Vince declares it’s time for a toast, stepping across to the champagne tower. On cue, fake Shirley walks in and starts to sing ‘Happy Birthday’.As we all join in, I move on autopilot towards Joe, an apologetic smile fading on my lips as I see how angry he is. ‘Is this a joke?’ he hisses as Shirley whips up a round of ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’.
‘I didn’t know!’ I still don’t know for sure, but the evidence is stacking up by the second. Those straight eyebrows, the way their smile starts with a tiny twitch of their lips and quickly lights up their whole face.
We are shushed by Vince banging a silver cocktail stirrer on a martini glass and I feel a little bit sick.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, it’s not often I turn fifty. But I am delighted to tell you that’s exactly what happened while we were all sleeping. And I am goddam ecstatic to celebrate with you the moment Vince Marino came into the world.’
‘Morelli,’ says Joe under his breath. ‘Marino is his stage name. He’s always believed his own hype.’
‘The fact you are all here tonight makes it totally special,’ Vince continues before spoiling the moment by winking at Shirley Bassey. ‘Tonight, I stand at a crossroads.’ He shoots me a look out of the corner of his eye, and I send him one back. His is a hoorah, mine’s a warning. Where’s he going with this? A declaration of his affinity with shame and death? A public reunion with his son who doesn’t look like he wants to share a pizza with him? Will he come out as an alcoholic? More likely he will come out as the asshole he often declares himself to be. With Vince, there’s no telling, as he holds the audience in his spell. The deconstructing fifty-year-old continues. ‘In the last couple of years, the track has been dark and winding, with many options for diverting from the path and several roadblocks I thought I’d never surmount. I’ve come face to face with loss. Several times. First, when I nursed my lovely wife as she faded from my life …’ There’s a round of sympathetic ‘tsks’ as actors do what they do best, while my eyes widen and flit to Joe, who meets them with a stony gaze. ‘And then I met it on stage. As the astute amongst you will have read in the press, I cancelled myself a few months ago and thought I would never recover. But I did. Tonight is proof of that. And if I can come back from this then anyone can come back from anything, believe me.’
He pauses for a moment to let this sink in with his audience.
‘Everything that is lost can be found, if you look hard enough.’ He looks around the room and his gaze falls on Joe, who drops back behind Blofeld. At least I think it’s Blofeld– he actually looks more like a young Robbie Williams. ‘Fifty is not a death sentence as some might have you believe. It is an opportunity, to embrace freedom from your forties, thirties and twenties. To hook up with or rediscover the people who matter to you.’
He tries to meet Joe’s eyes again, but they’re firmly focused on the wooden floor. ‘My amazing happiness coach, Daisy Blane, helped organise this awesome party and started me back on the road to recovery. Please come forward, Daisy.’
I reel backwards, willing Vince to drop it and move on.
‘Daisy has slowly convinced me of the power of positive thinking and action. One day she brought me a caterpillar and asked me to nurture it and I accidentally cancelled that too.’
A laugh goes around the room at his faux guilty face, tickling everyone apart from Joe. ‘So, I bought a dozen more. And then more again, and they did what caterpillars do. They metamorphosed and emerged with wings. And that’s how I plan to spend my next fifty years, ladies and gentlemen. Taking the paths less travelled like a goddam caterpillar turned into a butterfly, following my dreams, following a road to happiness. And I invite my wonderful son, Joe, to come with me on some of those adventures because one of the most amazing things Daisy has done tonight is bring us back together.’
From the safety of M’s shadow, I watch the consummate actor taking on a new role. His guests are still clapping when a man with spectacles and a pinched face appears; the Q to Vince’s Bond. Fake Q is holding a bulging, wriggling net and a plastic bazooka, and as silence descends, he pulls the trigger, releasing a fountain of glitter. Amongst the sparkle and wonder, the net opens, releasing a flight of white butterflies.
‘Let theNymphalis polychlorosfly free!’ the Q dude says, and a couple of people laugh. I’m guessing it’s a Bond line as I’m pretty certain these are cabbage whites. Shirley reacts like a pro, launching into ‘Goldfinger’,while Vince picks a glass from the edge of the tower and knocks back the contents. When he goes for another, I hold my breath, anticipating a Jenga-style crash. Meanwhile, someone opens the patio doors and a whoosh of freezing cold air carts several butterflies out into the night. ‘Let there be dancing and pizza!’ Q announces as the DJ hurriedly finds his headphones and the casino girls pack up.
I think pizza might be off the menu now.
‘Where’s Joe?’ Vince mouths, before grabbing a nameless actress and telling her she must meet his son. I glance around and see the prodigal leaving the room. I follow him into the hall as he disappears through the front door.
‘Joe!’
I grab my coat from the front door hook and run after him. But he picks up his pace and disappears from view. I can’t keep up with him in my bolstered heels. Giving up, I pull my phone from my pocket and ring him. No answer. I send him a WhatsApp message, telling him I had no idea and asking him to call me. My earlier tweet of the balloons has racked up a hundred likes and a whole bunch of retweets. Just wait until people start posting pictures of the butterflies! Vince will be fine without me, but with a punch in the gut, I realise I may have extinguished the sparkle from Joe’s eyes. There are no butterflies following me as I make my way home. They have also flown from my stomach, replaced with the lead weight that sat in my belly for years.
Chapter 22
The late November weather closes in. Frost and sleet keep me inside, as I prepare for #WellWomanCon, thinking up the kind of sample problems I might be asked, and refreshing my reading. I text Joe a couple of times a day, without any reply, and avoid visiting the coffee cart. If he’s angry and intent on mugging me off, I don’t want it to be a public sport. I can imagine Nosey Macchiato getting off on a row between us.
On Friday over breakfast Eva confirms we have Doodle for the show tomorrow and I announce I will have an early bath and bed. To my annoyance, she takes the opportunity to go out for drinks with Kai and bring him home afterwards. I hear them clattering about in the kitchen before they crash into my sofa bed together. As their enthusiasm reaches me through the thin walls, I become angry all over again about their relationship. Kai values nothing and takes what he wants as long as it’s conveniently packaged up and presented to him. And Eva seems determined to give herself to him on a plate. In the early hours of the morning, I ask myself if I’m jealous, as I can’t bag myself a decent date let alone a boyfriend. And then I remind myself Kai is a loser and drift off to sleep.
Next morning, I head out early, a light layer of frost making even the cracks in the pavements look festive. Christmas decorations have appeared in most windows and I wonder if I should put up a tree this year, now I have a flatmate to enjoy it with. Saturday morning passengers wipe sleep dust out of their eyes as I change onto the Piccadilly line at King’s Cross. I’m still swotting up as the carriages bump along, but ‘seven habits of highly effective people’ start to merge with the ‘scale of consciousness’ until they’re all just a jumble of words. Imposter syndrome kicks in and I wish I’d ignored the organiser’s original email so I don’t have to put myself through this.
A tree of life sculpture outside the main entrance of the Alexandra Palace venue provides a meeting point for people attending, as well as a repository for messages sent to the universe on brown paper leaves. I read a few and decide it’s the magic wishing tree for the politically correct. The conference logo is the lotus flower and a couple of people dressed as giant green versions of the symbol hand out goodie bags filled with promotional leaflets, maps for the event, and a timeline for lectures. Although hundreds will attend, many more are apparently watching online.
Reporting to the tech hub of Stage A I’m told my live ‘Ask Daisy and Doodle How to be Happy’ slot will come from a table in the main exhibition hall at midday. A stage manager talks me through how to stream the advice session from my phone. To prevent Doodle inflicting maximum damage on the well women of London, Eva agreed to collect and bring him along just before our slot. I hope all her late-night activity with Kai doesn’t scupper that plan.
The stage manager points me towards the main hall, where I locate the stand I will be broadcasting from, currently filled by an author signing books. I say hello and introduce myself to the owner of the VitaTox stand next door which helps you identify if you are being poisoned by your own vitamins. Being a well woman is a complicated and expensive affair I decide, as I wander adjacent stands filled with everything from period pants to the latest in fitness tracking devices. A lip balm that tastes of honey but exudes pheromones seems a good buy, until I look at the price and discover the pheromones are extracted from the jaw of the queen bee. Apparently the lure of her snog is so powerful that a boy bee will drop out of the sky for it. I can’t be doing with men falling from the clouds– I’m having enough trouble with those embedded in my life.
A lady dressed as a giant tooth stops me as I approach the edge of the stands. ‘How do you measure a smile?’ she says.
‘I don’t as a rule,’ I reply, wondering if she’s about to sell me a tape measure or some veneers. Or, given the ageing themes of many of the stalls here, dentures?
‘If you take a photograph of yourself with our new app you can get instant statistics on your smile’s attractiveness to the opposite sex and what you can do to make it more appealing.’ She holds out her phone, takes a selfie and an image of her appears on screen with tips for achieving a better grin. ‘Look, I’m an eight today.’ She shows me some video footage where four cheesy avatars hold up signs saying eight across the board like TV judges with great dentists and handwriting. I want to tell her I know how to create a smile when you aren’t feeling it, experimenting with its alchemy in the loneliness. But there’s a commotion over by the plasma facial stand as a loud barking is followed by a pounding of paws on the floor and my favourite dog hurtles back into my life.
‘Doodle, Doodle! Come here, boy, come here!’ He rises like a startled horse on a battlefield, and plants his front paws on my thighs. Claws lock on and both of us yelp. I’m so excited to see him I’ve forgotten to arm myself against his affections. ‘Get down, you savage panda,’ I laugh, trying to readjust my bright pink jumper dress.
Eva grimaces and shows me her own war wounds. ‘Need to claim damages …’
