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

and serene dark beauty in a bosomy low-cut black dress with a bump so high, so round and perfect that you might almost imagine it had been surgically augmented. Other guests had gathered round to stroke it, and it was such an appealing bump that, if he hadn’t been holding a tray of honey-mustard sausages, Stephen would have liked to stroke it too. He suspected that this might have thrown her.
    Stephen thought back to Alison’s pregnancy: nine long bad-tempered months of unemployment in a shared basement flat in Camberwell. He had tried to convince himself that this period had been “challenging but magical,” but his abiding memory was of damp clothes failing to dry on a lukewarm storage heater, and of Alison, bloated, angry and silently resentful, padding around in gray tracksuit bottoms, eating bran flakes straight out of the box as part of an ongoing battle with constipation. But apart from the neat, petite bump, the dark woman at the party was as thin and graceful as a musical annotation. Stephen stood for a moment, staring at her, lost in these thoughts, until the pregnant woman and her group of friends stopped talking and turned to look at him.
    Quickly, he hurried off to get the Sea Breeze, “with some actual
booze
in it this time,” that had been ordered by a very drunk and belligerent Wacky TV Comedian. “Will Swap Sex for Drugs” read the retro-style slogan on the T-shirt under his suit jacket, a slogan that had the advantage of being both humorous and literally true.
    Josh, meanwhile, looked around at the party he’d created, and saw that it was goodly good. He lolloped around with his long white shirt undone, calling Michaels Micksters and Johns Johnaroony, distributing beatific smiles and self-deprecating anecdotes, performing magic tricks, hoisting the funky little moppets onto his shoulders, dimpling his cheeks at their delighted mothers. At one point Stephen actually spotted him in the act of sniffing a baby’s head. He seemed to be everywhere at once, and everywhere he went people had their photographs taken with him with the cameras on their mobile phones, to prove that they were actually there, that they actually knew him.
    “How you doing, mate, all right?” he asked, winking, cocking and firing his imaginary gun at Stephen as he headed out to the kitchen area. Stephen was carrying a tray of goat’s cheese tartlets, so was unable to fire back.
    In the kitchen he shook up the Sea Breeze, filled a glass to the brim, then drank the remains straight from the cocktail shaker, and tried to trick himself into believing he was having a good time. Maybe he actually preferred to be the wry, ironic below-stairs observer, and maybe the glasses he was loading into the dishwasher were half full rather than half empty. Certainly the booze was helping—since the party started he’d been drinking fairly indiscriminately from beer bottles and champagne glasses, and was now experiencing a pleasant, woozy Sunday-night glow. He peeled the Parma ham from a stick of out-of-season asparagus and ate it slowly, leaning against the zinc worktops as Adam, clearly the ringleader, ferociously lobbed oranges into some kind of industrial juicer, as if they were grenades.
    “…the little
bitch
actually asked me to get rid of her
chew
ing gum for her, actually
put
it in my hand, because she was too bloody bone
idle
to do it herself, like I was her bloody
skivvy
or something…”
    “So did you?”
    “Did I
hell
. Talentless little
cow
. Did you
see
her in that
last
film? Oh my
God,
that was
the
worst film I’ve
ever
seen in my
life
…”
    “Everything fine in here?” said Nora Harper, glass in hand, leaning a little unsteadily in the doorway.
    “Yes, thanks,” they all chirruped in unison.
    “And, guys? If you want to take a break, then go ahead. I’m sure the guests can fend for themselves for a while…” She smiled a small, uneasy smile directly at Stephen, who suddenly remembered that the Wacky TV Comedian