Page 1 of Has Anyone Seen My Sex Life?
Prologue
Back then I wouldn’t have said I was a bitch exactly, but I was all the things that came from being a young professional Londoner: I was broadly cynical, deep into a free overdraft, my bloodstream was a mix of takeaways and watered-down cocktails, and I was prone to meltdowns over stolen teabags and my flatmates interrupting my sleep. I was a city girl working in magazine publishing, so naturally I was also a superficial douche. This was why when I first met Danny Morton, I was obsessed by his spectacularly ugly shoes. Footwear that hideous will brand itself into a girl’s memory; that and the moment I barged past, half-cut, spilling my overpriced White Russian all over him.
‘Oh bollocks…!Wow…’ I said the wow as I glanced down at his shoes being showered in my cocktail. Maybe the drink would make them less ugly? I giggled to myself. We were in a Soho pub, full of London’s finest cosmopolitan wankery, loafers and neon trainers and this gentleman had on clumpy walking boots, like he was setting off up a mountain or had come to fix my sink. ‘Those look sturdy.’
He wasn’t impressed or bothered. ‘Where I come from, a lass would apologise.’
‘Oooooh, “Where I come from”?’ I mimicked his broad Northern accent. I couldn’t pinpoint it. North for me was anywhere past Brent Cross. ‘Manchester?’ That’s North.
He eyeballed me. Was he handsome? Frankly who knew, I was so boozed up. He held out a hand.
‘Danny Morton, how do you do…’
I really was drunk. I curtseyed.
‘Meg Callaghan, very well, thank you.’ I said with a strange affected posh voice.
He smiled. ‘I haven’t had an apology yet.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You don’t sound sure about that?’
‘You’re a bit bolshy.’
‘You’re a bit rude.’ He turned his back to me. ‘Fookin’ Southerners.’
I’m not sure why but this struck a chord that I couldn’t ignore. I was never precious about where I was from or who I was. I quite liked being a Londoner; it meant that I was trendy, metropolitan and globally aware by association. But he was surly and quite frankly, a bit of a tit. Have I mentioned I was also very drunk?
‘Oh piss off, fucking Liam Gallagher.’
I’m not sure why I compared him to Liam Gallagher; it may have been the ape like persona and the fact I’d committed to him hailing from Manchester, but Britpop was all the rage back then. I was also fully aware that to support the fact that I was indeed a fully-fledged Londoner, I may have replaced my accent and gone all Cockney on him.
‘Facking?’ he said quizzically back at me.
‘Fooking,’ I replied.
He laughed. I wasn’t sure why. He looked me in the eye and did this strange action where he seemed to be doffing an imaginary flat cap. I thought it was quite charming but I was still offended by his aversion to my Southerness and frankly confused by the shoes situation.
An arm reached over my shoulder at that point. ‘Holy flaps, Meggers. We can’t drink here anymore. Bloke at two o’clock, I think I may have shagged him and peed in his kitchen sink because I couldn’t find the toilet in his house. I think his name is Ron.’
Bloody Beth. She stopped for a moment to check out my new Northern acquaintance. He, in return, stared intently at the sort of person feral enough to piss in a sink. Danny and I turned to see the man in question. ‘Ron’ had a strange centre parting and fringe curtains. I felt pangs of disappointment for my sister. Beth was still eyeing up Danny, but her expression read horror when she got to the shoes.
‘I’m Beth. I’m the sister. She’s Meg and she’s single.’
Beth was newly graduated and excitable. Her main agenda seemed to be recreating her university experience in the real world but constantly moaning about how everything was far more expensive and that she didn’t like it. She was training to be a teacher, with an agenda to save the kids from themselves. However, they swore at her and she was slowly realising poetry wasn’t something that could be taught via the power of rap. It meant we usually ended our weeks with ‘a drink to see in the weekend’ that turned into us one hundred quid shy by the morning with handbags full of soggy spring rolls from hitting the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet at 3a.m. That night, Beth was off her face, varifocal drunk due to an uncontrollable set of Year 8s. It meant she shuffled on the spot, adjusting her vision like the sun had just hit her eyes.
‘She’s a journalist and that is all her own hair. She is a frickingcatch,’ she said, pointing to me.
Danny Morton started laughing. Beth had the awesome ability of letting people into snippets of conversations in which they’d had no previous participation. She was referring to when ten minutes previously, we’d been talking about a girl at the bar whose extensions looked like they’d been applied with a hot glue gun. Beth proceeded to stroke my hair like one would a spaniel.
‘So, a journalist for what? Like the newspapers?’ Danny asked.
‘ForRedmagazine.’
‘Don’t read it.’ It was an absolute answer. But strangely, I found it very compelling. Too often, you mention you’re a journalist and people feign interest or come at you with their bullshittery. He seemed to have no concern about ingratiating himself to me.
‘You’re both sisters, eh? Got the same chin.’ His tone didn’t read as complimentary.
