I dashed to the internet to see if any of the local supermarkets had a slot open for same-day delivery.
They didn’t.
Shit. Fuck. Wank. I was going to have to leave the house. Interact with people.
Make a salad? I could cope fine, thank you, as long as I had time to prepare. As long as I knew where I was going, what I was doing, what would be expected of me, and how much energy it would take. I needed to plan. Assess the danger. Break the whole activity down into safe, manageable chunks so that the enormity and unpredictability of what lay ahead didn’t overwhelm me.
Go shopping?
It was a minefield of potential disaster.
I stared at my phone and thought about calling Niall, despising the way normal things could make me feel so utterly helpless.
Self-pity. Such an attractive quality.
But it was so miserably unfair. Whatever I did, no matter how hard I tried to pretend otherwise, there was no respite from my limitations. I was my own cage. And I hated it. Hated myself.
I put the list down on the kitchen table and carefully scrutinised it. Carrots, garlic, mince. And that was only the beginning. Argh. So many things heedlessly demanded in his careful, round writing. I would be shopping forever. Assuming I didn’t have a nervous breakdown in Sainsbury’s, which wasn’t as remote a possibility as I would have liked.
I considered which scraps of my self-respect I could bear to sacrifice. Niall would help me. Even after everything. Because he always did. And I would inevitably resent him for it. At first, gratitude felt like love. Now it felt like swallowing razor blades. And today I couldn’t even bring myself to ask. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad one. Pride, like happiness, was something a madman could ill afford.
Clearly, I was going to fail this very simple task. Which left me wondering how to present it to Essex. “Hi, Darian, sorry, but I’m afraid you’re shagging a mental who occasionally lacks the confidence to leave his own house. Still fancy me now?” That was out of the question. Absolutely out of the question. The sex was reason enough on its own to avoid ruining everything. But somehow, like a fool, I’d come to like Darian’s insistent questions and the way he spoke to me and looked at me. As if he thought I was fascinating and impressive. I’d felt the very opposite of those things for so long I could barely remember what it was like to think otherwise. And I couldn’t lose it. Not yet, anyway. Not so soon.
So that would mean lying to his face. Which I was, I realised with only a minor internal wince at my own perfidy, perfectly prepared to do. I just had to make sure it was plausible.
Except.
He would be disappointed.
And I did not want him to be disappointed.
Oh, no. I couldn’t afford to tangle myself up in other people’s expectations and inevitable disappointment. It would be awful. An ever-expanding cycle of everyone feeling bad, like a bulimic serpent eating its own tail. I’d been through it with my parents, with Niall, with nearly everyone I’ve ever known. I’d fuck up and let them down, they’d feel sad, I’d feel sad, they’d feel sad for making me feel sad, and so on, and so on, and so on. As if I didn’t bear enough frustration and regret on my own account, without also feeling guilty for hurting the people who loved me.
Once upon a time, I too dreamed different dreams. My horizon was bolder and grander and more beautiful than the threshold of my own fucking flat. And now I lived in a world so narrow and so colourless that getting out of bed in the morning was a victory. That not actively wanting to die was happiness.
Fuck it all, I was going shopping. I was going to buy carrots. And it was not going to be a big deal. That just left the salad problem.
I opened up Google and stared blankly at the search box. With nothing to lose, I typed in “how to make a very easy salad in order to impress a man you want to fuck.” It was unhelpful. The first hit was complete tat, the second was a list of fourteen things every guy should (apparently) know how to cook, but none of them were a salad, and the third was an article on how to tell if a man was gay. I was moderately certain Darian was gay. Fucking me had been a fairly subtle clue, but I was onto him. It seemed I’d found the one thing that wasn’t on the internet.
I rang Amy.
“I have to go shopping and make a salad.”
“My God, call the police.”
“No, but seriously.” (When did I say “no, but seriously”?) “How the fuck do you make a salad?”
“Oh, I know this one!” she said. “You go to Marks and Spencer, and they have them there in little plastic tubs. You buy as many as you need, take them home, put them in a bowl, and shout ta-daaa.”
That sounded almost doable except for the Marks and Spencer part. There was probably one nearby, because this was London, but it might involve the Tube. And I certainly wasn’t up for that at short notice.
“I can maybe get to a Sainsbury’s,” I offered.
She thought about it a moment. “Then you’re fucked.”
“Right.”
There was a pause.
“Ash,” she asked, “did you ring me because I’m the only person with a vagina you know?”
“Um . . .”
“Because, you know you don’t need a vagina to prepare a salad, right? In fact, I have it on good authority that there are salads prepared sans vaginas all the time.”
“Can you stop saying vagina over and over again? It’s scaring me.”
“It serves you right for being sexist. Vagina.”
Even in spite of Saladgate, I felt a smile threatening at the corner of my lips. “Isn’t it just possible,” I said, “that I rang you because you’re a brilliantly clever and generous person (with a vagina) who I knew would be able to help me in my hour of need?”
“No.”
“You’re probably right.”
“But, you know,” she said. “You should try Max. He’s a kitchen ninja. He’d love to help.”
I flinched a bit. “I’ll work something out.”
“No, I mean it. Ring Max. This is totally his speciality.”
“Yes but . . .”
“Anyway, sweetheart, I have to dash. I’m late for a meeting. The next Martin Amis, you know how it is. Mwah.”
Ring Max, she said. As if it were simple. As if I could just pick up the phone and talk to him. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him other than as part of a larger group, or the last time we’d had anything like a conversation. Perhaps we’d been closer at university, but I’d lost so much of that time due to an extravagant combination of recreational drugs, mania, and electroconvulsive therapy. A title for my autobiography, possibly. Or an epitaph. The ECT had sort of worked, but it had fucked my memory inside-out and upside-down. Nearly everything had come back, in time, but it had left my life a jigsaw. I had the pieces but I didn’t know what the picture was supposed to be.
University and its immediate aftermath were little more than a sensory haze. A blur of gold and green, the scent of old books, the slide of a stranger’s body against mine. Rushes of chemical rapture. The heat of a nightclub, a sweep of lights, like a peacock’s tail, bodies and heartbeats and music. I was king of a glittering world, a splintering, falling, shattering world. But what of Max? What could I remember of Max?
Patrician good looks and a self-deprecating smile. Cricket whites for dreamy afternoons. Punting and a panama hat in the full golden gleam of summer. And, in winter, a wine-red scarf by an Italian designer so exclusive even I hadn’t heard of him. I think Max used to let me bury my hands in it on cold days. My skin, at least, remembered the softness. Like a kiss from a ghost.
It’s quite an accomplishment to out-privilege me, but Max, the youngest son of an American heiress and an English viscount, was the sort of person who had no right to exist outside of Sunday night costume dramas and the novels of Evelyn Waugh. If there was any justice in the world, he would be profoundly unlikeable (or at the very least ugly) but, somehow, he wasn’t. Imagine, if you would, the sincerity of an American coupled with the self-irony of the English, wrapped in the body of a Greek God. The bisexuality, we must assume, was simply a gift from the universe.
Leaving university with an effortlessly acquired First, he went on to effortlessly found a culture consultancy firm, which had been effortlessly successful, even in the middle of the recession. I wasn’t sure what he actually did. Extremely wealthy companies hired him to improve their corporate culture. This seemed to involve Max telling them to buy fruit for their employees and then they’d give him millions and millions of pounds.
It was no wonder I was so reluctant to parade my endless inadequacies in front of him. Not that he hadn’t seen them all already. But there was something implacably blessed about Max. He was practically a mutant and his mutation was being better than you at everything.
I didn’t even know he liked cooking. No surprise that he was apparently excellent at it.
I rang him. What else was I to do?
“Ash, hi!” He sounded genuinely thrilled. He usually did. Talking to Max could make you feel like the most important person in the whole world. It was a heady drug. And Niall’s prescription of choice.
“So glad to hear from you,” he rushed on. “It’s been, like, forever. Excuse me a moment.” The line crackled and I heard him talking to someone else. He seemed to be telling them where to put some fruit. I snuffled in private hilarity and tried to pass it off as a throat-clearing as he came back onto the line. “I’m here. How are you?”
“I’m all right”—(ahwight)—“actually. How about you?”
“Going out of my tiny mind over the wedding. It’s an absolute ’mare. My mother’s family are outraged it can’t be held in Buckingham Palace, my father’s family hate my mother’s family, Amy’s family think we’re all insane and want to go back to Yorkshire. And I’m petrified they’re not going to allow their only daughter to marry me after all. But—” Amusement coloured his voice. “—other than that, everything’s fabulous.”
“Oh, it’ll be fine,” I said. “You’re filthy rich. They’ll probably just have you murdered on your wedding night.”
“That’s reassuring, ta. I read your latest by the way. Absolutely loved it. I totally didn’t see the twist, because I’m an idiot, but when I thought back, it made perfect sense.”
“I’m quite proud of the title,” I heard myself saying, “because his name is Rik Glass, right, and the title is Through a Glass Darkly. Which is an Annie Lennox song. And also in the Bible.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Max gave a snort of upper-class laughter.
“Anyway,” I went on before I ran out of stupid things to say that could be generously interpreted as my dry, ironic wit, “I sort of need your help.”
He didn’t hesitate. “Of course, Ash. What can I do?”
Shit. How to start? “There’s this . . . guy . . . who I’m . . . well . . . shagging, I guess.”
“That’s great!”
“Yes, I quite enjoy it. Anyway, I sort of . . . gah . . . it’s complicated.”
“Complicated?” I could almost hear him frowning, golden brows sliding into intent little Vs.
“Look,” I said, quickly, “I need to make a salad. How do I do that?”
Max spluttered. “God,” he said, “is that all? I was braced for absolute disaster. Married man, BNP supporter, closet-case, accountant. Not salad eater.”
“Oh, fuck off. You know I don’t cook. Now are you going to help or not?”
“Of course I’m going to help.”
“It has to be an impressive salad,” I explained. “A really impressive salad.”
“Oh, I see, you need a ‘let’s do it on the kitchen table right now’ salad.”
“They have those?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely they do.”
“Well,” I said impatiently, “hit me up. But remember I’m a salad neophyte. I’m not faffing around with pans or any complicated shit like that.”
“Damn, you’re a difficult man to please.”
I didn’t quite know how to answer that.
“All right,” he continued, “how about pear and Roquefort with a honey and ginger dressing?”
“That’s a sex salad, is it? Because, to me, blue cheese does not scream passion. But,” I added, with a play of reluctance, “I suppose I’ll have to trust you.”
“It’s a salad. It doesn’t need a safeword. I’ll send you the details. Also, we should go for a coffee.”
“Yes, we should.” This was how all of our conversations ended, with vague intentions and abstract good wishes.
There was a pause.
“Ash,” Max said, with a trace of hesitation I was unused to hearing in his voice, “why do you always give me the brush-off?”
“I said yes, didn’t I?”
“In a ‘never getting round to it’ way. I mean, you don’t have to. I can be your Long Distance Salad Guru. But I miss you.”
I shuffled uncomfortably. I was half convinced the reason I’d managed to retain whatever good opinion Max had of me was through the judicious application of distance. “What if I’m shit company?” I said, as though it was a very self-deprecating joke.
“What if I’m shit company.” He paused and then, half jesting, half sincere, added, “Am I shit company? Is that why you’ve been avoiding me?”
I sighed. “I’m a misanthropic, clinically anxious, bipolar lunatic. I avoid everybody.”
“Lies! You see Amy all the time.”
“I work with Amy.”
“Oh, so that’s why she’s entitled to misanthropic, clinically anxious, bipolar lunatic action despite the fact that some of us, it could be argued, have prior claim and should, therefore, be first in the queue?”
“There’s a queue?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
“Max I . . . I just don’t . . . I’m just not . . .” I trailed off. What could I tell him? I’m so much less than I used to be. Seeing you reminds me.
“Fine,” he said. “Fine. If it has to be professional, then so be it. I shall come and consult with you about improving your corporate culture. Over coffee.”
I gave a helpless, unexpected laugh. “I’ve got enough fruit, thanks.”
“I bet you don’t. I actually bet you don’t. I bet you don’t have a single piece of fruit in your whole house.”
“Darling, I am the fruit.” And while he was chuckling, I went on hastily. “Anyway, I’d better see about this salad. Bye.”
And I hung up on him, like the selfish coward I was.
A few minutes later, my phone bleeped. True to his word, Max had emailed me salad ingredients and instructions. It seemed just about within my capabilities. On a good day.
I could do this.