Lizzy Harrison Loses Control Read online

  Why is it that when he says I’m clean it makes me feel unspeakably dirty? It felt like such an insult from Dan, such a condemnation of sensible Lizzy Harrison, but in Randy’s mouth it seems flirtatious, exciting, challenging.

  ‘Clean?’ I say, laughing.

  ‘It kind of makes me want to mess you up, babe,’ he says, leaning over to cup my face in his hand. ‘Know what I mean?’

  I know exactly what he means, and it’s making me blush like a schoolgirl, so I’m a bit relieved when the waitress comes over with knives and forks and glasses and our conversation is temporarily interrupted. By the time she’s finished, Randy’s attention has already moved on to what the two of us should be wearing for our first official event as a couple, though it becomes obvious as he speaks that my role in this sartorial partnership is going to be as accessory to Randy rather than equal partner. He’s talking about using a stylist, about bringing in a hairdresser, about borrowing jewellery and shoes. I’m too grateful to him for agreeing to come to say that all of this sounds like my worst nightmare.

  ‘I’m thinking a sort of denim and leather theme,’ says Randy thoughtfully, as if this is a completely dramatic and unexpected departure for someone who is rarely seen in anything else.

  ‘I thought you might be,’ I say, waving a forkful of lamb shank at him, ‘but you can think again if you think you’re going to get me dressed up like Suzi Quatro.’

  ‘Hey, that’s an idea, babe,’ Randy coos. ‘Matching leather jumpsuits. I like it.’

  ‘Er, look – I’ve promised Lulu that I’ll go shopping with her, so I don’t know yet what I’m going to wear,’ I protest, rejecting the visions of myself forced into hideously unflattering, not to mention unbearably sweaty, skintight pleather. This is not the sophisticated ensemble I’ve been imagining for Lulu and Dan’s party.

  ‘Don’t worry, babe,’ says Randy, leaning forwards. ‘Leave it to me. Let me treat my girlfriend. I’d like to.’

  His girlfriend. He’s said it twice now. Without the ‘fake’. It can’t be an accident.

  When the waitress offers us the pudding menu, Randy declines it with scandalized horror as if she’s presented him with a syringe on a tray with a row of pills to follow, and instead suggests that we go back home for coffee. As I know that Randy’s as anti-caffeine right now as he is anti-sugar, I have a pretty good idea what he’s got in store. The sun is just starting to set as we start to walk home, and suddenly Randy pulls me down a different road, heading away from Belsize Park, lined with tall houses painted in ice-cream pastels.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I ask.

  ‘You’ll see,’ he says, entwining his fingers with mine as he leads the way.

  As we pass the cafés and bars of Regent’s Park Road, where crowds have gathered outside on the pavement, a few people call out to Randy. People he knows, beautiful girls in summer dresses, two tall men wearing sunglasses, a statuesque girl dressed entirely in leopard-skin. He just raises a hand in greeting and keeps on walking. As we get to the gates of the park, he wraps his arm around my shoulder and pulls me in closer.

  ‘Are you cold?’ he asks.

  ‘No,’ I say, leaning in towards him.

  It’s a beautiful night. The sky is a pale pink streaked with delicately rippling grey clouds, which darken to red close to the horizon. The park is dotted with clusters of people stretching out the summer evening for as long as they can. As we climb up the path to the top of the hill, we pass a group of teenagers. Four girls watch adoringly as a tall, angular boy with long dark hair picks at a guitar. A chubby boy sits on his own a little distance from them, chewing his lower lip and glancing in their direction. Randy waves at him, and he turns, open-mouthed, to watch us.

  ‘That’s sweet of you,’ I say. ‘Especially as I bet you were the guitar-playing boy when you were his age.’

  Randy turns to look at me in surprise. ‘No way, babe. I was the lonely kid all the way. I wasn’t a chubster, mind you, but being four feet high at the age of fifteen and lumbered with a pair of inch-thick plastic NHS specs does not a ladykiller make. Surely you’ve heard all this before? It’s all in my bio – Speccy Geek Turns Celebrity Swordsman? Funnyman Randy Jones Gets His Revenge on Childhood Bullies?’

  ‘Seriously? Weird, I can’t imagine you with glasses.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he laughs, but sharply, like he doesn’t find it funny at all. ‘The kids in the playground used to throw my glasses into the bushes and leave me trying to find them. Mrs Hopkin used to have to help me search for them at the end of every morning break. It doesn’t do a lot for your popularity to end up spending most of your free time with a fifty-something head of maths.’

  ‘So, what happened?’ I ask.

  ‘Contact lenses, babe. Contact lenses and the miraculous powers of puberty,’ says Randy, waving a hand over his face like a street-corner magician. ‘Grew two feet in a year, lost the glasses, changed my life. You’d think Bryan could get me some kind of endorsement deal out of it, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Mmmm,’ I say, still trying to imagine the famous man beside me as a bespectacled weed set on by bullies. ‘But I don’t know that puberty actually needs a spokesperson, Randy.’

  ‘Oh, very funny,’ says Randy, squeezing my fingers with his own. ‘I’ll make the jokes around here, babe.’

  We walk on towards the top of the hill. At the highest point, with London stretched out in front of us, Randy leads me off the path and pulls me down to lie on the grass next to him, hidden away from anyone else. He doesn’t say anything and nor do I. We just lie there side by side, holding hands and looking at the sky as the first winking stars emerge.

  ‘So, were you one of the adoring girls, then?’ he asks. ‘When you were younger, I mean.’

  ‘Oh I didn’t really go out much when I was a teenager,’ I say, suddenly feeling a panicky flutter in my chest. I don’t want to talk about this.

  ‘Why’s that, babe?’ says Randy, rolling on to his stomach to look at me. ‘Were you hideously ugly? Did no one never ask you out?’

  ‘No,’ I say, laughing nervously and pulling at a piece of grass next to Randy’s arm.

  ‘What then? Were you brought up Amish or something?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes, that’s it,’ I say. ‘I wasn’t permitted to mix with the English and all their new-fangled gadgets and temptations. However did you guess?’

  ‘Ah, it’s your lack of proficiency with the DVD player that gave it away,’ Randy teases, pushing a strand of hair away from my forehead. ‘That and your love of a horse-drawn carriage. No, really – were you a speccy nerd, too?’

  ‘Um . . .’ I say, not really sure how much of my life I want to share with this almost-stranger. ‘My dad died when I was sixteen. I didn’t really feel like going out much for a while after that. And when I did, it kind of took some time before anyone would treat me normally.’

  ‘Oh, babe, I’m sorry,’ says Randy, gently kissing the top of my head.

  We lie in silence for a while before Randy asks, ‘What was he like, your dad?’

  It’s hard to know where to start.

  ‘He . . . was just my dad, you know? He was a biology teacher, but his real love was botany. If he was here with us now, he’d probably be giving us a lecture on all the different kinds of grasses we’re sitting on.’

  ‘Grasses?’ says Randy dubiously. I realize that I probably should have tried for a more interesting fact about Dad, especially for Randy, Mr Zero Attention Span, but that’s all that came to mind in the moment.

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘My brother and I thought it was about the most boring thing in the world to listen to him going on and on about plants and grasses. But I’ve forgotten it all now. I’d give just about anything to have him tell me about it one more time.’

  ‘Oh, Lizzy,’ says Randy, his face pressed close to mine. ‘That’s too sad.’

  I curl into him as it gets darker, and he gently strokes my hair. It’s all very innocent and chaste, and yet somehow it feels more i
ntimate than any of the time we’ve spent in his bedroom.

  Though of course we do go back there afterwards.

  15

  Lulu is practically beside herself when I tell her that Randy and I will be attending her party as a couple. It almost distracts her from the question of what she will wear.

  Dan and Lulu’s shared birthday parties are legendary amongst our friends, and when we were younger it often felt as if the rest of the summer’s parties were just a series of rehearsals for theirs, the main event. For years they insisted on fancy-dress themes, from ‘Hello, Sailor’ to ‘Footballers and their Wives’, and discussion about appropriate outfits would dominate for weeks. But since Lulu got banned from a bar last year for surfing down the stairs on an inflatable alligator (theme: ‘In The Jungle’), Dan had declared that their next party would be a more civilized affair. Lulu and I have been bitterly lamenting the lack of opportunity to dress up in stupid outfits, as we are both firmly of the Fancy Dress Should Be Funny school, and are always slightly contemptuous of girls who use fancy dress as an opportunity to dress as sexily as possible. It’s just too easy to dress yourself up as a gold-bikini’d Princess Leia for an Outer Space party. How much more inspired to come along as Miss Piggy from the Muppets’ Pigs in Space. Then again, that may well be why I haven’t been chatted up at one of their parties for years. (Lulu, of course, didn’t let a plastic snout and ears stop her from going home with the bouncer on that occasion.)

  Once their parents decided to fund a posh do instead of the usual gathering in a pub garden, the lack of fancy dress was a condition Lulu was happy to agree to. Not least, she said, because the idea of her sixty-five-year-old mother dressed as a showgirl (Lulu’s preferred theme for this year being ‘What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas’) was too disturbing to contemplate. So, on reflection, Lulu and I are glad of the opportunity to look attractive instead of mental, and have spent several happy hours flicking through magazines and discussing what to wear.

  Lulu’s realization, however, that Randy’s presence also means the presence of the press, has stepped her sartorial considerations up a gear. After two fruitless hours in Selfridges, we retire to the champagne bar to restore ourselves with a quick drink and a shopping post-mortem.

  ‘I mean, Harrison, we’ve got to think about this much more carefully now, don’t you realize? Like that black dress I tried on in Liberty’s this morning – out of the running entirely.’ She shakes her head ruefully. (The copper curls are gone as of last week, replaced by a ruler-straight sheet of ash blonde.)

  ‘Why? You looked gorgeous in that one, Lu – don’t rule it out.’

  ‘But I’d have to go bra-less, Harrison, and with those super-strong flashbulbs from all the cameras, you’d totally be able to see my boobs through the fabric.’

  ‘Look, I’m sure Randy and I can manage to throw off the paps on our way to the party. You don’t need to worry about this, honestly. I don’t want it to spoil your night.’

  ‘Are you kidding? Don’t you bloody dare throw off the paps! I’m not about to spend five hundred quid on a dress for it to be seen only by my friends,’ says Lulu, appalled. ‘I won’t be happy unless I’m totally blinded by flashbulbs when I arrive, okay?’

  ‘Okay, okay – we’ll be sure to bring along the full contingent if that’s what you want. What does Dan think about it all?’ I ask. While Lulu has kept me up to date on every single development of the party over the last two weeks, from canapé selections to wine choices and whether or not her dad would pay for a fleet of semi-naked butlers (he would not), I haven’t heard anything from Dan at all.

  ‘Oh, it’s easy for boys, isn’t it?’ says Lulu. ‘He’s just going to wear bog-standard black tie and I’ve told him that under no circumstances is he to join any of those rugby boys in wearing cummerbunds or waistcoats with wacky cartoon characters on, and especially not –’ she shudders – ‘braces. But he’s far more interested in sorting out the DJ, so I’ve left that entirely to him. Prepare yourself for an evening dominated by the sounds of Eighties soft rock.’

  ‘And is he . . . bringing anyone?’ It feels weird having to ask Lulu about Dan; normally I see him often enough to know exactly what’s going on his life. But lately the only person I’ve seen often is Randy.

  ‘Well, funny you should mention it, but I think he is, yes,’ says Lulu. ‘God knows who – he’s gone all mysterious and secretive about it, but we were sorting the table plans last night and he put in a place next to him for a guest.’

  ‘Well I never. He’s a dark horse, isn’t he?’

  ‘You know, he is a bit of a dark horse lately,’ Lulu says. ‘I mean, I usually find Danny so easy to read it’s like he’s transparent, and I don’t mean any of that nonsense about twins being all telepathic and stuff. You know what I mean – Dan’s just so straightforward he’s practically binary. But lately he’s changed.’

  ‘Changed how?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it. But there’s something going on. Maybe it’s this new girl? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.’ She drains her champagne glass. ‘One more for the road?’

  Of course one more turns into two more and then, fired up by champagne, Lulu decides we should head off to a posh sex shop in Covent Garden to buy underwear on an account Randy has set up for me. I thought five hundred pounds was a quite ridiculous sum to spend on underwear, but he insisted that it was the least he could do after the granny-pants debacle, and anyway, wouldn’t he get the benefit of it? Once Lulu and I have stopped giggling at the leather spanking paddles and the crotchless knickers, we realize that five hundred pounds won’t actually go very far in here. The sales assistant hovers at my shoulder in a too-tight shirtdress, her bra clearly visible under the straining buttons, snapping prices at me with barely concealed hostility as if she’s unsure that I can afford them. And if I was spending my own money, she’d be right. The matching toile-de-jouy bra and French knickers set is one hundred and twenty-five pounds, madam. The black broderie anglaise set with foamy lace trim is one hundred and ten pounds, madam. If madam’s friend has stopped laughing at it, the rose quartz dildo with fox-brush attachment is one hundred and eighty-five pounds, but if this is to go on Mr Jones’s account, I should advise you that Mr Jones has already purchased this item.

  ‘Has he now?’ says Lulu, waving the fox-brush attachment at me.

  ‘I have never, never seen one,’ I insist, flushing scarlet – and I’m telling the truth. If Randy keeps a suitcase of sex toys under his bed, then I have yet to see them, thank God. Who knows where they’ve been?

  ‘Oh, he definitely has one, madam,’ says the sales assistant, her painted eyebrows raised challengingly at me. My blush deepens. Is she implying . . . ? She holds my gaze, smirking, and twirls a strand of long black hair slowly between her fingers. She is definitely implying . . .

  ‘Well,’ says Lulu briskly, dropping the underwear on to the counter and staring the sales assistant in the eye. ‘I guess some girls need all the help they can get their hands on. Thank goodness you’re not one of them, Harrison. Shall we just get these and get out of here?’

  ‘Certainly, madam,’ says the sales assistant. She rings up the total in utter silence (four hundred and twenty eight pounds!), painstakingly wrapping each item in tissue paper before dropping them into a paper bag decorated in a jaunty paisley that, on closer inspection, is entirely composed of risqué anatomical illustrations. I feel like I’ve been standing there, face flaming, for hours.

  ‘I’ll add this to Mr Jones’s account, madam,’ she says finally, holding the bag out towards me by the tips of her fingers. As I reach for it, she lets go of the handles so I’m forced to crouch down and pick it up from the floor. She leans over the counter, teetering on her patent leather stilettos, giving me an eyeful of her bountiful cleavage.

  ‘Do tell him to drop in and settle up with me any time.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he settled his account with you a long time ago,’ says Lulu fier
cely, shepherding me out of the shop before I can hurl a multicoloured vibrator at the shop girl’s retreating back.

  ‘Can you believe that woman?’ I gibber as we stand in the cobblestoned street. ‘Can you believe her?’

  ‘I can believe her, darling, and so should you,’ says Lulu, steering me towards a small metal table outside the hotel across the road. ‘Sit down. We need a drink.’

  ‘Can’t we go somewhere else, Lu?’ I protest as she places us firmly in the eyeline of the evil sales assistant, who is now gossiping with her colleague at the back of the shop.

  ‘No, darling, don’t let her intimidate you. We’re going to sit here and let her see us have a lovely drink and a chat in the sunshine while she folds underwear for a living, okay?’ Lulu gestures over to a waiter. ‘Now. Harrison. Clearly that woman is a spiteful little witch, but if you’re going to date the Shagger of the Millennium, I think you’ve got to accept that you’re not exactly part of an exclusive club.’

  ‘Well, I know that, Lu, of course I do. I mean, even Jazmeen Marie has been in touch to say she’s had carnal dealings with him – Jazmeen Marie!’

  ‘Yeah, well – her and lots of others, I expect. You’re sharing a shag tree with a lot of other women, and you’re not going to like all of them. Or any of them, for that matter.’

  ‘Ouch, Lulu – don’t try to protect my feelings or anything, will you?’

  ‘Two ginger Martinis, please,’ Lulu says, smiling up at the waiter. ‘We need the hard stuff, Harrison. It’s not up to me to protect your feelings, it’s up to you, okay? I know this is all exciting and fun, but you’ve got to keep your eyes open.’

  ‘Look, I know Randy’s got a bit of a reputation,’ I say. Lulu snorts into her Martini. ‘My eyes are wide open, honestly, Lu. But really – he’s different when it’s just the two of us.’

  ‘I do understand, darling, I do – after all, I saw his potential while you were still complaining about his hygiene issues. And God knows you needed to get back in the saddle. But something’s changed since I last saw you.’ She leans across the table to look me hard in the face. ‘I can see it. I don’t know what it is, but I just want you to be a bit careful. Don’t fall too hard.’