.’
So, Maddie could tell. And this, therefore, was a conversation that would have gone the way of all such conversations with her (and therefore straight to Hope’s soul without stopping at the services) were it not for the fact that the phone on her desk was now ringing.
Madeleine plucked it up, and listened for a moment.
‘Ah,’ she said, grinning at Hope, ‘no, it isn’t. But she’s right here beside me, so if you’ll just hold the line –’
She pulled the receiver from her ear, and then cupped her hand over it.
‘Cinderella, guess what? It looks like you’ve pulled.’ She winked again, and held the phone out to Hope. ‘For you. It’s that nice Mr Charming.’
That was the tricky thing about getting some sex, Jack decided. You had to find someone to have sex with. Up till now, this had proved an intractable problem. There had been Allegra, of course. (When had there not been Allegra?) He could have had sex with Allegra aeons ago. Before the divorce even, if he’d instigated it. But he hadn’t. Still hadn’t. Though having sex with Allegra was in no way an undesirable thing to contemplate on a rainy night when there was no football on the telly, Jack didn’t think it would be too clever. This was the woman charged with making him a television celebrity. This was the woman in whose hands his new career rested. No. It wouldn’t be too clever to make a move in that direction. The complications were altogether too obvious.
But then – hello? – there was the rest of the world. All the other available women who must be out there. But where did you find them? Jack had never been much of a one for lads’ nights out, except those that his five-a-side team sporadically semi-organised, and as these mainly consisted of a lot of drinking followed by a lot of dancing, followed by a lot of swearing, followed by a lot of pretending to be something other than a bunch of ageing married blokes with night-passes, followed by chips and curry sauce eaten at a cab rank (with a wooden fork) there was little prospect that such evenings were likely to prove productive on the sex front.
But he had made an effort. He had been to two dinner parties – reluctantly, and rightly so. They had both proved the point that friends – and almost all his were still married – only invited single men to dinner parties if they had newly flayed and disembowelled female friends to take care of, because that way they got a break. Got to shriek and guffaw in their kitchens while you – OK, he – had to sit at the table while said disembowelled females spent hour upon hour telling you how much they felt raped by the experience and what draconian maintenance agreements they had. He’d been to town, too. Twice. Where else did you go, frankly? Once with Danny, and once with a sometime journalist friend from the Echo , and both times had been pretty grim. Unexpectedly so. Where had he been all his life? Had it always been this way? He’d had no idea that so many married women went out in the evenings, en masse , wearing sparkly tops, swigging fluorescent drinks out of bottles, and pretending they wanted to have sex with you. And if this had been a revelation (and it had), then even more so had been the realisation that he didn’t actually want to have sex with the sort of women who prowled dance floors in town, in push-up bras (yes, he knew about those – the type that stood up by themselves in the washing pile) and too much make-up, whether they were married or not. He wanted to have sex with girls who didn’t need to do that. But where on earth did you go to find them?
Most depressing of all was that he didn’t actually seem to fancy anyone any more. Well, he did, but not anyone to whom he wasn’t invisible. He cherished the fanciful, if unrealistic notion that one day someone would just walk up and want to have sex with him who wasn’t in a sparkly top thing and didn’t feel the need to leap up and whoop when anything by
So, Maddie could tell. And this, therefore, was a conversation that would have gone the way of all such conversations with her (and therefore straight to Hope’s soul without stopping at the services) were it not for the fact that the phone on her desk was now ringing.
Madeleine plucked it up, and listened for a moment.
‘Ah,’ she said, grinning at Hope, ‘no, it isn’t. But she’s right here beside me, so if you’ll just hold the line –’
She pulled the receiver from her ear, and then cupped her hand over it.
‘Cinderella, guess what? It looks like you’ve pulled.’ She winked again, and held the phone out to Hope. ‘For you. It’s that nice Mr Charming.’
That was the tricky thing about getting some sex, Jack decided. You had to find someone to have sex with. Up till now, this had proved an intractable problem. There had been Allegra, of course. (When had there not been Allegra?) He could have had sex with Allegra aeons ago. Before the divorce even, if he’d instigated it. But he hadn’t. Still hadn’t. Though having sex with Allegra was in no way an undesirable thing to contemplate on a rainy night when there was no football on the telly, Jack didn’t think it would be too clever. This was the woman charged with making him a television celebrity. This was the woman in whose hands his new career rested. No. It wouldn’t be too clever to make a move in that direction. The complications were altogether too obvious.
But then – hello? – there was the rest of the world. All the other available women who must be out there. But where did you find them? Jack had never been much of a one for lads’ nights out, except those that his five-a-side team sporadically semi-organised, and as these mainly consisted of a lot of drinking followed by a lot of dancing, followed by a lot of swearing, followed by a lot of pretending to be something other than a bunch of ageing married blokes with night-passes, followed by chips and curry sauce eaten at a cab rank (with a wooden fork) there was little prospect that such evenings were likely to prove productive on the sex front.
But he had made an effort. He had been to two dinner parties – reluctantly, and rightly so. They had both proved the point that friends – and almost all his were still married – only invited single men to dinner parties if they had newly flayed and disembowelled female friends to take care of, because that way they got a break. Got to shriek and guffaw in their kitchens while you – OK, he – had to sit at the table while said disembowelled females spent hour upon hour telling you how much they felt raped by the experience and what draconian maintenance agreements they had. He’d been to town, too. Twice. Where else did you go, frankly? Once with Danny, and once with a sometime journalist friend from the Echo , and both times had been pretty grim. Unexpectedly so. Where had he been all his life? Had it always been this way? He’d had no idea that so many married women went out in the evenings, en masse , wearing sparkly tops, swigging fluorescent drinks out of bottles, and pretending they wanted to have sex with you. And if this had been a revelation (and it had), then even more so had been the realisation that he didn’t actually want to have sex with the sort of women who prowled dance floors in town, in push-up bras (yes, he knew about those – the type that stood up by themselves in the washing pile) and too much make-up, whether they were married or not. He wanted to have sex with girls who didn’t need to do that. But where on earth did you go to find them?
Most depressing of all was that he didn’t actually seem to fancy anyone any more. Well, he did, but not anyone to whom he wasn’t invisible. He cherished the fanciful, if unrealistic notion that one day someone would just walk up and want to have sex with him who wasn’t in a sparkly top thing and didn’t feel the need to leap up and whoop when anything by
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