Page 5 of You Had Me at Chateau
I put my phone back in my bright pink clutch bag. I thought a bit of colour was necessary, after throwing on a white shirt and the tailored black trousers I found conveniently screwed up on my bedroom floor – because I was worried I looked a little bit like I was going to a wake. So I straightened my long blonde hair and I layered on the eye make-up behind my white thick-rimmed glasses in the hope it would jazz me up somehow.
Standing up, as I go to pull my trousers back up, I notice something in one of the legs. Is that…? Oh God, it’s a pair of knickers, and a worn pair at that. I probably took them off with my trousers the last time I wore them and, like the catch that I am, left them there. I was going to say thank God I noticed in here, as though there was ever a likelihood of me taking my trousers off this evening anywhere apart from here in the loo or at home alone. Of course, I’ve no sooner pulled them out of my trousers (like a really shit, kind of kinky magician) when I’ve dropped them in the wet sink. Amazing, just fantastic, not stress-inducing at all. Obviously I’ve got no choice but to wring them out (thankfully they’re not soaking wet) and stuff them in my clutch bag, because I can’t exactly leave them in here, or flush them down the loo, and now that they’re wet returning them from whence they came (my trouser leg) is off the table.Stunning. I’ll probably forget I put them in there too and find them weeks later, when I’ve forgotten all about today (look at me writing this date off already) and least expect it.
As is typical of London, if you go deep enough into anywhere expensive enough, it can make you feel like you don’t belong there, and that’s exactly how I feel here in Charliez. Well, if you subscribe to that mentality, which I don’t, but there’s always that worry that you’ll be forcibly removed by those who do. The dress code here appears to be: unaffordable. Everyone else is in their designer outfits – everywhere you look there’s a Balenciaga B or a pair of Gucci Gs. Meanwhile I’m doing my best to make sure that the label isn’t sticking out on my Zara shirt and that no one manages to eyeball my bag as something I picked up from Topshop a million years ago. Who am I kidding? I’ll bet no one in here ever set foot in an original Topshop. What I’ve been telling myself is that I’m hoarding items – and I have been since I was a kid – so that I have a collection of clothing that will eventually be considered vintage which I can make a fortune from selling. And that’s my excuse, for why I still sometimes sleep in one of those Miss Selfridge tie-dye love-heart T-shirts that were all the rage in the nineties, and I’m sticking with it.
Charliez is all about elegance with a hint of – how do I even describe this? – purposeful tackiness. It’s supposed to be jarring, I guess, as you cast an eye around the room and try to make sense of the décor. The polished mahogany, the plush animal-print velvet, and the chandeliers that look like they belong in a ballroom but, for the purposes of the venue, have been refitted with disco lights. I know, it sounds awful, but somehow it works perfectly, shining down over the beautiful clientele and their overpriced cocktails. Oh, and with it being Christmas, the place is decked out for that. This is an old building, with super-high ceilings, so they’ve gone for the biggest tree they could get, overloaded with the most decorations they could squeezeon there, resulting in something that would give the Rockefeller Center a run for its money. The bar is lined with tinsel – yes, tinsel, the old-school kind your gran brought out every year when you were a kid – and you can hardly take a few steps without finding yourself underneath a piece of mistletoe. It’s coming down like snow, suspended in the air, putting a huge amount of pressure on the folks below – although people appear to be ignoring it for the most part.
Still no sign of my date. I push my way to the bar to order myself a drink, and smile as I glance over a Christmas-themed cocktail menu that offers drinks like a Sleigh My Name and Yule Only Live Once – bloody hell, at £32 a drink, yule only buy one once too. The young barman who serves me manages to do so in a way that barely acknowledges I’m even here. He looks so miserable, in a way that I’m starting to think might be part of the job, because he practically makes my drink with contempt. There’s no way a drink can taste good when it’s thrown together with such little effort, and yet… wow, it’s amazing. I want to say that it tastes £32 good, but maybe that’s just another thing I’m telling myself to make myself feel better.
I see a man making his way through the crowd, a single red rose in his hand. Ah, this must be Ray. My date. Holding his solitary rose to let me know that it’s him – something that sounded sort of romantic, on paper, but in real life looks sort of sad.
I know, you should never judge a book by its cover, but if it weren’t for the rose, Ray seems like the kind of guy you could easily overlook in a crowd. He’s got that sensible, slightly unkempt look that only a writer can truly pull off. His hair, a nondescript shade of brown, is messy, like he’s just run his fingers through it while contemplating his next paragraph. He’s wearing a jumper that could only be described as comfortable and jeans that are neither too tight nor too baggy.
I often wonder if I look like a writer. I mean, I’m sure I do when I’m actually writing, wearing what I like to call my ‘house bra’ (a big, squishy thing that does nothing for me or my boobs), an oversized T-shirt and my PJ bottoms, with my long blonde hair scraped up into a bun on the top of my head – to be untangled at a time when I have, well, time – and then there’s my glasses. Tonight, though, I’m dolled up for my date, so the glasses are the only part of the writer ensemble that made it out of the house, for obvious reasons. I love over-the-top glasses. I figure, if I need them, I may as well rock them. They’re as much a fashion accessory as my bag or my earrings as far as I’m concerned.
It’s probably a good sign that Ray looks as out of place in here as I feel, because it makes me feel like we might have more in common than simply being writers.
I grab my drink (or what little is left of it) and hop down from my stool. I should let Ray know that I’m here, and I’m me, to save him from aimlessly wandering around the bar with a flower.
‘Ray, hi, it’s Amber,’ I say brightly.
Ray snorts.
‘When Amy said it was a blind date, you know it was the date she was referring to, and not me, right?’ he replies. ‘I know it’s you. I can see.’
I’m instantly stopped in my tracks because I wasn’t expecting him to say, well, anything apart from hello. Is he joking or…?
‘Oh, er, sorry,’ I apologise – becauseof courseI apologise. I’m always fucking apologising, with no real idea why. I wish I could stop. ‘I thought, with it being a blind date, and me only knowing you were you because of the flower, I didn’t think that you would know that I was me… if that makes sense?’
‘That barely makes sense,’ he replies, narrowing his eyes at me. ‘Andyou’rea writer?’
He’s either a total arsehole or going for some kind of ‘treat ’em mean’, extreme negging strategy. Or he could be joking, I suppose, but I don’t really get it.
‘Yep,’ I say simply.
‘Well, I’ve sorted us a table, and I’ve ordered us some food,’ he announces. ‘They do these sharing platters here – amazing – so, let’s sit down, and order some more drinks, yeah?’
Okay, this is more like it. Perhaps his nerves were getting the better of him too, and he’s settling down now.
‘Okay, let’s do it,’ I reply. ‘You should try one of these drinks. Honestly, they’re so good.’
‘Tell you what, why don’t you ask the barman to send us over two more, and charge it to our table – table 13,’ he suggests.
I smile before doing as instructed. I catch up with Ray at table 13 – unlucky for some, but hopefully lucky for me tonight. Oh, and I mean that in a good-fortune way, not a ‘get lucky’ way, I hasten to add.
‘So,’ I say, sitting down across from him.
‘They’re big glasses,’ he points out, nodding towards my face.
I push them up my nose.
‘Oh, yeah,’ I say with a laugh. ‘I like to make a statement with them, I guess.’
‘They didn’t look as in-your-face in your photo,’ he tells me.
‘They’re more on-my-face,’ I joke – then I realise what he just said. ‘In my photo?’
‘Yeah, I had Amy show me a photo of you, before I would agree to come,’ he says. ‘You never know who is going to turn out to be a bit of a moose.’
