Free Eat My Heart Out by Zoe Pilger Page B

wrapping one leg around the bannister and gyrating against it.
    Vic ran down the hall and rolled the condom on his penis before I could stop him. It looked like a transparent blue holiday banana boat. He turned me around on the stairs and pushed himself into me. My fingers kept sliding around the carpet.
    Jan the operator opened one of the white doors on the first floor landing. She paused on her way to the toilet, and contemplated us.
    Vic came, squawking something about a man called Jeremy who didn’t deserve to lose his sight.
    Amy Winehouse had been reduced to her formal elements on the wall behind the bus stop at the lock. Her graffitied spirit urged me to destroy myself with drink and drugs and heartbreak. Go on , she snarled. Death by love is honourable for a woman. Everyone needs a chance to prove themselves .
    A bus arrived and I got on without checking where it was going.
    I waited for a sign.
    It came: Angel .
    I had the great idea of breaking into Sebastian’s parents’ house and positioning myself at the head of their wonderful old oak kitchen table, the site of so many of our lively debates. I wanted to rest my head on the cool oak surface for a while, perhaps tracing my fingers over the familiar cracks. I would leave before his family woke up to discover that I’d completely lost my fucking mind.
    I walked along Upper Street until I got to Highbury & Islington tube. Then I crossed the road. There was the familiar row of Georgian houses.
    I would need a brick to smash a window.
    But no.
    The front door was open. Sebastian’s parents were having a party.
    Baby boomers were filing into black cabs, talking about how naughty it was to be out after the sun had risen. The street was shining with light. I put my sunglasses on.
    A middle-aged woman in a black velvet cape accosted me in the hallway. Wooden parrots swung from her ears. ‘You’ve missed all the celebrations!’ she said. ‘You’ve missed an unforgettable time that is absolutely not to be missed!’
    I took my sunglasses off. ‘What is everyone celebrating?’
    â€˜Winter!’ She hugged herself and pretended to shiver with the cold, then disappeared into the living room.
    I followed her.
    Couples were swaying to the opening chords of Roberta Flack’s heinous swansong, ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’. It was the song that had propelled my parents to fall in love under a glitter ball on a cruise ship in 1984; it was the song that the drunk girls had been singing on Chalk Farm Road when Vic and I got the taxi back to his; it was the song that recurred within me, a dead ideal. I looked for the source of the doom and there she was: my mother. She was standing guard over the iTunes.
    The parrot woman attempted to get a look at the screen, but my mother blocked her.
    â€˜This is my favourite,’ my mother was saying.
    â€˜But haven’t we already heard it?’ said the woman.
    â€˜There’s nothing like hearing things again,’ said my mother.
    Now Sebastian’s parents appeared. His mother was at least two foot taller than his father. They’d always reminded me of a Robert Crumb cartoon, the Amazonian woman bearing the man on her back.
    His father held up his hands. ‘Don’t worry,’ he told me. ‘They’ve gone.’
    â€˜They’ve got a lot of packing to do,’ said his mother. ‘Sebastian will leave everything to the last minute. Luckily Allegra is a planner.’
    â€˜Wait,’ I said. ‘Is this party still their leaving party? When are they actually leaving?’
    â€˜No,’ said his mother. ‘This isn’t their leaving party. They had that at a Mexican-themed bar the night before last called – I can’t remember what it was called. This is a completely different party. No one’s leaving here!’
    â€˜This is just a winter soirée,’ said his father.
    â€˜How come you are friends