Girl 99 Page 4

  What if I said I’d had only a single sexual encounter? Say we were in the pub and the subject came up. How many people have you slept with? We go around the table: Five, fifteen, seven, twelve, twenty-seven. You get to me and I say, ‘One.’

  ‘One!’ You all shout in unison.

  The first guy says, ‘I thought five was low! What have you been doing?’

  Mr Fifteen pulls a face: ‘Were you in prison?’

  ‘Or a coma?’ says Mr Twenty-Seven.

  Everybody laughs.

  So we’ve established that none is weird, and one is laughable. Two might elicit a patronising coo. Three would be better, five better still. What about a thousand? You’d fall off your barstool, appalled. Somewhere along the way, more went from being better to worse. So where exactly did this shift occur? At what point does ‘one’ more become ‘one too many’? Thirty? Forty? Fifty? Okay, let’s say fifty. Why is fifty worse than forty-nine? What’s so bad about fifty? Or fifty-one, or fifty-two?

  What’s so bad about eighty-five?

  Chapter Three

  ‘Eighty-five!’ says El. ‘You filthy fucking slag.’

  Jiang, the waiter, smiles awkwardly.

  My best friend is impulsive, irritable, excitable, aggressive, blunt, inappropriate, clumsy and prone to depression. Though not all the time, and not necessarily all at once. Also, it is unlikely that he will reach his fortieth birthday. Sufferers of Huntington’s disease survive, on average, between ten and twenty years after the onset of symptoms. El was diagnosed seven years ago, at the age of twenty-five. He can expect to die from heart failure, choking, pneumonia or a fall. Suicide is also a popular choice. It’s a rare condition, and El developed it unusually young. And while all of the above are well-documented side effects of Huntington’s, it would be rash to dismiss El’s damning assessment of my character as merely symptomatic of his disease. He’s always been a wanker.

  We met at Bristol University. I rowed for my first two years, until a shoulder impingement and an indiscretion with the stroke’s girlfriend made it all too uncomfortable. For a while, El joined the team as a wannabe cox but, despite his small stature, he wasn’t cut out for the job. He steered a true line and called a regular rhythm, but it’s hard to row when you’re laughing – and El made us laugh every time out. With jargon including strokes, oars, hold it up, and a cox box at his disposal, El could fit more double entendres into two thousand metres than Benny Hill managed to stuff into forty-five minutes. Add to that a camped-up commentary of the various rowers’ pecs, delts and ‘glistening biceps’, and we had no choice but to throw him permanently overboard.

  Nevertheless, El remained a regular at races and in the clubhouse, and we’ve been friends ever since. After graduating, he moved to Glasgow to study for a PhD. It would have been easy for us to drift apart, but we visited often and spent large chunks of our holidays together. After gaining a few more letters after his name, El moved to London and found digs a twenty-minute tube ride from the place I was renting. It was like old times again, and it makes me smile at how lucky I am to still have him. Even if he is a wanker.

  Jiang manages to find room on our already overloaded table for a side of mushroom fried rice, a plate of crispy seaweed and two bottles of Tsingtao. There’s enough food for four here, of which El will eat less than a quarter. Every time, I tell him: This is too much, we’ll never get through it; and every time, he laughs and orders one more dish. Five foot six with a hat and boots on, honest smile, mischievous eyes, El looks like the cute one from just about any boy band. The sort of guy mothers love, because he’s just so downright adorable.

  ‘Eighty-fucking-five,’ he says through a mouthful of beef in oyster sauce.

  I almost ask El why he doesn’t just shout it to the whole restaurant, but odds are he’d do exactly that, so I keep my mouth shut and fill his glass for him.

  ‘So Sadie,’ says El, ‘is actually eighty-five. Sadie-five.’

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘Yes, I thought so. So what’s going on? Is it . . . ?’ El draws his fork across his throat in a gesture meant, I assume, to communicate the death of my relationship with Sadie.

  ‘Looks like it. Came back from Dad’s and all her stuff’s gone.’

  El winces. ‘And this is all because of that . . . whatsaname, the one from your office?’

  ‘Holly.’

  ‘That’s the one. Seems a bit harsh.’

  I haven’t told El (I haven’t told anybody) about the whole Sadie-giving-a-co-worker-a-hand-job thing. The excitement might finish the bugger off.

  ‘And you just snogged her?’ El says.

  I nod.

  ‘Well, that’ll learn you. If you’re going to cheat, cheat properly.’

  I raise my beer. ‘Words to live by.’

  El reaches for his drink, but his arm spasms, knocking the glass to the floor where it smashes. ‘FUCK! Fucking bastard.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I say, rising from my chair.

  Before I can get to my feet, Jiang arrives on the scene with a dustpan and a wet rag. As if he was waiting in the wings for just such a disaster.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ says Jiang. ‘It’s only glass.’

  ‘Full of fucking beer,’ El says, and laughs.

  Jiang smiles. ‘I’ll get a mop.’

  ‘And another Tsingtao,’ says El. ‘I might even drink some of it.’

  Despite the facade, I know how much these ticks and twitches upset El. They are the only visible sign of his degeneration, and they’re getting worse. Up until two years ago El worked in a research lab at UCL, adding unpronounceable chemicals to test tubes full of mutated bacteria. However, as the Huntington’s advanced, El’s declining mental faculties left him unable to cope with, or care about, the job. Plus, and to quote the man himself, a lab full of glass and poison is no place for a guy with a twitch. These days El stays at home, reads when he has the energy and watches movies when he doesn’t. Fortunately, his long-term partner, Phil, is solvent enough that money is one thing El doesn’t have to worry about.

  Jiang pours El’s beer and places the glass towards the centre of the table. I mouth a silent thank you, and he smiles graciously.

  A few years into his diagnosis, with an unknown span of time slowly unspooling behind him, El pledged to see a small group of his best friends on as regular a basis as possible. To this end, he embarked upon El’s Dead Good World Tour (‘Dead good, geddit?’). Each of these friends has been assigned a particular restaurant, and they meet there between once and a few times a month. A guy from El’s old lab takes him to an Italian, a former boyfriend treats him to Thai, and some friend called Fisher does Indian. I get China. We meet in the Lucky Dragon around once a fortnight and have been doing so for around eighteen months, so Jiang has pretty much got the hang of us. He knows about El’s illness, and we come early in the evening when the restaurant is relatively quiet.

  Carefully, El takes a sip of his beer. ‘So,’ he says, wiping his lips, ‘what are you going to do about it?’

  ‘About Sadie?’

  ‘Fuck Sadie. Sadie’s history.’

  ‘Harsh.’

  ‘But fair,’ says El.

  ‘So what are you talking about? What am I going to do about what?’

  ‘Eighty-five,’ El says, using his fork to trace the digits into his oyster sauce. ‘That’s almost a hundred.’

  ‘Did Phil cook Christmas dinner?’ I ask, sensing where this is going and not liking the look of the neighbourhood.

  El shrugs, points his fork at me. ‘You should go for your century.’

  ‘Turkey and all the trimmings?’

  ‘Say you’re playing snooker or cricket,’ El continues. ‘And you rack up eighty-five points, runs, whatever. You don’t quit. You get your head down and get on with it.’

  ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll put an ad in the paper.’

  ‘Don’t be facetious; I’m only trying to help.’

  I take a long sip of my Tsingtao.r />
  ‘Do you know how many people I’ve slept with?’ El asks.

  I sip more beer and shrug.

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘I don’t know. Ten? Twenty?’

  ‘Guess again.’

  ‘A hundred,’ I say.

  ‘Do I look like a slag?’

  I give El the finger.

  He holds up four in return. ‘Three men and’ – he shudders – ‘one woman.’

  ‘I think that’s sweet,’ I say.

  ‘It’s pathetic. So, if not for yourself, do it for me. Think of it as having my share.’

  ‘Christ, El, you’re like a . . . like a dog with a hard-on.’

  ‘Very apt.’

  And this is how it goes for the next thirty-several minutes. I try, numerous times, to change topic, but El’s train of thought is locomotive and will not be derailed. While I eat, he bombards me with rhetoric, both rational and ridiculous, and while El seems to have forgotten we’re in a restaurant, I’ve eaten so much I’m sweating MSG. The sight of the remaining food is making me uncomfortable so I beckon Jiang over and he sets about clearing the dishes.

  Balancing a kilo of uneaten food, Jiang asks with a straight face if we would like dessert. We order two coffees.

  ‘What have you got to lose?’ El continues. ‘You might even meet someone nice.’

  ‘Done that, didn’t like it.’

  ‘Think about all the nuns, priests and ugly people that don’t sleep with anyone at all.’

  ‘And your point is?’

  ‘The point is,’ says El, ‘we need your hundred to maintain the global average.’

  ‘What about porn stars and rock stars?’

  ‘Exactly,’ says El. ‘Gene Simmons – from Kiss – he reckons he’s shagged four thousand women.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Read it in a magazine,’ says El. ‘Lemmy, the bloke with the warts from Motörhead, said he’d done over a thousand. Even Paul Daniels bonked seven hundred and something.’

  ‘The magician?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Utter bollocks.’

  El shrugs.

  ‘And how does all this fit your theory of me bringing up the global average?’ I ask.

  ‘Forget the global average.’

  ‘Gladly.’

  ‘But if Paul Daniels could convince seven hundred women to play with his magic wand, the very absolute least you can do is do a hundred. Otherwise it’s just embarrassing.’

  And El does have a point, albeit a blunt one distorted beneath the relentless mallet of his wonky sensibilities. The idea of being single again, and all the fun stuff that encapsulates, is not entirely unappealing. Not in the mathematical sense that El is advocating, just in the sense of having a good time and rebuilding my ego. Plus, and shame on me if it’s wrong, I do like having sex with pretty ladies.

  The waiter arrives with our coffees and bill, and I fish my credit card from my wallet.

  ‘Jiang,’ says El, ‘how many people have you shagged?’

  Jiang looks for a hole in the ground to reverse into, doesn’t find one and looks to me appealingly.

  ‘Sorry, Jiang, he’s being a . . . he’s just . . .’ I hand him my credit card. ‘Will you put it on this, please?’

  ‘Was that inappropriate?’ says El, after Jiang has retreated with my plastic.

  ‘He’ll get over it. You can leave the tip.’

  El leans across the table and whispers, ‘A hundred quid.’

  ‘It’s a little steep, mate.’

  ‘For you. I’ll bet you a hundred quid you can’t do it.’

  I pull a face designed to project utter exasperation and total refusal.

  ‘Is that a yes?’ says El.

  ‘No, it’s a no, you muppet.’

  ‘I’ll give you a year.’

  ‘I don’t want a year. And I don’t want your hundred quid; you already owe me a meal.’

  El blows a loud raspberry. ‘When did you lose your virginity?’ he asks.

  ‘Difference does that make?’

  ‘Conversation, innit? When’d you’ – El slides his finger into the corner of his mouth and snaps it out with a loud pop – ‘your cherry?’

  ‘I was fifteen.’

  ‘Dirty bugger. When, though? Date, and don’t pretend you don’t know.’

  ‘July.’

  ‘The . . .’

  ‘Nineteenth.’

  ‘Nice time of year for cherries,’ says El, and I can’t help but laugh. ‘C-day,’ he says, encouraged by my reaction. ‘C for cock, C for cu—’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I get it.’

  ‘Well, you do seem to. Okay then – C-day plus one thousand pounds.’

  This time I go for unadulterated incredulity.

  ‘Good bet, yes?’ says El.

  ‘No. It’s not. It’s an absolutely awful bet.’

  ‘That gives you . . .’ El counts on his fingers. ‘Four, five, six . . . almost seven months. What’s that in weeks?’

  ‘Twenty-eight . . . ish.’

  ‘Okay. Twenty-eight-ish weeks to score fifteen runs. That’s what . . . about one every two weeks-ish?’

  El delights in mischief, it’s one of the reasons I love him. But this bet, the almost autistic belligerence, it’s not El. It’s the insidious disease that’s taking him over. And it’s tiring.

  ‘Fancy a pint on the way home?’ I say.

  ‘Does the Pope wear frilly knickers?’

  ‘I’ve never checked. So, do you want that pint or not?’

  El nods eagerly.

  ‘Well if you shut up about that bet, I’ll buy you one.’

  El zips his mouth, locks it, throws away the key.

  Then he says, ‘You could start with that whatsaname, Holly.’

  Eighty-five.

  It sounds big all in one lump, but this is the product of almost sixteen years’ work:

  One plus two plus two plus five plus eleven plus nine plus fifteen plus seven plus eleven plus three plus two plus six plus four plus four plus three plus none equals eighty-five.

  I’ve been consistent. I’ve been in the right place at the right time – eighty-five times, in fact. University, for example, is a place kids go to get drunk and have sex. You won’t find it in any prospectus, but neither do you need a degree in social anthropology to appreciate the truth of the situation. I toured Asia. I worked in and lived above a bar. If you can’t get laid in those situations, either you’re not trying or you’re absent a working set of genitalia. And I tried. I got myself out there, kept in shape, moisturised. Being tall helps, too. I’m easy to find in a dark, crowded bar for one thing. And it’s not ‘short, dark and handsome’, is it? That said, I’m hardly dark. In fact, if you asked one hundred people to name their least favourite hair colour, about ninety of them would pick mine. But at least it’s not that boiled carrot colour; it’s the copper variety or, as we like to call it, ‘auburn’. And some people like it, thank you very much. Which – as we seem to be doing the ‘big three’ – brings us to handsome. Whether I am, I don’t honestly know, but I’m not not; there’s nothing obviously off. I have pale blue eyes, straight teeth, my ears lie flat to the sides of my head. And, if Bianca is to be believed, I have good eyelashes. I’d give myself six out of ten, maybe seven on a good day at the right angle in favourable light . . . Call it six and a half. I can live with that.

  With one eye on the TV and the other on my list of conquests – as if I’m sneaking up on them – I’m able to overwrite several question marks with names and, in some cases, marks out of ten. At the bottom of the list, without making a higher-brain decision to do so, I write the words Sadie-Five – and I go over the capital ‘S’, turning it into an 8: 8adie-Five. And I add a score: 7/10.

  Then, purely for fun, I write the numbers 86, 87, 88 and so on, all the way to 100, which I decorate with stars and flags and fireworks.

  Chapter Four

  Sadie used to say, Would you love me if I was fat?

  How fat? I
’d ask.

  An extra stone.

  Of course.

  Two stone?

  More of you to love. And me – what if lost my hair?

  Wouldn’t bother me.

  Lost a leg?

  You’d never run away.

  We’ll grow fat together. Bald together. Old and toothless and grey together.

  Romantic lies.

  About four months after moving in, she pinched me on the love handle while she kissed me on the cheek, saying nothing but making her point nevertheless. I checked in the bathroom mirror, and no doubt about it, my waist was beginning to thicken – not much and not that you’d notice under clothes, but I’ve seen my father with his shirt off and the warning signs were there. A few weeks later, Sadie joined a gym and told me – more than once – that they did a discount membership for couples. I bought a rowing machine. But the sound of the fan used to annoy Sadie if she was anywhere in the flat. On the other hand, I only ever got the urge to use it when Sadie was home. Which, with the benefit of hindsight, was a warning sign of another kind.

  This morning it takes eighteen minutes and forty-three seconds to row four thousand metres, which is a couple of minutes more and few thousand metres less than is ideal. My shoulder seems to be holding up, but my heart feels like it’s trying to hammer its way out of my chest. Maybe it’s all the Chinese food I’ve been eating, or maybe it’s simply time I got myself back in shape.

  I’m a single man, after all.

  Following a long shower and a breakfast of coffee and thin air, my heart rate has finally dropped to somewhere in the double digits. It’s New Year’s Day in less than a week, so I resolve to get fit and get rid of these nascent love handles before they become the real thing. And, as any idiot knows, the first step in an effective fitness programme is to buy a fridge full of healthy food and a new pair of expensive trainers.

  I’m gently buoyed by good intentions as I pull on my coat and head outside. I’m a long way from whistling a jaunty tune, but I do toss my car keys in the air as I step into the crisp December sunshine.

  And then I drop them.