That seems to make him sad – that there aren’t any restaurants like this. When the plum wine comes, he tells me how it’s made, and I don’t give a shit. I just don’t give a shit. It tastes like cough syrup, but it’s obviously expensive, so I drink it, and I nod. And then I drink this awful cocktail he ordered for me. It has yuzu in it, and it’s bitter as fuck, and I feel like I’m licking a lemon rind. I’d have been happier with a pint of fucking tap water.
Is he talking to me about his job now? I don’t even feel like I’m here. I feel like he’s talking to me from the opposite end of a long tunnel. I think he orders for us. I think I just agreed to the tasting menu. He asks me if I like the cocktail, and I shake my head, and he makes some comment about my palate, and I hear my teeth squeak together because I’ve clenched my jaw so hard.
‘Excuse me,’ I say. And I go to the bathroom. And I’m hyper-aware of a room full of Tories looking at my arse, and tutting, and assuming I’m a call girl because I suppose it is now a crime to wear a see-through dress to a posh restaurant. My fanny isn’t even out. There’s a panel. There is a fucking panel.
There’s another woman washing her hands in the bathroom, who listens while I tell her this. She tells me she thinks my dress is nice, I think. She could have also just gone ‘hmm’， because I wasn’t really listening to her, or looking at her, and then she was gone. I go into the toilet stall. I say stall; it’s posh, so the stall is its own little room. The toilet has a heated seat and speaks in a perky Japanese accent. It sprays warm water directly into my vulva after I’m done pissing, and I go, ‘Fucking hell!’ loudly, because I wasn’t expecting it. It also dries me off, with a little blast of hot air. And when I come back out of the bathroom, I’m aware I want to talk about the fucked-up talking toilet, but fucked-up talking toilets that spray water up your gooch without asking are probably just par for the fucking course here, aren’t they?
Uncle Stephen tells me he complained about my cocktail, and got me a new one. The same one. I just don’t think I like yuzu. And when he tells me it’s unacceptable, with the amount he’s paying them, looking genuinely perturbed, I am reminded of the iconic scene from Keeping Up with the Kardashians where Kim loses her earring. They are on holiday in Bora Bora, and Kim is swimming in the ocean wearing $75,000 diamond earrings, and loses one. She loses one, and has a complete meltdown, ugly crying, and sobbing, and then, ever down to earth, Kourtney appears from around a corner, baby on her hip.
‘Kim, there’s people that are dying,’ she says.
‘Kim?’ says Uncle Stephen.
‘You know, when Kim K loses her earring. And it’s like… There’s people that are dying.’
‘Always good to have some perspective,’ he says. The first course comes. It’s sashimi. Uncle Stephen chastises me for taking a bite, rather than dropping the whole thing in my mouth. He eats loudly, reminding me of that bit in The Return of the King （the film） where Denethor is eating cherry tomatoes, and making Pippin sing for him. In this metaphor – allegory? – I guess I’m Pippin, which is strange because I’ve never identified much with the Hobbits before, and I’m actually a little annoyed that this is the position I’m in. Shocked to hear it comes in pints, and wondering if my simple Hobbit songs are good enough for these grand halls and their talking toilets.
He talks to me about his job while he eats. He’s some sort of advertising thing? God, I don’t care.
‘Is this cocktail better?’ he asks.
‘I just… I don’t like yuzu,’ I say. He flags down the waiter.
‘You’ll drink a Bellini, won’t you? Bring her a Bellini, a strawberry one, and make sure you use champagne not that Italian twaddle. I’ll know.’
They bring me a Bellini, and the smell of champagne makes my gut curl. But I drink it.
‘Tell me about you,’ he says. ‘I feel like we’ve only talked about me. I know you’re a photographer, of course, but what else is there?’
‘What else is there,’ I say. ‘I killed a boy, once.’
‘Oh, did you?’ Uncle Stephen chuckles.
‘He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. We both were. And he was covered in scars,’ I say. ‘And I put his skull underneath this tree, but now it’s gone. And it’s like… There were no missing reports, or anything, so did it even happen? You know, like? Did it even happen?’
He laughs again, slapping his hand on the table.
‘I love dark, northern humour, I really do. Do you like The League of Gentlemen?’
I do. So he talks about how he knows Mark Gatiss – did I know Mark Gatiss is from County Durham? He was in an excellent show recently. Do I like theatre?
‘Didn’t you hear me?’ I ask. ‘Didn’t you hear what I did?’ He laughs some more, and ignores me, and talks about theatre. I’m starting to feel a little frantic. I squeeze the champagne flute in my hand so hard that it shatters. My palm is filled with glass, and my hands are sticky with blood and bubbles.
I sit there, with my bloody hand, as he talks. I catch my reflection in my dinner plate, and there is glass in my eye, which I further inspect in the back of my spoon.
‘Your lipstick is fine,’ he tells me.
I lift my fingers to my eye. Nothing. I feel nothing. My hand is dry. My glass is intact. I stare at the glass, and my uninjured hand, and I blink. Uncle Stephen’s face twists, and melts – he’s his nephew, he is Eddie from Tesco, then he’s my boy, lunging at me. I flinch. I crush the champagne flute into the side of his head, and a blood-curdling scream fills the restaurant.
They’re all looking at me again. Uncle Stephen is Uncle Stephen again, and he is bleeding. My hand is bleeding. The waiters rush over, and they are so busy tending to him, they don’t notice when I slip out of the booth. They whisper as I walk by, but nobody stops me, nobody wants to stop me. I even hear a man saying, ‘Maybe they’ll comp us,’ and the blissfully unaware host hands me my coat, with a smile, when I tell him I’m going out for a cigarette.
I walk. I take off my shoes and walk barefoot on the cold, damp street. I hear a bell, jingling behind me. I walk till I can’t feel my feet anymore, till it feels like I’m walking on a pair of fleshy sponges. I walk through Chelsea, down through Battersea Park. I wonder if anything will happen this time.
I pull out my phone and tap out a text to Flo.
Like 80% sure i just glassed my date
And then:
Lol.
I send her a line of shrugging emojis.
I spot a man on a park bench.
He is small and large. He is wearing an expensive wool coat, a ratty T-shirt and a polo neck. He is skinny and fat. He has his head in his hands. He’s sniffing. He wipes his nose on his sleeve and rubs his eyes. I wave at him. I ask if I can sit down. I look at my feet. They’re bleeding.
‘Rough night?’ I ask.
‘Yeah,’ he says.
I pick up my feet and inspect them. They are peppered with gravel and blood, and pieces of glass which I pluck out, one by one, with my fingernails.
‘What’s up?’ I ask. He tells me a story I don’t listen to. His lips are dusty pink in the moonlight, the streetlight. His skin is freckled, and brown and white and red and wet. His hair is dark and curly, and blond and straight. I run my bloody knuckles down his cheek, which is soft and peachy. I tell him he’s going to be okay. I tell him not to worry.