‘He appeals to me,’ said Angela, taking the book back, looking at the inscription and smiling. ‘Very much so. I’ll leave you alone now, but it’s been a pleasure to meet you.’
She turned and offered a half-wave as she slipped back into the crowd, and Beverley stood there in the afterglow of the encounter. It was always thrilling to be recognized, but it was even better when someone else was there to witness it.
‘Wasn’t that nice?’ she said, smiling at her ghost. ‘Right, onwards to shoes. These characters won’t dress themselves. DON’T!’
SOME DOTTY OLD MAN
After leaving Jeremy’s office, George Cleverley made his way over to his solicitor’s receptionist with a smile on his face.
‘I’m leaving now,’ he said.
‘Thank you for keeping me informed,’ she replied, looking up and adopting a suitably hostile expression.
‘No problem at all,’ he said, remaining exactly where he was as he narrowed his eyes and stared at her face.
‘Is something the matter?’
‘No, I’m just … well, you’d really never know, would you?’
‘Never know what?’ she asked with a sigh.
‘That you’re … that you were … that you are … Look, here’s the thing.’ He glanced around to make sure there was no one near by to overhear any of this. ‘I’m a little confused. You said that Aidan never existed, but that’s not quite true, is it? Aidan did exist once upon a time, but he doesn’t exist any more. And that’s perfectly fine. Admirable, even. I’m happy to acknowledge his permanent absence and your permanent presence. But why didn’t you just explain that to me at the start? It doesn’t matter to me in the slightest. If anything, I applaud you for it. I think it’s wonderful that we live in a world where, increasingly, people can be exactly who they want to be.’
‘Who they want to be?’ asked Nadia.
‘Who they are, then. You see, all you’re doing now is looking for something to get angry with me about. I’m trying to be supportive and you’re scrutinizing my every word, desperate to find something to pick me up on.’
Nadia swallowed and stared at him. ‘That’s not what I’m doing at all,’ she said after a moment.
‘Oh, but it is,’ he replied pleasantly. ‘And if you think about it, if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll see that it is. So, again, I wonder why you didn’t simply explain your new identity to me in the first place, since we’ve met many times in the past and always got along perfectly well. Why act as if Aidan never existed and I am some dotty old man?’
Nadia said nothing now, instead looking down at her desk.
‘Could it be that you anticipate bigotry, that you actually long for it and can’t bring yourself to imagine that a man like me hasn’t an intolerant bone in his body? Because, if you took the time to examine my track record over three decades of public life, you’d see that’s the case. But no, you’re actually desperate for me to fulfil your own prejudicial expectations.’
‘Mr Cleverley, I—’
‘And if you can go home tonight and tell your friends that I’m exactly the kind of unevolved caveman that you need me to be in order to reinforce your victim status, then you can walk away feeling morally superior. Which is all you really want, isn’t it? But the reality here is that you’re the one being rude, not me. You’re the one being disdainful and contemptuous, not me. And you’re the one making baseless assumptions about a virtual stranger, simply because it fits the narrative that you want to construct around yourself, not me. Has it ever occurred to you that, of the two of us, you might be the intolerant one? That you might be the bigot?’
A ping from behind him sounded the lift doors opening and he raised a hand in farewell.
‘Never mind, we’ll chat another time,’ he said. ‘Have a pleasant day.’
Stepping into the lift he pressed the button for the ground floor and stared at his own reflection in the mirror, feeling rather pleased with himself.
A few moments later, back on the street, he took out his phone, opened his Twitter account and posted the following:
@GeorgeCleverley Much love to Aidan @AQFC as he continues his transition. Brave, authentic & inspiring. #TransRights #TransPride #BraveNewWorld #TotalSupport
And then, without bothering to read any of the replies that immediately began to flow in, he returned the phone to his pocket and continued about his lawful business.
SEX TAPES
Elizabeth was already in the bath when she realized that she’d left her iPhone on the charging stand in her bedroom. This was the furthest a phone had been from her hand in several years and she guessed that this was how a mother might feel when separated from her child for the first time. There was a noticeable fluttering in her chest, a dry sensation in her mouth and a condition she called ‘itchy finger’, whereby the index finger of her right hand continued to move in a spasmodic and uncontrollable fashion. She didn’t feel like climbing out of the bath to retrieve it as the water was at the perfect temperature and the ratio of bubbles to body mass was ideal, but regretted missing the opportunity for a wonderful Instagram post. Short of calling out for one of her brothers to enter the bathroom and take a photo for her – which would have been weird – there was nothing, however, that she could do.
I’ll only be half an hour, she told herself, channelling the valiant spirit of Joan of Arc as she rode into battle at the Siege of Orléans. I can live without my phone until then.
The room was filled with silence and, although she was alone, she felt strangely self-conscious.
So, what do I do now? she wondered, passing one hand gently through the water while she blew some of the bubbles from the fingertips of the other, like a girl in a commercial for bath foam.
I shall think, she decided.
I shall mull over my options.
I shall consider those less fortunate than myself.
It occurred to her that one of the advantages of travelling to an obscure Indonesian island to work with lepers was how amazing it would be for her brand. She had almost four thousand followers on Instagram, and if she could multiply that by, say, thirty, then she’d definitely be able to call herself an influencer. Most of her followers had initially clicked on her account because of their interest in her father’s television show or her mother’s novels, but their motivations didn’t matter to her. After all, Kim Kardashian had built an empire by releasing a sex tape and her entire family had become billionaires afterwards. Not that she was willing to go down that path again. She’d tried, once, with a former boyfriend, Tuscany Fields, but it had failed to cause the scandal she’d longed for and she still found the entire incident excruciating to recall.
She and Tuscany had only been dating for a few months when she came up with the idea of them making a sex tape of their own, releasing it online and then complaining about the invasion of their privacy. She’d met him one Saturday night when she was backstage at a recording of Cleverley. He’d been interning, tasked with keeping the production crew away from Scarlett Johansson, and she’d immediately been drawn to him. It turned out that he’d been brought up in a commune in Italy – hence the name – but had recently decided that he’d prefer not to spend his life eating lentils and saluting the sun. Instead, he wanted a Bose sound system, a seventy-eight-inch Sony television and a BMW. So, he came to London.