Eat My Heart Out Read online

  ‘A what?’

  ‘That you’re on a spectrum.’

  ‘We’re not on a spectrum.’

  ‘He said it was like The Cement Garden and incestuous and shit all up in this place but that I shouldn’t be perturbed if you got jealous because one thing he likes and can’t stand about you is your temper.’ Samuel turned back to the TV.

  Now the crazy French chef was trying to murder the blatantly racist rendition of a crab with a cleaver.

  Samuel laughed until the tears welled up in his eyes again. He addressed me with sincerity: ‘You’re the coolest bitch I’ve ever seen.’

  Freddie was concealed inside the silk drapes of his four-poster. The room was fetid and smelt of yeast. Sex. The curtains were closed, but I could see the full blue condom that had bellyflopped into a brogue.

  I crawled into the bed. ‘Freddie.’

  He was asleep.

  ‘Freddie, why did you let Allegra’s brother in here?’ I prised his eyelids open. His eyeballs were a brilliant red. ‘Get him out.’

  Freddie smiled and pulled me down against him so that my face was pressed against his naked chest. ‘This is nice,’ he said. ‘I love you.’ He kissed me on the forehead.

  I lay down next to him and smoked a cigarette. Then I got up and attempted to lock the door, but the lock was broken.

  Samuel appeared wrapped in my towel and sang in a falsetto: ‘Say My Name!’ He got into bed too.

  I was stuck between them.

  The gloom was unbearable; I got up and opened the curtains.

  ‘Freddie says you love Beyoncé because you went to a black school and that is sick,’ said Samuel.

  The morning light seemed to wash the room. I saw the full horror: more full condoms; three more. More white dust.

  Now Freddie and Samuel were kissing, graphically.

  I shook Freddie until he turned away from Samuel and turned towards me. ‘It’s finally happened!’ I said. ‘I felt it – the coup de foudre!! Vic and I had sex so hard last night that now I can’t even walk properly!!’

  ‘Deck,’ said Samuel.

  I spat in his face.

  He looked like he would cry again.

  ‘That’s not very nice, is it?’ said Freddie. ‘You got on very well with Samuel when we all spent that lovely weekend together in Buckinghamshire.’ He turned to Samuel. ‘When your parents were in the Maldives.’

  ‘Yeah, it was awful.’ I addressed Samuel: ‘You’ve changed. You used to be a chess champion.’

  ‘Yeah but now I’m a hipster.’ Samuel nodded earnestly. Then he shook his head. ‘No. I forgot. I’m not meant to say that I’m a hipster. But I am one.’ He bared his private school teeth: they were straight and white like hers. ‘I got the braces taken off and everything! I was just waiting to get them taken off before I made my last exit to Hackney.’

  Dear Vic,

  A man with arrested development has invaded the house. If you don’t write back to me soon I’m going to kill myself. That is not an empty threat. I never did see the point in living unless some form of meaning was erected out of the raw, overwhelming nothingness. I guess that’s the point of being an artist. Are you an artist, Vic? Could you ever be one? I doubt it.

  I’m glad. Artists are like megalomaniac ageing despots who build halls of mirrors around themselves in order to block out the world that dares to be itself e.g. autonomous. They veer between arrogance and insecurity.

  I think I’m falling more and more in love with you.

  Ann-Marie X

  I sat in the basement on an upturned plastic bucket and switched on the projector. I had to cover my nose and mouth; the smell of sewage was unbearable. It was dark and I was alone except for the mice. We turned this space into a screening room a few months ago.

  Our Super-8 installations flickered like sun on water. There I was dressed up in a mohair jumper and white shirt, my hair coiffed, my ankle-socks pristine, preparing milk and cookies in a Formica kitchen, kissing two child actors whom Freddie had hired for the day, laying them down for a nap, duct-taping the bedroom door shut and sticking my head in the oven. There I was dressed up in an Edwardian hat, traipsing into the River Cam in the middle of the night, piling rocks into my pockets, looking depressed though ready. Drowning. There I was gassing myself in a parked car in a garage – that was Anne Sexton. She was less well known, but Freddie had wanted a trilogy. His lucky number was three, but only if pressed – really, he wasn’t superstitious at all. He’d won a young film-makers’ bursary from Sundance.

  Dear Vic,

  Do you want to skype? My username is purposedestiny7.

  Ann-Marie X

  Samuel decided to make a cocktail called Aqua Fortis because a friend of a friend who’d been to Williamsburg had said it was deck, so off he went to Gerry’s specialist off-licence in Soho to buy marjoram-infused Lillet Blanc, El Jimador Reposado, and Meletti Amaro. He returned hours later, empty-handed.

  Samuel couldn’t get served. He couldn’t get served because he was only seventeen.

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to be at school?’ I demanded.

  ‘I gave all that up.’ He was standing against the wall in the kitchen, his hands behind his back.

  Freddie sat at the table, morose and smoking.

  ‘Samuel.’ I spoke very slowly. ‘Do your parents know where you are?’

  Samuel started to nod, but then he shook his head. I saw the tears. ‘They think I’m at The Custard—’ Now the tears flowed.

  ‘Is that your tuck shop?’ I said.

  ‘No. The Custard Collective is my squat. East. I ran away to The Wick, as they say!’

  ‘They don’t say that,’ I said. ‘I’ve never heard anyone say that.’ I came very close to his face. ‘You are in a lot of danger. Hackney is a very dangerous place for a boy like you. They will get you.’

  ‘I don’t care! I don’t care!’ He went hysterical, grabbing at the copper pans hanging from the stove, banging them together. It reminded me of Allegra’s performance back in my college room all those years ago. Three years ago.

  ‘Sit down!’ I commanded.

  He sat next to Freddie, who was repeating: ‘I want a drink. I want a drink.’

  ‘I was born to be a DJ!’ said Samuel, with passion. ‘Or a lifestyle – a style consultant.’

  ‘Samuel’s an Enlightenment polymath,’ said Freddie, darkly. ‘I’m going to make him a star.’

  Samuel turned to Freddie with the light of true love in his eyes. He buried his face in Freddie’s neck and said again and again: ‘I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.’

  I had agreed to buy the drink, but I had no intention of going all the way to Gerry’s because I was due in Soho in two hours anyway to start my shift. I considered trying to find Vic’s house after work and using Freddie’s drink money to pay him to go out with me. I had £150 cash in my hand. I had never felt so free. But soon my freedom became a burden again.

  I walked around the pond on Clapham Common, eyeing the men in tents. Their fishing-rods trailed in the freezing water. A tree bent its gnarled body all the way over so that its branches disappeared in the depths. Yuppies walked their dogs despite the adverse temperature. One mongrel bounded towards a collie of some kind; they yelped at each other and then sniffed each other’s backsides in a circular dance of mysterious sweetness before their owners appeared in running-gear and ruined the friendship. I passed the fenced-off zone where feral cats and feral children roamed. Like voyeurs at a peep-show, young couples stared at sumptuous images of semi-detached houses in the estate agent’s window. The council flats soared to the right, wrecking the dream. I passed the local crazy woman, parked outside Specsavers. She wore her hair in bunches and she carried a mangy Cabbage Patch doll. Her whole ensemble was bricolage.

  I stopped and counted out £50. I gave it to her.

  ‘I’ll tell you a secret,’ she said. ‘It’s something I didn’t put in my memoir because they made me censor it when I had Betty.’ She gestured to the doll.
r />   I waited.

  ‘Soon the snow will come. The snow will cover us.’

  ‘Do you mean as in global warming?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. I said snow. Not sun. It will freeze.’

  ‘Do you mean the world or just in London?’

  Her teeth were black. She rocked her baby and told me that I was a good girl, really.

  ‘What do you mean, really?’

  ‘Really,’ she said. ‘Really you are.’

  I headed to the only vintage shop in Clapham, which was also a coffee shop. Yuppies were sitting around with their iPads and their real babies. I decided not to use the money to pay Vic to go out with me. Instead, I bought a cream satin blouse with a pussy bow and a black pencil skirt, perfect for work, then headed over to Sainsbury’s and stocked up on Bio-Oil to counteract the ageing effects of smoking. I bought a bumper pack of Golden Virginia too. I threw the rest of the money – £17 – down the drain outside Snappy Snaps.

  I had to go back to the flat; I needed to get my balletpumps for work.

  I tried to discern a sign in the clouds that meant Vic would definitely skype me. But there was nothing. I saw a black cat cowering behind a rubbish bin but it didn’t cross my path. I counted seven crow-like birds fighting over a scrap of food. But then another crow appeared. Eight is fucking useless to me. The grand old doors of the church where William Wilberforce had once preached against slavery were being shut and locked at just the moment that I tried to enter. I wanted to pray for Vic to text me. I got really excited when I passed the pond again and saw two white swans, their necks gracefully arched together, swimming in perfect symmetry. They looked utterly in love.

  When I got closer, I realised that they weren’t swans at all – just two white plastic bags, floating aimlessly across the freezing water.

  ‘Yah cos it’s a gay thing,’ Jasper was saying, spread-eagled on the chaise longue, fondling one of Freddie’s uncle’s bejewelled daggers. ‘That’s why he wrote it. Cos he wanted this guy in like Copenhagen in the 1830s or something ridiculous. And the guy was like no. I’m not a homo. I’m getting married. So Hans Christian Andersen was like, fine. I’m going to write a story about it instead and make like a shit load of money.’

  ‘Who let Jasper in?’ I demanded.

  They were all dead drunk. Two empty bottles of champagne were standing on the painting of my face. The bust of Freddie’s uncle seemed to shake its head in horror. Samuel was as alabaster as Allegra now; he looked like he was going to be sick.

  ‘Jasper,’ I said. ‘Get out.’

  ‘Ann-Marie, charmed to see you as always,’ said Jasper. He tried to kiss me on the mouth but I blocked him. He stank of musk.

  ‘I’m allowed to have friends over,’ slurred Freddie. ‘We don’t have to live like fucking hermits in a cave any more. Exams is over.’

  ‘Yeah, so over. Hey.’ Jasper had a widow’s peak. He had the frigid elegance of the international technocratic elite. ‘I’m so sorry to hear that you didn’t get your degree.’ He tried to get his arm around my waist; again, I blocked him.

  ‘It was a gesture,’ I said. ‘Of emancipation.’

  ‘Yeah right,’ said Freddie.

  ‘You only got a third!’ I shouted at him. ‘Tell that to your fucking father then see if he lets you curate a bloody show!’

  ‘I think it’s fabulous,’ said Jasper. ‘Artists shouldn’t have degrees. They should be renegades.’

  ‘I’m not an artist,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, what are you again?’ said Freddie.

  ‘Oh, shut your mouth,’ I told him.

  Jasper collapsed onto the chaise longue. ‘So actually that cartoon is like a gay allegory. Because Hans was dreaming of being a human née heterosexual instead of a mermaid née queer in order to be like part of their world.’ He swigged from his flute. ‘It’s about yearning.’

  ‘I know about yearning,’ said Samuel.

  ‘So do I, so do I,’ said Jasper. ‘I was yearning to smash Sebastian’s fucking face in last night when he started doing that preposterous whirling dervish dance.’

  My heart stopped.

  ‘Yeah, and she was there, clapping and shit.’ Jasper looked at Samuel. ‘Your sister.’

  ‘Shouldn’t hold a grudge, old man,’ said Freddie.

  ‘Was it a party?’ I said.

  ‘Yah.’ Jasper grinned. ‘Ann-Marie, I’m surprised you weren’t invited.’

  Freddie laughed.

  ‘It was their going away bash,’ Jasper went on.

  ‘Where are they going?’ I said.

  ‘Sebastian and Allegra are going to Mexico for six months to do some theatre thing about Aztec sacrifice,’ said Samuel in a rush. ‘Allegra’s going to rip out someone’s heart at the top of a pyramid and eat it.’

  ‘Yeah, while Seb waits to ask her permission to use the toilet,’ said Freddie.

  The cigarette smoke in the room seemed to move inside my brain, fogging all thought.

  Then I was striding over to the mantelpiece and crushing the seven brittle wish-bones that I had saved and dried every time Freddie and I cooked Nigella’s roast chicken.

  Four

  Michel the sous-chef was simulating an ecstatic kind of anal sex with a skinned rabbit on the stainless steel cooker in the kitchen downstairs at William’s, the Soho restaurant where I’d worked for the last five months. The rabbit’s eyes were agog and aware like a human. It looked mortified. Michel held the hind-legs with the force of a man about to come and banged the livid red pelvis into his own again and again. The rabbit’s body was long and muscular. Only the fluffy tail remained, which Michel squeezed and shut his eyes and hollered something about monogamy before he performed a vicious orgasm and collapsed on top of the rabbit’s slender back so that we all heard the ribs crunch.

  The rest of the kitchen slaves cheered and whistled and looked genuinely happy for once. A pile of rabbits awaited their violation to the left.

  This was why I chose the hospitality and catering industry after I failed my degree. I had read Marco Pierre White’s memoir White Slave, later more tastefully retitled The Devil in the Kitchen. All that protein and aggression appealed to me – I wanted to experience it for myself.

  Now I made an espresso and returned upstairs.

  The reception was my domain. I was the reigning door bitch, crowned in the summer, when I had answered William the manager’s ad on Gumtree and made my way to Soho shaking like a horse in a thunderstorm. The aftershocks of finals were intense. I lied about my degree; I said that I’d left school at sixteen. William looked at my legs throughout the interview. He told me that my skirt was too short. I said thanks, it was a dress. William said that he’d give me the job if I gave him a blow job. I said no fucking way and stood up, but he said fine and gave me the job anyway, which undermined his authority forever in my eyes.

  I had assumed that William owned the restaurant because it was his name above the door, but later Michel told me that no, William had applied for the job as manager because someone with the same name had owned the restaurant back in the 50s, when Muriel Belcher’s The Colony Room was at its height just around the corner and Soho was a place. William desperately wanted Soho to be a place again. The real owner was a man called Bob who never appeared, but oversaw the accounts. He oversaw the renovation of the upstairs into a private members club, complete with a pianist and a team of mixologists, a billiard room, and something called The Snatch, a cushioned cell where everyone was encouraged to lie down. The iPod nailed to the wall only played songs that encouraged sexual healing.

  Everything was going downhill in any case. William’s attempt to source reliable foragers in rural areas of the West Country proved bogus; there was a bad write-up in the Guardian that used the word ‘gimmick’ three times. But the single most powerful factor that impeded the restaurant’s success was William’s coke habit, which had soured his soul. He would have been a nice person without it. He was damaged. And damaged people constantly damage eve
ryone else around them, as Madeline the Australian head waitress had told me often and sadly.

  Madeline had left a copy of Eat, Pray, Love in the reception drawer. I read it, checking my phone every thirty seconds, then every twenty seconds, then every ten seconds, in the hope that Vic had texted me.

  Nothing.

  ‘He’s just not that into you,’ came Madeline’s sing-song voice, as she counted the number of covers for the evening. She reeked of a celebrity-endorsed perfume. She was square like a tank but she had a smiley face. She told me about Cirque de Soleil, which she had gone to see the night before with her sister. I told her that I hated musical theatre. She said she was amazed that I didn’t want to take advantage of all the wonderful entertainment here in London. I said I didn’t have the time or money or inclination. She laughed and told me that sarcasm was the lowest form of wit. I said that I wasn’t being sarcastic, that I really hated musical theatre. I didn’t see anything good about it at all. She went to give the waiters their briefing.

  My job was to be nice at all times, to stand up when a guest appeared, to not merely point him or her in the direction of the toilet, but to accompany him or her all the way into the toilet if necessary and even wipe his or her arse for him or her if he or she should so request it because he or she is paying a fuck load of money to be here and I can get another girl who looks fucking grateful to be working, William had told me. I was paid a lucky £7 an hour, which was why I took this job as opposed to the door bitch job at Ronnie Scott’s, which paid an unlucky £8 an hour.

  William appeared just before the first guests were due to arrive and informed me that I was going to get slammed hard from all directions tonight so I better fucking enjoy it.

  Paparazzi on motorbikes arrived just before the pop star, her tall, bald, much older boyfriend, and his parents. The paps seemed to balance like a circus pyramid. Their flashes dazzled me through the glass. The pop star was going for the Patti Smith look but without the courage to be truly haggard like Patti. Her hair was dyed black with a blunt fringe. She tried to hide behind it, but I could see her drugged eyes. Her movements were languid and paranoid. William ushered her to table twenty.