‘No, thanks. I’m going to clean my wardrobe out.’
‘Ohhh – I mean: Oh, right, have fun!’
Then Fran and I fled to the pub to meet Alex and Charlie. ‘Amanda & Fraser Ltd’ had generously deigned to join us: the presence of two good-looking West London boys had obviously upped our social desirability somewhat.
Walking into the pub, I shot a sidelong glance at Fran. It was not looking good. Amanda was sitting in the middle of the three men, showing off in her pertiest manner. Fraser was watching her dutifully – or staring at her adoringly, I couldn’t make out what was true and what was bitchiness on my behalf – and Alex and Charlie were sniggering and nudging each other.
Alex gave me a kiss, and I went to get some beers, while Amanda said something and everybody laughed. I looked at the beautifully cut profile of the man I loved and suddenly felt empty, even when he yelled, ‘Mel, gorgeous gorgeous thing, get over here and sit on my knee immediately.’
How could he be so sweet and still want to move to Fulham with Charlie? I sat on his knee and tried not to mope, but it wasn’t easy.
‘So, anyway,’ Amanda was squawking, ‘I spoke to the designer and she says she’s never seen such a tiny waist! They’re going to have to do it all by hand specially, and it’s going to cost an extra two thousand pounds! Can you imagine!’
‘Bloody hell!’ said Alex dutifully.
The other boys nodded blankly. That infuriated me: they listened to her because she was pretty, but they wouldn’t know what a wedding dress cost at gunpoint.
Then she gave Fraser a look and snapped her fingers. He immediately got up and fetched her another drink. Fran and I looked at each other in amazement.
Anyway, to make myself sound at least vaguely interesting, I spilled the beans about Linda. Fran looked disapproving, but only because she didn’t think to tell it herself. Everyone was enthralled, so I tried not to embellish too much. Well, everyone except Fran, who was being disapproving, and Charlie, who was staring at Fran’s breasts. And Amanda, who was attempting to tell a rival story about her suspected anorexia, which she was trying to make sound like a pretty cool disease.
Suddenly, Angus walked in, and it was like a chill hit the air. Fraser smiled anxiously in welcome, while Amanda gave him a very tight look out of the corner of her beautifully made-up eyes and deliberately smiled without smiling.
‘Oh, hello, Angus,’ she said. ‘So glad you could make it.’
‘Aye.’
Good God, what was he, an extra from Cold Comfort Farm? Angus sat down stolidly.
Fraser looked around. ‘Does everyone know Angus?’ Everyone hummed and pretended to – even if (like Fran) they’d never clapped eyes on him before – so we didn’t all have to go round and introduce ourselves.
I’d gotten to that delicate part of sitting on somebody’s knee when I’d forgotten to balance my toes on the floor and they now had an extremely dead leg which they were being too polite to tell me about.
‘Hey, elephant baby, darling, obviously I adore you, but if you don’t get off my knee now I’m going to collapse and die,’ my beloved announced loudly.
Amanda brayed with laughter, as she was the dictionary antonym of an elephant, whereas clearly, I was the synonym.
There was nowhere to sit, so I edged to the end of the group, red-faced but pretending to take it as a joke, next to the naturally red-faced Angus who was staring surlily at a pint of English bitter. This was a bad ploy, because by the time I re-emerged from my mild and unnoticed strop to re-enter the conversation, the conversation was away from my nutsoid flatmate altogether and back on to bloody weddings again.
‘So,’ Amanda was saying, ‘we’re going to hire out the entire castle and have heather and haggis and tartan swathing and pipers …’
‘… parading out of my arse,’ a voice said quietly in my ear, in a not bad approximation of Amanda’s posh squawk. I giggled before coming to my senses that it had in fact been uttered by Angus the Sulky. No one else had noticed.
‘Hello there,’ I said, warmer than I had intended.
‘Hullo.’
‘Good time on Saturday?’
‘Hmm,’ he said, with a pointed look at the intended duo.
Our fast becoming habitual embarrassed silence stole over us.
‘So, are you older or younger than Frase …’ As soon as I asked the question I remembered I already knew. God, my small-talk radar was getting worse all the time.
‘Still younger.’ He almost half smiled. I briefly wondered what he’d look like if he really did smile.
Someone set another drink in front of me, and I smelled Alex’s aftershave and closed my eyes.
‘Oh, have you two met?’
Alex and Angus shook hands in that wary fashion blokes do when the girl they’re going out with introduces them to another bloke.
‘Hi. Err, you’re Fraser’s little brother?’
Well, of course he was. D’oh!
‘Yes. Yes, I am.’
‘You were at the engagement party, weren’t you? Brilliant night, wasn’t it?’
Then quite an odd thing happened. Angus and I exchanged glances, and I almost smiled.
‘Yes. Yes, it was quite something.’
‘So, what are you doing down here then? Working?’
‘Yes, I’ve got a short-term contract in Docklands. If I like it I might stay …’
‘Bet you miss the sheep in hoochter-choochter land though, eh?’
I cringed.
‘No. Actually, I’ve met plenty of woolly twats since I arrived.’
Double rude! Yikes! Fortunately, Alex had already turned back to Charlie to make some other sheep-related remark and had missed it. But I was shocked, and puzzled: why did this ginger bloke hate us all so much? And if he did, why was he here?
Nothing happened to change my opinion as the evening wore on. Angus seemed staggeringly unimpressed by Alex’s American stories, which I still found funny, even though I’d heard them several times. More pints were consumed, more chatter went round, and he didn’t feel the need to offer a single comment, make one remark, or laugh – not even when Alex got on to the time he decided he was going to become a rodeo star!
I looked around for Fran. She had managed to get herself completely cornered by Charlie, whose eyes were as round as Fran’s nicely shaped baps. He’d got her up against the wall at the back side of the table, and everyone else was in that mildly blootered universe where they didn’t notice much around them (except Amanda, who was drinking Aqua Libra, but never noticed
