âOf emancipation.â
âYeah right,â said Freddie.
âYou only got a third!â I shouted at him. âTell that to your fucking father then see if he lets you curate a bloody show!â
âI think itâs fabulous,â said Jasper. âArtists shouldnât have degrees. They should be renegades.â
âIâm not an artist,â I said.
âYeah, what are you again?â said Freddie.
âOh, shut your mouth,â I told him.
Jasper collapsed onto the chaise longue. âSo actually that cartoon is like a gay allegory. Because Hans was dreaming of being a human née heterosexual instead of a mermaid née queer in order to be like part of their world.â He swigged from his flute. âItâs about yearning.â
âI know about yearning,â said Samuel.
âSo do I, so do I,â said Jasper. âI was yearning to smash Sebastianâs fucking face in last night when he started doing that preposterous whirling dervish dance.â
My heart stopped.
âYeah, and she was there, clapping and shit.â Jasper looked at Samuel. âYour sister.â
âShouldnât hold a grudge, old man,â said Freddie.
âWas it a party?â I said.
âYah.â Jasper grinned. âAnn-Marie, Iâm surprised you werenât invited.â
Freddie laughed.
âIt was their going away bash,â Jasper went on.
âWhere are they going?â I said.
âSebastian and Allegra are going to Mexico for six months to do some theatre thing about Aztec sacrifice,â said Samuel in a rush. âAllegraâs going to rip out someoneâs heart at the top of a pyramid and eat it.â
âYeah, while Seb waits to ask her permission to use the toilet,â said Freddie.
The cigarette smoke in the room seemed to move inside my brain, fogging all thought.
Then I was striding over to the mantelpiece and crushing the seven brittle wish-bones that I had saved and dried every time Freddie and I cooked Nigellaâs roast chicken.
Four
Michel the sous-chef was simulating an ecstatic kind of anal sex with a skinned rabbit on the stainless steel cooker in the kitchen downstairs at Williamâs, the Soho restaurant where Iâd worked for the last five months. The rabbitâs eyes were agog and aware like a human. It looked mortified. Michel held the hind-legs with the force of a man about to come and banged the livid red pelvis into his own again and again. The rabbitâs body was long and muscular. Only the fluffy tail remained, which Michel squeezed and shut his eyes and hollered something about monogamy before he performed a vicious orgasm and collapsed on top of the rabbitâs slender back so that we all heard the ribs crunch.
The rest of the kitchen slaves cheered and whistled and looked genuinely happy for once. A pile of rabbits awaited their violation to the left.
This was why I chose the hospitality and catering industry after I failed my degree. I had read Marco Pierre Whiteâs memoir White Slave , later more tastefully retitled The Devil in the Kitchen . All that protein and aggression appealed to me â I wanted to experience it for myself.
Now I made an espresso and returned upstairs.
The reception was my domain. I was the reigning door bitch, crowned in the summer, when I had answered William the managerâs ad on Gumtree and made my way to Soho shaking like a horse in a thunderstorm. The aftershocks of finals were intense. I lied about my degree; I said that Iâd left school at sixteen. William looked at my legs throughout the interview. He told me that my skirt was too short. I said thanks, it was a dress. William said that heâd give me the job if I gave him a blow job. I said no fucking way and stood up, but he said fine and gave me the job anyway, which undermined his authority forever in my eyes.
I had assumed that William owned the restaurant because it was his name