I was ninety-nine per cent sure he was joking, but as I was frantically trawling my brain for a stray memory, a waiter appeared to take our order. I’d never been so keen to get dinner ordered in my life. I literally asked for the first thing that caught my eye – a risotto – and Simon ordered duck confit. I really wanted to press Simon on this phantom kissing memory, although part of me didn’t, because I suspected he was thinking of another girl. Specifically Harriet Smythe, his mum’s hairdresser’s daughter. I knew because my mum went to the same hairdresser and she told me.
The waiter hovered for a few more agonising seconds, flamboyantly shaking out our napkins and placing them on our laps.
When the waiter finally left, Simon leant forward. ‘The time I’m talking about is when you’d just discovered your mum’s lipstick. You wanted to conduct an experiment and you recruited me to help. How could I stand in the way of scientific progress?’
‘Oh. My. God.’ I covered my face with my hands. ‘I did that withyou?’ I had a vague memory of trying out my mum’s lipsticks, but in my head, I’d been kissing the back of my hand. I rememberwantingto rope Simon into it, but never getting round to it.
Suddenly, however, it all came rushing back in excruciating detail.
My overly curious ten-year-old self had been intrigued that whenever actors kissed on screen, the woman’s lipstick never smudged or transferred onto whoever she was kissing. It didn’t make sense, and itreallybothered me, but before I started writing letters to my favourite film directors – yes, I wasexactlythe sort of kid who did that – I wanted to be sure of the facts.
Sitting cross-legged on the green carpet of my parents’ bedroom, in front of Mum’s fake rococo dressing table, I had pressed my waxy lips against Simon’s innocent mouth, held for a count of five, decoupled, then checked the results. A quick wipe with cotton wool doused in baby oil and then the process was repeated. We did this with every one of Mum’s sixteen lipsticks.
‘I’m so embarrassed. What was I thinking? And more importantly, why didn’t you stop me?’
‘Well, itwasdumb that all those movies perpetuated the myth of the unsmudgeable lipstick.’ He grinned. ‘Hey, sometimes I wish my life was still full of girls wanting to make out with me in the name of science.’
It was a casual quip – right? I sipped my wine, trying to cultivate an aura of serenity and mystique, but probably only succeeded in looking like I was ignoring him.
How had talking about childhood kisses turned into such a minefield?
I felt much more like we were on solid ground when Simon remembered a record-signing trip we made to Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus one afternoon – the one and only time I’d ever bunked off school. My parents were livid when they found out. I really should have hidden my signed SoundgardenCDa bit better.
I was in such a good mood that after dinner and coffee, I let Simon talk me into going to a club – and not one of my usual places. He picked a neon-signed monstrosity, far too close to Leicester Square, that promised ‘banging toonz’.
We waited forty-five minutes to get in. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d queued that long for anything. We stood alongside boys wearing too much Lynx and girls with thickly painted eyebrows. One girl muttered ‘Wotchit, grandma’ when I accidentally trod on her stiletto, but even that didn’t dampen my mood.
Once inside, Simon burrowed his way to the bar and returned with two bottled beers. The music was loud, so his lips were brushing my earlobes as he tried to make himself heard. His breath made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Before I knew it, he’d persuaded me to dance, even though they were playing Chesney Hawkes’s ‘The One and Only’.
But I didn’t care. Simon’s hand on the small of my back made me sizzle and each time he twirled me, I felt a rush.
We danced to Bon Jovi, to S Club 7, and even to someone I suspected had recently wonThe X-Factor. Simon’s energy was boundless. We bopped to Take That and Backstreet Boys, but when Hands Down came on, my bubble burst. That’s the downside to working in music – listening to it is how most people relax, but when it’s your job it can intrude on your fun. Hands Down reminded me of Nick Jones, which reminded me of my failure with the Marcie interview.
‘I need another drink,’ I mouthed to Simon, and headed to the bar. By the time I got back to him, someone with taste had taken control of theDJbooth and ‘Under Pressure’ was playing.
I hastily put down our drinks and grabbed his hands. We were jumping up and down and I was fifteen again, in my bedroom, listening to this song with Simon, bouncing on the carpeted floor till my mum came up to tell me we were shaking the bulbs out of their sockets. Bowie’s voice going up the scale in the middle eight still gave me goosebumps.
*
We left the club at 3 a.m. and I was all set to get on the night bus when Simon objected.
He put his arm around my shoulder. ‘Your mum would kill me if she knew I’d let you get on a bus alone.’
‘Don’t be daft, Si. We’re not thirteen anymore. The bus practically goes to my front door.’
‘I’ll come with you, then. You’ve got a couch, haven’t you? I’ll sleep on that.’
‘I’ve actually got a sofa bed,’ I said, mentally high-fiving myself for hoovering under it earlier. ‘But still, it won’t be as comfy as your hotel room, which is a ten-minute walk away.’
He held my eye for a second. Was that a coded invitation back to The Halson?
‘I want the full London experience,’ he said. ‘A bit of night bus conviviality would be marvellous.’
*
Our night bus experience on the 94 to Acton Green offered plenty of shouting, belching, steamed-up windows and, just after Holland Park, a puddle of vomit.
Conviviality must have taken the N207.
