It’s slightly worrying and just a bit Woody Allen on his Bergman kick in that the house, a grand stucco edifice on one of those curling crescents on the way up the Notting Hill Gate, is slap bang next to my shrink. I only realized the coincidence, and yes, shut up Freud, such things do exist, when I was standing outside earlier in the day ringing the bell.
As I left at the end of my session I told her that I was invited to a party later that night in the house next door. ‘And I’m definitely going.’ I added, just incase she had also been invited and was planning on attending. This is my social life at stake here so if there’s any risk of us running into each other outside the professional space I want it made clear from the outset that I’m not going to be the one staying home watching Coronation Street.
So lines drawn in the psychoanalytical sand, I’m upstairs in the drawing room, drinking Prosecco, hoovering up peanuts and any canapé that is unwary enough to come within a three foot radius, mingling. I hate mingling. I sort of swim through the crowd looking for someone I know well enough to monopolise and then cling on to their social lifebelt like a shipwrecked sailor, and if I happen to hail a familiar face across the room, believe me I’m definitely drowning, not waving.
Luckily, literary friend is already in situ, next to an ashtray and a bowl of chocolate truffles, although no luck is involved in any part of this sentence as all has been carefully arranged including the relocation of the small bowl of confectionery, previously on a low table at the other end of the room. Literary friend is swathed in smoke and provides a great, if odoriferous, place to hide. She has colleagues with her, enough to look like there are a bunch of us, all terribly interested in what each other has to say which, given that they work together every day, is highly unlikely. I have my eldest daughter with me which, given that we live together every day means the same conclusion may be drawn.
I don’t really know the author but have the good fortune to remember who he is as he strides across the room looking older and even more handsome than he did ten years ago when we last met at something FTish. However, we share an agent, and his wife used to be my editor, and his launch party is being held in the house next door to my shrink and my friend Kate is an editor at his publishing house. That makes me an utterly legitimate guest who is not attending under false pretences.
I repeat this between handfuls of peanuts: ‘
One of the few things that makes it bearable that other people live in houses like these is that they too probably have mice. You are reassured that you are not the only person to have cracks big enough to push wishes into like the Wailing Wall under your windows or huge, water-stained chasms in your ceilings which small children could drop through. The daughter who was with me followed my gaze upwards and, knowing the small fissure on our kitchen through which water drips every time someone has a shower, smiled at me in solidarity. She remembers sitting in the Bodleian in Oxford working on her thesis when there was a scuttling sound overhead and a squirrel fell out of the ceiling and scampered off across the reading room table and disappeared behind the stack. When she mentioned it to one of the librarians they looked at her disapprovingly and informed her that nobody else had complained.
No squirrels here. So far. But it is a ruddy big hole.
And that’s where the Woody Allen kicks in. 1988 Another Woman. (The power of Google, lest you imagine I'm a film buff. I can’t remember anything before last Tuesday unless it involves humiliation or emotional trauma when it becomes encyclopedic.) Mia Farrow sitting spilling her soul in her shrink’s office and Gina Rowlands (coincidentally, again, forget the Freudian stuff) eavesdropping through the air conditioning vent.
Oh God.
I scanned the room for the attractive older woman who seemed to be the hostess and the dark, dapper man who was, possibly, her husband. Their son, a friend of the author (I believe) was wandering round with a bottle in each hand. It suddenly occurred to me that while I’m upstairs spilling in the shrink’s front room that any of these poor, unsuspecting people could be resting in their bedroom next door, listening.
Imagine. It’s like this blog only never, ever funny. The hairdresser without holidays. The confession without the sin. The city without the sex. Is there anything worse than blabbing about your petty neuroses than the possibility of being overheard?
I looked again, right into the eyes of the young man serving the wine. He smiled cheerfully – either a waiter, hired for the evening, or totally unperturbed by any leaking angst. Neither one of the older couple seemed to be catatonic with boredom. The sound of my voice didn’t send them screaming to the window ready to jump. Very thick walls then? Hole in ceiling not directly connected to shrink’s consulting room? Apparently not.
I moved away from the comfort of familiar faces anyway, just to be on the safe side as an old friend, another author, rent-a-bod at London Literary Parties, and sharer of agent appeared in the doorway. He was with a poet (it’s
I waved (drowning).
Frantically.
He obliged by approaching and after several heavy hints introduced me to the poet.
‘You’re adults, you can introduce yourselves,’ he said crossly on the third raised eyebrow and elbow dig.
I tried to see if the poet was wearing a wedding ring or a big sign saying ‘I am gay,’ but couldn’t verify either and am smiling winningly, or grimacing wildly depending on how many glasses of wine you’ve had when the old friend announced that he had seem my husband earlier that morning at Chatham House.
‘Did he tell you he left me five months ago?’ I asked, sighing, turning to the poet adding an ex to every subsequent sentence with a husband in it. He backed off a little in a manner suspiciously similar to that of the person (aged approximately 35) I had spoken to earlier when I introduced him to my twenty four year old daughter.
‘That’s too bad,’ said old friend. ‘I’m sorry to hear it. If I had known I wouldn’t have mentioned seeing him.’
Oh shut up about the husband please, I’m thinking.
‘You know I’ve been through all this myself.’ He added. ‘We could always have a drink?’
At which point my mobile rang with a call from my sixteen year old daughter asking to be picked up.
Woman with baggage. See me weep.
What’s worse was that after I’d excused myself another message from my daughter arrived to say that she was getting a taxi home and didn’t want me after all.
By that time I was home. Had missed Corrie, but still managed to catch House.
Welcome to the club darling, welcome to the club.
