Al, darling! Where have you been?’
‘Alex! Sara said she bumped into you in LA – had a few fantastic days, I hear?’
‘Oh, come over and see Benedict and Claire – we haven’t seen you since the pool party!’
I too had been at the pool party, having a thoroughly miserable time. I too hadn’t seen any of these poncey poseurs since then. I pretended to look politely interested and waited for Alex to re-introduce me.
‘Guys, you remember Melanie, don’t you?’
A blonde horse glanced at me cursorily, and I wished – for God’s sake! – that my name was a little less common.
There was a short pause in the conversation as they gave me simpering nob smiles and enquiring looks, then they fell back into loud guffaws as Alex recounted his adventures yet again, cast me one apologetic glance, then hurled himself into dissecting the rugby season and knocking back the ’poo.
So much for the grey silk dress. The entire circle, defying the laws of physics, appeared to have its back to me, and I felt out in the cold. Deflated, I wondered what had happened to my fantasy big night at Amanda’s party. I would have made my excuses and left, but there was no one to give my excuses to. So I wandered off, pretending to be in search of a toilet, and wondering whether or not to go and have a little cry by myself.
Weighing up my options, I spotted Amanda. After all, she was the hostess, she had to talk to me! I wandered up to her group in my best ‘I’m not at all desperate to talk to anyone at this party, ha!’ manner.
‘Hello, darling!’ air-kissed Amanda. For once, her shallowness was pitched at precisely the right level for me, and I was extremely grateful for it. She was wearing a Barbie doll-sized dress made of some pastel, girlie, lacy thing that was almost, but not quite, see-through. ‘That’s flaunting it a bit when you’re meant to be celebrating your union with someone you’ll love for the rest of your life,’ I thought nastily as a waiter did a full body-swerve trying to make out her nipples – but I decided not to mention it.
‘Ehmm … are you having a nice party?’ A stunning social opener from me.
‘Darling, it’s fantastic! There’s a Hello! photographer here.’
There was social success, and there was social success.
Amanda was looking even tinier and more cutesy than ever. Her sly little features glowed in the gold of the room as she checked her reflection again in the mirrors and – I swear to God – simpered at herself.
‘Ho!’ I said heartily. ‘Maybe he’d like to photograph me and Alex, back from the grave!’
This was meant to be a weak joke, but as I would so patently never be Hello! magazine material, it just came out as a bit sad.
‘So, tell me all about it!’ pouted the minuscule radiant one, while doing a quick scan of the room to make sure no one could see her talking to me.
I did start to try and explain, but other people’s happy love lives are so unbelievably boring – we shagged, we stared deep into one another’s eyes and, hey, we had this really funny private joke whereby we turned the pillowcase into a singing animal – and Amanda hid her boredom less than most. It also didn’t help that the other half of this indivisible team was guffawing his head off, miles away. I found my voice trailing off into a litany of hmm, so, it’s great, yeah, fine. Then there was a bit of a pause. My shoulder was being looked over. I knew I should have paid my homage and left by now, but I could hear big roars of laughter from Alex’s clique – laughter I simply could not share (I was tending towards the melodramatic by this stage) – and my options remained either clinging desperately to Amanda like a limpet or bursting into tears in the toilet.
‘So,’ I stalled, ‘where’s Fraser?’
‘Hullo thair,’ lilted the Scottish tones behind me. I turned round, with the only genuine smile of pleasure I’d felt all evening. He must have remembered me after all.
‘Frase!’
Despite the kilt, however, this character wasn’t Fraser. He wasn’t even looking at me – he was looking at Amanda, who returned a rather icy stare. I felt a complete fool.
‘Angus,’ pronounced Amanda beautifully, ‘have you met my old schoolfriend, Melanie? Melanie, this is Fraser’s baby brother.’
I looked at him like a surprised fish.
‘Hullo there,’ he said again.
A rather ruddy-faced boy stared back at me. He was as tall as Fraser, but didn’t share any of his features. His hair was reddy-brown, and he had freckles. Hmm.
‘Hello,’ I said casually. ‘Are you the best man?’
Whoops. Patently not the thing to ask. Ongas, or whatever his name was, blushed to the roots of his – almost ginger in this 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
