beaten her to it.
‘Your salad will be better than this,’ Zach assures her.
Her salad might actually be salad, this is not a salad.
‘Ergh, get a room,’ Clarky says. He doesn’t have much patience when it comes to Fifi and Zach’s flirting. ‘It’s surf and turf.’
Everyone burst out laughing.
‘Bollocks,’ Ed replies.
‘Why is it so spicy?’ Matt asks, coughing and spluttering after bravely taking a bite.
‘I put chilli in it,’ Clarky explains.
‘Amazing, that it’s killing my taste buds and yet still tastes awful,’ Ed muses.
Clarky repeats his words back to him, mocking his Cambridgeshire accent.
‘I’m not good with spicy stuff,’ I say politely. ‘Sorry.’
‘Well, Luca, you have blue hair,’ he tells me. ‘So I don’t trust your taste anyway.’
I push my plate away a little, to emphasise that I’m not eating it. What on earth is he thinking, serving us fish fingers and beans with sausages, laced with copious amounts of chilli, on a bed of salad. Baked beans on salad!
‘My mum used to make it for me,’ Clarky tells us.
‘Well, you should have been taken into care,’ Zach tells him.
With the general consensus being that we’re absolutely not eating it, it isn’t long before we decide to order pizzas. Clarky, adamant that he is a cordon bleu chef, eats not only his own plate of food, but makes a start on someone else’s too.
We abandon the formality of the kitchen table to eat pizza and watch Anchorman in our massive living room. After initially refusing to watch it with us because we wouldn’t eat his mum’s recipe, Clarky has had a change of heart and sat down with us after all.
‘That’s your culinary career down the pan,’ Matt tells him, persisting with the teasing after most of us have let it go.
Clarky bats his hand.
‘As if that’s what I’d want to do,’ he insists. ‘I want a job that impresses women.’
‘Like?’ Matt asks him.
‘I dunno, like a pilot or an astronaut or something.’
‘You won’t meet many chicks in space,’ Ed points out.
‘You shouldn’t be studying media then, that’s not gonna get you far,’ Zach tells him.
‘So, Clarky reckons he’ll be a pilot, Ed is gonna be a doctor,’ Matt says. ‘What about the rest of us? Personally, not to set my sights too high, but I’m gonna be the next Steve Jobs.’
‘I wanna work in film,’ Zach says.
‘Me too!’ Fifi squeaks. I notice Clarky roll his eyes. ‘What about you, Luca?’
‘Erm,’ I start, wracking my brains. The truth is that I’m not entirely sure yet. ‘Maybe advertising.’
‘Boring,’ Clarky heckles.
‘Who do we think will be the first to get married?’ Fifi asks.
‘Ed,’ we all reply, pretty much in unison.
‘And the last?’ she says.
Everyone says Clarky’s name, apart from Clarky who simply points at himself with both fingers.
‘It’s hard to imagine us as real adults,’ Fifi muses. ‘Some of us more than others.’
‘Stop talking over the film,’ Clarky insists.
‘Sorry,’ she snaps. ‘I didn’t realise Will Ferrell was so important.’
‘Do you really think we’ll grow up?’ Matt laughs, glancing between this slice of pizza that’s sitting on his lap and the dumb movie on the TV. ‘Well, I mean the rest of us – Ed is already grown up.’
‘We’ll know Ed has properly grown up when he has kids,’ I point out.
‘And we’ll know you’ve grown up when you get over your daft punk phase and stop dying your hair stupid colours,’ Clarky tells me.
‘I didn’t know you were into Daft Punk, Luca,’ Matt jokes.
‘We’ll know you’ve grown up when you finally learn how to cook,’ Zach tells Clarky.
‘And we’ll know you’ve grown up when you finally get a girlfriend,’ Clarky replies.
‘Not everyone wants saddling with a girlfriend,’ Zach says defensively. I notice Fifi look visibly disappointed.
‘What about me and Fifi?’ Matt asks.
‘When Fifi starts using her real first name,’ Clarky points out.
‘And when you stop using headlocks to show affection,’ Ed tells Matt. ‘Maybe some of us will grow up, maybe some of us won’t. I reckon we’ll all stay friends though.’
We exchange half-smiles before getting back to the film.
‘Unless Clarky kills us with his cooking,’ Matt adds, unable to resist one last dig.
Now
‘Fifi,’ I call over, spotting my friend hovering outside the hotel’s reception room, where the wedding ceremony is about to take place.
‘Luca, oh my gosh,’ she replies, smiling widely as she pulls me in for a hug. ‘Wow, no one has called me Fifi in years. Zach, when was the last time someone called me Fifi?’
‘Uni,’ he laughs. ‘She dropped the nickname when she was applying for jobs.’
‘I don’t mind one Fi though,’ she assures me.
‘How’s it going?’ Zach asks, hugging me.
‘All great,’ I tell him. ‘How are you two? It’ll be your wedding soon, right? I got my save the date.’
‘Next year,’ she replies.
Fiona’s grin spreads from one ear to the next. She was always such a bright, positive person, but she seems so happy with Zach, and I’m so happy for them. For a while, we thought the two of the might never get together and look at them now, happily engaged.
‘You still have funky hair,’ she points out.
I
