pulling at the bit of toast I’d made her that just had a midget nibble out of one corner. But she saw me anyway and she got in a huff, jumping off the sofa with her legs unravelling and speeding off like Fred Flintstone’s – you know, when he’s pedalling along in his car or just running somewhere really fast and they go round in a little circle and make that twiddly noise. Quinton looked up from behind Brideshead Revisited, which was all he ever read, he had a million different copies and DVDs of it, and then looked down all hasty and fiddled with his parting.
It seemed like it had all changed just like that with no warning. There was no sign of lovely pottering Saf any more, there was just sulky-secrets Saf huffing about and pulling at bits of toast. There were dry old lines of coke all over the flat on CD cases, basically my whole last two years’ worth of album purchases: Gui Boratto and Bat for Lashes and LCD Soundsystem all sitting there sadly covered with craggy crumbs that had been forgotten about, and the night before I’d caught her about to rack up on a Brideshead DVD and it was a good job I did, Quin would’ve gone flippin’ spare if it’d been him that walked in. I sat there staring at a bag of apples, pink ones, her favourites, but you’d never have known it cos they were untouched, just sat there going brown and soggy, and pink apples didn’t come cheap, much more pricey than red or green ones and they didn’t taste any different to me but then I figured I was no expert. And that had got me a bit wound up because I didn’t like money being wasted. When I was in a better mood than then, I sometimes laughed at how we’d both spent too much of our lives thinking of pounds; at how Saffy had spent her past trying to lose pounds off her body and how I spent our present trying not to lose pounds on the tables. It’s not so funny now, when I think of what happened next.
There’s me looking at these pissing apples and wondering how to turn them and Saf back pink when Quin gets up off his sleeping bag and stands there tweaking at the creases on his trousers and smoothing down his blazer and his parting with his pudgy fingers.
‘Shall I have a word, Fitz?’ he goes, shuffling from one foot to the other.
‘Do what, mate?’ I said, still a bit distracted by the apples.
‘A word,’ he goes again. ‘You know, about eating.’
‘Oh, right, yeah,’ I said, tearing my eyes away from the bag. ‘I think so. You know best, Q, but she doesn’t seem right.’
‘Yeah,’ he goes. ‘Look, don’t worry about it. Sometimes she just forgets. When she’s stressed, you know.’
‘Okay, thanks, mate.’ I had a swig at my can of Coke and sat up a bit. ‘You off out tonight?’ I asked, because I really wanted to be nice to him all of a sudden because I couldn’t help thinking again that it was lucky we had him around.
‘Yep,’ he goes, big smile, ‘I’m off to this thing at Hector’s club – it’s champagne baths and a pool party. You’ve met Hector, haven’t you?’
I had met Hector as it goes, and it was hard to forget because the bloke was wearing tweed chaps when I’d made his acquaintance. Nice fella actually, bare arse aside. Well, Quin was off then on some spiel and he was rubbing his hands together and then holding them out wide and chortling away to himself, and I was glad I’d tuned out to be honest because who knows what he was describing the length of, you never could be sure with Quin – one minute he’d be telling you he was nipping down the shop for some of the special clove cigarettes he was always puffing, and the next he was on about a party he’d been to where they’d all snorted ket off the host’s cock. He was that kind of kid. It might seem strange that the sort of guy who plonked his tubby little bod in Bolly every weekend spent the rest of his time kipping on a My Little Pony duvet in our front room and looking out for Saffy, but underneath all his frilly shirts and dirty stories I was just properly learning that he had the biggest heart going.
So he toddled off out and I got up and had a quick look around for Saf, just in case she’d heard that little conversation cos that’d be the end of it if she thought we were talking about her. She was in the bathroom in the shower, and that wasn’t all that surprising cos that was where she always ended up, always in there buffing and scrubbing and rinsing until the cows came home. I even bought her a little shower radio for her birthday the year before, this little blue fish that suckered on there and warbled out tunes right next to your ear. It was like the best present she’d ever had, her eyes went all shiny and she stretched right up on tippytoes and gave me the biggest hug in the world. Shot myself in the foot there really, because there was no getting her out after that, songs tinkling out and pennies trickling away down the drain with the suds and the bubbles and the little grainy things from her scrubby stuff, which incidentally is not suitable for manly bits as I learnt the hard way. But at least it was only pennies not pounds trickling away cos she didn’t like her showers too hot like I did, she had them lukewarm so, you know, that was something I guess, if you liked to look for the bright side like I did.
She wouldn’t be out for ages so I wandered into the bedroom and had a bit of a half-arsed tidy-up, pulling the duvet up and picking up the glasses Saffy seemed to collect like a little magpie, and the big pot of salt that always wound up floating around out of place because she said that drinking saltwater was really good for you. I wandered back and stuck them in the sink and I was gonna wash them up but then there was no hot water cos Her Highness was still in the shower, so I just stood at the sink and looked up through the tiny jailhouse window at the top of the wall at all the feet and ankles trekking past. It was almost time for me to go to work and I was glad if I’m honest. Right about then the flat was feeling like it was shrinking, like I’d been looking at Saf’s mardy face and Quin’s side parting for too long and maybe the outside world had ended and there was nothing except us left in this flat and outside there was just people’s zombie legs wandering around, just stubs that ended at the knee marching around with bloody chips of bone sticking out the top and nowhere to go. I grabbed my work shirt off the radiator where it was steaming away happily next to a row of crispy socks and pants and shoved it on over my T-shirt and grabbed my bag off the side.
‘’Bye, Saf,’ I yelled, as I was opening the front door, and the bathroom door opened and she stuck her little blonde head out rubbing at it with a flannel.
‘Off to work,’ I said at normal volume. ‘See you later.’
‘Okay, lovepuff,’ she sang, and she blew me a kiss with her lovely pink lips. ‘Ooh, Fitz,’ she said, hurrying out after me.
‘Yes, babe,’ I said, turning back with one foot up the steps to the pavement. She was standing on the doorstep in her big beach towel hopping from one foot to the other on the cold concrete. ‘It’s Alice’s party tonight, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Have you forgotten?’
‘’Course not,’ I said. ‘I’ll come after work but you go ahead with Lilah if you want, hun, cos I might be a bit late if it’s busy.’
‘Okay.’ She smiled, giving me a little curtsy in her beach-scene beach towel. ‘See you there then, sexpants.’
‘You will,’ I said, skipping up the steps two at a time, and I turned near the top to blow her a kiss but the front door was already shutting.
Work was pants but then it was never exactly my highlight of the day. In general it wasn’t all that bad to be truthful – Cadbury, my boss, was pretty decent and it was usually busy enough that the time whizzed by, and even though it was stressful when you were in the thick of it, it was always nice when you suddenly realised your shift was over just like that. Much better than just sitting there watching the clock, which was what I was doing that day, just watching the hands tick tick round slow as you like while the only two lunchers we had were sat there sliding down the plasticky sofas and staring at the last half of the last bottle of wine they’d ordered. The pub next door
