Remember seeing Ravi’s band at The Ferret. Sticky carpets, dripping ceilings – happy days! What a terrible shame.
I’d heard she was ill. So very sorry to hear this.
Didn’t they do a tour once? I’m sure I saw them in Pontefract. Such a talented person gone too soon!
She moved to Australia, didn’t she? Sounds like she was living her best life out there. RIP Ravi Kapoor.
Lloyd arrives at my flat to find me huddled over my laptop. ‘Aw, babe,’ he says, hugging me. ‘Was she a close friend?’
‘Yes, she was,’ I reply. ‘When we were young, I mean. Teenagers. We were super close back then.’
‘Aw, that’s sad.’ He plants a quick kiss on my cheek and then, after a respectful pause, adds, ‘C’mon, let’s get started while it’s hot.’ He sets out the array of takeaway cartons he’s brought for us and I try my best to tuck in. ‘It’s a new takeaway on Bethnal Green Road,’ he goes on, already stoking his face. ‘Gave me the rice for free. Full of chat, the woman was. She might have some work for me.’ Lloyd is a self-employed kitchen fitter and never seems to have a shortage of work. He appears to have forgotten about Ravi already.
As I finish my noodles, I remind myself that Lloyd is a good, kind man. We met on an app, and he was so refreshingly straightforward and funny – and, yes, strikingly handsome – that our first date flashed by in a blink. I’d tumbled into my second-floor flat a little drunk and dizzy from his kisses, assuming it would be a one-off. At fifty-seven, I’m ten years older than he is and couldn’t imagine he’d want to get involved with me. Yet seemingly, he did – and things took off quickly. We’ve fallen into a pattern of seeing each other around three times a week and it’s lovely. At least, it mostly is. Lloyd just doesn’t know my history, that’s all. He’s not interested – perhaps because it’s as unimaginable to him as the Tudors. Yet in the year-and-a-bit that we’ve been together, I’ve endured countless hours of Lloyd’s tales of growing up in Essex; of wild nights out clubbing, and of course I should be fascinated to hear of someone called Hairy Mick puking on Caspers’ dance floor in 1996.
‘Remember I told you about that band I was in?’ I prompt him as I clear away our takeaway cartons.
‘Oh, yeah. What kind of music was it again?’
I smile, wondering how best to put it to someone whose musical taste is pretty much limited to techno. ‘If you can imagine a chaotic Bananarama, but with two girls and a boy and guitars and drums and?—’
‘Huh?’ He looks baffled.
‘Never mind,’ I say, but he’s fazed off anyway as he switches on my TV. A trailer comes on for a World War II documentary. Tearful parents are waving off children with neatly combed hair and heartbreaking little suitcases.
Lloyd turns to me. ‘Were you evacuated?’
I stare at him. Fucking hell, he thinks I was born in 1932.
‘What?’ he asks, frowning.
‘Lloyd, how old d’you think I actually am?’
‘I know how old you are, babe…’
I choke out a laugh. ‘So don’t you think it’s pretty unlikely, seeing as I was born—’ I quickly calculate ‘—twenty-three years after the war ended?’
‘Oh, right. Sorry.’ Chuckling, he cracks open a beer. ‘I’m terrible with historical dates.’ The football starts and he stretches out to his full, athletic six-foot length on my sofa, ready to watch.
Historical dates? Prickling now, I carry the cartons, plus my laptop, to the kitchen. What does he think when we’re in bed together? ‘She’s not bad for… ninety-three?’ Just as well he’s always preferred older women! We’re ‘solid’, apparently. ‘No nonsense’, ‘grounded’, ‘self-assured.’ Like an intimidating head nurse. Should I get myself the outfit? Give him a vigorous examination next time we’re in bed? Our sex life has been flagging a little lately – down to me, not him, I have to say. Perhaps that would pep it up.
At my wonky fold-out kitchen table I open my laptop and carry on reading about Ravi, trying to find out what happened. I wish I’d known she was ill, and feel terrible that I didn’t – but it’s been decades since we’ve spoken or even been in touch. Thirty-seven years since I last saw her, I figure out. It’s been an evening of calculating dates.
Lloyd stays over and, as ever, is up for it. Until a couple of months ago, I was too. But lately – since my GP prescribed me a low dosage of ‘head pills’, as I call them – orgasms have eluded me. It’s not that I was depressed. Just generally out-of-sorts, I suppose, and my friends reckoned he should have offered me HRT. I tried to tell Dr Clearly-Uninterested-in-Women’s-Hormonal-Chaos that it seemed to be all wrapped up in menopausal symptoms. That it had started soon after my periods had petered out (wasn’t that a clue right there?). But he wasn’t interested in any of that. ‘Been googling, have you?’ he crowed. Well, yes! ‘Just try the medication. I think it’ll help,’ he insisted, virtually shoving me out of the door.
I didn’t have it in me to argue or beg. The upshot is that part of me – the sexual part – has shut down like a faulty boiler component. She never had it serviced. It finally gave up the ghost.
Nowadays, not even my go-to fantasy gets me there. The one that’s always been there for me, as undemandingly reliable as my Rimmel lipstick in a shade named Asia. It’s my Brat Pack fantasy, featuring the adorable cast of those eighties John Hughes movies – in which neither they, nor I, have aged one jot. Perhaps that’s the appeal. Because in my salacious mind it’s never assumed that I experienced air raids or ration books. Instead, it’s forever St Elmo’s Fire in my loins (in a good way, not a raging thrush way), and one of The Pack – variously Andrew McCarthy/Judd Nelson/Emilio Estevez/Rob Lowe, whoever’s available and trouserless at that precise moment – is going at me up against my fridge.
That’s it. Works every time. At least it did before the pills. Now, I can get close to orgasm – tantalisingly close, like when you accidentally drop a sweet wrapper and chase it along the street. There it is, literally within your grasp. But as you go to grab it the wind whips it away, and it’s gone.
That’s what happens tonight. Lloyd doesn’t comment; in fact, I wonder if he even notices now. It certainly doesn’t seem to worry him as post-takeaway/football/beer/sex, he is perfectly satisfied, and within minutes he is sound asleep.
2
Next morning, after Lloyd has headed off to a job, I spot another tribute to Ravi on Facebook.
Thinking of dear Pam and Kamal at this sad time.
