Читать книгу It's Got To Be Perfect - Haley Hill - Страница 13

THERE WAS A chill in the evening air but I felt hot and dizzy. I opened my coat as I strode alongside the Thames and let the icy breeze whip around my body. With each stride, my temperature dropped.

Having stood side by side for over a century, the giant Edwardian town houses seemed to peer down at me with intrigue. They had undoubtedly witnessed many a young girl hoping to change the world, but tonight, as the commuters bulldozed past me, it was as though they were nudging each other and placing a bet on how long I would last. Lifting my chin up, I reminded myself of the findings from my market research: forty per cent of London’s population was single. I continued ahead, the wrought-iron street lamps casting pools of yellow light that seemed to beckon me towards my destination.

When I arrived, the door looked like any other on the street, apart from a shiny brass plaque inscribed with a picture of a bowler hat and a polite reminder that only members were welcome. After weeks of pondering a suitable venue for meetings with clients, I’d concluded that one with a bar would be most appropriate. This unpretentious private members’ club, hidden in ancient vaults beneath the Strand seemed to be the perfect match. I pressed the bell, then waited for the receptionist to buzz me in.

A staircase lined with blood-red carpet led me to reception. With each step, it was though I were venturing deeper into the heart of London, leaving behind the hard surface to discover the secret underworld, the pulse that kept it alive. Behind a mirrored desk, in what felt like a dark cave, stood the receptionist, her lips as red as the carpet, her hair as black as the frame behind her. She tapped a nail file on the counter like a bored teenager.

‘Yes.’ She sighed, the vague glance in my direction quickly redirected to her long scarlet nails.

Once I’d introduced myself, and gone on to explain that every day, and night, for the foreseeable future I would be interviewing prospective clients in the bar, she readjusted her tight black minidress and leant forward with interest, thrusting out her firm tanned boobs in response to the mention of eligible men.

‘I look after your cleeants,’ she purred in a sultry French accent, punctuated with a sex kitten giggle.

I thanked Brigitte for her help, then followed the throb of the music and the flickering wall lights down the second staircase, tunnelling deeper into the vaults. At the foot of the stairs was a lounge bar, where leather chairs and low tables nestled in shadowy alcoves. A bronze bar stretched across one side of the room, shining and glimmering like an oasis on a desert night. The music pulsed through to the other chambers—a restaurant, and two further bars—like blood from ventricles.

Selecting an alcove near the foot of the staircase, I positioned the chair facing outwards so I could see the clients when they arrived. Tonight I had three consultations: William at six p.m., an accountant who I’d met while dancing ‘Gangnam Style’ at Apt; at seven p.m. it was Harriet, a risk analyst Kat had found at Zuma; and, finally, Jeremy at eight p.m., a friend of model Mike who I’d met at the champagne bar. I laid my new clipboard on the table and stared at the blank sheet of paper, my heart pounding in time to the quickening tempo of the music.

‘Evening,’ said the barman after he’d swaggered over to my table, his shirt tight with muscles. ‘Looks like you could do with a drink.’

With a gravelly London accent and shaved head, he seemed more ‘Guy Ritchie movie’ than ‘private members’ club’, but his eyes twinkled with a charm that brought a smile to my face.

‘Glass of white, please, whatever you recommend—’ I squinted at his name tag ‘—Brigitte?’

He laughed and then lifted up the tag. ‘Must’ve picked up the wrong one this morning. I’m Steve.’

‘Okay, Steve, my wine is in your hands.’

He started flicking through the list and paused somewhere about halfway through. ‘White Rioja,’ he said, reading from the page. ‘It’s unpretentious, elegant and full of character.’

I peered at the menu. ‘It’s also £15 a glass. Do you have something less elegant and more lacking in character?’

He flicked back a few pages. ‘The house is approachable and inoffensive and £6 a glass.’

‘I’ll have a bottle.’

He nodded and then glanced up. I noticed one of his eyelids was twitching. I followed his gaze to see Brigitte wiggling down the staircase, her long, tanned legs balanced on Louboutin heels, her eyes fixed on Steve like a cat stalking a mouse.

‘Ellieee, your sex o’clock ees ‘ere. I sind eem down?’ she said once she’d approached us, her eyes flitting between me and Steve.

‘Yes, please,’ I replied, picking up my pen and clipboard as though I were about to take notes. Realising my actions were a little premature, I placed them back on the table. ‘Please send him down, Brigitte.’

Her gaze was locked on Steve, tracking him as he backed away.

After he’d ducked down behind the bar, presumably to get my wine, she shook her hair and strutted back towards reception. As her tiny toned bottom wiggled up the staircase, I looked down at the red dress I’d borrowed from Kat. It had tracked her curves like a second skin, but on me it seemed ill-fitting, digging in where it shouldn’t and gaping where it should dig in. Since learning that I looked like a journalist, whatever that meant, I’d decided to ramp up the glamour a bit. According to Kat, this required a gel-filled bra, uncomfortable shoes and a GHD attack on my hair.

As I took a couple of glugs of the wine Steve had just delivered, moments later, I caught sight of a tall man, wearing a pinstriped suit and grappling with an oversized rucksack. He began carefully navigating the spiral staircase, which seemed somewhat of a challenge due to the dim lighting, his height and the apparent weight of the rucksack. After a few hairy moments, he lost his footing on the final step and did an impromptu leap that sent him into the bar. Attempting to steady himself against the wall, he inadvertently grabbed the frame of a large decorative mirror, which under his weight, swung on its pivot, throwing him again off balance and culminating in an awkward encounter with a couple on a sofa. When the ordeal was eventually over, he straightened his suit jacket, looked up from his polished brogues and scanned the room like a hedgehog about to cross a motorway. I rushed over to greet him and led him back to the table, hoping to avoid further calamity.

‘It’s lovely to see you again,’ I said once we had sat down at the table.

‘Likewise,’ he said, climbing out from under the gargantuan rucksack. His eyes flickered over my dress, zoomed in on my maxi-boosted cleavage and then settled on the wine list in front of him.

‘Let me get you a drink,’ I said. ‘Would you like a glass of wine?’

He looked startled, as though I’d just offered him a syringe full of heroin.

‘Er, yes, why not?’ he stammered, one hand still gripping a strap of the rucksack, the other trembling on the table.

Once I’d filled his glass, almost to the top, he wrapped his hands around it. I let him take three big gulps before commencing my questioning. From our initial conversation at Apt, which had been significantly impaired by his flamboyant dance moves, I’d only managed to scribble a few notes down. However, I recalled that at some point, during a prolonged bottom wiggle, he’d told me that he was thirty-four, an accountant, and that he enjoyed playing tennis and growing herbs in his garden.

Halfway through his first glass of wine, he went on to explain that he had never been married, had no children and reminded me that he enjoyed playing tennis. He was also keen to clarify that the herbs were basil and rocket (‘nothing dodgy’).

By the time he was on the second glass of wine, his grip loosened on the rucksack and he detailed the exciting career prospects within accountancy. And then explained how, in order for him to fulfil his potential, his hobbies, namely tennis, would have to take a back seat for a while.

By the third glass of wine, he told me he hated his job and that tennis was his life.

By the fourth glass of wine, he told me that one of the herbs was marijuana and that he hadn’t had a girlfriend in five years.

‘I’m a social outlier,’ he said, taking another gulp. ‘According to statistics, single men of my age are having sex at least twice a week.’

I laughed. ‘Yeah, and men never lie?’

‘Why would they, in an anonymous survey?’

‘It isn’t a numbers game.’

‘One would be good.’

‘One is all it takes.’

He giggled. ‘That’s what they said in my sex education classes.’

I smiled. ‘So, the one, what would she be like? What are you looking for?’

He sat back in the chair and laced his fingers together. ‘I don’t know, someone nice.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Is that all?’

‘Hang on,’ he said, before ducking down to rummage in his rucksack. When he had resurfaced, he handed his phone to me. ‘Here you go. Scroll through.’

I flicked through the images: a girl wearing a tennis skirt and holding a racket, two girls wearing tennis skirts while playing doubles, a girl wearing a flat-fronted tennis skirt and pumps, a girl wearing a pleated tennis skirt, a girl lifting up her tennis skirt and showing her bottom.

‘Okay, I get it,’ I said, handing the phone back to him. ‘You like tennis skirts.’

He looked up and smiled.

‘How about a girl who wears a tennis skirt when she plays tennis?’

His grin widened. ‘How often does she play?’

I leant back in my chair and sighed. ‘Why don’t you just buy one of those real-life dolls and dress her up in tennis whites?’

He looked down at the floor. ‘I just want a nice girl to spend time with, that’s all.’

‘Well, forget the tennis skirts and focus on the woman, then.’

He nodded. ‘Okay, just tell me what I need to do.’

After he’d left, scaling the staircase like a mountain goat, rucksack now slung casually over his shoulder as though it were a small handbag, I sat back in the chair and thought about the past hour, and how it had taken four glasses of house white for William to open up. I drew a big cross through the earlier notes I’d made, resolving to abandon any formal matching strategy from now on, and to work from my instinct instead.

It wasn’t long before I caught sight of my next client, Harriet, slinking down the staircase like a catwalk model. What William had made appear to be a formidable feat, she pulled off with the elegance of a jaguar.

‘Ellie?’ she asked as she approached.

I gestured for her to take a seat.

She slipped her gently curved hips into the leather chair, then pushed her caramel hair behind her ears and fixed me with fawn-like eyes. She was wearing a simple black pencil skirt and a fitted shirt; there was nothing overtly sexual about her, yet the softness of her skin and the fullness of her lips revealed an intrinsic appeal, leagues above Brigitte’s long legs and enthusiast cleavage. There was something else as well and it wasn’t just silky skin wrapped around perfect bone structure. There was some kind of aura, a presence she had about her.

‘Evening, ma’am.’ Steve addressed Harriet as though she were royalty. ‘Would you like a glass of the white Rioja?’ It seemed he knew better than to offer the house white.

After a quick glance at the wine list, and with gracious diplomacy, Harriet explained that 2005 was a temperamental year for Rioja and that she’d ‘prefer a glass of the 2007 Mersault, if possible.’

Steve nodded and then hurried back to the bar, where a stern-faced Brigitte began prodding him on the shoulder.

Harriet had an impressive CV. At twenty-eight, she spoke four languages, had lived in ten different countries and was now working for an American bank in London. She had an interesting family background: her French mother was a professor in neuroscience and her Swiss father was a senior officer in the military. However, the conversation seemed more like a job interview than an open exchange. Unlike William, Harriet only managed a few conservative sips of her award-winning Burgundy.

I decided to get straight to the point. ‘So,’ I said, leaning forward, ‘what kind of men do you like?’

Her cheeks flushed and she picked up her glass and took a sip.

I pointed to a dark-haired man with cute dimples standing at the bar. ‘How about him?’

She threw a casual glance over her shoulder, and then looked back at me, shaking her head.

‘Why not?’

‘Looks like a womaniser.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘What makes you say that?’

She looked over at him again, this time pausing longer. ‘He’s too good-looking. I don’t date men like that.’

‘You don’t fancy good-looking men?’

She took another sip. ‘Successful relationships aren’t based on that.’

‘What, sexual attraction?’

She shook her head. ‘I need someone who fits in with my family, my culture and who matches my intellect.’

‘Even if you don’t fancy them?’

She took another sip, though this time it was more of a gulp.

I scanned the room once again and noticed a man with a broad smile and blond hair who was sitting on a sofa. ‘Okay, what about him?’ I pointed.

She turned to look. ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head.

‘Why not?’

She went to put her glass down then lifted it to her mouth again. ‘This might sound a little mean.’

‘Go on.’

‘He’s not sophisticated enough.’

‘Because?’

‘Button-down collar.’

‘Okay,’ I said, scanning the room, searching for someone who might fit her ideal. I settled on a dark-haired man with intelligent eyes and a Hermes belt. ‘Him?’

She looked over, her gaze sizing him up. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, someone like him.’

Her glass was half empty when she excused herself for a trip to the Ladies’. I watched her glide across the room, and then have an awkward ‘after you, no after you’ dance with cute dimples at the bar. I noticed his head swivel, following her as she walked away. However, Mr Hermes belt ignored her as she swept past, seemingly more focused on looking up Brigitte’s skirt as she leant over the bar.

When she returned from the toilet, her make-up and composure refreshed, she continued describing her future husband.

‘I need a man who can fit in with my life,’ she began, her face expressionless. ‘He would have an international background, like myself. And a successful career. He’d have to want a large family. And, most importantly, he would need to be from an upper-class family.’

I raised my eyebrows again. ‘Why?’

‘It’s important to have shared values,’ she said, staring ahead.

I shrugged my shoulders and pretended to make notes, hoping I hadn’t sounded so clinical when I’d listed my requirements to Matthew no less than a month ago.

When she’d finished the last of her wine, she dabbed the sides of her mouth with a napkin and bid me a pleasant evening. I leant forward to kiss her goodbye, but she sidestepped my advances and then offered me her hand to shake instead, as though there had been a gross misunderstanding and she was, in actuality, hiring me to assist her in a business merger.

When I sat back down to yet another refilled glass, I checked my watch and tapped my pen on the table. My next client, Jeremy, was late. Due to my lack of faith in the network coverage in the bar, I nipped upstairs to give him a call. As I approached reception, I saw Brigitte leaning over the desk, boobs squeezed together, bottom in the air as though she were inviting penetration. With a slow deliberate lick of her lips, she pressed a piece of paper into the palm of a man standing in front of her.

‘Ahh, Ellieeee. Dis ees Jirimie,’ she purred as the man spun round, and flashed me a smile.

‘Blatch, Jeremy Blatch,’ he said, in the manner of an international spy.

Although a little slick, he was breathtakingly handsome, as though he’d just walked off the set of a Hugo Boss photo-shoot. Wearing a grey suit and a white shirt, and with floppy dark blond hair framing dazzling blue eyes, he looked every inch the fantasy Mr Right most women dreamed about.

Suspecting that Brigitte had just passed on her number, and concerned she may try to straddle him if I left it a moment longer, I suggested to Jeremy that we go downstairs to the bar.

‘That’s a first. I’m usually invited upstairs,’ he said with a wink.

I stepped back, surprised to find myself immune to his charms. It seemed my mind had adjusted from its instinctive default of perceiving men as potential boyfriends for myself, to assessing them objectively on behalf of others. Right then, I saw him as prime stock for the single girls of London.

Once settled in the bar, he unbuttoned his jacket. Through his slim-fit white shirt, I noticed the outline of a tight stomach and taut pecs. Oblivious to my X-ray assessment, or politely ignoring it, he ordered a Martini.

‘I want to meet someone special,’ he said, before I’d had the chance to begin questioning him.

‘I’m tired of meeting airheads and bimbos,’ he continued, nodding in the direction of Brigitte, who just happened to be wiggling past our table. When she saw Jeremy looking over, she bent down to pick up something from the floor, waving her bottom in the air like a mallard. He looked away, evidently unimpressed.

‘No, I’m being unfair,’ he continued. ‘Some of the girls I’ve dated have been remarkably clever and successful.’ He paused, and then looked a bit strained. ‘It’s just, I don’t know …’

‘You haven’t found what you’re looking for?’ I said.

‘Yes, you’re right. I haven’t.’ He looked down to stir his Martini.

‘I thought it was shaken and not stirred?’

He laughed, looking quite chuffed with the analogy.

Unlike William and Harriet, Jeremy seemed to have no inhibitions when talking about his personal life and relayed his childhood with a mix of passion and nostalgia.

‘Life used to be so simple,’ he said, having described the farm in Somerset where he grew up. ‘When did it get so complicated?’

He downed his Martini, and then went on to explain how he’d play outside all day with his dog, Rusty.

‘He never left my side. He didn’t care how much I earned or what car I drove.’ He threw a glance to the ground. ‘And back then neither did I. Now life is all about work.’ He picked up his phone. ‘And the reason I’m working so hard—’ he frowned at the screen ‘—is so that one day I can have that life back.’

During his second Martini, he went on to explain how his dad went bankrupt when Jeremy was eight years old, and that the family had had to move to London for work. And that they couldn’t afford to take Rusty with them.

‘I begged my dad to keep him, promised I would find a job to pay for his food.’ He gripped the Martini stirrer. ‘But he wouldn’t listen.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘It was a cold day that day, so cold.’

‘What day?’

‘The day my dad shot Rusty with a .38 special.’

My hand few to my mouth. I heard a snap and then saw the Martini-stirrer fall to the table in two pieces.

‘That was the moment I vowed never to be poor again,’ he said.

After he’d blinked his tears away, we ordered more drinks. Then he explained how, when they’d first moved to London, he’d bunk off school and wash cars and windows to help his mum out with the bills and that by the age of eighteen, he had grown it into a national cleaning company.

‘And now, six businesses later, I find myself running a hedge fund,’ he said, sinking back into his chair.

‘What a story.’

‘Yeah, great, isn’t it? Now I get to wear this bloody suit every day and pretend to be someone I’m not.’ He laughed, though I could tell it was forced. ‘And now, I’m embroiled in this ridiculous life. I own a watch that allows me to dive to a depth of three hundred metres. I can turn my Bang and Olufsen sound system on from my desk. I employ someone to book my flights, wash my underpants, clean my toilets and buy my clothes. I have twelve thousand square foot of property that I hardly use, a forty-foot yacht and a car that can accelerate from zero to sixty in two seconds.’ He sighed. ‘The women I meet, they don’t want me. They want a lifestyle.’

I cocked my head and thought about what he’d said.

He leant forward and picked up the broken stirrer. ‘I guess I’m looking for an old-fashioned girl.’ He paused. ‘I want a big family, and a wife who has the time and patience to nurture our children. Not work all hours or shop all day while some stranger plonks them in front of the TV.’ He looked at me, his eyes clouded to the dull blue of his silk tie. ‘Are there any women like that left in the world?’

I nodded while the image of Harriet flashed through my mind. I tried to suppress it, after all, nothing on paper would put them together, but there was a strange feeling niggling in my stomach. And I knew it was more than a litre of house white.

Later that night, vivid dreams disturbed my sleep: a party, Harriet shaking hands with faceless men from behind a Venetian mask, William laughing, waving a joint and wearing a tennis skirt, Jeremy dressed as a dog and holding a shotgun and Brigitte, naked, sprawled across the desk at reception. I woke abruptly when I felt myself falling down a never-ending staircase, blood-red carpet spiralling into darkness. I sat up in bed, my heart pounding as I gasped for air. That was when I realised that there was no going back, that I couldn’t let them down.

They had put their faith in me, and now all I had to do was the same.