brown bread and cover it in crap.’
‘What, like vegetables?’
‘Yeah!’
‘You’re right – bloody Americans and their healthy eating! That’s why they’re all in such fantastic physical shape.’
He giggled, then took my face in his hands. Here it came.
‘Gee, Mel, it’s good to be back. Americans … they never mean what they say. I never feel I can talk bullshit with anyone as much as I can with you.’
‘I think that’s possibly the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,’ I said gravely.
He laughed, and ruffled my hair.
‘I mean … I behaved like a complete dork, Mel. I’m sorry. I really am. What I did to you, it really bit. You know, I had no idea what I was doing. With all my parents and stuff … I can find it really hard to open up … and I got scared. I was so worried you were going to … just ignore me. Which I would probably have deserved.’
‘Yes, you would.’
‘You’re special to me, you know.’
‘I do know. And if you ever EVER do anything like that again, I’m going to impale a testicle on each arm of a pair of scissors and start snipping.’
He winced. ‘Is that nice?’
‘You’ll see.’
And that was it. I was very happy.
The next week passed in a blur – a dirty-sheeted, stupid, giggling, New York-time blur. I finally got it together to go into work, but was so glowing and smiley that I got away with more murder than usual. Even the secretaries couldn’t hurt me. No one in the world had ever been as happy as us, ever, and in fact could have no idea what it was like. I floated around, occasionally stopping to pity people for not being as happy as me.
At home, I stopped answering the phone and made Linda do it, which was mean of me as she hated doing it and my friends hated speaking to her. Fran eventually stomped round in a fury, having gleaned, accurately, that things weren’t exactly going the way she’d planned. This surmise was confirmed when she came to the door and Alex opened it, clearly in possession of both kneecaps.
‘Hey there, Fran,’ he said winningly. ‘Good to see you again.’
I wondered what she was going to do. For a moment she looked as if she would completely ignore him, then she shook her mane of hair and smiled.
‘Hello! Great to see you – you complete bastard! How nice!’ she said, walking straight past him to kiss me on the cheek.
Alex grimaced at me, but I shrugged. Even if I hadn’t been able to give him a hard time for what he’d done, I had no objections to Fran doing it.
I put the kettle on. From the other room I could hear Fran’s trained voice, devastatingly polite.
‘So, did you stay in lots of interesting places … cocksucker?’
‘Well, yeah,’ Alex stammered. ‘Yeah, I moved around a bit, saw a few states. Bumming around, mostly.’
‘Really? How unusual … for such a rampant arsehole.’
‘MEL!’ shouted Alex, coming through to the kitchen. ‘How long do I have to put up with this?’
‘As long as it takes … buttcheeks.’
‘Buttcheeks? That’s complimentary, surely?’
I blushed. ‘Shut up and take in this tea. And try and make it up to Fran.’
‘I didn’t do anything to Fran.’
‘What, you want to get on her bad side? Be nice.’
He sighed, hung his head, and we carried in the tea.
‘I like knobchop’s new fake accent,’ Fran said to me. ‘Do you remember when he came back from Goa? He talked about his karma all the time and wanted to be a hippie. Gosh, wasn’t it jolly funny! What a wankfox!’ And she laughed a tinkly little Amanda laugh.
‘Fran, give me a break!’ said Alex. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, goddamnit.’
‘Gimme a break! Ah’m sawry, gawdamnit.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, stop it!’
‘Stawp it!’
‘OK, OK, OK.’ He got up and made to leave the room.
Fran wasn’t finished. ‘So what are your plans now, worthless anal wart?’
He looked at me and then at the floor.
‘To make it up to Melanie and never leave abruptly again and be a good human being and find a good job and become respectable, SUH!’
Fran nodded slowly, winked at me, and smiled at Alex, who gradually sat down again. Then she launched into filling us in on the gossip. It looked like things were going to be OK.
And they were. Alex and I swanned about London, doing all the things we normally couldn’t be bothered with, like Art and Culture, for example. I cooked us fabulous meals, to which I politely asked Linda. However, she didn’t seem to fancy them. She’d had another big parcel, anyway, and stayed in her room a lot, not really giving me a chance to thank her for doing the washing-up.
Alex did have some plans. This pop-star bloke was apparently lined up to get him some work here in the record business, so it was all going to be cool and he might even try and get a band together. I nodded supportively … For the moment, I was simply happy to keep playing Hide the Trousers and didn’t really care.
Eventually, I phoned Amanda back about the party. OK, I was happy, but it didn’t stop me feeling an urge to get a gloat in, given half a chance.
‘Darling, hi. I’ve just got a call on the other line – give me a second.’
Crap. This meant she must already have heard and had gone into defensive mode, which meant I wouldn’t have the satisfaction of relaying the news.
‘There,’ she said, ‘now what’s all this about Alex? I couldn’t believe it when I heard. Really, Melanie, haven’t you ever thought of playing hard to get?’
Every time.
‘No, it’s great,’ I said. ‘We’re really … happy to be back together, get everything sorted out, you know. We worked out we wanted to be together.’
‘Oh!’ she squealed. ‘Tell me you’re going to get married too! We could have a joint celebration.’
She knew damn well I wasn’t.
‘No, of course not. That’s for grown-ups. Which reminds me, we’re coming to your do on Saturday night.’
