lack of turnaround time between holiday and back-to-uni had left me with a dirty laundry backlog. Ben had volunteered to sit with me during the spin cycle and then go get a coffee. He was house sharing with the lads from the flats, and although he’d filtered out the worst of them, the best of them still wasn’t exactly panning for gold. (For example, even he’d admitted it wasn’t advisable for me to use their Zanussi unless I wanted to return from the coffee to find them all wearing my smalls on their heads.)
‘How did he have a bag packed for you without telling your folks?’ Ben asked, as I boasted about sapphire seas and cultural sightseeing.
‘Oh, it wasn’t my stuff. He went to Boots and bought me a toothbrush and got me a bikini. And some other things.’
Actually, it was a comically stripped down, in more than one sense, male fantasy idea of what a woman might need on a surprise sunshine getaway. The detour to my family home had the benefit I could get the things I needed without hurting his feelings.
‘Right.’ Ben glanced down at what was in my hand and with some horror I realised it was a school-girlish broderie anglaise bra that was a good few shades away from Daz bright. I hastily bundled it into the machine, slammed the door and fed it with coins.
We sat down together on the slatted wooden bench.
‘The look on the warlock of a landlord’s face when I left,’ I crowed. ‘It was great.’
‘Sounds it. Greece with Rhys,’ Ben said.
‘It was amazing!’
‘Sure. Lots of sun and … swimming and stuff?’ Ben rubbed his chin.
‘Yeah.’ I sighed. I knew I was being insufferable. I was in that vile realm of ‘all broadcast, no reception’ smug coupledom where I couldn’t stop.
The bell on the launderette door jingled and a girl entered. A girl in the same way an Aston Martin Vanquish is a car: it was Georgina Race. This was a name that any male of the undergraduate population was incapable of uttering without the accompanying exhalation. She was instantly identifiable by her sheet of incredible shiny copper hair, a colour so intense it was as if she walked the planet with a Royal Albert Hall follow-spot on her. It was impossible for your eyes to slide past her – and once they were on her, there wasn’t much to quibble with, as my dad would’ve said. She had a porcelain, doll-like face that looked as if it had been sketched for the cover of a Mills & Boon paperback. You could absolutely imagine her in a ragged blouse, wilting in the bulky arms of the arrogant Prince Xaviero.
Georgina was on my course. She had perfected the art of the lecture hall entrance, standing at the front of the room and scanning the half-empty rows for a spare seat, knowing every male in the place was trying to will her near. Ben would usually nudge me, clasping his hands in a ‘prayer’ gesture under the desk, to which I’d make a hand-shaking ‘wanker’ gesture in return. They were all shit out of luck, though: rumour had it she was dating some soap actor in London.
This crisp September morning, Georgina was looking equally crisp: she had an apple-green scarf knotted at her white swan throat and a short swingy patterned dress that served to highlight her long long legs that didn’t appear to get any wider as they went up. Over the top she was wearing a navy frock coat that clung to her waist and flared out in folds around her violin-shaped hips. All in all, she looked like she should be striding down Carnaby Street a few decades ago with men who looked like a young Michael Caine lowering their spectacles and wolf-whistling.
She was clearly a bitch. I just had to find hard evidence.
‘Hey Ben!’ she trilled, spotting him and breezing over. ‘What’re you doing here?’
She knows Ben? And what the hell do you think he’s doing here, I thought. Ordering a frittata, getting a slippy gearbox checked out, waiting for the results of a splenic biopsy?
‘Waiting with Ron here. Her washing machine’s knackered.’
Georgina’s eyes moved reluctantly to me, only for a moment. ‘Ahhh. Nightmare, right?’
I nodded. Annoyingly, I felt a little of that beautiful person dazzle, as if a celebrity had acknowledged me, and couldn’t speak.
‘What’re you doing here?’ he asked. ‘Getting clothes washed, I guess?’
‘Dropping some stuff for the dry-cleaning service,’ she said, unlatching some probably-incredibly-expensive slinky things in monogrammed garment bags from her shoulder, by way of demonstration. ‘Cashmere, etcetera.’
I couldn’t help but notice she had slender arms like carved willow and tiny, fluttery-butterfly, delicate hands, screws of translucent tissue paper. In the genetic lottery, she’d won a triple rollover.
‘Listen, we should totally do that thing we talked about? The dinner?’ she said.
‘Sure. Let me know when?’
‘Certainly will,’ she said, with a little feline moue, and a flirtily-eyelinered wink. ‘See you around, yeah?’
She left her dry cleaning, breezed out and did a tips-of-the-fingers coy wave to Ben as she went. I said, trying very hard not to sound like a bitter nosy nag and failing: ‘Uhm. What thing you talked about?’
I fully expected Ben to dissemble about some vague plan to hit up the Pizza Hut all-you-can-eat buffet for a gorge-til-you-gag.
‘A date.’
‘A date?’ I repeated, as if he’d said ‘bumming otters, hanging on to their whiskers like they’re handlebars’.
‘Yeah. Is it that amazing?’
‘I didn’t think she went out with students, that’s all. Thought it was strictly cool successful older guys in other cities.’
‘Like you, you mean?’ Ben smirked. Touché. And before I could retort, Ben continued: ‘Everyone was second guessing so I thought I’d ask her. He who dares wins.’
This got worse. He’d asked her? I couldn’t deny that in some ways, it was a match ordained by heaven: the prom king and queen of English Literature & Language.
‘Cashmere, etcetera,’ I mimicked.
Ben didn’t rise to it. I had a sense that karmically, I’d pushed hard on a swing door.
24
Pete Gretton and I share the press bench in the later half of the week for the opening of a medical negligence trial. It concerns the very untimely death of a twenty-nine-year-old woman in a liposuction procedure, and two NHS doctors and a nurse at a private practice being prosecuted for negligence and manslaughter. There are several stringers from the agencies – a more geographically mobile, less seedy strain of freelancer than Gretton. He’s here because we’ve heard there’ll be some fairly gory details of operative complications and dislodged fat particles. Gretton is a rogue collection of cells himself, travelling around the arteries of the building and causing dangerously high blood pressure whenever he comes to a halt.
‘They can’t all be to blame,’ he mutters, before the court’s in session. ‘How many people does it
