I’d have quite happily gone back to the boardwalk and some unscary, touristy place, but it was obvious Quin was lobbying for the nobleman’s gaff. ‘The pop-up sounds interesting.’
‘Interesting’ was one of the things I loved about Quin. An ‘opera supper’ on a boat in Helsinki harbour had been a total shambles but we’d had such a laugh. However, you needed to be in the whole of your health for his adventures and tonight I wasn’t.
Wearing the second of my sexy dresses, we headed to an eerily quiet network of leafy, residential streets which reeked of old money. Imposing villas, their windows dark and shuttered, snubbed us with their haughty fa?ades as we hurtled past in an Uber, trying to catch glimpses of house numbers.
‘I think this is it,’ Quin said as the driver stopped outside a pale-pink, five-storey villa, and said things to us in Catalan, the gist of which seemed to be, ‘Get out.’
Framed by palm trees and uplighting, the villa was set behind metal gates which were unnecessarily tall. Clambering onto the pavement, I tipped my head back to see the top and had to wonder at what point the extra metal became just showing off.
Quin is great and my life is good.
‘Is that the Comte?’ Quin asked as a balding, irritated-looking man beckoned us to the front door. ‘I thought he’d look more … noble?’
Once it was established that our names were on the list, we were led up stone stairs by a harried woman into a dimly lit room where perhaps twenty other people milled around, drinking red wine from large goblets. From what I could see – admittedly not much – they looked as if they’d come straight from a very fashionable evening wedding. There were a lot of feathered hairpieces, thick purple lipstick, dark red tartan, spiky jewellery and gold platform shoes.
The fashion people, who turned out to be Italian, greeted us with delighted cries. Lovely, of course – but it was only then that I understood tonight would be a communal experience.
Sometimes I’m fine, meeting twenty new people in a pitch-dark room in a villa in Barcelona, when everyone else is crazy-drunk but I’m stone-cold sober and haven’t eaten in eight hours, while bothered by awful suspicions that six years earlier I relapsed into drug addiction and ruined my marriage. Fine.
But the language was a problem. Quin and I spoke almost no Italian and the fashion people, though smiley and charmingly affectionate, spoke no English.
‘I thought it would be just you and me,’ Quin said. ‘I didn’t know we’d have to socialize.’
‘We can pretend it’s just us,’ I said.
But they wouldn’t leave us alone. Two drag queens, both wearing platform ankle boots which looked like goats’ hooves, made a stab at a conversation. We established that the whole group was from a town called Messina and tonight was a birthday party for someone called Giuseppina. But it was hard work for the four of us, and eventually the duo said something to each other in Italian, along the lines of, Ah, fuck this, Vera, and went back to their friends.
‘I’m hungry,’ I said to Quin. ‘Scrap that. I’m hangry.’
‘Oh no,’ Quin muttered as two more fabulously attired fashion types materialized, grinning, from the gloom and the excruciating attempts at chat began again.
Quickly, though, they tired of us but our relief was short-lived, as two fresh ones showed up, black-toothed and garrulous from the wine.
‘They’ve done a rota.’ Quin looked as though the misery might kill him. Then both of us began to wheeze with laughter while attempting to apologize to the Italians.
For the next hour, new companions continued to join us every ten minutes, until they burnt out, and replacements popped up in their stead. In normal circumstances, I’d have said, ‘Hey, Quinster, I’m having the worst night of my life, can we cut our losses?’
But circumstances weren’t normal.
Eventually we were led into another room – just as dimly lit – for dinner. There was a scramble for places at a dark-wood table as long as a runway and Quin and I found ourselves shunted right down at the end. It was for the best.
It was no surprise that not a single one of the browbeaten waiters knew anything about my pre-ordered vegetarian meal. Quin, who was normally very good at complaining – calm but effective – was all set to weigh in but I sensed nothing good would come of it. ‘It’s fine, it’s fine, I’ll just eat the non-meat bits.’
‘Or we could leave?’ he said.
‘No!’ Bailing early would stamp the evening as an Abject Failure and we needed some sort of a win.