After Ever After Read online

  Then, after Fergus, I was too busy being in love to notice, putting my heart and soul into living the dream I had dreamt about so often. After almost thirty years of waiting for my lightning bolt to strike, the delight of romantic electrocution made me miss all the signs of her addiction, largely because I simply didn’t see her quite so much and when I did I was being part of a couple, a kind of benevolent sister letting her indulge in her latest range of oddness. I simply didn’t know about it until she was admitted to hospital. And I feel bad for that. I let Dora down.

  Dora was always odd, had been from the first time I’d hung out with her at lunch break at Hackney Downs Primary School and she’d pierced her own ears with a safety pin, a cork and a bottle of TCP, the scent of which was still discernible about her person for the rest of the week. Not so weird – teenagers do go a bit mad, you might think – but we were only seven. So Dora in shades and a mac on a summer’s evening wasn’t an unusual thing. To let myself off the hook, maybe I wouldn’t have noticed even if I had been on the ball, all present and correct.

  ‘Worried you’ll be spotted by the Feds?’ I asked as we exited the lift into the lobby. ‘Or maybe the Mafia is after you again?’ She peered at me over the rim of her cat’s-eyes glasses and pushed her dyed black fringe out of her eyes.

  ‘You may laugh, but some of us were born to be arrested.’ We did laugh, and Dora strode out into the damp evening air with us, where the last remnants of the summer’s day we’d missed, pinned behind hermetically sealed double glazing, sizzled on the pavements.

  This launch wasn’t your usual kind of affair held in whichever was the latest hippest club or music venue. It was to celebrate the sudden, surprise commercial success of one of our singer-songwriters, a guy called Simon Shaw who had been languishing unheard and unplayed almost since he’d been signed and until he was almost due to be dropped. And then some anglophile indie fan in LA had chosen one of his tracks to feature in the latest teen flick and he had become an overnight Stateside success, prompting the instant renewal of his contract and the swift re-release of his back catalogue. Camille had told us that Nick Cavell, the boss of us all and God to many a teenage hopeful, had told her that he expected the fuss to be over as soon as Shaw won an Ivor Novello award, so they wanted to make as much cash as possible right now. It seemed that Simon was unaware of the Machiavellian machinations that turned behind his back, though, as he believed fate had finally delivered him the break he deserved after years and years of paying his dues. Despite this he wanted to ‘keep it real’. So the champagne, the discreetly provided coke, the party-compulsive celebrities, the godlike executives and the likes of us, the hangers-on, were all transferred to a warehouse conversion in the Docklands where an old school friend of Simon’s, an aspiring artist, had managed to put together a show. Simon wanted to spread his good luck around.

  It was an impressive space and the art was fairly impressive too: huge canvasses of compelling colour. The artist guy hung around them with his girlfriend, looking on nervously as a scantily clad soap actress eyed one painting, biting her thickly glossed lip and absent-mindedly adjusting her thong. Following our usual routine, the three of us made a beeline for the bar and collected as many free bottles of beer as we could carry before finding a niche that would afford the best view of the proceedings at the top of a wrought-iron spiral staircase with a balcony that overlooked the sequined throng.

  ‘What does this Simon Shaw geezer look like then?’ Dora asked me as she shed her mac to reveal a very revealing red lace-trimmed dress, the sort of affair you’d see going for £9.99 at Walthamstow market. ‘I might want to sleep with him. I’ve recently realised I’ve never shagged a famous person.’ Dora had never yet been turned down by anyone she had taken a fancy to; it was her instant display of her double-jointed contortions that usually swung it.

  ‘He’s sort of, well, blondey, mousey, blue-eyesy kind of average, really,’ Camille said. ‘He’s terribly nice, though. We had a lovely chat in the lift the other day.’

  Dora and I exchanged an ‘it figures’ look, or at least I think we did; she still had her shades on.

  ‘Well, I’m off to shag someone fitting that description. I’ll see you chicks later.’ And she headed off into the crowd, leaving me to reflect that the time we spent together at parties and clubs before she went off on her own private missions had dwindled down to almost nothing.

  ‘Look!’ Camille squealed, ‘is that David Beckham?’ I peered at the back of a curiously shaved blond head in a white suit and gave it the benefit of the doubt.

  ‘Yes, I reckon it is – which means Posh must be around here somewhere …’ We avidly scanned the crowd for a hint of Dolce & Gabbana.

  As the evening wore on and the bubbles in the bottled French beer gradually seeped into my bloodstream, I wandered with Camille from clique to clique, riding on the coattails of her instant acceptance and meeting and talking and flirting and somehow waiting for something.

  It was just after midnight when it happened; it was 12.02 to be precise. I’d been standing apart from a crowd on the raised balcony just under the curves of the wrought-iron spiral staircase as it continued up to some of kind of loft space, waiting for either Dora or Camille, whoever turned up first. I’d been looking at the city lights flicker across the river. It was the evening before the longest day and the last streaks of a fabulous sunset still lingered just behind the skyline, waiting for the onset of night to finally extinguish the heat of the day.

  For a moment I forgot the quiet roar of the crowd and myself and my endless wait as I watched the shadows wash over the dark river water.

  ‘All right?’ I span on my heel and looked at a tall man who was returning my gaze with the kind of enquiring curiosity that might have been considered impolite. Did I look drunk? I was about to open my mouth to assure him that I was all right when his jaw dropped and his eyes widened. I looked over my shoulder but there was no one there.

  ‘Oh …’ he said with a half-smile, as if he’d been expecting someone or something. ‘Um, sorry, it’s just that …’

  I prepared myself for the ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ chat-up line, thinking that if he was going to trot it out it could have been much worse. In that first second all I noticed was his height and the breadth of his shoulders and the slope of his cheek. He had the kind of physical presence that makes you instantly flustered and teenagey.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ I said, an uncertain smile hovering on my lips as I desperately composed myself in readiness for another game of flirtation. It’s so strange, but in retrospect, in that moment, I thought I was facing my usual type. A predator, a smooth operator who would whisk me away for a night of empty passion with a bunch of pretty words I chose to believe until the next morning and a week of empty answerphones – like any one of my previous ten ex-boyfriends. The type that was wildly beguiling and exciting to begin but which invariably seemed to end up as uncommunicative, angry, mad or just plain cruel. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  He paused, and then shook his head with self-conscious embarrassment, his initial composure lost in semi-shyness and uncertain charm.

  ‘Sorry, what I mean is that you look like someone. Someone I’ve been waiting for …’ He glanced over his shoulder at the glittering throng. ‘It must be all these famous people, it makes you think you’re seeing double all the time.’ I wondered if I should feel offended or sorry for him. The poor man had obviously been stood up by some stupid cow who didn’t know what was good for her.

  ‘She didn’t show then?’ I said with an understanding smile. He blinked at me.

  ‘Who? Kylie Minogue?’ He turned and scanned the crowd. ‘I know, I told Si she wouldn’t.’

  I laughed. ‘No your date, the one you thought was me.’

  He looked back at me with a quiet smile, as if enjoying his own private joke, and brushed off my query with a shrug. ‘This girl just asked me when my next film was coming out and if she could have my autograph. I to
ld her I work in IT solutions. I’ve never seen anyone disappear so quickly.’ He bit his lip. ‘Who do you reckon she thought I was? Not Brad, too blond – maybe Pierce?’

  I smiled and shook my head.

  ‘Mmm, maybe from behind …’

  We both laughed then, the way two people new to each other do. A little louder, a little more carefully delighted than usual, just testing each other.

  ‘I know what you mean, though.’ I took a step nearer to him. ‘I work for the record company that threw this bash. Usually when I say that, people start singing or rapping or tap-dancing or all three, and then they find out I do admin in the HR department and can’t be bothered any more.’

  We grinned at each other stupidly and I remember that I glanced around briefly, as I always did when I met someone, looking for celestial signs. I think I might have seen a shooting star or perhaps it was the blinking lights of a plane heading for City Airport – one or the other – but either way I took it to be a good omen.

  ‘I’m crap at social functions,’ he told me cheerfully, running his fingers through his longish black hair. ‘Rubbish at meeting people. It’s because all I do all day is spout technical crap that actually means nothing at boardrooms full of people who pretend they know what I’m talking about until all of us are blue in the face and bored rigid. It’s the kind of job that can seriously compromise your social skills. I only came to this party ’cos I used to go to school with Mr Humphries over there …’ He gestured vaguely at the crowd.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ I said, trying to see who he meant, and thinking that his social skills seemed fine to me.

  ‘Oh, Si I mean. Simon Shaw. We always used to call him Mr Humphries. We all thought he must be gay, what with his guitar playing and poetry society. I went to an all-boys school,’ he said as if by way of explanation.

  I laughed. ‘Well I hope he’s not gay, for my mate Dora’s sake,’ I said. I took a step closer to him, and his gaze was so intense, the moment so inexplicably loaded, that I froze under it like a rabbit caught in headlights. It was then, in that short second, that I noticed the improbable blue of his eyes.

  ‘Um,’ he said, stiffly polite, clearly as taken aback as I was. ‘So, you work at Si’s record label then. Cool. Do you get to go to all the do’s?’

  I shook my head cautiously. That was the second reason many people wanted to know me, free access to celebrity bashes.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t if it wasn’t for my colleague, Camille. She knows everyone.’

  His eyes lit up with recognition. ‘Oh, Camille! Lovely girl.’

  I was not surprised.

  ‘Are you a friend of her too, then?’ I asked him. If he was he couldn’t be single. Camille would have had me sitting across a dinner table from him long before now.

  ‘No, not a friend exactly, I met her outside the loos, we had a chat about how hot it was and she told me to come up here, said it was a bit cooler, with a beautiful view.’ He looked momentarily hesitant and then, with an almost imperceptible shrug, he looked me in the eyes and said, ‘She was right, about the view I mean.’

  I smiled then, and tried not to laugh, but he caught my look and grinned to himself.

  ‘Too much?’ he asked.

  I half shrugged and shook my head. My new friend squirmed and I could tell that chat-up lines weren’t really his thing. I remember I liked that about him.

  ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t introduced myself, have I? All those years of private education wasted. Mum’d be tearing her hair out if she could see me now.’

  He held his hand out to me. ‘I’m Fergus, Fergus Kelly. Yes, dad Irish, but I’ve lived in England all my life.’

  I took his hand, amused by his pre-emptive strike against the routine of small talk. ‘Kitty,’ I said. It was the nickname my mum had given me as a little girl and I had clung on to it long after she had gone, until somehow it had seeped out of the school yard and on to my graduation certificate, my CV and my phone bill.

  ‘Kitty, short for what?’ he asked. No one had asked me that in years.

  ‘Katherine,’ I said, feeling kind of slighted.

  ‘Mmmm, I like Kitty better – it suits you.’ He let go of my fingers with a touch of reluctance and an awkward silence interrupted what was already a halting conversation. Even in the dim lighting I noticed his cheeks colour slightly as he cast around for something, anything, to say.

  ‘Well, it’s good to know your name. There’s nothing worse than waking up with someone the next morning and realising you don’t know their name.’

  I stared at him and the smile froze on his face, transforming into the perfect expression of horror.

  ‘Oh God, did I say that out loud? Jesus.’ For a second he regarded his feet in disgust. ‘You know that you’re … really nice looking. I mean, you look like a nice person. I mean, you’re pretty too, not just nice as a person because I don’t know you as a person, but you look nice. Really … nice.’ He paused and swallowed hard. ‘Look, what happened is this. Have you ever done that thing when you start thinking of something to keep up a conversation with this really pretty girl you’ve just met and this really stupid crass line from a copy of 101 Chat Lines that your mate keeps in the loo pops up and you immediately dismiss it but it’s there just waiting for you to open your mouth so you can fuck the whole thing up? That’s what happened, honestly. I mean, I’m not a pig. I was only going to say I thought you looked nice in that dress, but then the whole evil tongue thing …’ He ran out of steam and I couldn’t help but smile at his embarrassment. ‘But don’t worry, I really don’t expect you to sleep with me or even talk to me from now on. Ever again, actually.’ He shook his head in frustration and I began to laugh.

  ‘Security?’ he shouted, waving his arms theatrically. ‘Can someone remove me from this woman’s presence immediately?’ A number of fashionable people glanced up at him for the brief moment they could spare from themselves and then ignored him. ‘I told you I was no good at chat-up lines.’ His smile disarmed me and my heart sort of melted, right there.

  He didn’t leave. He held his ground, his cheeks flushed and hot.

  ‘Do you want me to go?’ he asked, touchingly hopeful. I shook my head.

  ‘No, no. I don’t think so …’ I smiled again and together we turned our backs on the party and walked over to the plate-glass window that looked out on to the city.

  ‘Kitty, look at those stars. Can you remember the last time you saw a cloud of stars like that over London? It must be something to do with light refracting off the edge of the earth, don’t you think?’

  I glanced at his profile, marvelling at how quickly he became at ease again and watching his boyhood shadow re-emerge in a moment of childlike fascination.

  ‘Yeah, that’s exactly what I thought,’ I said happily, and for a moment we both tipped back our chins to bathe our faces in the light-filled cosmos; the party, the glass, the city lights all seemed far, far away. After a few moments my heartbeat, which had soared after his almost inappropriate declaration, slowed to a manageable rate and I felt comfortable.

  He turned, taking my hand, and looked into my eyes.

  ‘Do you want to talk about music and film and all that malarkey?’ he said mildly. ‘Because I’m pretty sure I can’t get to the end of that without telling you my favourite film is Deep Throat or that my all-time classic book is Confessions of a Driving Instructor.’

  I laughed and I shook my head. ‘I don’t think we’d better risk it right now, not while I’m quite liking you.’

  We watched each other intently for a moment.

  ‘Good call,’ he said. He took the beer bottle from my hand and set it on the floor. ‘Kitty, you’ve guessed by now that I’m not terribly good at talking to incredibly beautiful women, so I’m just going to tell you that for the last five minutes I’ve been dying to kiss you. If you slap me now I’ll take that as a no.’ He looked as nervous as I felt, but he didn’t wait for my assent. We both knew that I didn’t need to speak any
more, my consent formed in the gradually diminishing space between us. His hand snaked around my waist and pressed firmly against the small of my back, bending me to his kiss, and another shooting star soared above us. I was lost and found all at once.

  ‘Bloody hell, Kitty, you’ve pulled a shag!’ Dora exclaimed loudly in my ear and we broke apart, both glowing from the kiss. I felt as if the last fragments of that sunset had entered me to escape the onset of the night. I shone with it.

  ‘So have I pulled a shag,’ Dora stated proudly. ‘It’s singer-songwriter Simon Shaw.’ I looked at the fuzzy blondish man who stood next to her and determined that she had indeed pulled the man of the moment, but that his album cover photo had been seriously digitally remastered.

  ‘Well done, Dors,’ I said, knowing that she’d want me to override good manners with praise for her quarry, although Simon Shaw seemed pleased to be admired in this way. I got the feeling that sexual admiration had been thin on the ground for him before he got famous.

  ‘Well done yourself, Kitty. Not bad.’ Dora gave Fergus the once-over.

  ‘Fergus, mate,’ Simon Shaw said, holding out a hand to Fergus. ‘Glad you could make it. I saw you a while back, but that publicity bird kept wheeling me around to all these showbiz types.’ He looked guiltily pleased with himself.

  ‘No worries, Si. I’ve been talking to the love of my life here.’ Fergus said it lightly, but as he picked up my hand again I felt a lightning bolt lighten my head and turn every passing plane into a shooting star; how many more signs did I need?

  ‘Fergus and I went to school together,’ Simon told a patently uninterested Dora. ‘I wanted all my old mates here tonight, not to show off or nothing. You know, keeping it real.’ Before we could reply, Dora pulled him off into the crowd and I guessed that I wouldn’t see her again that night. To be honest I was glad to have at least one friend discharged from my responsibility.

  ‘Kitty, will you come with me for some coffee? I know this great café.’ Fergus said, suddenly irrepressibly excited.