Dumped, Actually(42)
No!! No, you don’t!! You’re not going to ruin this for me!! I need this after what happened with Bambi, you bastard!! Smile at her, agree and let’s get this show on the road!!
For a moment I am frozen in place, not knowing what to do. Then I remember that I have a story to concoct about this evening . . . so I had better at least make an attempt to do something worthy of the write-up.
This gets me going.
‘Okay, that sounds like a great idea,’ I tell Vanity, in a slightly shaky voice.
She takes my hand. ‘Great. I’m sure we’ll have a lot to talk about,’ she says, voice now huskier than Lapland.
As she leads me into a dark corner of Manucode, which is relatively empty compared to the rest of the bar, I spot Erica looking at me with a self-satisfied expression on her face. I return it with one that is partly grateful and partly scared to death.
I don’t see much more of Erica that evening. Vanity holds my complete attention for a good hour over in the corner. The conversation ranges around a variety of subjects, but I would have a hard time relaying any of them to you now, because Vanity is quite a mesmerising person to be with. Her voice is melodic, her smile is captivating and she smells like thirteen kinds of wonderful. You try remembering what you’re talking about when your opposite number in a conversation is like that.
I think I just about manage to hold up my end of the chat (whatever the hell we talked about), but it’s touch and go, to be honest. Mostly, I just try to avoid gazing at her cleavage too much. This is slightly more difficult than inventing a perpetual motion machine out of three bottle caps and a Smarties tube.
By the time she asks me if I’d like to come back to her place for a nightcap, I am in such a state of utter bewilderment that it takes me a moment to get my mouth to work. This simply doesn’t happen to people like me. Incredibly beautiful, exclusive women do not invite us back for a nightcap. We get to see them once every so often going past at speed in a Ferrari. If we’re very lucky, we might get splashed by their puddle water.
‘Er . . . yeah. That’d be cool,’ I say, draining the last of my Peroni with a slightly trembling hand. I’m still not sure I’m ready for this kind of thing, but I’m pot committed now, so had better get my arse in gear.
Vanity then leads me out of Manucode, past Carlo, who just about manages to conceal his amazement that someone like Vanity is leaving with someone like me.
We then walk down the road about two hundred yards.
‘Are we going to call a cab?’ I ask her.
She smiles and delves into her cleavage, pulling out a single silver door key. ‘No need. We’re already here.’
Well, of course Vanity would live close to the exclusive club, in an extraordinarily expensive Georgian townhouse . . . What was I thinking?
Okay, maybe it’s only the ground floor flat of the Georgian townhouse, but if it costs less than a million quid, I’d be flabbergasted.
Vanity enjoys the minimalist look.
Once we’re past the ornate frontage of her flat, we enter a world of clean lines and simple colours.
There’s a lot of black in here, along with an equal amount of light grey, some flashy red, and a bit of white. Everything is colour-coordinated to within an inch of its life. The black couch looks like it was made just to sit on top of that red rug – which, come to think about it, it probably was. Vanity seems the type to enjoy bespoke.
The rest of the flat is similarly decked out. Vanity obviously appreciates the same kind of artwork as Manucode, as there are some very similar paintings on her light-grey walls.
The kitchen is all gleaming steal and marble counter tops.
The whole place is a good 483 per cent cooler than I could ever be.
The only thing coordinated in my flat is the coffee stain on the carpet that matches my dusty, second-hand Ikea TV stand.
‘Would you like a gin and tonic?’ Vanity asks me as she pads lightly over to one of her gleaming kitchen cupboards.
‘Yeah. That’d be good,’ I tell her, still looking around the kitchen with wide eyes.
‘Okay. Go make yourself comfortable and I’ll be right in.’
I do as I’m told, and go back into the lounge, where I sit on the black couch and try my hardest not to touch anything. I especially avoid going anywhere near what looks like a brand-new ultra-thin TV that’s hung on the wall in front of me. It looks like it cost a year’s wages, and I don’t think Vanity would be very happy if I—
OH MY GOOD GOD IN HEAVEN.
Vanity has come into the lounge with two tall glasses of gin and tonic. She has also lost her dress somewhere, the poor girl – hence my blasphemous exclamation.
All Vanity is wearing now is a pair of black hold-up stockings, a black G-string, a plain black bra and a smile that says she’s getting precisely the reaction she wanted.
She sashays over to me with a wicked smile on her face and hands me my drink. ‘You don’t mind me looking like this, do you?’ she asks.
This is rather like my bank manager asking me if I mind him putting an extra one hundred thousand pounds in my bank account.
I shake my head very slowly. I’m slightly worried if I do it any quicker, my tongue will fall out.
Vanity sits down and looks at me with smoky eyes as she takes a sip of her gin. ‘I hope I haven’t shocked you,’ she says, knowing full well that she has, ‘but I’m not the type of girl who likes to beat around the bush.’