Will Self - The Book of Dave

'Issat you,' 'chelle? No, rain's come on, his nibs got me a salad. What's up?'

'I was going to call him, but I'm in a cafe with that Rachel from work and I swear she knows.' Michelle risked a glance over her shoulder: Rachel was sizing up a builder at the next table, whose flesh-coloured dust mask disfigured his neck like a goitre.

'Yeah,' Sandra laughed, 'she knows she's a scheming little cow, that's what she knows.'

'I dunno, San, I'm bloody nervy today, it's… it's like something's gonna happen, I dunno what — just something.' Michelle's eyes flicked outside to the Hammersmith Road, where a black cab shook with mechanical ague.

'Are you meant to be seeing him?'

'Yeah, later, I don't know where, though, he'll leave me a message at home — lissen, I gotta go.'

'What?'

But Michelle had hung up. She went back to her seat opposite Rachel. The builders at the next table rose, four big bodies moving in dusty puffs. From the kerfuffle a meaty arm tossed the Sun between the two young women. 'Paper for yer, luv,' he said, giving Michelle a gappy grin. She picked it up: it was open at the horoscopes and she read: 'PISCES. It has been a long, rough and lonely road emotionally. However, with the sun in Cancer and a new moon to boot, this will be a week of amazing highs and the realization that at last your darkest days are over.' Snip-snip … He's gonna leave her … Snip-snip, he's gonna cut her out of his life … Snip-snip.

Michelle unlocked the front door and took the stairs at a run. Fiddling with her flat key on the top landing, she felt her nostrils prickling with dust — then the Yale clicked. Without bothering to shut the door, she lunged for the answer-phone. It peeped, hissed, crackled: 'chelle, it's Mum here.' As if I don't know your voice. 'I was wonderin' if you were coming by Friday. .'so you can put me down with sly digs '… 'cause I'm going down the market an' if you are I'll get a whole chicken instead of pieces.' A thigh or two for her, a leg for Ronnie, gross. 'Anyway, love, gissa call, there's a good girl, love, Mum.' She thinks she's writing a bloody letter. 'Peep!' 'Alright, 'chelle? A load of us are going down Gossips tonight.' That's desperate. 'We'll be in the wine bar before that…' getting pissed enough to take on anything in trousers — and it's only Thursday '… so see ya there, unless you're getting shagged by wossisface, ta-ra.' I should keep my big mouth shut. Shut. 'Peep!' 'Hilton on Park Lane …' His voice! '… eight o'clock in the lobby, don't be late.' 'Peep!'

Michelle kicked off the black heels, she shrugged off the red jacket, she sloughed off the tight red skirt, she tore off the white cotton blouse. In her bra, tights and knickers, she raced into the bathroom, her head a whirl of transportation schedules. I don't want to rush, it'll be sweaty on the tube, I don't want to sweat. No sweat, he doesn't want sweat — he doesn't want real, he wants a fantasy girl. . Weird thing is … I wannabe that for him. Crouching in the bath, Michelle used the rubber Y of the shower fitment to sluice away Olympia and Manning. She pushed the heel of her hand down through her pubic hair, then gouged out her vagina with the bar of lavender soap … Dirty girl Dirty, dirty girl. On the mat, she twisted in front of the full-length mirror, checking for stubble under arms and between thighs. I wonder if Mrs Thatcher ever does this? Or Chris Evert? They must do. Michelle flipped her mane forward and vigorously stroked it with the saddle brush. A hiss of spray to stop the frizz and Michelle flipped it back. Deodorant was sprayed under arms still damp from their douche. Perfume was dabbed at ear and neck and crotch. In the bedroom she pulled multicoloured handfuls of silk and cotton scraps from her drawer, and strewed them like blossom on the counterpane of her bed. Why bother? He doesn't want this — I don't want this. He wants in — I want him in as fast as possible.

Michelle Brodie had always been a fashion victor, triumphing over each season's army of styles, colours and cloths with her own inimitable Look. Aged sixteen, trolling through Crystal Palace on her way to her Saturday job, she'd been spotted by Ben Bendicks, a photographer so famous that even Michelle had heard of him. He came at her out of the shiny fourth dimension that was folded into Vogue and Harpers. They were deep in Sarf London, deep and high up — to the south lay the North Downs, a bright, green streak on the horizon. All this airy calm was annihilated by the Yank car flung against the kerb, the man in the iridescent silk shirt and wraparound shades shouting, 'You've got it girl! You've got the Look!' She was wearing a midi-length black skirt and a white blouse. Some Look. Still, Bendicks conjured up her exhibitionism with his own. A spread-legged year followed — not that he ever laid a hand on her — as Michelle posed in front of paper flats, morphing to the rat-a-tat-tat of his shutter. The freckles on her face and hands were airbrushed out, and she learned to think of nothing so as to achieve the allure of a Zen garden. Bendicks got her on hoardings as the Face of Fermata — the designer label of that year.

To begin with Michelle kept the modelling a secret, convinced her mother would freak out. When, inevitably, Cath did find out, she egged her on — the money was so good for them, after always having to scrimp towards bare adequacy. Michelle liked to think that it was she who'd drawn back. Much later she would say, 'It was crap, like going out with a big latex head jammed on my own.' She disavowed such caricatured regard. The truth was less heroic: Bendicks had used her up. She wasn't that photogenic anyway — she'd had her year, 1979, and her look was fossilized within it, crushed in a layer of fashionable sediment. So she retrieved her freckles and went to College. She dressed down and got her HND in Business Studies. She had boyfriends who were musicians; their greasy hair stained the tummy of her old teddy bear, brought from home to cosify a shared flat on the Wandsworth Road. The recognition factor faded until it was merely a subliminal thing that made every tenth person who passed her by in the street — and every third who met her face to face — feel certain they'd encountered her before. It was a villagey regard, quite tolerable. Michelle depended on the approbation of her good looks more than she could ever admit — that they weren't quite good enough gnawed at her.

Michelle put on a tan suede dress, calf-length, silk-lined, low on the back, high on the breast. She slung on a cream linen jacket and slipped into high-heeled sandals. She put a tiny diamond stud in each ear lobe and, after having turned back the cuffs, a chunky ethnic bracelet on each wrist … the salesgirl said they were from Malawi, I say Malaysia. On the radio a middle-aged smoothie was braking drivetime with his soft-shoe voice. The Flying Eye was summoned up, banking high over the North Circular: 'Lorry lost its load at the Welsh Harp' — an atmospheric crackle — 'tailbacks all the way back to Staples Corner …' Michelle snatched up her bag and rasped the door to. Glancing at her watch, she saw it was Seven fifteen! I can still make it.

'It's just a bloody toy of that Prince Albert,' Dave's fare expounded; 'it's not a real football team.' Dave had picked him up underneath the glass portico of the new Lloyd's Building and the getter hadn't stopped yapping since. 'I tellya that Hoddle's a fucking mercenary. He said he'd take a pay cut to go to a good European club — now he's taking a million quid to piss off to Monaco.' The fare was leaning right forward on the seat, shifting from one plump buttock to the other as the cab cornered, yet keeping his muzzle right in the conversational trough.