a wonderful Sunday morning in bed the next day, ‘nursing’ his hangover. Then – after he saw I wasn’t too interested in dissecting what a fantastic night it had been, ‘particularly the bit when Barfield stuck the napkin up his arse, ha ha ha!’ – he went out to see his mates.
I lolled around with the papers all day.
Back late, he barged in loudly, waking Linda, probably, and certainly me. After bouncing around the kitchen looking for something to eat (I never seemed to have any food in the house after my first week of being a show-off chef, so God knows what he found, although Linda was looking, if anything, even more fucked off these days, so it might have been that. You’d think she’d like having a man around the house – God knows, I did), he came in, sat on the end of the bed, kissed me squarely on the nose and announced, ‘Hey, guess what! I’ve found a flat! Or rather, I’ve found my old flat – Charlie’s forgiven me and I’m moving back in with him!’
I sat up. I hadn’t rationally thought about it, but now he’d told me, I realized that I had planned our future out, after all, in my head. We would go find a room together somewhere nice, and eventually get our own place, once he had this music company job. Or we would both stay where we were – Linda wouldn’t mind. Perhaps she’d even move out – oh no, she couldn’t, it was her flat. Either way, I hadn’t seen us being apart so soon, nor the decision so gleefully made on his part. Despite it being only two weeks, waking up next to him every day already felt a necessity of my life, something I didn’t want to do without.
‘Ermm, great!’ I said casually. ‘So, is Charlie still living in …?’ As if Charlie and I had had tons of in-depth chats about our personal lives.
‘Fulham, yeah. It’s a great flat.’
‘But it’s bloody miles away! And it’s in West London … you hate West London!’
‘Well, I can’t stay here pestering you for ever, can I?’
Actually, that’s exactly what I’d been planning on.
I pouted prettily, in what I hoped was an appealing manner. ‘I wouldn’t mind.’
He looked at me and ruffled my hair again. But not as enthusiastically as before.
‘It’ll be fine. You’re still my favourite pumpkin, aren’t you?’ I was. We dived under the bedsheets. End of matter. Well, apart from when I got up to get a glass of water at three o’clock in the morning and found myself inexplicably staring at my reflection in the kitchen window and starting to cry. I went back to bed and tried to forget all about it, clinging on to him in the night.
Fran popped by on Monday evening before we went to the pub.
‘Enjoy the party then?’
‘Ha ha. You were missed.’
‘Yes, only by you and Alex’s ghastly mate Charlie, who seems to think that because I didn’t go to public school he has God-given leave to put his hand on my arse every time he’s pissed.’
‘Ah, well, there’s good news about Charlie …’
I told her everything. All I needed her to say was, ‘Mel, just because he’s moving out doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you. He’s getting his own space together, that’s all, so that wherever you do end up, you’ll have chosen it yourself and everything will be absolutely fine.’
‘Oh God, Mel!’ she yelled. ‘He needed somewhere to crash, he was worried about coming home alone, he wanted a bit of shagging attention … America probably wasn’t half as much fun as he’s telling everyone it is – I mean, does he have a job from his great pop-star mate yet? Honestly, how can you let yourself be taken advantage of like this? Aren’t you worth more than this? Aren’t you?’
Linda walked into the sitting room. Her fat face fell.
‘Ehmm, I didn’t know you were having people over.’
‘Yeah, you know Fran, don’t you?’
‘Hello! How are you?’ perked Fran, taking a momentary break from her onerous shouting duties.
‘Fine.’ Linda retreated. I heard her head out of the door with some elderly voices.
‘Shit! Do you think those were Linda’s parents?’
The door slammed.
‘God, I feel awful. And it’s Monday today. Sunday is parental visit day. Everyone knows that!’ I was grumbling to myself. ‘Why doesn’t she tell me these things?’
‘Isn’t it written up on the calendar?’
‘Who the fuck keeps a calendar, for fuck’s sake?’
Fran pointed out the large thing covered in kittens on the back of the kitchen door. I thought that was Linda’s idea of changing artistic taste. In big pink letters, it said ‘parents coming today’ under the date. There wasn’t another single thing in the whole month.
‘What is the matter with that girl?’ I cringed. ‘Why can’t she just go out with her friends and get rat-arsed like everyone else?’
‘Does she have any friends?’
‘No. Don’t think so.’
‘Do you ever think of asking her out with us?’
I couldn’t stand Fran pulling this saint act.
‘You ask her!’
‘She’s your flatmate!’
This was getting childish, so I just sighed and made a half-hearted flapping motion which was supposed to mean OK without actually committing myself to anything. Alex temporarily forgotten in the light of someone else’s troubles, something else occurred to me.
‘I wonder what’s in those enormous parcels she keeps getting.’
‘So, to make her life a complete misery, why don’t we snoop amongst her stuff as well?’
‘You started it!’
‘Did not!’
‘Did too! When Nicholas was here!’
‘Oh.’
We looked at each other enquiringly.
‘Well …’
‘That would be extremely … naughty.’ Fran giggled nervously.
‘Well, I’ve already ruined her day …’
We looked at each other and both leapt out of the room.
Linda’s sanctum was possibly the most spotless place I have ever seen. Even the teddy bear looked like he’d been through teddy grooming school. Everything in it was either pink or peach, and the wall managed
