‘Ehmm … are you having a nice party?’ A stunning social opener from me.
‘Darling, it’s fantastic! There’s a Hello! photographer here.’
There was social success, and there was social success.
Amanda was looking even tinier and more cutesy than ever. Her sly little features glowed in the gold of the room as she checked her reflection again in the mirrors and – I swear to God – simpered at herself.
‘Ho!’ I said heartily. ‘Maybe he’d like to photograph me and Alex, back from the grave!’
This was meant to be a weak joke, but as I would so patently never be Hello! magazine material, it just came out as a bit sad.
‘So, tell me all about it!’ pouted the minuscule radiant one, while doing a quick scan of the room to make sure no one could see her talking to me.
I did start to try and explain, but other people’s happy love lives are so unbelievably boring – we shagged, we stared deep into one another’s eyes and, hey, we had this really funny private joke whereby we turned the pillowcase into a singing animal – and Amanda hid her boredom less than most. It also didn’t help that the other half of this indivisible team was guffawing his head off, miles away. I found my voice trailing off into a litany of hmm, so, it’s great, yeah, fine. Then there was a bit of a pause. My shoulder was being looked over. I knew I should have paid my homage and left by now, but I could hear big roars of laughter from Alex’s clique – laughter I simply could not share (I was tending towards the melodramatic by this stage) – and my options remained either clinging desperately to Amanda like a limpet or bursting into tears in the toilet.
‘So,’ I stalled, ‘where’s Fraser?’
‘Hullo thair,’ lilted the Scottish tones behind me. I turned round, with the only genuine smile of pleasure I’d felt all evening. He must have remembered me after all.
‘Frase!’
Despite the kilt, however, this character wasn’t Fraser. He wasn’t even looking at me – he was looking at Amanda, who returned a rather icy stare. I felt a complete fool.
‘Angus,’ pronounced Amanda beautifully, ‘have you met my old schoolfriend, Melanie? Melanie, this is Fraser’s baby brother.’
I looked at him like a surprised fish.
‘Hullo there,’ he said again.
A rather ruddy-faced boy stared back at me. He was as tall as Fraser, but didn’t share any of his features. His hair was reddy-brown, and he had freckles. Hmm.
‘Hello,’ I said casually. ‘Are you the best man?’
Whoops. Patently not the thing to ask. Ongas, or whatever his name was, blushed to the roots of his – almost ginger in this light, really – hair and mumbled, ‘Ehm, well, I don’t think so … erm, no.’ Amanda looked cross. ‘Well, we had to make all these decisions for the church and so on!’ This was so meaningless I took the point and didn’t enquire further. Amanda had, however, managed to say this in transit and had already made her exit, leaving us with ‘Unpopular at Parties’ syndrome. We both knew we were the leftovers, so we certainly didn’t want to be speaking to each other, but we didn’t have anyone else to talk to.
‘So, what do you do, Angus?’ Jesus, I sounded like the Queen.
‘I’m a mechanical engineer.’
‘Oh, like your brother?’
‘Ehm, no, it’s a bit more boring than that.’
As if in cruel mockery, this remark was punctuated by yet another enormous laugh from Alex’s group, who were obviously having the best time any one group of people had ever had, in any place, ever. Someone had a napkin tied on as a blindfold, I noticed.
Another long pause. Every fibre of my being screeched for Fran to mince in, or for Alex to run up declaring, ‘I’m so sorry to have been parted from you, my darling. God, these awful bores, they just won’t leave me alone. Come, let me ravish you in the gazebo, you amazing raunch-puppet.’ Maybe then I could find out what a gazebo was.
‘So, did you come down from Scotland?’ This remark was pointless before it came out of my mouth, judging from the kilt. Actually, I was dying to ask why he and the lovely Fraser clearly didn’t get on, and why they had fallen out, but looking at his face as he failed to hide his disbelief at the idiocy of my remark, I decided against it.
‘Yes. Yes, I did.’
We dabbled, excruciatingly, in the myriad available modes of transport from Scotland to London, before lapsing, once more, into an uncompanionable silence. Finally, I decided that Tears in Toilet beat this hands down and, preparing to make my exit, I laid down my last small-talk tool:
‘So, what do you think about your big brother and little ‘manda then?’
Suddenly he faced me full on and, for the first time, managed to look cold and cross without going red. His eyes were a very bright blue. Out of nowhere he said, ‘I think he’s being a twat. And I’m sorry, but I think your friend is a witch. Excuse me.’
I really looked at him then. So much for party chitchat.
‘Care to elaborate?’ I asked, in what I hoped was a casually wry manner, and not the kind of thing middle-aged women said when their husbands announced they were having an affair.
‘She treats our mother like a skivvy, she treats Fraser like dirt, she treats that bloody title like a cure for cancer, and she wants to re-do the old place like some fucking King’s Road bam-pot house. So, I apologize, but I’m not quite in the mood to meet her pals. Excuse me.’
And with that he stomped off, deserting me! Bloody hell, what a pig.
Secretly, I was quite impressed. It was kind of true. Amanda was a witch. Fraser was being a twat. But even so! There was I, trying to be nice to the poor bloke, who obviously didn’t know anyone. He’d hardly needed to be so rude as to march off at the first opportunity. He could have at least waited for me to do so first. I stared after him, then examined the chandelier very hard in case anyone thought I was staring at someone who’d just walked away from me as opposed to doing some hearty chandelier-spotting.
Well, at least there were deliciously expensive hors d’oeuvres. I stuffed my face and wished I’d brought a magazine – I could almost enjoy myself.
Alex’s group were by now completely plastered and utterly hysterical over nothing – well, not nothing, something about a chap called Biffy and an imaginatively cruel PE teacher – but, to be honest, I couldn’t follow the details. Alex slung a drunken arm round me and hollered, ‘Totty!’ I pretended to laugh and inadvertently caught Fraser’s brother’s eye. The look on his face plainly showed that he thought we were all a big bunch of wankers. Over in one corner I could see Joan, Amanda’s distinctly tipsy mother, pawing Alex’s old flatmate, Charlie, who was clearly drunk himself but doing his best to reciprocate. It was not a pretty sight.
The speeches came and went as a welcome distraction, because everyone had to be quiet, and not just me. Fraser was eloquent, Amanda fluttered and blushed attractively. Then Amanda’s dad said something, but God knows what – it was lost in the car crash of his new-posh and Estuary vowels. And then they brought on an Irish samba band, which was apparently the latest thing on the snooty party circuit. There was a mass screeching noise as three hundred people who could all ride horses scrambled for the dance floor. I decided to feign illness.
I sat down and tried to look pale and a bit brave, hoping someone would come up and ask me what was wrong