light, really – hair and mumbled, ‘Ehm, well, I don’t think so … erm, no.’ Amanda looked cross. ‘Well, we had to make all these decisions for the church and so on!’ This was so meaningless I took the point and didn’t enquire further. Amanda had, however, managed to say this in transit and had already made her exit, leaving us with ‘Unpopular at Parties’ syndrome. We both knew we were the leftovers, so we certainly didn’t want to be speaking to each other, but we didn’t have anyone else to talk to.
‘So, what do you do, Angus?’ Jesus, I sounded like the Queen.
‘I’m a mechanical engineer.’
‘Oh, like your brother?’
‘Ehm, no, it’s a bit more boring than that.’
As if in cruel mockery, this remark was punctuated by yet another enormous laugh from Alex’s group, who were obviously having the best time any one group of people had ever had, in any place, ever. Someone had a napkin tied on as a blindfold, I noticed.
Another long pause. Every fibre of my being screeched for Fran to mince in, or for Alex to run up declaring, ‘I’m so sorry to have been parted from you, my darling. God, these awful bores, they just won’t leave me alone. Come, let me ravish you in the gazebo, you amazing raunch-puppet.’ Maybe then I could find out what a gazebo was.
‘So, did you come down from Scotland?’ This remark was pointless before it came out of my mouth, judging from the kilt. Actually, I was dying to ask why he and the lovely Fraser clearly didn’t get on, and why they had fallen out, but looking at his face as he failed to hide his disbelief at the idiocy of my remark, I decided against it.
‘Yes. Yes, I did.’
We dabbled, excruciatingly, in the myriad available modes of transport from Scotland to London, before lapsing, once more, into an uncompanionable silence. Finally, I decided that Tears in Toilet beat this hands down and, preparing to make my exit, I laid down my last small-talk tool:
‘So, what do you think about your big brother and little ‘manda then?’
Suddenly he faced me full on and, for the first time, managed to look cold and cross without going red. His eyes were a very bright blue. Out of nowhere he said, ‘I think he’s being a twat. And I’m sorry, but I think your friend is a witch. Excuse me.’
I really looked at him then. So much for party chitchat.
‘Care to elaborate?’ I asked, in what I hoped was a casually wry manner, and not the kind of thing middle-aged women said when their husbands announced they were having an affair.
‘She treats our mother like a skivvy, she treats Fraser like dirt, she treats that bloody title like a cure for cancer, and she wants to re-do the old place like some fucking King’s Road bam-pot house. So, I apologize, but I’m not quite in the mood to meet her pals. Excuse me.’
And with that he stomped off, deserting me! Bloody hell, what a pig.
Secretly, I was quite impressed. It was kind of true. Amanda was a witch. Fraser was being a twat. But even so! There was I, trying to be nice to the poor bloke, who obviously didn’t know anyone. He’d hardly needed to be so rude as to march off at the first opportunity. He could have at least waited for me to do so first. I stared after him, then examined the chandelier very hard in case anyone thought I was staring at someone who’d just walked away from me as opposed to doing some hearty chandelier-spotting.
Well, at least there were deliciously expensive hors d’oeuvres. I stuffed my face and wished I’d brought a magazine – I could almost enjoy myself.
Alex’s group were by now completely plastered and utterly hysterical over nothing – well, not nothing, something about a chap called Biffy and an imaginatively cruel PE teacher – but, to be honest, I couldn’t follow the details. Alex slung a drunken arm round me and hollered, ‘Totty!’ I pretended to laugh and inadvertently caught Fraser’s brother’s eye. The look on his face plainly showed that he thought we were all a big bunch of wankers. Over in one corner I could see Joan, Amanda’s distinctly tipsy mother, pawing Alex’s old flatmate, Charlie, who was clearly drunk himself but doing his best to reciprocate. It was not a pretty sight.
The speeches came and went as a welcome distraction, because everyone had to be quiet, and not just me. Fraser was eloquent, Amanda fluttered and blushed attractively. Then Amanda’s dad said something, but God knows what – it was lost in the car crash of his new-posh and Estuary vowels. And then they brought on an Irish samba band, which was apparently the latest thing on the snooty party circuit. There was a mass screeching noise as three hundred people who could all ride horses scrambled for the dance floor. I decided to feign illness.
I sat down and tried to look pale and a bit brave, hoping someone would come up and ask me what was wrong and I could complain of feeling faint and not wanting to ruin anyone’s night, thus drawing lots of sympathetic attention to myself. I was sitting there for quite some time until – AT LAST! – Alex came up to me when the crowd had dispersed on to the dance floor, and grabbed me under the arms.
‘Having a good time, pumpkin pie chicken thing?’
I struggled to escape. ‘Mm hmm …’
He ignored this blatant message of despair and started to tickle me.
‘Come on, come dance with me.’
Perhaps the evening could be salvaged after all. However, my image of a romantic smoochy dance-floor show of togetherness in which I could show everyone (well, that poxy brother of Fraser’s) what a successful character I was lasted about two seconds, till I remembered that Alex was one of the world’s all-time worst dancers. He counted out the beat, wrongly, while bouncing from foot to foot. Not only this, but he was so pissed that he got distracted and forgot who he was dancing with, so that he was bouncing around the room like Tigger before he takes his medicine, while I was left bopping along on my own, like a girl in a Human League video. I checked the clock and it was only midnight.
Cursing the fact that I didn’t go with the feeling ill thing twenty minutes ago when I could still have caught the tube, I leaned over and, gently but firmly, grabbed Alex’s attention.
‘I’m going home.’ I smiled sweetly.
‘What?’
It was impossible to hear a damn thing.
‘I’M GOING HOME! I’M HAVING A SHIT TIME AND I’M GOING HOME!’ I hollered, exactly as the music stopped, and everyone turned around to play ‘Spot the Harpy’. I flinched, tried a half-hearted grin, and decided to scram.
‘Thanks, Amanda, it was wonderful, lovely to chat, speak to you soon, bye!’ For once, I was the one doing my socializing on the run.
Heading out the door, an extremely puzzled and drunk Alex staggering behind me, I practically bumped into Fraser, who’d been saying goodnight to guests.
He looked at me for a second, quizzically. Fuck it. I wasn’t going to remind him yet again how insignificant I’d been in his life.
Alex scrunched warily ahead down the gravel drive. Of course, the pre-booked taxis wouldn’t turn up for hours yet, so it was a mile-long walk down the drive, then out into fucking Fulham to try and catch a black cab on a wet Saturday night just after pub chucking-out time.
‘Melanie?’
