Mad Read online

  One of the surprising features of the mollusk is its economical ability to use the same organ for multiple functions. For example, the last guy I slept with used his cock as both a penis and a brain. And he was slimy. Not in a good way. No, in my experience boyfriends are far too time consuming and demand far too much attention. Like that Tamagotchi I had as a child that died. Lucky for me, God invented Tinder . . . and failing that, Duracell.

  I could hear her stirring the sprouts on the other end of the phone: the water boiling and bubbling and splashing, the whirr of the fan up overhead. I could practically smell them.

  “What was your last boyfriend called again? Michael or Simon or Richard or something?”

  “How on Earth should I know?” It might have been Ahmed?

  “I always lose track, dear, there seem to be so many.”

  I grit my teeth.

  Despite all this, there was no way in hell I was going to Beth’s big white wedding on my own: a loner, a singleton, a social pariah. And one day, when Mum called me, I finally cracked. I said the first name that came into my head.

  “Alex, Mum. His name is Alex.”

  “Ah! Alexander?”

  “What?”

  “Is he Greek?”

  “No!”

  “Is he rich? Is he a shipping magnate? What is his family name?”

  “No, no, and I don’t know.”

  “Fine. Well. I’ll send you both an invitation. And I’ll finalize the seating arrangements. You can sit at the ‘Honeysuckle’ table between Great-Aunt Vera and Uncle Bartholomew. I’m sure they’ll both be thrilled to meet him. They once went on a cruise to Corfu.”

  I didn’t know anyone called Alex, of course, and as I sat on the easyJet plane waiting for the flight to Milan to take off, I began to freak out. I guess I could say he’d been called away on urgent business—one of his ships had crashed into an iceberg?—but they wouldn’t believe me. Single at my sister’s fabulous wedding. A reject. A gooseberry. I was starting to get (even more) desperate.

  I decided I’d take whoever sat next to me on the plane; random, I know, but strangely arousing. I watched the passengers boarding one by one. . . . Ooh, he looks nice: designer jeans, clean-shaven, expensive-looking man bag. Is that Prada? He turns left and sits down with his lingerie-model wife and Gap-ad kid. Great. Ooh, what about him? This one’s gorgeous. A Tyson Beckford look-alike. Diamond earrings. Ralph Lauren sweater. Sexy smile. He sits in the row just behind me with his even fitter boyfriend. Somebody kill me. Now.

  “Hello,” said a long-haired, beardy-faced, excessively tattooed Harley-Davidson type as he sat down next to me in the aisle seat. “I’m Adam.”

  Adam? Almost. That’ll do.

  Adam smelled of hydroponic marijuana and had an accent that could have been Geordie or he could have been deaf. He had a tattoo saying MUM and a tattoo saying CHARDONNAY inked along his pockmarked neck. Old motor oil under his fingernails, scabs on his face from when he fell off his bike. Adam had a mind even filthier than mine. Great-Aunt Vera wouldn’t have lasted five minutes. Over the next two and a half hours, it was all we could do not to consummate our lust by joining the mile-high club right there on the plane, but there always seemed to be a queue for the toilet and anyway, I knew I had to make him wait or he’d never come with me. We snogged for a bit (much to the annoyance of the little old lady knitting in the window seat) and he fingered me under the drop-down plastic tray. That’s when I asked him.

  “Fancy coming to a wedding in Milan? I’ll make it worth your while,” I said with a wink and a hand placed too far up his black-leather-clad-thigh.

  “All right,” said Adam with a wonky smile. This was going to be perfect.

  I think it’s fair to say that he wasn’t “my type,” but a bird in the hand and all that; especially when that “bird” has two fingers in your “bush.”

  It wasn’t my fault we were the first in the church and it wasn’t my fault that we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. He must have liked my crotch-length, strapless Spandex dress and silver fishnet thigh-highs. . . . (I’d made a real effort to dress up for Beth’s wedding; I was channeling Pippa Middleton’s bum.) We snogged on a pew for a bit, at the back in the corner, but we got some funny looks as the congregation came in. Whispering. Pointing. Tut-tut-tutting. We needed a room. There were convenient little booths (thank God for confession boxes) lined up against a wall inside the church. They were just the right size and had red velvet curtains you could pull across the doorways for intimate privacy. So I grabbed Adam’s hand and we snuck in there as the church filled up.

  At first, we were quiet (what with being in a church), but I think we must have got carried away as he rammed me up against the mahogany walls and I sat on his cock on the bench. I remember getting high on the incongruity: we are shagging in a church! Adam tasted of Cornish pasties and did a weird shaking, trembling thing as he came. The mahogany banged against the wall. I seem to remember he yelped. I shouted something like “Jesus H. Christ!” or “Fuck me till Sunday!” and Adam shouted “Mum!” We fell out through the curtains just as we climaxed and as Beth and her bridesmaids walked down the aisle. Beth went bright red—I can still see her face. Everyone stared. A small boy asked Adam if he was Jesus (I guess it must have been the beard). My mother put her camcorder down. They all looked at Beth, then looked at me and then looked at Beth again. Spectators at an X-rated tennis match.

  It never would have happened if Beth had asked me to be her bridesmaid.

  After that, and once the priest had asked Adam to leave, the wedding was boring. It was a big white affair with hundreds of people I didn’t know, mostly Italians. It was all very Roman Catholic. Mum changed the seating plan so I was stuck in the kitchen with the staff. I was sandwiched between a fat pastry chef called Giuseppe and Toto the pot-wash boy. Not in a good way. There were thirteen courses at their reception dinner: antipasti, pasta, lobster, venison, veal. . . . The wedding cake was six feet tall. Magnum after magnum of vintage Prosecco, shot after shot of bittersweet limoncello. We danced La Tarantella all night: a hundred people holding hands, racing around and around as the music sped up, then reversing direction again and again, before collapsing in a dizzy heap on the floor. People kept pinning banknotes to Beth’s poufy dress and I kept pulling them off again. I made €3,000 that night.

  A few of the guys came on to me. Ambrogio’s friends were dressed like extras from The Matrix: long black jackets, blackout shades. Apparently they all worked in Sicily in something like “waste disposal,” which sounded kind of gross and anyway, I wasn’t really in the mood after Adam. My grandmother asked me if I was a vegan, “like that lovely Billie Jean King.” She couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting married like my sister or dancing with any of these handsome guys. (I think she must have been napping during the Adam incident. . . . ) Turned out she meant lesbian, not vegan. I told her I was gay just to get her off my case, “like that lovely Jodie Foster,” but she didn’t know who that was. “Cara Delevingne? Ellen DeGeneres?” Still no idea.

  Beth had looked so beautiful; she was like a different person. Standing side by side for endless wedding photographs, I’d thought of before-and-after pictures: like that American TV series, The Swan. Beth was a fairy-tale princess and I was a frog. Beth had seemed older somehow, more grown-up. I know, she is officially twenty minutes older, but older even than that: taller, more worldly, self-assured. Perhaps that’s what marrying money does to you? I wouldn’t know. Their Alfa Romeo was decorated with flowers to pave the road to la dolce vita and as they drove away, I couldn’t help it, I cried. Ambrogio was perfect and he should have been mine. It was all so unfair. It was tragic.

  Anyway, Beth hasn’t really spoken to me since then. Until these emails. Come to think of it, she wasn’t really speaking to me before that either, not since the autumn of 2007, to be precise.

  I stub out my smoke and flick th
e butt through the window at a pigeon; I miss. Watching her walk down the aisle that day, it had dawned on me that our divergence was complete. Yes, the doctor had cut our umbilical cords twenty-five years ago, but we’d lived side by side until our sixteenth birthdays. Alvieanbeth. Bethanalvie. We’d shared a bedroom, bunk beds, books. She had defined me. She was the closest thing I’ve ever had to a friend, even if I had hated her most of the time. And then she was gone.

  When we’d moved to different cities, we’d forged different lives. Beth had gone to Oxford, to the university, and I’d moved to London. I can’t remember why. I guess I’d thought the streets were paved with gold, but it turned out to be dog shit and chewing gum.

  I’m like a less successful female Dick Whittington. Did you know, in Archway, there’s a statue of his cat? That’s what happens if you become the mayor of London; people make limestone effigies of your pets. If/when I become mayor, someone will carve a to-scale replica of Mr. Dick for all posterity to behold. They’ll erect it on a plinth up in Whitehall. I know Ken Livingstone kept pet newts. Does Boris Johnson have a pet? Is it just me, or do Donald Trump and Boris Johnson look like twins separated at birth? I wish someone had separated me and Beth. Adopted me or Beth. Beth or me. Beth. Beth. Definitely Beth.

  I glug some more wine.

  Now we have nothing more in common, apart from DNA.

  People always assume that twins are best buddies, have a psychic connection, an undying bond. What the hell do they know? Give me a break. How would you like it if your whole damn life you’d been overshadowed by a doppelgänger, who outshone you at everything? Whom all the boys had fancied at school? Ask your sister if she’ll go out with me? Get your sister to meet me by the bike sheds after class. Wouldn’t you hate them? Just a teeny little bit? Even as you loved them half to death? I guess you could call it a love/hate relationship: Beth does the love bit and I do the hate. At least, I think she used to love me. Tolerate, perhaps. No one’s ever really loved me, not loved me properly, like in books. I light a cigarette.

  Beth wrote a novel while she was at still at uni, like Zadie Smith, but devoid of talent. Of course I haven’t read it, but I’m pretty sure it’s wank. Reading Beth’s novel would be like listening to Beth go on and on for ten hours straight; she loves the sound of her own voice. (Living with Beth made me want to tattoo SHUT THE FUCK UP on my face.) I don’t really like talking, especially not to other people. I prefer poetry.

  I wrote another haiku today:

  Summer emptiness:

  The city is deserted,

  Save for swarms of wasps.

  I didn’t say it was any good. Even haikus are too long for me: three whole lines. I like the poetry of Ezra Pound; “In a Station of the Metro” is only two lines long. Ideally, it would be one. Or zero. Just silence.

  I rifle through a pile of old clothes in a torn plastic bag and find a dress I haven’t worn since October 2007: body-con fuchsia à la Katy Perry. Beth got us matching ones for our birthday, so we looked like the Kray twins or those creepy little girls in The Shining. Will it still fit? I strip naked and stand in front of my reflection in the floor-length mirror. I am mozzarella di bufala. I shiver at the thought of nudity in the presence of Ambrogio. Yanking the dress over my head, I force the zip. It snags my skin. It doesn’t fit. I fling it on the floor and jump up and down on it in bare feet. Must have shrunk in the wash. Not that I’ve washed it.

  I look at the books that line my shelves. There’s no way I can take them all with me; they’re far too heavy. There’s a copy of The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir that’s far too fat to read. Some Toni Morrison, Jeanette Winterson, Susie Orbach. Perhaps I’ll take just one . . . or two. I really need to steal a Kindle.

  I throw a few other essentials into my suitcase—knickers, cigarettes, Swiss Army knife, passport? Shit! My passport! Where is it? I haven’t used it since my trip to Milan. I’ve moved flats five times since then. It could be anywhere. Did I leave it in Odd Bins when they asked for ID? Did my flatmates swap it for crystal meth? Considering only hours ago I didn’t want to see my sister, I am now psycho-desperate to visit. (Well, where else am I supposed to go? Beth’s place is better than getting bum-raped in an alley by a homeless Cockney. Just.) And now I’m drunk, which isn’t helping. I empty my underwear onto the floor: bras and panties that have seen better days. I squat on all fours and squint under furniture, scooping out crap. The room looks like the aftermath of a typhoon. There’s no sign of the passport, just the mess I call my life.

  I have no identity. I am nobody. Like an unborn child or an unkissed frog. How am I going to tell Beth I can’t make it? She’s going to kill me. She’ll never forgive me. This was my only chance to make up! We have to make up, she’s driving me crazy! Skulking about in my subconscious like a Hogwarts Dementor. Sucking my soul. Making me mad. Bringing me down, down, down. My bottom lip begins to quiver. Hot, wet teardrops prickle my eyes. I lie on the ground curled up like a fetus and cry myself to sleep using the suitcase as a pillow.

  DAY TWO

  Envy

  “I Wish I Had an Ass Like That.”

  @Alvinaknightly69

  Chapter Four

  It was Beth’s fault we never had any birthday parties.

  Well, not since our first and last one when we were five.

  We were so excited, I remember that much. It was our first proper party. We were running around the house, shrieking and laughing, jumping up and down and waiting for the guests to arrive. Beth had on her new frilly dress with fairy wings and a tutu skirt and I was wearing one of Beth’s old pinafores that she’d grown out of. We’d done our hair up in lopsided bunches with our favorite scrunchies and butterfly clips. Mum had made party bags, blown up balloons. She’d even baked a cake with nine candles: five for Beth and four for me because one of them broke in the packet on the way back from the shop. The house was warm with the sweet smell of baking. It was a My Little Pony cake: vanilla buttercream, strawberry jam, hundreds of thousands of sprinkles. I didn’t like vanilla. Or buttercream. Or strawberry jam, to be honest. Beth was the one who was mad keen on horses. I preferred trolls. But I thought the cake looked pretty cool too: the pink flying pony with sparkly wings and a blue mane that glistened and flowed in the wind. Horses could fly in those days, there was magic in the air. At least, that’s what I thought until the guests started to arrive. Then it all went downhill.

  “Happy birthday!” The kids all burst in squealing. And then the party games began. Beth won Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Beth won Musical Statues and Musical Chairs. Mum always stopped the music when Beth had the present when we were playing Pass the Parcel. Beth was the one Mum let cut the cake and make a wish (and it was such a beautiful knife!).

  That was it. I couldn’t take any more. I turned on my heel and sprinted upstairs, my head exploding with thundering rage. My eyes overflowing with tears. I spent the afternoon crying in a locked bathroom surrounded by tissues soggy with snot. I could hear the party in full swing below me, the ghetto blaster thumping Beth’s favorite song: “I Should Be So Lucky” by Kylie Minogue. Mum said I could stay in there “Until you learn how to behave!” Beth had a great time. I never tasted that cake. My sister kept trying to make me come out. Banging on the door. Begging me. Pleading. She twisted the doorknob so hard it came off. She offered me her presents, her cards and cake (she only did it to make herself feel better). But it wasn’t the same. Secondhand toys just don’t have that sparkle. I didn’t want to share. Sharing is bullshit. Whoever said “sharing is caring” did not have a twin.

  That was the year the horses stopped flying.

  We never had another a party after that.

  ◆

  Tuesday, 25th August 2015, 7 a.m.

  Archway, London

  “Where’s my wine, Alvina?”

  Someone is shouting at me in Scouse. Who looks for wine at this time in the morning? There’s a bang on the d
oor and the handle waggles. Thank fuck I locked it. I’m lying naked on the floor with a crick in my neck; I’ll spend the whole day looking left.

  “I want my wine,” whines the slob. I try to get up.

  “Sorry. I drank it. I’ll give you a tenner?” Unlikely.

  “Make sure you do.” The waggling stops. Footsteps pad along the hallway. Silence.

  I haul myself up; the ground shifts and spins beneath my feet. My mouth tastes like an ashtray that someone’s spilled a pint in. I wish I’d bothered to brush my teeth; they feel kind of furry. I notice a pocket on the front of my suitcase that, in hindsight, looks like a sensible place to keep a passport. I unzip it. It’s there. I can’t believe it!

  I read the name on the passport, just to make sure: Alvina Knightly. Yup, that was still me last time I checked. I study the picture. It’s an old photograph. I remember when I took it, in a photo booth at Paddington Station in 2007, just before I met Ambrogio. I study the face in the picture, my smile, my eyes. What is that? Hope? Innocence? Youth? I look different, somehow; I look nice. I close my eyes and hold my breath, suck in the pain and store it away, lock it somewhere deep in a basement and throw away the key. That was before everything happened. I was eighteen then, so young, still a virgin. I still had a chance. . . . I flick past the photo and leaf through the pages; empty, pristine. No stamps. No memories. I haven’t been anywhere. Haven’t done anything. Haven’t grown up. Haven’t moved on.

  What time is it? Shit. Why didn’t I set an alarm? It’s 7:48 a.m. I have just over an hour to get to Heathrow. I don’t know if I’ll make it. I grab the dress that doesn’t fit and pull it on over my head, throw on a denim jacket with toothpaste down the front and my beaten-up Reeboks. I search through my drawers for something smooth and pink, grab Mr. Dick, and throw him in my handbag. I scan the room. There’s nothing here that I care about losing. The slobs will probably burn it all when they see I haven’t left that tenner. Or the last two months’ rent. I resist the urge to set fire to the flat on my way out. I skid down the stairs and out of the house. I’m at the station in under a minute.