‘Tomorrow night is absolutely fine. I find myself at a loose end, having been rejected by all human women under the age of eighty-four.’ Awww.
‘We might be quite late, is that OK?’
‘My dear girl, I am nocturnal.’
‘You won’t . . . I mean, you won’t bring a model or—’
‘No, no, no, Jones. I shall be a model. A paragon of babysitting. Ludo. Wholesome vitamin-packed fare. And by the way . . .’
‘Yes?’ I said suspiciously.
‘What kind of knickers are you wearing? At this moment? Are they mummy pants? Mummy’s lovely mummy panties? Will you show them to Daddy tomorrow night?’
Still love Daniel, though obviously not to the point that I would get involved with any of his crap.
THE PERFECT BABYSITTER
Thursday 6 September 2012
133lb (v.g.), alcohol units 4, sexual encounters in last 5 years 0, sexual encounters in last 5 hours 2, embarrassing sexual encounters in last 5 hours 2.
The day of the Stronghold outing was upon us. Billy was wildly excited that Daniel was coming. ‘Will Amanda be here?’
‘Who’s Amanda?’
‘The lady with the big boobies who was there last time.’
‘No!’ I said. ‘Mabel, what are you looking for?’
‘My hairbrush,’ she said darkly.
Managed somehow in the excitement to get them bathed and asleep, and scrambled to get ready before Daniel arrived.
I had opted for jeans (a brand chillingly called Not Your Daughter’s Jeans) and a cowboy shirt, thinking it would fit in with the Americana theme.
Daniel arrived late, in his usual suit, hair shorter now, still gorgeous with that irresistible smile, bearing armfuls of unsuitable gifts – toy guns, semi-naked Barbies, giant bags of sweets, Krispy Kreme doughnuts – and a suspicious-looking half-hidden DVD, which I decided to ignore as I was cataclysmically late now.
‘Ding-dong! Jones,’ he said. ‘Have you been on a diet? I thought I’d never see you looking like this again.’
It’s horrifying how differently some people treat you when you’re fat, to when you’re not. And when you’re all done up and when you’re just normal. No wonder women are so insecure. I know men are too. But when one is a woman, with all the tools at a modern woman’s disposal, one can literally look like a completely different person from one half-hour to the next.
Even then, you think you don’t look like you should. Sometimes look at billboards of beautiful models, and the real people underneath, and think it’s a bit like if we were on a planet where all the space creatures were short, green and fat. Except a very few of them were tall, thin and yellow. And all the advertising was of the tall, yellow ones, airbrushed to make them even taller and yellower. So all the little green space creatures spent their whole time feeling sad because they weren’t tall, thin and yellow.
‘Jones? Are you still inhabiting your head? I said, I suppose a fuck would be out of the question?’
‘Yes!’ I said, jerking back to the present. ‘Yes, it would. Though this is in no way a sign of my lack of gratitude for the babysit.’ Rattled through a gabble of instructions and thanks and shot out of the door, feeling outraged as a feminist by Daniel’s complex fattist pass, but uplifted as a female.
When I arrived at Talitha’s, however, Tom burst out laughing. ‘Seriously? Dolly Parton?’
‘You can’t rely on your arse in jeans at our age,’ said Talitha briskly, sweeping in with a tray of mojitos. ‘You’ve got to have something else going on.’
‘I don’t want to look like mutton,’ I said. ‘Or a prostitute.’
‘Well, quite, but you need something to start the idea of sexuality. Legs or boobs. Not both.’
‘What about one leg and one boob?’ said Tom.
Eventually I ended up in a very expensive short black silk tunic of Talitha’s and insanely high Yves Saint Laurent thigh boots.