The Mirror World of Melody Black

6

DADDY

I wanted to kill my sister.

She called me the day before the family meal – the day before! – to tell me that some work thing had come up. She was being flown out to New York that very evening. It was something she simply could not get out of.

‘You bitch! You absolute bitch!’

There was a long unruffled silence down the line. ‘Listen, Abby. I know it’s a pain. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’

‘You’ve spent the last fortnight haranguing me over this. How could you?’

‘It’s work. I don’t have a choice. It’s not as if I wanted to pull out. Daddy’s gone to a lot of effort, booked a really nice restaurant. I was looking forward to it.’

‘Great. So how about you go to dinner with Daddy and I’ll fly out to New York and eat canapés and hobnob with a bunch of idiots and close whatever stupid fucking deal it is you have to close?’

My voice was getting increasingly shrill. I was very aware of this, but I couldn’t do a thing about it. Francesca, in contrast, had started using her telephone voice – which was so enunciated you’d have thought she’d been taught it in finishing school. In actual fact, I think she’d been taught it on some moronic assertiveness course at work. It was the voice she slipped into whenever things got heated, and it always made me feel like I was eleven and she was fifteen again, and there was this unbreachable gulf that existed in our relative levels of maturity.

The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that this four-year age gap had defined all the major differences between us. It had definitely defined our different attitudes to our father. Francesca had been eighteen when he left us; by that time she had gone up to Cambridge. She had more important things to worry about than the final death rattles of our family. I had been fourteen, and was left wondering, Why now? The answer, I could only assume, was that my sister had been the mysterious glue that kept my parents together. And her relationship with our father had emerged from the divorce pretty much unscathed. Twelve years later, she still called him ‘Daddy’ like she was a girl from Beverly Hills asking for a lift to the Prom. When I called him ‘Daddy’, I was being Sylvia Plath.

‘Abby, you’re being very unreasonable about this,’ my sister continued.

‘I’m being unreasonable? I’m not the one who’s spent the past two weeks going on about how important these horrendous family get-togethers are. I’m not the one who drops every other commitment the second work calls.’

‘Oh, come on. That’s hardly fair. Our jobs are very different. Yours is much more . . .’

‘More what? More frivolous? More dispensable? More of a hobby, really?’

‘It’s more flexible. You don’t have things like this dropped on your plate at the last minute. You get to work to your own schedule. You should count yourself lucky.’

‘Jesus! Do you know how patronizing you sound?’ The weary sigh down the phone suggested she didn’t. ‘That’s it – I’m not going either!’

‘Don’t be silly. You have to go. Daddy’s already called the restaurant to change the booking. They were really good about it. And you must know how difficult it is to get a table there. They’re always booked up months in advance.’

‘Oh, yes. I’m sure it was nearly impossible for them to change a table for six to a table for five.’

‘Four.’

‘What?’

‘A table for four.’

‘Fucking hell! Adam’s not coming either?’

‘No, of course not. Why would he go without me? That would be weird. You wouldn’t make Beck go to a family dinner if you had to pull out.’

‘Yes I bloody would! I’d make him go and take notes and report back on the whole sorry affair.’

‘Ha ha.’

‘I’m not joking.’

I heard another deep breath down the line. ‘Listen. When did you last see Daddy?’

‘Don’t guilt-trip me. You have no right.’

‘When was it?’

‘It was recent enough.’

‘When?’

‘Around Christmas.’

‘That’s not recent.’

‘I didn’t say recent. I said recent enough.’

‘He’s worried about you. He asks how you’re getting on all the time, whenever we speak.’

I didn’t say anything. It probably wasn’t true. But there was a part of me that wanted it to be true. And I hated that part of me very deeply.

I felt hollow in the pit of my stomach, like I was going to cry.

I didn’t cry. Instead, I told my sister that she wasn’t getting a birthday present this year. ‘You don’t deserve one and I can’t afford one.’

Then I hung up.

I was lying, of course. I wouldn’t have made Beck go to the meal without me. I couldn’t have, not at the moment. He still hadn’t forgiven me for the second article.

So far as I could tell, his main grievances were as follows: 1) I was dramatizing my life – our life – no matter how I chose to dress it up. 2) I’d written about private conversations and given too much personal information. 3) I’d made a couple of passing references to our sex life – even though I hadn’t said anything bad about our sex life. (Admittedly, this could have been included under the previous point, but I knew from his tone that it should stand as a complaint all by itself.) 4) I was being deliberately provocative. 5) Neither of us came off well.

But, really, it seemed to me that this was all just one mammoth, repetitive, mostly unreasonable grievance. Every point could be subsumed under the single theme that it was wrong for me to write about my life in a national newspaper.

‘Who are you trying to be?’ Beck asked me. ‘Katie fucking Price?’

This was extremely unfair.

I wasn’t trying to be anyone. I was just being myself, writing something open and honest. It wasn’t as if I were standing on a table flashing my tits.

‘That’s exactly what you’re doing,’ Beck told me.

I was flashing my literary tits.

Six days after the article had been published, as we took a taxi through the narrow streets of Soho, we had argued ourselves to a frosty impasse. Tacitly, I think we’d agreed to stop talking about it for the time being. We’d stopped talking in general. It was getting us nowhere.

We had to take a taxi to the restaurant because walking, even to a bus or Tube station, was completely out of the question. I was wearing five-inch heels, which would go some way to narrowing the height difference between Marie Martin and me (assuming that she wasn’t also wearing five-inch heels; I didn’t think she would be because that would make her three inches taller than my father, and he was far too vain to feel comfortable with this arrangement). I’d spent at least a couple of hours getting ready for this ridiculous meal, and I knew most of my preparation was for her benefit.

This did not make me feel good about myself. And I felt myself sinking even lower as we pulled up outside the restaurant. I could tell straight away that I hated it. The façade was mostly glass. It was trendy. There was minimalist furniture and abstract art everywhere. One glance at the table of diners nearest the entrance confirmed that there wasn’t a round plate to be seen. The crockery was all quadrilaterals – squares and rectangles mostly, but I could have sworn I also glimpsed a rhombus at one point.

My father and Marie Martin were waiting for us in the bar area. She looked incredible, needless to say. She was in a black halter neck that clung to the narrow curve of her hips like a second skin. Her make-up looked like it had been done by a professional and her hair was swept over one shoulder in a cascade of elaborate ringlets. She looked immaculate, airbrushed, as if she’d stepped straight out of one of her adverts. The only consolation I could find was that her breasts were no larger than mine; they were possibly a little smaller, depending on how much padding she was wearing. Definitely no more than a B-cup, though.

I don’t know why this mattered to me, but it did.

My father and I hugged with the stiff, awkward hug we’d been perfecting over the past twelve years – the kind of hug you could imagine Angela Merkel and Silvio Berlusconi exchanging for the benefit of the assembled cameras before heading backstage to discuss fiscal austerity. Except I was nothing like Angela Merkel.

Marie moved in for the French double kiss, but I’d anticipated she would and was ready with my brusque British handshake. She stared at my extended left hand for several seconds, smiling an amused little smile, then countered with a flawless curtsy. This, of course, left me nowhere to go. I nodded in acknowledgement of her victory and withdrew my hand with all the good grace I could muster.

My father, meanwhile, was administering several over-enthusiastic slaps to Beck’s arm, allowing him to miss, or pretend to miss, all this embarrassing power play. Maybe I should have delivered a few friendly blows to Marie Martin’s arm. That would have been a better rejoinder to that stupid curtsy. But the moment had long passed. She was now double kissing Beck, a manoeuvre that he made no attempt to forestall. It was hard to tell in the too-dim violet and turquoise lighting of the bar, but I thought he blushed a little, which I supposed was forgivable. At least I’d be able to ask him how she smelled later on.

I ordered a double vodka and Coke before we were taken across to our table.

Our table seemed to be in the exact centre of the room, which made me feel exposed and vulnerable. It didn’t help, either, that Marie inevitably attracted a lot of staring. Some people were clearly trying to place her, to work out why she looked so familiar; others were just gazing at her, the way you might gaze at the roof of the Sistine Chapel, in awe that such a thing existed. And yet she seemed completely oblivious to the attention she was garnering. She was chatting to the sommelier in French; it sounded vaguely flirty, but then French usually does. I supposed she must be used to all this attention. She probably took it for granted. My father, however, was a different matter. I knew that he wasn’t oblivious to the gawking. It would be like a dozen different fingers all massaging his ego. Though, surely, he must have felt just a tiny bit uncomfortable as well? A fair share of those onlookers must have been trying, unsuccessfully, to work out the peculiar dynamics of our table. The obvious assumption would be that this was a father taking his three similarly aged children to dinner – except no daughters would ever dress the way Marie and I had dressed for the benefit of their father. And there was zero chance the two of us shared a mother.

I glared at the pretentious menu while my father attempted small talk. How were things? What had we been up to? After less than five minutes of staccato chit-chat, he had moved on to work and money, the two themes that were never far from his mind.

‘If you’re struggling, Abigail, I can always find you some work writing copy. You only have to ask. We always need writers.’

‘We’re getting by.’

‘Yes, I’m sure. But you could be doing so much more than just getting by. You know, you could earn twice as much writing for advertisers than you do with the papers. At least. It’s worth thinking about.’

Beck nodded. It was a small, diplomatic nod, not very effusive, but it still annoyed the hell out of me.

‘I’ve thought about it,’ I said, ‘and I’m not interested.’

My father cracked his knuckles, then sipped his wine. ‘I just think it’s a shame, that’s all. You have a way with words – that’s a marketable skill. Finding the right phrase, the right slogan to grab someone’s attention, that’s a talent worth having. You shouldn’t waste it.’

‘Waste it how? By writing about things that actually interest me? That I care about?’

‘That’s not what I meant. Of course you can do that too. This would just be a sideline, another source of income. What’s wrong with that?’

‘Daddy, I don’t want to write pointless trash I don’t believe in – to sell pointless trash I don’t believe in.’

The look of incomprehension on my father’s face was so pure it could have been miniaturized and used as an emoticon. ‘I just want you to be a little more comfortable, a little happier,’ he concluded.

This was a very simple and achievable condition in his mind: increase your income, increase your happiness. But I didn’t feel like arguing the point. I downed the rest of my second vodka and told him I was going for a smoke.

‘If you need to order while I’m gone’ – I jabbed at the menu – ‘get me the braised saddle of lamb with the carrot reduction.’

I had no idea what a carrot reduction was.

I’d miscalculated – badly, stupidly. I’d thought that I’d at least be able to achieve some respite from the torture with three or four tactically placed cigarette breaks, before and between courses. I’d been counting on it when I agreed to this meal; it was one of the few occasions when the indoor smoking ban seemed a blessing rather than a curse. Whatever tumult I had to endure inside, I’d still have this handful of moments, oases of calm in which to relax and regroup.

But Marie Martin was a model. She was French. Of course she smoked. I couldn’t believe how dense I’d been not even to have considered this. But reality registered the moment I saw her stepping out of the doorway to join me in the street. She had a pack of Gitanes, the cigarette equivalent of a double espresso. Reluctantly, I handed her my lighter. She made a thank you smile, and I did my don’t mention it shrug. Neither of us said anything for a while. A man in skinny jeans and a leather jacket passed between us, got about six paces down the road, glanced back at Marie, and walked into a bin.

I gestured with my cigarette. ‘I suppose that sort of thing happens to you a lot.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Causing men to walk into bins, or lampposts, or out into traffic. That sort of thing.’

She gave a modest nod. ‘It happens sometimes.’

‘One of the hazards of beauty.’

‘It’s something I try to ignore.’ She took a deep drag on her cigarette and let the smoke trickle out of her nostrils. ‘It’s not nice to be judged always on your looks, you know.’

I snorted. ‘You may have chosen the wrong profession.’

‘Yes, perhaps. I was very young when I started. Sixteen. It was exciting at that age. But modelling is like being a football player. There is no career past thirty. Thirty-five if you’re very lucky.’

She looked at me for a bit, as if studying one of the abstract paintings inside. ‘I read your articles,’ she told me. ‘Both of them.’

‘Oh.’

I was surprised, but I shouldn’t have been. The articles were online. She probably had a Google alert set up on her name, or something like that.

‘What did you think?’ I asked.

‘They were . . . interesting. I liked the Yeats very much. It was beautiful. It made me feel warm and sad at the same time.’

Fine. So she could appreciate Yeats. She obviously understood Yeats (even though she pronounced it ‘yeets’, to rhyme with teats and Keats). It didn’t mean a damn thing. ‘If you like Yeats, I doubt things are going to work out with my father,’ I told her. ‘He’s not a sensitive man.’

Marie took another drag on her cigarette and didn’t say anything. The silence felt vaguely accusatory, enough that I wanted it to stop.

‘How did he take it?’ I asked. ‘My father?’

Marie shook her head. ‘He hasn’t read it.’

‘What, he chose not to?’

‘I didn’t show it to him. I didn’t think it would be kind.’

Terrific. A lecture on kindness from my father’s thirty-year-old model girlfriend. I didn’t know whether to scream, laugh or cry, but the second seemed the least of the three evils.

‘You’re pretty when you laugh,’ Marie told me.

‘Right. But not walk-into-a-bin pretty.’

‘No,’ she acknowledged. ‘Just pretty.’ She managed, somehow, to sound weirdly envious.

I thought it must be a front, some sort of mind game.

‘I enjoyed our talk,’ she told me. Then she crushed her Gitane under one of her two-inch heels and went back inside.

I lit another shaky Marlboro. Simon had given me a taste for them.

I was determined to get my five minutes of calm.

When I returned to our table, Beck and my father and Marie seemed to be sharing a joke. I thought it really would have been better if I wasn’t there. Then everyone could go on having a good time.

‘Well, you and Daddy certainly seemed to be getting on,’ I said to Beck as we waited for a taxi to take us home. I didn’t even try to keep the reprimand out of my voice.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Abby!’

‘What? It’s good that one of us enjoyed dinner.’

‘I can’t believe you sometimes. Do you actually expect me to turn up to your family meal and spend the whole time being hostile to your family?’

He made it sound so unreasonable.

‘I’m just asking for a bit of support. Is that so much to ask? I’m not saying that you have to be actively hostile to my father, but you don’t have to nod and agree with every idiotic remark he makes. It undermines me.’

‘I undermine you? Not the other way round – like when you told me to put my wallet away because I was “being ridiculous”. You know, it’s normal to offer to split the bill. It’s the polite thing to do.’

‘Oh, don’t be such a man! It was ridiculous. How could we afford to split the bill? Anyway, Daddy had already made it clear that he was paying. You do understand that he earns four or five times our combined income?’

‘Don’t exaggerate. He doesn’t earn anything like that amount, not after tax.’

I laughed, and it was a genuine laugh. ‘Really, Beck! You’re so naïve. Daddy doesn’t pay tax. It’s one of the few things he has a strong moral objection to. He pays his accountant instead. He has more money going offshore than either of us will earn in the rest of the decade.’

Beck scowled. ‘Fine. Next time I won’t bother coming at all. You can sit there and be miserable on your own.’

The awful thing, of course, was that I knew I was being ridiculous and unfair. I was being a complete bitch. But somehow I couldn’t stop myself. Seeing my father brought out the absolute worst in me.

I knew I should apologize. I knew I should tell Beck that I did appreciate his being there, that it made such a difference to me, even if I acted completely to the contrary. But I thought that if I tried to say any of this, I’d just break down crying, and then we’d have to have yet another earnest conversation about my mood. I couldn’t handle that at the moment. I’d had too much vodka; it was fogging my mind and making me depressed. And the thought of getting in a taxi and going home made me feel even worse. Our flat was not a good flat to argue in, and it was not a good place for tense silences. It was too much of a pressure cooker. There was nowhere to stomp off to, nowhere to cool down.

I needed to stay out for a bit. More specifically, what I really needed was that special clarity, that feeling of absolute tranquillity that only ecstasy can provide. This was the best solution I could see to our current situation. It would offer us a short cut to reconciliation, without the need for words or compromise or all those raw, dangerous emotions.

Beck, however, was resistant – even though he must have been as fed up of arguing as I was.

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea,’ he told me. ‘Not at the moment.’

‘It’s a great idea. We need to have some fun, forget the past week. I can’t face the thought of going home right now, not like this.’

‘We’ll still have to go home,’ Beck pointed out. ‘We’ll have to go home to get the stuff.’

‘No, I have the stuff in my bag,’ I told him. We were calling it ‘the stuff’ because we were still in the street, and there was a certain amount of pedestrian traffic. Not that I thought anyone would care. Plus ‘stuff’ wasn’t exactly the Enigma Code.

‘It’s in your bag?’ Beck repeated, after a small, faintly pointed hesitation.

‘Well, you know . . . dinner with Daddy. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. I thought we might need it.’

He still looked far from convinced.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘How about we just go and find somewhere to have a drink? A soft drink – I realize I’ve had quite enough alcohol.’

This last was very true, but I also said it knowing it might placate him a bit. It was almost an apology.

‘One drink?’ Beck asked.

‘Yes. One drink. If you still want to go home after that, we’ll go home.’ We weren’t going home. ‘Either way, I think it will do us some good.’

Beck weighed this proposition for a few moments. I could see the cogs turning. Going for a drink was obviously a more attractive proposition than going home in a huffy silence, but I still had to play this carefully, find the right balance of carrot and stick. I placed a hand on his arm and gave him a soft, tentative smile. Slightly manipulative, but never mind.

‘Please? I just need to wind down. It’s been a really difficult evening for me.’

A vacant taxi had finally emerged from around the corner. Beck looked at it for a moment, dropped his hand, and let it pass.

‘One drink,’ he said.

We found a club that was playing non-stop classic trance until 6 a.m. and stayed until it closed. When we got home, an hour later, we each had another pill, then had sex on the floor while listening to Blondie’s Greatest Hits. It was languorous, and meltingly soft.

Halfway through, I started thinking about Marie Martin and began to giggle.

‘What?’ Beck asked.

‘Marie Martin thinks I’m pretty when I laugh.’

‘You are pretty.’

‘Prettier than her?’

‘Yes. Much, much prettier.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It’s the truth.’

‘I don’t think many men would agree.’

‘No, I’m sure they wouldn’t. That doesn’t matter. You’re much more of a niche market – darker, quirkier.’

‘Good. I want to be a niche market.’

‘You are. They don’t come any nicher.’

He ran his fingers through my hair. Debbie Harry was singing ‘Sunday Girl’.

‘What about Debbie Harry? 1977 Debbie Harry. Am I prettier than her?’

‘Of course. No competition.’

I could feel tears starting to well in my eyes. I wrapped my legs tightly around Beck’s waist and buried my face in his shoulder.

‘I love you,’ I said. ‘I’m so fucking happy.’