Page 45 of Going Solo

Photographers.

It was too late. Short of a miracle, I’d been caught. This was going to make for an embarrassing front page.

ChapterEighteen

Ipushed open the door of Miss Timmy’s to be assaulted by the reassuringly homosexual stench of roasting coffee, protein farts, and freshly laundered Calvin Kleins. I was greeted with kisses, and a slight frown, by Sandy Crotch—Miss Timmy’s resident drag queen.

“Did you come straight from the urinal at Trough, dear?” she said, meaning the fetish club under the Vauxhall railway arches. “Or did you piss your knickers when you saw this cinch?” She turned so I could appreciate her waistline.

“Bit of an incident,” I said, holding up my grazed palms instead. “I don’t suppose you have some Dettol and wet wipes behind the bar?”

“It’s a gay bar, dear,” she said. “The council would shut us down if we didn’t carry industrial-strength antiseptic.”

When I reached the booth where Nick and his friends were sitting, I was greeted by silence and… more frowns.

“Hello, everybody,” I said. That seemed to break the spell that was holding them. Dav, his best mate Sunny, and Sunny’s boyfriend, Ludo, were all warm smiles and hellos. Then… back to frowns.

A waiter appeared. “What can I get you?”

“Two Essex Girl shots and a bottle of Krug, please,” I said. The waiter nodded, frowned, and disappeared—not batting an eyelid at the fact I’d ordered a bottle of obscenely expensive champagne and two shots of a sickly vodka, peach schnapps, and cranberry juice concoction that had probably claimed more virginities across Essex than a busload of Premier League footballers.

It was Nick who spoke first. “You fucking reek, pal. What have you done to yourself?”

“I was escaping the press,” I said, revealing my grazed palms to general gasps of horror.

“Via the sewers?” Dav asked. Sunny laughed.

“The fire alarm went off. I had to improvise. I spent twenty minutes hiding under a sleeping bag I found in the bins, pretending to be a rough sleeper. When the paparazzi finally cleared off, I had to pay Britain’s most mediocre busker a bribe for not ratting me out.”

Everyone was in fits of laughter—except for Ludo, who seemed distracted.

“The guy who only plays Bob Dylan?” Nick asked.

“His name’s John, and he only knows ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’.’ I had to listen to it four times. And he demanded twenty quid.”

“Good on him,” Sunny said, lifting his cocktail to toast the entrepreneurial busker.

“He made me take him to a cash machine to get it,” I said. “I had to make small chat with him all the way up to Cambridge Circus.”

“Are you seeing him again?” Nick asked.

I scowled.

“You got his number at least, though, right?” Dav said.

“You lot are meant to be cheering me up,” I said.

The waiter put my drinks down in front of me, and I knocked back one of the shots immediately, letting the alcohol heat my gullet and boil my stomach. As I lifted my champagne out of the ice bucket to pour myself a glass, Sandy appeared at the end of the table with antiseptic, wet wipes, and an airline-size bottle of Jean Paul Gaultier’s Le Male (which, by the state of it, had been rolling around at the bottom of her handbag for at least four Pride seasons).

“I thought you might need some of this,” she whispered softly into my ear. “Not being funny, love, but you smell like you’ve been fucked by a tramp.”

As Sandy swanned off, the boys laughed uproariously. All except for Ludo, who was looking past me, over my shoulder, with concern on his face. I felt a twinge of worry.

“Did you not try the phone trick?” Sunny said, jogging me from my thoughts.

I opened the wet wipes. “What’s that?”

“If you have no choice but to go through a scrum of reporters or photographers like that, put your phone to your ear and pretend to be on a call,” he said. “Or better yet,beon a call.”

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