‘But did he hit you?’ Matt understood emotional and mental trauma but felt she could, should, learn to live with lamé jibe.
‘Oh God no! He wouldn’t dream of it. I think he has men for that sort of thing. You silly billy!’ She stroked his arm and looked up at him adoringly. ‘I do love you, Mattie. Oh look! There’s Jonny Selby! Amazing abs, you know!’ And with the concentration of a springer spaniel in a field full of pheasants she was up and off and shimmying in as sultry a fashion as someone so drunk could manage.
Matt sat back. Nope, he’d never learn. She was a constant nightmare and yet still he couldn’t help but smile at her. It was like being cross with a puppy, just pointless.
The Cleopatra girl slid across the banquette beside him.
‘Do you want to go for a fag?’
Matt didn’t really. A non-smoker these days, he wasn’t mad keen on the smell but knew he shouldn’t let her hover outside by herself. Although she looked pretty capable of handling herself. Oh bollocks, being pissed and not wanting to walk the length of the club was not a good enough reason not to be a gentleman. Besides which, fresh air, whether he wanted it or not, was probably a good idea.
‘I want to talk to you about Angeleenah,’ she drawled. Oh, bloody hell!
‘Come on then.’ He slid off the seating and offered a hand to help her up. She negotiated the furniture and the club, walking just ahead of him, with grace. He bumped into three chairs, stood on one foot and knocked someone’s drink. This whole getting older nonsense seemed to have a real effect on the senses. He was sure he hadn’t been this clumsy earlier in the day. Dear God, he’d be having to walk around in bubble wrap by forty if this trajectory continued! He carried on pondering this whole aging process thing as he snaked behind Siobhan and headed towards a different door to that which he had entered through.
The air hit him, making him reel and feel as if cartoonboofs andbooms had appeared all round him. They seemed to be in a street slightly less salubrious than the one where the club entrance was. Here pallets and bins lined the pavements, the smell arising from them penetrating his nostrils and reminding him how glad he was not to be a city dweller any more. The puff of his breath in the darkness under the street lamp clouded the already thick air in front of him.
‘Woah.’ He rocked a little back and forth on his toes whereas Siobhan was as collected as she had been with all that weaving stuff she had done.
‘So you’re Angeleenah’s brother then? Matthew, she said. Yah?’
‘Yah!’ Where’d that come from? Since when had he started talking like an eighties Sloane Ranger?
‘And you’re visiting London because she’s terribly upset about Andrei, yah?’
‘Yah.’
‘I did warn her, I said it’s all very well knowing these people but one doesn’t sleep with them, for fuck’s sake! Yah?’
‘Yah.’ Matt put his hand out towards the wall, concentrating on just standing there.
‘Line? Yah.’
‘Yah. Bloody hell. No. No!’ Siobhan had handed him a teeny spoon-shaped implement thingy after taking a very professional snort from it herself. ‘No, I don’t. Never have.’
‘Oh yah. Of course. Entirely up to you. Very welcome. Cigarette?’
‘No.’ He paused and looked around himself in the darkness. ‘Oh, do you know what, actually yes. I think I need to.’ He accepted a cigarette from her and they stood there in silence for a second as they both inhaled deeply. He hadn’t smoked for years and it was disgusting. He wasn’t going to smoke for several more after this. But at the same time, just in this drunken moment, it seemed right. Plus he needed to make sense of what was happening here. Somehow after racing from Cornwall where he had been standing in Rosy’s garden in a velvet cap a mere twelve hours ago, he was now outside some club in London with a girl he had never met, who had no qualms about offering him drugs and then doing cocaine very openly in front of him and in a public bloody street. And she was friends with his baby sister. He needed to sober up quick and sort this out.
He stomped on the cigarette and took a deep breath of the morning air.
‘Thanks. So, Siobhan, you said you wanted to talk to me about Angelina.’
‘Yah.’
‘Well, what did you want to say?’
‘This Andrei, well, he’s vile. But Ange seems really really upset. It took me ages to persuade her to come out tonight, and she’s just not herself. Yah.’
‘How so not herself?’
‘Well, normally she’s the life and soul of the party, and tonight, well…’
‘She looked fairly life and soul to me.’ Matt recalled her slinking around on the dance floor, champagne flute aloft as they had left but a few minutes ago.
Siobhan’s response was to look at him pityingly. ‘Hmmm. No, really, no. And anyhow…’ Her voice began to speed up and her arms became quite animated. ‘ I want to talk to you about you too. Ange talks about you all the time, about how you just don’t really understand the need for a profile, yah. I understand that you have this new programme coming up on terrestrial, gardens and that sort of thing. People just love it, don’t they? Love it. Don’t understand myself but anyway, going to be huge. Simply huge. I was thinking that really you could do with raising your own profile, your own brand beforehand, couldn’t you, get you out to lots of parties, be seen with who’s important, yah? Lots of public appearances, networking, really really get your face out there, yah. And of course being Angeleenah’s brother could be really useful, yah. She can get you in everywhere. Drop some hints, get you in the paper a lot. Maybe you could date Charlene, fromCelebrity Big Brother, she’s huge right now. Huge. Nice girl. As long as you don’t talk to her. Dreadful accent. North or something. But very now. People love her, yah. Well, you and her, and then if we could get Angeleenah back with Andrei, I know he’s a shit, but it would only be a short time, we could pitch you as the new showbiz family. It would be huge, huge! What do you think? Perfect. I knew you’d agree, let’s go in and I’ll tell Angeleenah that you’re on board. Yah.’
‘Um.’ Matt’s head was a whirlwind but he was pretty bloody sure that he didn’t want to agree with whatever this woman was suggesting. Not in a million years. Rosy’s face popped back into his head: her sitting amongst cardboard hearts, simple, unadorned, smiling. Never in his life had he wanted aStar Trektransporter as much as he did now. Two actually. One to disappear bloody Siobhan, who was still standing in front of him, gesticulating wildly and planning, plotting and laughing unnecessarily. And one to beam him up, right back home.
