My friend Morgan is chubby and not unpleasant to look at. He’s averagely funny, but he doesn’t worry about it or try hard, and he laughs with genuine enjoyment at people who care more about things like that. He’s a banker, and he does fine. He has sandy hair, which has always been thin, so I don’t think it’s getting thinner. Girls like him, but they don’t really fancy him unless they are drunk. But for some reason, if they are drunk, Morgan becomes irresistible. No one can explain why this is, it just is, and whenever he’s with us on a night out, one of the most enjoyable bits of the evening is the moment where strange girls start coming over and throwing themselves at him. (We, his close friends, have been mainly inoculated by years and years of contact, but we all had our moments.) Sometimes Morgan has a girlfriend, but usually he doesn’t because it’s hard to have a girlfriend if wherever you go the most beautiful girls in the room start stroking your arm and slipping their numbers into your pocket as if you are film star taking a break from the movies to be a Formula One driver and qualify as a paediatrician.
I sat in the front of the minivan-taxi from Pin Head to Mayfair. Johnny Depp was in the back row with Jeremy Clarkson’s wife, and in the middle row Morgan was sandwiched between Kylie Minogue and the little red-haired angel who drove me to Luton airport what seemed like a lifetime ago. Kylie mumbled, so she had to practically touch Morgan’s ear with her mouth, ‘I can’t believe I normally date larrikins like dancers and models, etc., if bankers are all like you. You are so much more bonza than all those raw prawns, don’t you agree?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Morgan. ‘I’m pretty boring when you get to know me.’
‘You’re so funny,’ said Kylie.
‘I’m really not. I can’t believe you are millions of years old.’
‘That’s not very gallant, you dingo.’
‘I’m sorry, I just meant…’
‘I don’t mind, you pelican. I was just kidding. You learn a lot of things in a million years, especially if you spend a lot of time down under, if you understand what I’m saying?’
‘I do,’ said Morgan. ‘That’s a really funny joke.’
‘Geez, Morgo, none of the drongoes I’ve been ever get my jokes. They don’t think women can be funny. You’re a fair dinkum beaut, etc.’ All this time, the red-haired angel was pressing her futile knee into Morgan’s, unable to resist him but knowing in her heart that she was hopelessly outmatched. But I’d been watching Morgan dance with the red-haired girl all evening, and now I saw him find her hand. Kylie saw her too, and she said, ‘Good decision, mate, I don’t blame you. Red’s the real thing. She’s going with Mary Sue when… I shouldn’t say. She’s amazing, mate.’ In the end, when we got to the house, Morgan and the red-haired girl said Kylie could join them upstairs if she wanted, and Kylie said, ‘Really, mate! That’s totally bonza! You sure you don’t mind? I know I’m just the third, don’t worry. I’ll just help out any way I can.’
I went into the garden, past David-Mitchell-the-novelist and Katharine, who were half-undressed barely out of sight of the kitchen window, and went to the back wall, where I waited for where I knew Johnny Depp would come to join me. He did, and we leaned back against the dry brick looking at the silver trees and held hands. We knew that nothing more than this would happen, and that we should go inside and sleep. But also, with out hands, we acknowledged how much we both wanted to do the things we weren’t going to do. I knew some reasons, and he knew some reasons, and they had to be enough reasons, however drunk we were. Then Johnny said, ‘We might die tomorrow.’ I said nothing, just pressed my side against him. ‘I love Vanessa, Mary Sue. I love her forever. And I know you don’t love me.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘It would just be lust if it happened. Which it won’t.’
My voice was husky because I could remember what it was like with him, which was, well. You either know what I mean or you don’t, and if you don’t I can’t describe it for you, because I’d heard it described enough times but I didn’t understand until Johnny. He said, ‘Yes, it would be wrong. Let’s go inside.’ But I didn’t move, and nor did he. And then he said, ‘I’ve lost her thousands of times, Mary Sue. Don’t think it’s ever easy, but when it happens, I deal with it like I deal with death in war, by denying it until there’s time to cope privately. But that only works when I’m with someone who doesn’t understand what’s happening, because then I don’t have to think about it or pretend, and they can assume they have all of me. But with you, I know you understand, and I also know you’re only doing it because you also can’t have who you want. So we should go inside now. I wouldn’t even be standing here if I wasn’t drunk and if there was no danger that tomorrow would be the end of everything.’ He sounded like he was trying to persuade himself. ‘It’ll be fine,’ he went on, ‘because we’re strong, and we know it would be wrong.’ His hand tightened on mine, but I felt the tightening somewhere else, and I shivered with the force of how hard it was to resist. He was right: we might die tomorrow. What harm could it do? What harm really? Miss Smallbone was jealous, but she could hardly blame… I mean, if this was just about Miss Smallbone being jealous, and not me being in more specific danger then… But Miss Smallbone had fought so hard for so long, and how could I make things worse for her, because if there was one thing I knew, it was that she would know, so… And she’d gone mental a couple of times in the past she said, and the last thing we would need tomorrow was a mental Miss Smallbone… And if Johnny didn’t know about that, and he was just worried about me, then I was the one who really knew where the most pain and danger would be caused, even if it was a thing no one could really help in the long run, and so it was up to me to be strong… But how strong could I be when… But, but, but. I was going to resist him. I knew I was going to resist him. I was almost certainly probably just about to say that we had to go inside when David Tennant called out, ‘Are you alright, Mary Sue?’
‘Yes,’ I called. I’m just coming in.’ I supposed I should have felt like a naughty girl called by her father from her dangerous older boyfriend’s car, but when I saw David, concerned and beautiful, that is not how I felt.
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