10.30 p.m. Leatherjacketman:
Thursday 27 June 2013
9.15 p.m. OH GOD, I’M SO LONELY. Maybe will call Daniel and see if he will take me out to cheer me up!
11 p.m. Daniel has not replied. Is not like Daniel. Maybe he is currently getting married.
Friday 28 June 2013
3 a.m. Billy just got into my bed, sobbing. I think he’d had a bad dream. He put his arms round me, all hot and sweaty, and clung to me. ‘I need you, Mummy.’
He does. They do. And there’s no one else. I can’t afford to get into a mess like this, trying to fill up a void with stupid men. Come on, pull yourself together.
7 a.m. Woke up sleepily and looked at Billy, warm and exquisitely beautiful on my pillow. Started giggling, remembering wailing self-pityingly about Roxster, ‘When am I ever going to wake up with someone as young and beautiful as that again?’
You see? Simple! Even younger and more beautiful.
JUST THE WAY THEY ARE
Friday 28 June 2013 (continued)
10 a.m. Starting to feel worried about Daniel. For all his, well, Daniel-ism, since Mark died he has always got back straight away if I call. Ooh! Telephone.
10.30 a.m. Had forgotten about conference call with George from Greenlight, Imogen and Damian.
‘Right – we’re all in the office, you’ll be pleased to hear,’ George began. ‘Now here’s the thing.’ There was sploshing in the background. ‘If you talk to Saffron about the pages you are not to give her any idea that you are not one hundred per cent in love with Stock—’
‘George?’ I said suspiciously. ‘Where are you and what is that sloshing noise?’
‘In the office. It’s just . . . coffee. OK. Ambergris is into Stockholm so don’t—’
There was an odd, rubbery, slithering squeak, a giant splash – I mean, really like something huge had fallen into a large body of water – a muffled shout, then silence.
‘Right!’ said Imogen. ‘Shall we see what happened there and call you back?’
11 a.m. Just called Talitha to see if she had spoken to Daniel lately.
‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you heard?’
The thing is, Daniel has always had addictive tendencies, which have got worse as he has got older. There was a period when everyone was saying, ‘I’m so worried about Daniel,’ in judgemental voices, as he behaved increasingly outrageously at dinner parties. Various glamorous women tried to ‘fix’ him until eventually he was shipped off to a treatment facility in Arizona and returned looking fresh-faced and a little sheepish. As far as we all knew, he was fine. But it seems a recent break-up with the latest glamorous woman catapulted him into a dazzling spree, taking him through the entire contents of his 1930s cocktail cabinet in a single weekend. He was found in a terrible state last Monday morning by his cleaning lady and now he is in the drugs and drink ward of the same hospital where I went to the Obesity Clinic.
Oh God, oh God, and I let Billy and Mabel stay the night with him.
11.30 a.m. Imogen just called back. It seems that George, rather than, as claimed, being in his office slurping coffee, was in a dinghy on the Irrawaddy River to which he had retreated from his luxury indigenous-style houseboat in order to ‘get a signal’. Somehow, the swell from a passing executive speedboat had unbalanced the dinghy, catapulting George into the murky waters of the Irrawaddy, shortly followed by his iPhone.
George was fine, but the loss of the iPhone was catastrophic. I decided to leave Greenlight to deal with the aftermath and hotfoot it round to see Daniel.
2 p.m. Just back. Scary. St Catherine’s Hospital is a bewildering visual mix of Victorian prison, 1960s doctor’s surgery and the Yemen. I wandered, unfocused, until I found the right block, bought Daniel newspapers in the gift shop and a card with a duck on it saying: ‘Stay afloat’, adding in pen: ‘Dirty Bastard’, then impulsively put inside: ‘Wherever you go and whatever you do I’ll always love you.’ One doesn’t want to ENABLE, but I could imagine everyone was going to come in and tick him off.
The ward was a ‘locked ward’. Pressed on the green button. Eventually a lady in a burka appeared and let me in.
‘I’m here to see Daniel Cleaver.’
She didn’t seem to recognize the name, just another one on her clipboard.
‘Over there to the left. First bed behind the curtain.’
I recognized Daniel’s bag and his coat but the bed was empty. Had Daniel done a runner? I started trying to tidy up, then a strange tramp-like figure appeared in winceyette hospital pyjamas, unshaven, with wild hair and a black eye.