No life
Separate lives
Toby Young
This Friday, Caroline and I were supposed to be having supper at Le Caprice to celebrate the first anniversary of our engagement. It was in that very restaurant that I proposed to her this time last year and, romantic that I am, I'd even gone to the trouble of booking the same table. However, a couple of weeks ago Caroline announced that she'd prefer to spend our anniversary in Tenerife instead. Oh, okay. I said. Tenerife it is. Er, no, she explained. I wasn't invited. She needed 'a girlie holiday', apparently, before we get married on 21 July. So last Friday off she trotted for a week in the sun accompanied by three of her best-looking girlfriends. Needless to say, they are all single and in their twenties.
'Don't worry,' one of them said as I waved goodbye to the four of them from the doorstep of my Shepherd's Bush bedsit. 'Nothing's going to happen.'
Yeah, right, I thought. She hadn't witnessed Caroline's behaviour that afternoon. The little minx had spent at least four hours trying on a succession of skimpier and skimpier outfits.
'What d'you think of this?' she asked at one point, looking like a member of Hear'Say posing for a picture in Loaded. 'Is this top a little too tight?'
You can't possibly wear that,' I harrumphed.
She just giggled and put it in her suitcase.
And the 'evening wear' was nothing compared to the bikini she modelled for me later on. The phrase `itsy bitsy teeny weeny' doesn't begin to do it justice. The top half looked as though it had been constructed from two postage stamps and some dental floss; the bottom half resembled a small eye patch.
'Is that a joke?' I asked.
'Yes, darling,' she replied, and then stuffed it into a thimble which she then dropped into her make-up bag. Clearly, the more outraged I was by a particular outfit, the more likely she was to take it with her.
My best friend Sean Langan, who's become my unofficial 'relationship counsellor', has advised me that there's a silver lining to all this. 'Think of all the brownie points,' he said, 'It's like building up credit in the bank. On the anniversary of your wedding next year we can go to Amsterdam for the weekend and she won't be able to say a thing about it.'
He has a point, I suppose, but I'm not sure I want to go to Amsterdam with Sean on my first wedding anniversary. I'd prefer to spend it with Caroline at 'our table' at Le Caprice. Of course, having said that, I expect she'll be celebrating the occasion somewhere exotic with her three girlfriends while I'm stuck in Shepherd's Bush. Lanzarote, perhaps. Or Corfu, One of those places that feature in semi-pornographic documentaries on satellite television about life in plebeian holiday resorts.
Indeed, in six months' time, after we're married, I expect to see Caroline on Tenerife Uncovered, an X-rated docu-soap on Sky One. In between sips of Malibu and Coke, Caroline will explain that, while she does have a fiance back home, she doesn't intend to allow that to cramp her style. She'll then be filmed participating in a wet T-shirt contest, vomiting outside a nightclub called Sex on the Beach' and snogging a hirsute young man called Dave. As Dave explains exactly what he and `Cazza' got up to the night before — 'when she was sober, like' — his regional accent will be so strong I won't be able to understand a word he's saying. However, it'll be plain from his monkey-like grin and obscene gestures that it was something fairly disgusting.
Okay, perhaps I'm being a little unfair. Caroline did call last night to assure me that the marauding mobs of British football hooligans on Tenerife were so terrifying, she and her friends, who were all educated at Cheltenham Ladies College, had yet to venture outside their hotel. Still, I know what she's like after she's had a couple of Malibu and Cokes (oh, all right then, half a bottle of Chardonnay). A creature I call 'bad Caroline' emerges from her lair, This alter ego has a mischievous glint in her eye and, in Shepherd's Bush anyway, likes to flirt outrageously with 6ft black men. The waiters at Sex on the Beach have a treat in store for them, particularly if the local DJ puts on 'Living La Vida Loca' by Ricky Martin. Ay Carramba!
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