his position.
I turned to the left, but the girl with the ladder in her tights was obviously having a deeply personal conversation on the phone. Huh. I busied around tidying things up – like that was something I usually did – so Flavi wouldn’t come over to see how I was doing. When lunch time came, at last, I went out to find a payphone. Well, I didn’t want to look too bad on my first day.
As I walked out into the freezing afternoon, I didn’t even want to think about where Alex had spent the night. Last time I’d phoned Charlie’s house, he’d been six thousand miles away.
And he hadn’t even called me, the bastard. I was ready to get deeply upset when I remembered that Elvis and Tony had had the phone disconnected all morning, so he couldn’t have got in touch even if he had wanted to. If he’d tried, I thought grimly. But I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, and tried my house first. Surprisingly, Linda answered the phone. I really didn’t want to talk to her. After a quick mental battle with myself as to whether to just say ‘Sorry … long number’ in a dreadful Chinese accent and hang up, I asked for Alex, without identifying myself.
‘No, he’s moved his stuff out. Melanie, is that you?’ she asked wonderingly.
‘No! Sorry! Bye,’ I said, and put the phone down, slumping against the wall. He’d moved his stuff out. Another fucking moonlight flit. Where had he gone this time? I wondered to myself. China? Tibet? He could stick that North Pole up his arse, see if he could find himself with that. Fuck! How could he?! Again?
I noticed a particularly virulent prostitute’s card stuck up in the phonebox. A woman was bent over with her wrists tied to her ankles. Above a childishly written phone number it said: ‘Melanie, new to the area, submissive – loves punishment. Will service your every need.’ It was a sign. Definitely a sign. But what could it mean?
I had a disconsolate sandwich and wandered back to my new home, where the rat-faced man to my right was vigorously enjoying a ridiculously stinky hamburger. Small pieces of lettuce and indescribable goo were dripping on to my … what looked like my … well, anyway, an enormous bunch of flowers dumped straight on to my desk. My mind went through the options: David Duchovny; the cast of ER; Alex, from the North Pole …
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed the girl with the ladder in her tights trying to weep inconspicuously.
Very carefully, I picked up the bouquet. ‘Hey, pumpkin,’ it said on the card. Terse as ever. I relaxed.
‘Sending flowers to yourself again?’ coughed Ratto, mildly spewing me with burger phlegm.
‘No, actually, they’re for you. Oh, have you got a boyfriend called Alex as well? What a coincidence!’
‘Think you’re funny?’ muttered Ratto, and returned to his mastication.
I turned to the girl.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she whimpered, clearly not fine. ‘It’s my contact lenses.’
The man with Copydex stuck to his chin eventually came downstairs with my phone sorted out. The voice mail appeared to have been switched off, and when I looked up Charlie’s number in the phone book it had been scrubbed out furiously – although whether by me or Fran I couldn’t say – so I was stuck sitting there, still vainly tidying, till it rang.
‘Hey there.’ Alex spoke softly. The tone of his voice made me soften.
‘You’ve moved your stuff,’ I said.
‘Well, there didn’t seem to be any point in hanging about. That flatmate of yours was giving me the evil eye.’
‘Really, she’s cross-eyed. She was really giving me the evil eye.’
‘Ah.’
There was a pause.
‘Did you …’
‘I got …’
We spoke simultaneously.
‘I got the flowers. Thank you. They’re gorgeous.’
‘I wanted to apologize. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, and I should have phoned you when I stayed at Charlie’s last night. I just don’t want to take anything too fast. But, you know, we’ve got so much time. To get back together. For everything.’
‘I know.’ I sighed. ‘It would have been daft. Far too quick. Etcetera.’
There was a silence, then he spoke tentatively.
‘Friends again?’
‘Just friends?’
‘Oh no. And will you come and visit me in Fulham?’
‘Nope.’
‘Not even if I beg?’
‘No, but you can try a bit of begging if you like.’
‘Please!’ he yelled. ‘My darling Melanie, pearl and pumpkin of my life, take the immortal trip on the District Line and enter my realm of joy.’
I giggled.
‘Nope.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Nope.’
‘So I’ll see you around six?’
‘Nope.’
‘Excellent. See you later then. Bring wine.’
He put the phone down and I smiled to myself.
‘’Oo’s that, your lesbian lover?’ said Cockney Boy.
‘Yeah. Actually, it’s your mum.’
‘Fuck off.’
There was still Fran to deal with. I caught her at her house, or rather her bedsit. She lived sparsely, not far away from me in Kennington.
‘Franster?’
‘You’ve got your ingratiating tone on. Let me see: you want me to sponsor you on a round-the-world bike ride for badgers? You need me to donate some bone marrow? Or has Alex moved in with that creep Charlie and you haven’t done anything about it?’
‘Ehmm … are those all the options?’
‘Yup.’
‘I’m sorry! I couldn’t, not for that! He wouldn’t understand! Oh, Fran, don’t make me …’
‘God, what is this, Sophie’s Choice? OK, fine. You want to go out with a wanker that lives with another wanker, then fuck it, that’s how it is, flowers or no flowers.’
‘You know about the flowers?’
‘What? Yeah, I got a big bunch, from Charlie. Odious little creep.’
‘Ohhh.
