and I had come out of an hour before. She wasn’t there. I walked back to the front of the club and stood looking round for two minutes.
Had she seen me? Had she come to see me? How would she know I would be there?
The door to the club banged open and people began to spill out on to the street. Lena came over to me. ‘What are you doing out here, sweetie? But more importantly, tell me about Margo. Shall I make my own way home, or can we journey together?’
‘I have no plans,’ I said. ‘Let’s find the car.’
At half past seven there was a tap on my bedroom door. ‘Cup of tea?’ my mum said brightly and came into the room.
I had been dreaming. I rarely dream of the people I want to but in this one I’d been dancing with Margo, moving slowly round to a sensual rhythm, holding her in my arms, feeling the softness of her body, smelling the sweet rose perfume and cigarette smoke in her hair.
I sat up crossly. ‘Mum, I didn’t get in till three o’clock.’
‘You said we had to get to Columbia Road early to miss the crowds.’
‘Yes, but I didn’t say the middle of the night.’
‘Ah, now, talking of the middle of the night, before I forget, about midnight a friend of yours rang. I can’t remember if she said her name. Ssss –’
‘Saskia?’
‘Mmmm, perhaps. I’m sure she told me, and I was going to write it down, but she said there was no message. I told her where you were anyway.’
‘And did you know where I was?’
‘I heard you talking on the phone to Lena. If you said “the Queen of Sheba” once, you must have said it ten times during the conversation. Did she find you?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘in a manner of speaking.’ I yawned. My throat was raw and my head was not happy. I didn’t know if that was the alcohol or the black eye. I tried to remember how much I had had to drink the night before. I’d had too much to drive and there had been the very scary experience of Lena driving us home, meandering slowly through the streets of the City. ‘I’m better when I’ve got my glasses on,’ she had said.
‘Drink your tea, it’s getting cold,’ my mother reminded me.
I sat up obediently.
‘Now there is something I wanted to talk to you about,’ she said, settling herself on the edge of my bed. I moved over to make room for her.
I waited.
‘Have you heard of Dr Henry?’
‘That name rings a bell,’ I said.
‘He said he’d ring you.’
‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘he has rung me. I tried to ring him back. Is he a friend of yours?’
‘Well …’ My mother smiled coyly. ‘In a funny sort of way, I suppose he is. I met him at a drinks do at Audrey’s a month or so ago.’ Audrey was my mother’s oldest friend, from her schooldays. ‘I know in this day and age a woman ought to be able to simply ring a man and ask him to the theatre, but I’ve never felt happy doing that. So I found a sort of excuse.’
‘What do you mean? What kind of a doctor is he?’
‘He’s a surgeon, a plastic surgeon.’
‘So, what, you’ve been ringing him up asking about thigh reduction? I thought you were proud of your firm thighs. I thought it was the one thing I had to thank you for.’
‘Don’t be unnecessary, Frankie. No, it was a nose job, actually.’
‘You don’t need a nose job. You’ve got a really nice nose.’
‘Well, it wasn’t for me,’ she said slowly, looking at my face.
I started to laugh. My mother wanted me to have a nose job because she fancied the doctor.
‘It doesn’t have to be a nose job, I just thought you might like that,’ she said. ‘It could be collagen in your lips, that would be nice. Or possibly,’ she hesitated, ‘breast enhancement.’
‘For God’s sake, Mother.’
‘I’d pay.’
‘Mum, are you desperate or what? I can’t tell you how shocked I am. You are going to ring this man and tell him very clearly that I love my nose and all those body parts you mentioned, and I want none of them changed.’
‘I wonder if he does things with black eyes,’ she murmured.
‘Mother! I am very happy with my body and I don’t even want a sniff of a plastic surgeon in my life. If you want to go out with him, ask him, just ask him. Or at least have the decency to go under the surgeon’s knife yourself.’
‘He is very attractive,’ she said.
We drove silently to Columbia Road and I made her buy me bagels and coffee for breakfast. As we wandered through the market I began to relent. I knew she was lonely and had been for a long time. She was a very nice woman and it made me angry that she still felt the need to engage in subterfuge to catch a man. We bought two bunches of deep red and white chrysanthemums, and two small pots of early Christmas bulbs for Freda next door, and Mum said she was weighed down and would have to do the rest of her Christmas shopping in Colchester. By the time I tipped her and her case and bags of flowers into the train at Liverpool Street I was sorry to see her go.
‘I tell you what,’ I said, ‘why don’t I ask him out for you?’
‘Oh, Frankie, you can’t,’ she said. ‘Have you got his number?’
‘Yes, I have, and I shall ring him tomorrow and tell him there’s a perfectly formed woman in Colchester who would like to go and see The Return of Martin Guerre with him, to discuss whether he did it by plastic surgery.’
She giggled with pleasure. ‘I have no pride,’ she said. ‘Do it if you must.’
As I walked away from the platform and went into W. H. Smith’s to buy the Observer I realised that my headache wasn’t just a hangover, I was getting a cold.
I rang Lena and we went to Hampstead to see a revamped copy of Bringing Up Baby. I had to go out halfway through the film to buy a packet of tissues and by the end my nose was streaming.
‘You should go home and have a hot toddy,’ Lena said.
‘Would hot whisky have the same effect?’ I sniffed. ‘I don’t think I’ve got the other ingredients.’
Lena ordered me to stop the
