Material Girl. Louise Kean

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      ‘How charming.’ My eyes focused. ‘You’re incredibly handsome,’ I said.

      ‘I’m an actor.’ He pinched his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger, as if appraising a painting in the Portrait Gallery, or a piece of broken china in a boot sale.

      ‘That makes sense. You may as well play to your strengths.’

      ‘Are you a model?’ he asked.

      ‘I am quite clearly five foot five. We both know that I am not a model.’

      ‘You could be a different kind of model, it doesn’t have to be catwalk.’

      ‘If you are asking me if I am a hand model, I find that offensive.’

      ‘Not at all. You could be a model of the more glamorous variety.’ He reached out and moved a strand of hair away from my eyes. I blinked him away.

      ‘You’re hoping I take my top off for a living?’

      ‘Maybe.’

      ‘I’m sorry to disappoint, but these puppies stay caged most days. I’m Make-up.’

      ‘Why don’t I ever get a Make-up like you? All mine are married with three kids.’

      ‘Your wife probably hires them,’ I said, without a smile.

      ‘I’m not married. Are you?’

      ‘Not yet. I have a “Ben”.’

      ‘And where is your “Ben” this evening?’

      ‘Playing Championship Manager with a warehouse assistant from Ealing Dixons.’

      ‘He sounds like fun.’

      ‘Yeah, well, you don’t know him. He has other qualities.’

      ‘Like what?’

      ‘You don’t care, so I’m not going to answer. Thanks for the drink.’

      I walked off, proud of myself. The guy was on the make, I was obviously too drunk, and it showed but I still resisted. I didn’t want to meet anybody that night. It had become too frequent, too easy lately. A peck on the lips before home-time turning into a full-blown kiss, and I didn’t know who I was kissing and if I would ever see them again. It made me feel wretched. The first time that I kissed somebody else I didn’t realise it was happening until my lips were merged with his, and once I’d started, like eating a chocolate digestive at eleven a.m. on the first day of a new diet, it seemed pointless to stop. I’d start my fidelity again tomorrow. And the ‘being unfaithful’ part, in itself, was so unexceptional and run of the mill and ordinary that it just didn’t seem like that big a deal. He was an ad exec and we were drunk at eight p.m. on a shoot for the Carphone Warehouse, and we had stumbled into the wardrobe cupboard to find funny hats to wear. As I said, we were drunk. He kissed me, and I kissed him back, and the passion felt so unfamiliar it was akin to riding the rapids at Center Parcs, or jumping up and down on a bouncy castle – it didn’t seem bad, because I didn’t love him or care about him. It just seemed like a fun thing to do at the time, and nothing at all to do with Ben. It was three hours later that I experienced delayed shock, like whiplash, and I burst violently into tears.

      That was it, I had cheated. I had spent all this time terrified that Ben would be unfaithful, and I had just let a cocky guy from Kent called Dave cop a feel of me through my blouse, and tell me that he loved it when I scratched my nails across his stomach under his shirt. It felt awful then, and awful the next time, four months later at three a.m. in the corner of a bar called Push on Dean Street, with a stuntman I’d met half an hour earlier. He had deliberately set himself alight only two hours previously.

      That was just a kiss. Eight months later I went home with a guy called Jonathan who was the post-production supervisor on a short film I’d been working on. I consoled myself that at least I’d known him for three days when it happened. I’d called Ben the next day and told him I’d crashed at my brother’s because it was closer, and he hadn’t seemed bothered, he certainly hadn’t questioned me as I would have questioned him if he had stayed out all night. In a way I wish he had, and I’d been forced to admit it there and then. The lack of suitable grilling the next day just compounded the reasoning in my head for doing it: Ben didn’t care.

      That night at Gerry’s, walking away from another possible indiscretion, I collapsed in a corner and chatted to an old bloke in a checked suit with a red nose and three strips of hair that sat on his crown like rashers of bacon. He was hammered on whiskey, but he managed to tell me that I bore a sharp resemblance to his first and favourite wife, only that I was fatter.

      I noticed the handsome sleaze staring at me from the bar, trying to catch my eye. I ignored it, but eventually he was by my side again, putting another glass of red into my hand.

      ‘I can’t shrug you off tonight, can I?’

      ‘I’m Tom Harvey-Saint. And you are?’

      ‘Scarlet.’

      ‘That’s a very evocative name. Do you have a giant “A” on your chest?’

      ‘Not yet, no, but I’m working on it.’

      ‘You seem sad, Scarlet, and I’d like to help.’

      ‘I bet you would. Help me out of these wet clothes perhaps?’

      ‘Well that’s a very depressing way of looking at things. What could be so bad? Look at us, here, tonight, drunk in a glorious city full of beautiful people. What could be so wrong?’

      ‘That’s not enough for me. I need more than that. Five years ago that was enough, but not now. I need more than wine and London.’

      ‘Darling, don’t say you’re tired of London, you know what that means.’

      ‘Maybe I am, maybe I am tired of life. Of my life at least.’

      ‘Maybe you’re just drunk, darling, and feeling a little dramatic. Let’s not be pompous, it does nothing for you.’

      ‘I’m not being pompous … I just feel blue.’

      ‘But Scarlet can’t be blue! What can I do?’ He was stroking my thigh, running his fingers up and down my leg, his digits creeping towards places they shouldn’t. I wanted to shrug him off like a dirty shirt, but at the same time hug him like a five-day-old puppy.

      ‘Christ, I just want something beautiful to happen! And I want it to happen to me! Have I made that many wrong decisions? Are my expectations so disjointed from reality? Have I been that hateful that I don’t deserve to be happy?’

      ‘Fuck all that, darling, just live. Wake up. Just have fun. It’s every man for himself.’

      ‘No it’s not. It can’t be.’

      ‘Well what do you think the answer is?’

      ‘I think the answer is to find somebody who wants what you want. And who wants to be honest. And realises that’s a valuable commodity, if you find it. I need somebody to be my refuge …’

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