I think she has telepathically understood that I’m concentrating on detox programmes. But before I tell her that I’ve never done colonic irrigation – I just can’t stand the idea of a hosepipe up my bum – she puts me on the right track.
‘I mean with men?’
This is easier to answer.
‘I never do three in a bed.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes, I think everyone’s entitled to some exclusive devotion, even if it’s between twenty minutes and a few hours.’ Not much of a moral, I admit, but one I’m faithful to.
‘Is there an ex in your past, then, Cas?’
‘No,’ I say without hesitating.
‘Then again you’re not on the cusp of marriage.’
‘Nor am I ever likely to be.’
‘Then how did you know the show was going to be such a success? How did you know both Brian Parkinson and Abbie would fall? And, for that matter, all the other couples that we’ve already recorded?’
‘I didn’t know, absolutely know, but I thought the odds were with me.’
‘You are so cynical.’
We have fast become confidantes. This is entirely due to the copious amounts of alcohol we’ve consumed; still, I am quite unable to resist the illusion of companionable intimacy. Whilst I talk about work Fi is more keen to discuss her dearth of men in relation to my plethora. On one hand it is odd; after all, she is an extreme beauty. She’s also got that exotic twist of a Scandinavian parentage. If I were male I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. The matter is cleared up when she admits to me that secretly all she desires is a large family and a log cabin. Men can smell women who want commitment further away than they can smell those who wear Poison perfume. The odour is just as overpowering and off-putting.
Fi is looking through Tatler’s ‘ Little Black Book’. She throws it aside and picks up London Guide to Restaurants. She isn’t looking for somewhere to eat but she’s looking at the photos of the chefs. She fancies the idea of bagging a creative, temperamental kitchen diva. I’m sceptical.
‘I’d stick to the methods which are proven,’ I advise.
‘Like what?’ asks Fi grumpily.
‘Supermarkets or the company telephone directory. I don’t know. I never have any trouble meeting men.’
‘Yeah, you’d get lucky in a convent.’ She throws the guide to one side. ‘But it’s such a waste. You are never even grateful.’
I stare at her. Surely that is the point.
‘Why are you so eternally unimpressed?’ she asks. It is the drink that has given her the confidence to ask this. ‘Your first!’ She’s fallen on some inspiration. ‘Tell me about that.’
She’s looking for insight. I don’t normally indulge. But a bottle of Merlot has magically appeared from nowhere and we’ll have to talk about something as we drink it. Fi’s stories have dried up pretty quickly. I feel obliged to entertain.
‘My first.’ I cast my mind back through the numerous tangled sheets and emotions I’ve shagged my way through. ‘Maybe if he’d been faithful I could have believed in fidelity, even after my father’s rather poor attempt as a role model.’
‘He wasn’t, then?’
‘What do you think?’
‘The odds are definitely against it,’ admits Fi. She pours some wine into my glass. ‘What was he like?’
‘Beautiful,’ I admit. ‘I mean, I was just like the next seventeen-year-old. OK, my parents had gone pear-shaped, but you know I was seventeen. I was hopeful. I hadn’t been sitting at the dining-room table sticking a fork into my hand to see how much pain I could sustain, like some psycho.’ I sigh. ‘He was twenty-six. He was beautiful and shallow. And married, as it happened.’
‘No.’ Fi is shocked. I grin wryly. I remember being shocked. Now disreputable behaviour never shocks me, it doesn’t even disappoint me – I see it as an inevitability.
‘Yeah. Slipped his mind to tell me. Until his wife turned up on my mother’s doorstep. To quote the great Holly Golightly, ‘Quel Rat.’
Fi sits silently, trying to take it in. It’s true it’s not the conventional first lover story. That’s meant to take place in the back of your parents’ Volvo or at someone else’s house whilst you are babysitting. It’s meant to take place with some acne-ridden youth who is equally inexperienced and as smitten as you are.
‘Which made me a paramour at seventeen years old,’ I joke. But really it was no laughing matter at the time.