s been so long since I’ve
been asked out on a date by someone who knows what I look like. And I didn’t
even have to advertise!
    ‘What’s his name?’
    I’m sure Ethan told me once. I can
see a picture of an owl beside the blackboard and me writing...
    ‘Andy,’ I say.
    ‘Not—’
    ‘Certainly not!’
    ‘Sounds perfect,’ says Michelle. ‘So,
what’s he like?’
    ‘You tell me.’
    She appraises me for a moment or two,
looking me up and down and walking right round me so she can see back and
front.
    ‘He’s very good looking,’ she says.
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘You’re pulling your tummy in, and
you keep doing that thing with your hand to get your fringe out of your eyes,’
she says.
    ‘He’s way above me in the league
tables,’ I tell her. ‘I’ve no idea what he sees in me.’
    ‘Don’t be silly.’
    ‘He is on the rebound, so maybe he
thinks I’m safe?’ It’s the only plausible reason I can think of.
    ‘He sounds brilliant,’ says Michelle.
‘What does he do?’
    ‘He’s a pilot.’
    ‘Terrible womanizers, pilots,’ says
Michelle.
    Funny how best friends will make any
suitor into a potential life partner and then almost immediately start finding
reasons you need protecting from him.
    ‘How many pilots do you know?’
    ‘I do three air hostesses’ nails.
There’s a lot of them live round here because of the symmetry to Heathrow.’
    She means proximity, but now is not
the time.
    ‘All of us wanted to be air hostesses
at school,’ I remember.
    ‘Then we all wanted to be
hairdressers,’ says Michelle.
    ‘And then we got a social conscience
and wanted to be nurses.’
    ‘Some of us kept wanting to be
hairdressers,’ says Michelle.
    ‘Nobody wanted to be a teacher.’
    ‘What did you want to do?’ asks
Michelle.
    ‘Travel and help people. But I wasn’t
pretty enough to be an air hostess.’
    ‘And you can’t walk in heels,’
Michelle adds unnecessarily. ‘Still, he’s bound to get air miles, isn’t he?’
    ‘It’s early days. I don’t really know
him. He’s a parent.’
    I slip that in to get an objective
reaction. I still haven’t quite decided what the ethics of the situation are.
    ‘You won’t be wanting my baby, then?’
says Michelle.
    I could see she was anxious about
something when she opened the door.
    ‘It was a lovely offer,’ I tell her.
    ‘Thing is, Declan’s quite into the
idea,’ says Michelle.
    ‘I’m pleased for you, really I am.’ I
must not cry.
    ‘I did mean it,’ says Michelle. ‘At
the time.’
    ‘I know you did,’ I say, giving her a
hug. ‘But it wouldn’t have worked, would it? You’d always be trying to buy her
face glitter and stuff.’
    ‘What’s wrong with face glitter?’
Michelle wants to know.
    Best not start.
    The clock on the mantelpiece chimes
ten.
    ‘News or Big BrotherV asks
Michelle.
    We should watch the News.
    ‘Doesn’t seem to be much going on at
the moment, does there?’ I say.
    ‘Four of them are up for eviction!’
    ‘In the world, I mean. All these big
American corporations with fraudulent accounts. But what does it all mean? Does
it actually make any difference?’
    Michelle looks at me like I’m crazy,
then points the remote at the television like it’s a gun and presses Channel 4
decisively.
    ‘Have you voted yet?’
    ‘I’ve decided not to,’ I tell her.
‘As a matter of principle, actually. I didn’t like the way they split them into
rich and poor. Isn’t there enough poverty in the world without people playing
at being poor for the benefit of a television audience?’
    We sit watching seven people we do
not know or like doing nothing much.
    If you see Big Brother as an
experiment with controlled variables about what human beings will do when they
have nothing to do, the results are a bit dispiriting.
    The only answer in the Big Brother house to the question ‘why are we here?’ is ‘to win £70,000’ (although some
disingenuously