The Understudy: A Novel by David Nicholls Read Free Book Online Page B

finally the monstrous reality of the situation took firm shape in his mind.
    I.
    I am not a guest.
    I have not been invited to this party as a friend.
    I have been asked along as a waiter.
    I am staff.
    I.
    I brought a bottle.
    But Josh was speaking now, Josh his employer, saying something about people arriving in half an hour or so, which was plenty of time, and did he want to bartend or take food round or carve the Serrano ham off the bone or just collect coats or maybe they could take it in turns and was he any good at shucking oysters, but Stephen couldn’t take any of this in because of the sound of the blood ringing in his ears, so instead he asked…“Is there a toilet I can use quickly?”
    “Sure. Use it slowly if you want!” quipped Josh, and one of the waiters obliged him with a £15-an-hour snort of mirth. “Other side of the room, on your left.”
    “Thank you very much,” Stephen managed, very formally, and turned and walked stiffly across the room, as if he’d just learned how, stopping only when he was about twelve inches away from the wall. There was no sign of a door. He looked both ways along the length of the wall. Nope, definitely no door. He desperately needed to be on the other side of a door right now, any door at all, but there was definitely no door here. He contemplated kicking himself a door, but the walls looked too solid, so he worked out a form of smile, practiced it facing the wall, nailed it in place, then headed back to the kitchen, where Josh was showing one of the caterers, Adam perhaps, the correct way to open an oyster.
    “…and hold the shell
flat
in your hand…”
    “Hi there, Josh…?”
    “…so you don’t lose the precious juices…”
    “Josh, sorry, I can’t…”
    “That’s the best bit about an oyster, the juices…”
    “Hi there, Josh—JOSH!”
    “Mr. McQueen?”
    “I can’t seem to find the toilet.”
    “It’s a concealed door—if you look carefully, you’ll see the…” Josh sighed, gave up on the oyster, hocked it impatiently into Adam’s hand, precious juices and all, and led Stephen out of the kitchen. As he left, Stephen glanced back, just in time to see Adam clutching the oyster shucker by the handle as if contemplating embedding it in the top of Josh’s head.
    Josh, meanwhile, had his arm around Stephen’s shoulder, pointing at the wall opposite. “There—you see that rectangle?” and sure enough, Stephen could make out the faint outline of a door. “That’s the bog. Hidden doors, you see? Like in an old castle or something. Cool, isn’t it?”
    “Amazing,” said Stephen, taking care not to move his face too much, in case it collapsed.
    “
Should
be amazing—it cost me a fucking fortune…” Josh said, then headed back to the kitchen. “Just push it gently, and it should swing open…”
    Stephen pushed the edge of the door and, sure enough, it swung open with a futuristic pneumatic hiss. Once safely inside, he turned, locked the door, stood with his head resting against it and let out a long, high, demented hum, the kind of noise you hear in hospital dramas, when a life-support machine is turned off. The bathroom was L-shaped, large and chic, gun-metal and black, lit only by a host of tea lights and a jasmine-scented candle, and it wasn’t until she gave a little artificial cough that Stephen realized there was someone else there.
    An attractive woman with cropped black hair, in a knee-length, tight-fitting black dress, sat on the bidet with her legs crossed, smoking a cigarette.
    “Everything okay there?” she asked with an American accent.
    Stephen stopped humming. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize…” he stammered, pointedly looking up at the ceiling.
    “ ’S okay, I’m not doing anything…intimate,” said the woman nonchalantly, and Stephen glanced discreetly down at her crossed legs, just to check. No, she didn’t appear to be doing anything intimate, just sitting quietly on the bidet, by herself, smoking.