of course, us Phillips can trace our ancestry back pretty far.’
‘What, to Woking?’ said Fran.
‘Ha ha, very funny.’ She turned. ‘Are you getting married, Fran? Oh no, I forgot, you’re not seeing anyone, are you? Because maybe, if you ever do, we could make fun of you for a change.’
Fran raised her eyes to heaven and headed back to the bar for more drinks.
Tantrum over, Amanda leaned in chummily. ‘So, you and Fraser were quite close, weren’t you?’ She smiled, as if to show that this didn’t mean ENVY ME! ENVY ME!
‘Not really,’ I said, meaning: Well, I fancied him and he completely ignored me.
‘Oh, you must come to the wedding. It’s going to be absolutely wonderful. Daddy simply insists on making a fuss.’
Amanda’s dad had been married about four times since we were sixteen. He got a discount.
‘I’d love to.’ I would be generous. She was the first of my friends to get married, and to a lovely bloke. Why shouldn’t I be happy? Without warning, a thought of Alex popped into my head, and I winced.
‘Great! Oh, I’m sorry I can’t make you a bridesmaid, but Larissa and Portia are such good friends from varsity, I just had to ask them.’
‘Oh, right …’
‘You will meet someone, Melanie, you know. Someone nice. Such a shame about Alex dashing off like that. He was a bit of a one, wasn’t he? And of course so terribly well connected.’
Meaning what exactly? I put my drink down, rather too emphatically.
‘Well, I don’t care about that, and I don’t care about Alex.’
‘No, of course you don’t,’ she said, patting me on the hand in an infuriating manner.
I was constantly forgetting Amanda’s true potential for sheer malice. Revising my earlier estimate, I hoped she’d have a poxy marriage and get divorced before we’d finished the cake.
Fran came back with the drinks, but Amanda immediately hopped up and said she had to be elsewhere. She shook back her blonde sheet of hair – rootless – and sashayed her pert little leather-trousered arse out the door to her latest-model convertible, mobile phone already clamped to her ear, waving merrily behind her, off to somewhere infinitely more glamorous and exciting than the pub on a Friday night.
Fran and I sat in silence for a bit, till Fran said, ‘Sod that, then!’ and we drank her white wine as well as ours. Then we had another one to cheer ourselves up, and then a couple more, and before long we didn’t care that Amanda Phillips had found her handsome – if scruffy – prince and was going off to live in a castle. Much.
Much, much later we were yabbering nonsensically about the last bloke Fran metaphorically kicked in the bollocks and threw out the house – actually, when I came to think of it, she had literally kicked him in the bollocks, and he had limped out of the house of his own accord – when across the crowded pub I spied what looked like a familiar pair of knees. Following upwards, I deduced that it was in fact Nicholas, tallest accountant in the world. (How did I know him again?) Gosh, he was tall. I liked tall.
I tugged on Fran’s sleeve. ‘Look –’s Nicholas.’
Fran looked roughly over. ‘Wanker,’ she said.
Had Fran not said wanker about every bloke we’d mentioned for the last hour and a half I might have listened to her and saved myself some trauma. Instead, I waved at him in huge circular motions. ‘Knickerless!’ And I dissolved in giggles. He flew over and gave me a big kiss. Oh, we must have been old friends, then.
‘Melanie, fantastic to see you. I’ve just been having another crazy night out with the accountants.’
I squinted to make out anyone else who’d been at the other end of the bar, but they all seemed to have mysteriously disappeared.
‘God, we’re mad. Can’t see us getting home tonight without a police caution! Chaw chaw chaw!’
‘Buy’s a drink, Nicklas! You’re loaded!’
‘Sure, babe.’ And he did so with the fervour of a man who knew only too well just how much alcohol he usually had to get down a woman to get her to sleep with him.
In normal circumstances I would have run six miles from Nicholas, whom I had accidentally slept with at a party once because he was, er, very tall. He’d phoned me up constantly since and I’d realized that, tall though he might be, he was also the most boring bastard who’d ever lived. In fact, he was the most boring accountant who’d ever lived. After the inevitable grilling I’d caught from Fran when he turned up to pick me up in stonewashed jeans and pink cowboy boots, I’d made Linda answer the phone for a month. Now here he was again, and he was desperate, and I was desperate for attention – a deadly combination.
Ensconced in a corner next to Fran – who looked half-asleep, but with a drowsy look that said she could still bite you on the face if you thought about trying anything – Nicholas started telling me all the latest pranks him and his fantastic accounting mates had been up to. By the time they’d finally got on the coach they’d hired to go see Bryan Adams, I was about to gnaw off my own hands in despair. With impeccable drunk logic, I decided I’d better kiss him to get him to shut the fuck up. It wasn’t the easiest of tasks; almost on a par with climbing a tree. While pissed out of your head. So, once I got to the top, I decided I’d better stay until the tree fell asleep. I’d crawled from under the wreckage the following morning.
‘So now what am I going to do?’ I complained to Fran. ‘There’s a big stinky man in my bedroom, whom I hate, and if I go in and wake him he’ll start telling me hysterical stories about tax again.’
‘So?’
‘So, ehm, could you go … like, ask him to move?’
‘Me! Why me? You’re the one with all his saliva! Anyway, plus, what if he’s naked?’
‘Oh, right, you’ve never seen a naked man before?’
‘Not one that’s six foot seven. It’ll put me right off my sausage sandwich.’
Suddenly my ultra-loud doorbell rang, which made us both jump. Fran and I looked at each other and I limped dourly towards the door to stop the infernal noise.
WHOP! Straight out of my bedroom, an absolutely starkers, very hungover, six foot seven man ran full into me in panic, and it didn’t look like he had the faintest idea what galaxy he was in.
‘IS THERE A FIRE?!’
We stood for a while, looking straight at each other like rabbits caught in headlights. Then my psyche made an independent decision to turn me into my mother for as long as necessary.
‘No, Nicholas, of course there’s not. Go get dressed immediately! Now! – before I open the door.’
He blinked and retreated without saying a word, headed for the bedroom, then did a quick U-turn and made a bolt for the loo, where I could soon hear him having a six
