David Mitchell - Slade House

“Who doesn’t?” says Todd, and I’m about to say, “You don’t, I bet,” but a black guy with hair dyed white opens the oven door next to us: “ ‘Scuse us, ‘scuse us, boys ‘n” girls.” He slides out a tray of garlic bread and offers us a slice: “G’arn, g’arn — ya know ya want to.” I don’t know if it’s a real London accent or a Cockney piss-take, but the garlic bread smells authentically gorgeous. I hesitate. Todd says, “I will if you will.”

“Mum’s blind,” Todd tells me when we’re on our third slice, “as a matter of fact.” Actually I’m on my fourth, but I stop chewing. “Todd.”

“Hey, it’s no big deal. People live with worse.”

“It’s not not a big deal. Is that why you live at home?”

“Uh-huh. I got accepted at Edinburgh, and Mum and Dad were all, ‘Go on, son, it’s your life,’ but Dad’s not getting any younger, I’m an only child, so I stayed. I don’t regret it. I’ve got my own granny flat above the garage, all mod cons, for—” Todd realizes that if he says “girlfriends” it’ll look like he’s hitting on me “—for, uh …”

“Personal space and independent living?” I offer, wiping a dribble of butter off my chin as sophisticatedly as possible.

“Exactly. Personal space and independent living. Can I use that?”

I dare to say, “Only with me.” I try not to gawp as Todd grins and licks garlic butter off his fingers. “If it’s not too personal, Todd, can I ask if your mum was born blind, or if it came on in later life?”

“Later life. She was diagnosed when I was eleven. Retinitis pigmentosa, or ‘RP’ to its friends. She went from about 90 percent vision to less than 10 percent in a year. Not the best of times. These days she can tell if it’s night or day, and that’s about it. But we’re still lucky. Sometimes RP ushers in deafness and chronic fatigue as well, but Mum can hear me swear from a mile away. She works, too, transcribing audiobooks into Braille. She did that Crispin Hershey novel, Desiccated Embryos .”

I say, “Cool,” but don’t add that I thought the book was massively overrated. I imagine Todd with his parents at their kitchen table discussing life. Todd’s knee’s almost touching mine. If I were drunker, or Fern, or Freya, I’d put my hand on it and tell Todd, “Kiss me, you idiot, can’t you tell I want you to?” and I’d sound so classy. But if I tried it, I’d come over like a drunk podgy sad-sack slut — like a female Lance — and I can’t, won’t, mustn’t, don’t. “Cool.”

“You and Mum’d get on.” Todd stands up. “Really well.”

Was that an invitation? “I’d love that, Todd,” I say, inserting “I,” “love” and “Todd” into the same sentence. “God, I’d love to meet her.”

“Let’s make it happen. Look, I’m going to track down the bathroom so you promise not to go anywhere?”

“I do. Most solemnly.” I watch him vanish among the bodies. Todd Cosgrove. A good name for a boyfriend. “Todd” is kind of classless while “Cosgrove” is borderline posh. Nice balance. “Sally Timms’ sounds like a shat-upon events organizer, but “Sal Cosgrove” could be a rising star at the BBC, or an interior designer to the stars, or a legendary editor. Sal Cosgrove isn’t fat, either. She’d never wolf down a family-size bag of Minstrels and make herself vomit it up in the toilet afterwards. True, I only properly started talking with Todd half an hour ago, but every undying love was only half an hour young, once.

Behind me, Darth Vader’s slagging off his Sociology lecturer to a thin-as-a-rake Incredible Hulk while in front me, the Grim Reaper’s scythe slides to the floor as he, or she, flirts with a black angel with crumpled wings. I open my handbag and get out my Tiffany compact mirror — a “sorry” present from Freya for being too busy for me to stay with her in New York in August. The girl in the mirror fixes her lipstick. With Todd as my official boyfriend, I’ll stick to my diet, I’ll only eat fruit for breakfast, I’ll only eat half my present portions. Mum and Freya’s jaws will drop when they see me. God that’ll feel good! So now that’s decided, I walk over to the food counter. Popcorn, more garlic bread and two Wedgwood cake-stands piled high with brownies. One cake-stand has a little flag stuck into the topmost brownie, saying: “HASH BROWNIES,” while the flag on the other one reads “NO HASH BROWNIES.” Apart from a Snickers bar before my Chaucer seminar, plus the tube of Pringles I had at the library, I haven’t eaten a thing since lunch. If we gloss over the garlic bread. Plus, I burned skads of calories walking to The Fox and Hounds. One tiny no-hash brownie won’t hurt …

… Holy hell, my mouth actually froths, they’re that delicious. Dark chocolate, hazelnuts, rum and raisins. I’m about to eat a second one when this tanned blond blue-eyed Action Man body in muscle-hugging black appears and asks in a twenty-four-carat Aussie accent, “Didn’t we meet at the Morrissey gig?”

I would have remembered. “Wrong girl, I’m afraid.”

“Story of my life. But seriously, you’ve got a doppelganger. I’m Mike — Melbourne Mike, as opposed to Margate Mike. Nice to meet you … Question Mark?”

We shake hands. “I’m Sal,” I say, “from Singapore, I suppose, if I’m from anywhere.” Singapore’s more exotic than Malvern, as long as you’ve never actually lived there.

Melbourne Mike lifts a man of mystery eyebrow. “Singapore Sal. I think I drank three of those one night in a cocktail bar. All on your ownsome, Sal?”

Of all the guys who’ve hit on me and who haven’t been drunk, which isn’t actually all that many, Melbourne Mike’s the best looking by light years. But I’ve got Todd, so I give Mike an apologetic smile. “ ‘Fraid not.”

Melbourne Mike does a courtly bow. “Lucky bloke. Happy Hallowe’en.” Off he goes, and screw you, Isolde Delahunty at Great Malvern Beacon School for Girls and your platoon of body-fascist Barbies who spent eight years calling me “Oink” like it was just a friendly nickname and saying, “Oink, Oink, Oink!” when you passed me on the stairs or in the showers after hockey and I had to smile as if it were all just a funny joke but you knew it wasn’t, you knew it hurt, so screw you Isolde Delahunty and screw all of you, wherever you are this evening, because I won, Oink just turned down a bronzed Australian surfer demigod, who now returns, still smiling, and points at the two cake-stands of brownies: “By the way, Singapore Sal, some joker may have switched those signs over.”

I stop chewing. “But that’s really dangerous.”

“Some people, eh? Proper turd nuggets.”

At the foot of the stairs, a possibly Indian girl in an all-silver Tin Man costume reads my mind: “Bathroom’s this way, turn right, go along, it’s there. Love the nail-varnish, by the way. Peacock blue?” I get stuck between saying “Yes” and “Thanks” so it comes out “Yanks.” Embarrassed, I follow her directions to a TV room where a bunch of guys are sitting on sofas watching The Exorcist, but I’m not staying for this. The Exorcist was on at the party in Malvern where I lost my virginity to a temporary best friend’s ex-boyfriend’s friend called Piers. Not a memory I cherish. Isolde Delahunty told the whole school about Oink Oink’s Big Night, of course, and publicized what Piers had said about me afterwards. Now I’m in a blue-lit corridor booming with Björk’s “Hyperballad.” I pass a pair of tall doors and peer in to find thirty or so people are dancing in a big sort of ex-ballroom, lit by dim orange lamps. Some of the dancers are wearing stripped-down half-costumes, others are in only T-shirts or vests. I see Lance, sliding his hand over his own torso and neck. He tosses his dandruffy mane, spots me at the door and beckons me inside with a sex god’s “Come hither” finger. I hurry off down the chilly corridor before I puke, around a corner, up some stairs and down some more until I find a bay window that gives a view of what might be the front of Slade House, with two big gateposts, though the streetlights and tree shadows and lines are blurred by mist and the fogged-up mullioned window, and to be honest I left my sense of direction in the kitchen. “Hyperballad” has turned into Massive Attack’s “Safe from Harm.” Fern says my name. She’s draped on a giant sofa in an alcove, French cigarette in one hand and a glass in the other, like she’s doing a photo shoot. “Hello. Are you enjoying the party?”