Double booked, p.1
Double Booked, page 1
double
booked
double
booked
lily
lindon
www.headofzeus.com
First published in the UK in 2022 by Head of Zeus Ltd,
part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © Lily Lindon, 2022
The moral right of Lily Lindon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB): 9781801107563
ISBN (XTPB): 9781801107570
ISBN (E): 9781801107594
Head of Zeus Ltd
First Floor East
5–8 Hardwick Street
London EC1R 4RG
WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM
For my dad, Robert Lindon
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
PART TWO
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
PART THREE
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Epilogue
Thank You!
About the Author
An Invitation from the Publisher
PART ONE
1
‘Sorry, can’t. I’ve got other plans.’
‘Georgina!’ scoffs Soph. Even over the phone I can see her sarcastic glare. ‘You know that I know that you don’t have other plans.’
It’s forty-two past three p.m. I’ve just taught my last piano lesson of the week and if I keep to my usual walking pace I’ll make it to the Tube before peak hours, saving me a sweet fifty pence.
‘It’s Friday,’ I recite, ‘so I’ll get a takeaway from Cod Almighty. One portion of fish and chips, ketchup on the side. Then I’ll have a bath, one medium glass of white wine, and—’
Soph joins in, ‘—lie back and watch Friends. I know,’ she moans. ‘But you don’t have to. You could change your schedule, come out with me and actually have some fun.’
‘Genuinely, what could be more fun than watching Friends in the bath?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, anything?’ squawks Soph. ‘Like, literally what I’m suggesting right now? Come to London’s best gay bar, see one of the most exciting up-and-coming indie pop bands perform live, and get all your drinks paid for by your generous and gorgeous best friend?’
I pretend to consider as I stride down the pavement. I remember to step over the dangerously wonky manhole cover, saving my most comfortable work heels from a scuffing. Well done, Gina!
There’s a glimpse of spring sun this afternoon, a golden glow hesitating through London’s usual gloom. To feel the warmth on my neck, I tuck Soph under my ear and twist my hair into a bun.
Then I see myself in a window and remember that I look astonishingly bad when my hair’s up. It reveals my whopping jaw, the freaky freckles along my neck, the way my goofy ears stick out like a garden gnome’s. As quickly as I’d tied it up, I let my hair down again, back into limp brown curtains. It’s not great, but at least it hides the ears.
‘Surely there’s someone more suitable you should go with? Have you forgotten which of your friends you’re talking to? I’m Gina, the one who is very boring, very plain, and very straight.’
‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks.’
‘Don’t start that nonsense again or I’ll accuse you of reverse conversion therapy. Why can’t you go with Jenny?’
Soph doesn’t reply. I try to hear her expression but I swear she’s avoiding my eye.
I slow down. I’ll be furious if I miss that off-peak discount, but I guess comforting my best friend is worth fifty pence.
‘You were going to go with Jenny,’ I deduce, ‘but you’ve broken up again.’
Jenny is the kind of open-hearted, unaffected woman who’d wear her muddy Arsenal merchandise to her own wedding. She and Soph are in a perpetual on-off relationship. A real-life Ross and Rachel.
‘Did she refuse to be in your SophieSnob videos again?’
Predictably, Soph explodes. I lean away from the phone to save my eardrum.
‘I don’t understand. Most women gag at the chance to be with me. I’m gorgeous! I’m funny! I’m smart! I’m famous! But Jenny won’t even do a photoshoot with me.’
‘Blasphemy,’ I agree.
‘Whatever,’ she sighs. ‘It’s just a shame. Couples videos are really popular and I’ve never been able to do one… Oh well. Maybe being single is better for my brand anyway.’
Her glumness is infectious.
‘If you’d be embarrassed to have Jenny there tonight,’ I say, fiddling with the button on my outdated grey pencil skirt, ‘then you certainly don’t want me there. Your hideously plain chaperone.’
‘You’re not hideously plain.’ She pauses. ‘But I could give you a tiny makeover if you want?’
‘I’m at the Tube now,’ I lie. ‘Good luck!’
‘No you’re not. You’ve still got one and a half minutes.’
Damn it! Damn her! Damn my routine!
I pick up speed.
‘Why don’t you go with one of your party lesbians?’
‘Because I prefer you!’
I wait.
‘And,’ Soph admits, ‘because they’re all on holiday in a Berlin sex dungeon.’
‘There it is. Goodb—’
‘Honestly,’ she says quickly, ‘it’s the best thing that could have happened. I’ll take some quick footage, then we’ll hide in a corner and judge the band. Just the two of us, Gee, like old times. Pleeeeeese…’
At uni, Soph and I fancied ourselves as talent spotters, going to all the gigs we could afford on student loans. She’d review them on her vlogs, I’d take inspiration for my own songwriting. Obviously, we haven’t done that in years.
But salvation! I’m in sight of the Tube. I can taste my medium cod already. I’m about to hang up when a sudden softness in Soph’s voice makes me stop.
‘Please, Gee…? I know it’s still difficult for you to—’ She changes track. ‘I wouldn’t pressure you if I didn’t think— I really do think we’d have a fun night together. I miss talking about music with you.’
And, for a moment, I close my eyes and allow myself to imagine it: sitting with Soph in a secret corner of a neon bar, all makeovered, sipping a cocktail, watching from the shadows as confident women laugh with each other, listening as the band starts playing and…
‘Nope,’ I say, shaking my head and striding towards my destination. ‘Sorry, Soph, but I can’t. You’ll find someone else, some beautiful lesbian to go with, and you can tell me all about it on the sofa on Monday. Tonight, I am going to a wedding with my other Friends.’
My finger is a millimetre away from the button to end our call when Soph plays her trump card.
‘Pumpernickel.’
I drop my phone. Some banker walks into my back, shouting profanities. I pick the phone up and hiss into it.
‘Really?’
‘Really,’ she says. ‘Pumpernickel.’
Pumpernickel is our blood pact, used for calling in favours. It started in second year of uni when Soph had a delicious but indigestible pumpernickel bread and ravaged our bathroom, just as her crush arrived at our door. I took the blame. Since then, ‘Pumpernickel’ has been used to bribe agreement. I Pumpernickeled her into starting standing ovations at my terrible early gigs, she Pumpernickeled me into dumping exes on her behalf and we both used it to write each other’s essays. Pumpernickel cannot be denied.
Weirdly, reliefs flood through me.
Following Pumpernickel is like following the routine laid out for me in my calendar: it’s not my choice, and it’s therefore not my fault if something goes wrong.
‘I’ll be at yours at six,’ I say. ‘But I still want chips.’
After we’ve hung up, I update my digital calendar, deleting Fish and Friends and replacing it with a new event: Pumpernickeled: going out-out with Soph.
I stare at the screen, reading its instruction over and over again.
I realize I’m not just relieved.
I’m excited.
2
‘It’s five pounds for gays, eight pounds for straights.’
<
We’re at The Familiar, a gay bar in gay Hackney Wick. It is indeed familiar to Soph, who practically moved in when we all came to London after graduation.
‘You should just pretend you’re a lesbian,’ she says, handing her fiver to the butch on the door. ‘Thanks, bab, how are you?’
While Soph has a heart-to-heart with the bouncers, the queue eyes her up. Soph is literally glowing tonight – the neon lighting casts artistic shadows on her dark brown skin, her sparkling black eyes are framed by glittery pink cat eyes, her short sequined dress gleams almost as much as her long, moisturised legs, and the gold cuffs on her braids glint like crystals when she moves. And boy, does she know it.
Meanwhile, no one gives me a second glance. Maybe it’s because their functioning gaydars tell them I’m as straight as a very straight thing. Or maybe it’s because, with my wall-paint white skin, mid-length mid-brown hair and ‘I haven’t been out in years and have nothing to wear at short notice’ mid-length black dress, I look plainer than a default avatar. I was too self-conscious to allow Soph to give me that ‘tiny makeover’. You can’t nail-polish a turd, after all. I keep my eyes on the ground.
‘Excuse me,’ says a miscellaneous supermodel from the queue, ‘aren’t you SophieSnob?’
Soph curtsies and they all squeal. Oh, fresh hell.
‘Oh my God, I’ve watched your channel since I was a baby gay!’
‘Your sex tips genuinely saved my life.’
Thankfully, the bouncer shouts at them to get in line. Soph regally waves her camera and tells everyone to like, rate and subscribe.
It’s weird seeing Soph in her lesbian habitat like this. Usually, when we’re together, we slob out on the sofa, watching romcoms and gossiping about people we don’t know. But here at The Familiar, everyone thinks she’s a legit culture critic, a queer connoisseur – and judging by their stares, very fit. My inferiority complex flexes.
The bouncer pulverises my hand with a stamp.
‘It’s a cat,’ says Soph, seeing me prodding at it. ‘Like a witch’s familiar. Cute, right?’
‘You should get yours tattooed. You’d save a lot of money.’
‘Genuinely, very good idea.’
She herds me down the ramp into a dark passage lit by neon-pink cobwebs and winking pumpkins.
‘I don’t get it,’ I say, poking a slimy wall and wiping it on Soph’s shoulder. ‘It’s February. What’s with the spooky stuff?’
‘It’s The Familiar.’ She shrugs, wiping the goo back on me. ‘It’s witchy. Get on board.’
At the end of the passage is a gothic arched door with the drawn outline of a massive witch. She’s split in half: angelic blue on the left, holding healing flowers; demonic magenta on the right, with deadly potions. Soph takes footage posing in front of it. She tries to bring me in for a selfie, but I pretend not to hear.
The bar itself is even more saturated with camp Halloween decor. Ghost bunting screams at me. Glittering paper cats raise their backs. Silky bats flap into my eyes. Soph establishes us in a covert corner booth, under posters of a scantily cloaked hag. She returns from the bar with two signature cocktails, one blue Good Witch and one magenta Bad Witch. She hands me the blue one.
This irritates me. Just because I’m straight doesn’t mean I’m boring.
I take a sip and choke. ‘What percentage is this?’
Soph pinches my cheek. ‘Thanks for coming along with me tonight, Gee,’ she says.
I shrug. ‘Thanks for emotionally blackmailing me when your cool friends were busy.’
‘I promise I won’t let any other queers bother you,’ she says and winks outrageously. ‘Unless you finally decide you want them to.’
I scratch my face with my middle finger.
Soph rolls her eyes and leans back, surveying her kingdom with satisfaction. Even hidden away in the corner, I swear passing eyes are drawn to her. Must be nice, to be attractive.
It’s strange; when I (admittedly, very rarely) go on ‘straight’ nights out, I’d love to feel like random men weren’t ever going to come over and bother us. Here, though, with no laddish men around, it hits differently to get ignored. Maybe it’s because I trust women to have a better sense of taste? It’s like getting unfavourably peer reviewed.
I don’t want to let Soph down, but as yet another gorgeous woman smiles at her, then sees me and swerves away, I feel like my presence is a massive cockblock. Bad choice of words. I need another drink.
Soph insists I go to the bar myself, regardless of how self-conscious I feel. It’s even worse when I look up from the floor to see the bartender is offensively beautiful. She looks like Cara Delevingne, with a platinum buzz cut, dark eyebrows and hundreds of hooped earrings. Under her cropped vest, she has an eclectic patchwork of tattoos – a sun and moon, a howling wolf, something that might be a block of cheese (?) and a long sunflower growing down her side. Idly, I wonder how far down it goes…
God, it’s hot in here. But, presumably because I’m neither gorgeous nor gay, the busy bartender keeps me waiting. What do I need to do to get served in here, tattoo a rainbow on my face?
A waft of Soph’s Chanel. She leans on the bar next to me, nonchalantly nods her head, and instantly gets bumped to the front of the long line.
‘A Bad Witch and a Good Witch please,’ she says, somehow making a drinks order sound cool and seductive.
The bartender starts hurriedly flipping cocktail shakers.
‘Actually, two Bad Witches,’ says my mouth. ‘And make them doubles.’
I immediately realize my mistake.
‘They’re cocktails,’ says the perfect bartender, barely glancing up from scooping ice. ‘They don’t come in doubles?’
Soph laughs and I pretend to join in, but I know this moment will be replayed in my nightmares. I cower back to our booth with a non-double Bad Witch. Soph raises a smug eyebrow at me.
‘Stop looking at me like that. I just wanted to try a pink one.’
‘Whatever, bab,’ she snorts. ‘You don’t have to justify your cocktail choice to me.’
Thankfully, a distraction arrives before I have to invent one. The bar lights dim and everyone turns to the stage. A spotlight follows a hooded cape, sashaying to the microphone. The cape is thrown off to reveal a buxom drag queen with a sparkly fuchsia gown, wig, and beard.
‘Good evening, magical darlings,’ she sighs, sultrily, ‘and welcome to The Familiar. I am Polly Amory, your compère extraordinaire.’
The audience whoops. I gather they’re familiar with her work.
‘I have a spell to summon our first performer. But – oh no! – where did I put my wand?’
She pats herself down, enjoying the process immensely.
‘Oh, I’m always losing things. My keys, my cards, my dignity. I’d lose my own head if it wasn’t tucked in.’
She pulls a phenomenally long wand out of her knickers.
‘Voila! Now I can summon a Drag King legend – and one of my many ex-lovers – Willy Nilly!’
I didn’t know Drag Kings were even a thing. Turns out they are very much a thing in The Familiar. He’s dressed like William Shakespeare and speaks in ye olde verse about how good he is in bed. He then does a striptease, seductively removing his ruff to reveal another underneath. When he finally whips off his pantaloons, his own little William has a little ruff too. For someone thrusting around a fluorescent green dildo in a paper skirt, he’s pretty good.
With a pantomime wink, Polly says, ‘Willy likes it ruff!’
The audience groans, then cheers Willy’s retreating bottom.
After Willy Nilly comes a very sincere poetry reading about how straight people are complicit in the patriarchy. I chuckle a bit out of nerves until Soph kicks me.
‘It’s the interval,’ announces Polly, ‘so have a drink, a wee, a flirt, and be back in ten minutes for our headline act… I know they’re why you’re all here in your best outfits. We’ll be blessed by the presence of everyone’s favourite girl group, Phase!’
My head jerks to Soph. The audience are squealing like hungry pigs. She takes an innocent sip of her Bad Witch.
Urgh. So that’s why she lured me here tonight. Soph has been going on and on about this band. She saw them a few weeks ago at the The Glory and raved about how much I’d love them. ‘They’re so original, innovative, sexy, yadda, yadda, yadda.’ But they aren’t available to listen to anywhere online. Not that I looked much, obviously.
