Excerpt 18

Here is the latest excerpt from my new novel, How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous. Please remember that, if this excerpt is of the slightest interest, a free pdf copy of the entire book can be obtained through this link. (If you want a copy in any other format, please write.) Also, should you be overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to buy a copy of the book, you can obtain one (in the UK) from any bookshop. Theoretically that should also be possible in the US. If you wish to order online, UK retailers such Tesco.com and Play.com both offer the book with prompt delivery. American readers can buy from Amazon.com. Delivery times on Amazon.co.uk are at present unaccceptable, despite what it says about 'usually despatched within 24 hours'.

Debbie explains Russian Roulette

The following morning I woke up wondering what Debbie had got up to while I was in the pub. I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

Debbie rang me again. She said she’d had dinner with Con the night before. He paid, and they went somewhere posh. They had a good meal and a long chat afterwards, she said.

Hmm, I thought. I wouldn’t have minded being a fly on the wall when those two got together.

I was going to ask her what they decided, if anything. But before I could she told me to turn up at her flat for a meal that evening. Said we’d discuss it all then.

Fine by me.

In the afternoon I got my spinning rod out and went fishing for pike in the river. Didn’t catch much – a couple of small ones – but I enjoyed the fresh air.

I like looking at the birds too. I’m not a proper bird-watcher, but my Dad taught me most of the names when we lived in the country. And it’s surprising what you can see if you keep your eyes open.

When the sun went down it was bitterly cold, and I was glad to get back home.

A bit later on I walked over to Debbie’s flat again.

Debbie’s a good cook. I soon discovered that. Very big on organic vegetables and stuff. She isn’t a vegetarian but she doesn’t go much on steak and red meat. Though that night we did have some chops that came from one of the farms she goes to. And a fruit salad.

After we’d put everything in the dishwasher, we sat down and had a bit of a chat.

‘Well, Harry,’ she said, ‘your friend Con is an intriguing sort of chap. In more ways than one.’

Con wasn’t my friend. Not really. But I didn’t interrupt her.

‘He didn’t give too much away, but when I said that I was interested in taking part in his show – in principle – his eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. And, as I thought, he is willing to negotiate.’

Hmm, I said to myself. Again.

I couldn’t work out why Debbie was the least bit interested in Con. Or interested in me either. In spite of what she’d said the day before about her raised profile.

‘Are you sure you want to do business with Con?’ I said. ‘He’s a slippery bugger if you ask me.’

‘No doubt he is.’

‘And even if he offered you the crown jewels I don’t think it would be enough. Not to go the whole way.’

‘Well, Harry, that’s a matter of opinion. And anyway, I haven’t signed anything yet. We’re still talking.’

I didn’t actually say that I couldn’t see why she was interested in me. I thought that would look a bit feeble. As if I didn’t have any self-confidence. So I kept that to myself. But perhaps she was reading my mind.

‘You do realise,’ she said, ‘that I’ve waited two years for you to ask me out, Harry. And you never did.’

‘No, well, I wasn’t in the mood, Debbie. What with one thing and another.’

‘I was told in no uncertain terms that you and I were well suited.’

‘Oh? Who by?’

‘Dora Cartwright, for one.’

Blimey, I thought. If Dora Cartwright was keen on me and Debbie getting together, it’s a pity she hadn’t mentioned it to me. A year earlier. And then things might have been different. But I kept that to myself too.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I certainly had my eye on you, Debbie. But at the time Dora’s little massage parlour seemed the best option. Why didn’t you ask me out, come to that?’

She smiled. ‘Oh, the man has to take the lead, Harry. It’s nature’s way. I smiled at you in the street once, but I don’t think you saw me.’

We didn’t say anything for a bit. And then she said, ‘You see the point is this, Harry. When Dora told me about Cathy being HIV, and you as well, I didn’t say to myself, Oh dear, well that’s the end of all that then. What I said was, Oh dear. Poor Harry. What can we do to help?’

Now it was my turn to smile. ‘Not much, as far as I can see.’

But that seemed as good a time as any to tell her about going to see my doctor. Which was what Dr Meadows at the clinic suggested I should do. And I told her how my GP had decided that I should be monitored. That’s what they call it, being monitored. It isn’t a cure for HIV, because there isn’t one. What they do is keep an eye on you, and when you get to a certain point you may need various drugs.

We talked about that for a while, and then we came back to the TV programme. In those days everything always came back to Con and his programme. I got sick of it at times.

‘You see the thing is this, Harry. If I’m going to sign up to appear on this programme, and play the girl that you’re courting, so to speak – what Con calls chatting up – then I need to find out whether I like you or not.’

I didn’t follow that. ‘I thought you did like me,’ I said. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.’

Debbie shook her head. ‘No, Harry. Not just like you, Harry. But like you like you.’

I still didn’t get it.

‘I mean in bed, Harry. In bed.’

Oh.

So we had a discussion about that. I was definitely reluctant. And I hope you understand why.

‘But it isn’t even our first date,’ she said. ‘We’ve been out together a couple of times. Had meals. All sorts of things.’

She seemed amused that I was twitchy. But I was twitchy. In fact I was more than twitchy. So we talked about the risk some more.

But in the end Debbie got her way. She always does.

It wasn’t that I didn’t fancy her. Of course not. And I certainly wasn’t worried about performing. If things had been different I’d have been all over her. But there was always that danger in the back of my mind.

‘We are going to be using a condom,’ she kept saying.

‘Yes, but even so….’

In the end she got a bit cross with me. ‘Harry,’ she said, ‘for Christ’s sake stop wittering. People take a bigger risk than this when they eat supermarket chicken. So shut up and take your clothes off.’

So I did. For better or for worse.

In fact we didn’t just go to bed together – I ended up staying the night.

The next morning I was awake early but we didn’t hurry ourselves. And we were both a bit late setting off for work.

I didn’t go straight to work. I had to go home to collect the van and get changed into my work clothes. But guess who was waiting for me when I got there.

‘Morning, Harry,’ he said.

I may have grunted. Nothing more.

He followed me into the house and hung around while I made myself a cup of tea. I’d got cold on the way over.

‘You’ve got a smart one there, you know, Harry.’ He meant Debbie. ‘A real smart one. I’m going to see her again later today.’

I could tell that he was dying to know what had happened the night before. And whether I’d spent all night at Debbie’s or not. I wouldn’t have put it past him to have slept outside her flat in his car. But he didn’t look as if he had. He just looked as if he was dying to ask. His eyes followed me around. I expect he was hoping to work something out from my expression. But I didn’t give him any help.

Of course a lot of blokes in his position would have had a smirk on their faces. And they would have made a few smutty remarks. But he was careful not to do that. Just as well. Otherwise I would have hit him.

After I’d had my cup of tea I left him to stew in his own juices and went off to the church.

As I did my work that day I spent quite a lot of time thinking about what the Vicar had said to me. And what Debbie had said. And wondering if I’d done the right thing.

Perhaps it would be for the best, I thought, if Debbie decided that she didn’t like me enough. That would be best for everyone really. But funnily enough I didn’t think she would say that. It’s not that I’m big-headed or anything, but I thought I’d made a good impression.

I can’t remember whether it was that first time we went to bed together, or later. But sometime early on, when we were still feeling our way, Debbie talked to me about probability.

‘How are you on probability, Harry?’ she said.

‘How do you mean?’ I said. I find myself saying How do you mean quite a lot when I’m talking to clever people like Con and Debbie. Because they’re educated and I’m not.

‘Well – even you, in your media-free zone, Harry, even you must have heard of Russian roulette.’

‘What – that business where you put a loaded revolver against your head and pull the trigger?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘What about it?’

‘The way it works is like this. You take a revolver, which holds six bullets in a circular chamber. You put one bullet into the chamber, roll the chamber at random, so that you don’t know where the bullet has ended up, and then you hold the gun against your temple and pull the trigger. With me so far?’

‘Yes.’

‘What do you think the odds are of blowing your brains out? How likely is it that you will survive?’

I hadn’t the faintest idea of course. The whole thing has always struck me as seriously crazy. ‘You tell me, Debbie.’

‘Well I’m not a statistician. Or an expert on probability theory. But the way I see it, there’s one chance in six that you’ll end up dead. Now – suppose you want to play the game again. What do you do?’

‘Press the trigger again, I suppose.’

‘Well, you could do. And if you do you’ve got less chance of surviving than before. So now there’s a one in five chance that you’ll blow your brains out. And if you go on pressing the trigger, without taking the gun away from your head, then the chances reduce every time. Five, four, three, two, one. You might get killed at any one of those points. But eventually, if you’re still there at the end of all that, you know for certain that the bullet has now ended up in the firing chamber, and you’re going to end up dead if you pull the trigger again.’

I couldn’t quite see where she was going with this. So I just had a drink of the wine that we’d opened and let her get on with it.

‘On the other hand, Harry, you could play the game a different way. Instead of going on pressing the trigger, with the odds getting worse and worse each time, you could take the gun away from your head each time, spin the chamber again, and then pull the trigger. That way the odds would always remain the same. There would always be one chance in six that you’d end up dead. In other words, you’d have a better chance of survival.’

Funnily enough I could follow all that. She explained it well enough even for me. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘But what has that got to do with us?’

‘My point is this, Harry. What kind of game are we playing? Or, to be more precise, what kind of risk am I taking, when I go to bed with you? We’re always going to be using condoms. And we know that they provide pretty good protection. And we also know that people don’t always get infected with HIV, even if they don’t use a condom. So let’s say the risk is a thousand to one. But if I sleep with you a thousand times, does the danger get greater every time? Or does it always remain a very slight danger – does it stay at one in a thousand?’

‘I’m sorry, Debbie,’ I said. ‘But I just don’t know the answer to that.’

‘Neither do I,’ she said. ‘But I’m pretty sure it’s the latter. In other words, Harry, it’s a very small risk indeed. So I want you to stop worrying about it.’

She was quiet for a bit. Then she said, ‘You have to live, you know, Harry. That’s my opinion. I drive a very fast little car, and I put my foot down. Because I like to drive fast.’

That was certainly true. Until I calmed her down a bit she used to frighten the life out of me.

‘And when I was younger, working for GLAPSTOW, I did all sorts of dangerous things.’

I knew that because Con had told me. But Debbie would never talk about them when I asked her. She always shrugged me off.

‘Having sex with you is a bit like smoking, Harry.’

Actually Debbie doesn’t smoke. Neither of us does.

‘People who smoke know that there’s a risk involved. They’ve been told it often enough, and it’s written on every packet. But they also know that smoking doesn’t kill everybody, and they assume that it’s going to be someone else. They want to do it, so they do do it. It’s their life. Their choice. And that’s the way we are. We both want to go to bed together, so we do. In my view it’s about as dangerous as one cigarette a day. So stop worrying, Harry. And since you don’t smoke, stop eating supermarket chicken too.’