positions. I don’t remember how he’s caressed my boobs, taken baths with me and commented on my rather relaxed upkeep of hair removal. It’s like we are experts at compartmentalization. When we’re having sex, we’re tender and intimate. When we’re not, we’re mates. That’s all, nothing more, nothing less. Just mates.
I look at Jim.
‘So, what are you wearing for your “hot date”?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean when are you getting changed, you know, into your going-out clothes?’
Jim examines his attire. Then looks at Vicky. He actually looks a bit hurt. A little part of me wants to give him a hug.
‘This is it,’ he says. ‘This is what I’m wearing.’
‘You are kidding,’ I say. Vicky erupts, spraying scampi fries everywhere. ‘This is the ballet, Jim. You’ll get chucked out looking like that.’
‘Like what? What’s the matter with me?’
‘Like an Austin Powers/raver cross breed?’
‘Aw, give over Tess. He looks alright, don’t you Jimbo?’ Vicky puts an arm around him, trying not to laugh.
Jim looks at me.
‘What?’ he says, a smile curling at the sides of his mouth. ‘It’s a bloody good jacket this, I’ll have you know. It’s Ellesse, not your Top Man bollocks. Top notch.’
Vicky and I are pissing ourselves now. Jim’s had that jacket since about 1991. Which was about the time Ellesse was last cool.
‘Where’s your whistle and your acid tabs?’ I joke. ‘And I bet it’s still got that fag burn in the back.’
Jim sticks his bottom lip out in a mock show of hurt.
‘Come ’ere, I’m only kidding,’ I say, getting his head and putting it into an affectionate head-lock. ‘You look cool. Honestly. You really do. Kind of…what would I say? Sports casual with a seventies twist.’
We all laugh but the fact is, he does look cool, in a Jim-eclectic kind of a way. It’s a mish-mash of decades, what with the Ellesse jacket, the seventies tank top and cords, but there’s something attractive about a man who doesn’t try too hard and Jim’s certainly not guilty of that. In fact Jim doesn’t so much ‘do’ fashion as happen upon it when by the laws of probability means he does, occasionally, pull something OK out of his wardrobe.
Jim stands up, zips up his jacket and announces he’s going. ‘Well, thank you, Fashion Police,’ he says. ‘But I’m now going to get myself some refined company. A woman who knows how to conduct herself, a woman who appreciates cutting-edge style when she sees it.’
Kylie’s ‘Spinning Around’ comes onto the jukebox. Jim stands up and shimmies to the bar, his small bottom wiggling.
‘Nice moves, Ashcroft!’ I shout after him. ‘The girl won’t be able to resist!’
With this, he downs the rest of his pint, puts his glass on the bar, flashes us a V-sign and dashes out of the door. I watch him as he goes, bouncing along the pavement on his Reebok Classics, hands in pockets, head down.
When I turn back, Vicky’s staring at me.
‘What?’
‘You’re smiling,’ she says.
‘Am I?’
‘Yeah, you’re really smiling.’
Here we go again.
A night out with Vicky is a bit like that film Groundhog Day. From the moment I walk in to the moment she disappears into the night only just catching the last train to Beckenham by the skin of her teeth, I know exactly what’s coming: as many bottles of house red as we can fit in and the obligatory ‘but-you-are-really-secretly-in-love-with-Jim, aren’t you?’ conversation.
Vicky has a huge soft spot for Jim. ‘So, are you two like fuck buddies? I mean, is that how you’d define yourselves?’ she asks, looking at me over her wine glass.
She no doubt got this awful term from some sordid programme about weird peoples’ sex lives hosted by Jenny Éclair, but she has a point: ‘Friends who have sex’, that’s exactly what we are. But we’re not, either, not in my eyes anyway, because ‘fuck buddy’ suggests it’s all about the sex and not much about the friendship and Jim and I are the complete opposite to that. ‘Fuck buddies (if ever there were such a grim thing) are all about sex on tap without the emotional complications that come with actually caring about someone,’ I say to her. ‘And I do care about him, I love him to bits.’
‘I know you do,’ she says, over-enunciating the words as though I am deaf. ‘And he loves you – hello! – a lot.’
‘But not like that,’ I say, staring into my glass. I always feel uncomfortable when she starts on this one. ‘As disappointing as that is – and believe me, I’m disappointed too, it’s not like that. Jim and I are just mates. Mates who occasionally shag and probably shouldn’t, I know, I know; but we’re still just mates.’
Vicky shakes her head, defeated.
‘Pretty weird ones if you ask me.’
And on we went. Until I found myself stumbling out of the pub, at almost midnight, into the crisp ring of night air and no hope of getting home before one a.m.
I decide to pass on the cab and walk through Soho, to catch a bus on Oxford Street.
There’s nowhere quite like Soho at night. It’s like the set of a West End show itself, alive with movement, light and noise. As I walk down Old Compton Street, the gay guys sit outside French patisseries with one leg snaked around the other, scarves wrapped tight around their necks, sipping their espressos. Steam from the last washing up of the evening rises from the basements and bar workers settle in for their end of shift beer.
I cut across Dean Street towards Wardour Street, snaking through the crowds of people queuing for late-night bars, members’ clubs and restaurants.
This part of London, it’s the playground of the free. A zone for those who don’t have to make any decisions yet, the circumstances of their lives still unravelling, for those still playing.
And just for now, I’m playing too. But I’ve got a funny feeling that for me, the game’s almost over, the final whistle is nearly up and I have to make some decisions and sort out what I actually want from life.
It’s ludicrous to think I could have been pregnant with Jim’s baby last week. Besides anything else, as I held that test in my hand, the potential father of the potential baby was on a date, just as he is tonight, and that can’t be right, can it?
I had been tempted to send a text. HELLO, DADDY-TO-BE would have served him right, out gallivanting while I was in a self-cleaning toilet having a near nervous breakdown.
But I couldn’t do it in the end. ‘It’s negative,’ I texted. ‘You’re off the hook.’
I didn’t even get his reply until I was standing at the bar in the Camden Head an hour later: ‘Thank fuck for that. And you had me believing that paunch was all baby.’
Cheeky git! So much for sharing the weight of responsibility.
I turn into Wardour Street where a herd of twenty-somethings, the boys all moulded hair and skinny jeans, the girls with sultry, smoky eyes, are careering across the street, singing and laughing. One of the girls is sat on what must be her boyfriend’s shoulders, lanky arms in the air, swigging a bottle of beer. Still high on the buzz of London, I think: we were like that; that would, once, have been me, Jim, Gina and Vicky, strutting our way from one late bar to the next, back to someone’s place, more beer, maybe some drugs, not caring about the next day, masters at navigating a day’s work on no sleep.
We still give it our best shot (even Vicky, who I sometimes