‘Teaches at the academy. He’s got an arse like Tom Daley’s. It might be love.’
It was ‘love’ quite often with Joe. In the past few months, various of these loves had passed through the front door. There had been Lee, a waiter from a pub in Kilburn; Josh, who Joe had picked up in the Apple Store buying a new iPhone; Paddington, a footman from Buckingham Palace, and Tomas, an Argentine polo player who insisted he was straight, but liked Joe to do unmentionable things to him with various leather props that he kept under his bed in a box. I tried never to go into Joe’s room in case this box was lying open.
The thought of Joe’s box made me feel a bit weak again.
‘I’m going to go back to bed actually, forget the tea.’
‘Okey-dokey, my petal, I’ll be quiet later. It’s only a first date, don’t want to scare the poor boy. And don’t worry about your boyfriend running off like that, happens to the best of us.’
‘Does it?’
He paused. ‘Well, not me, no.’
‘Great, that’s very helpful, thanks.’ I plodded back to my bed and put my earplugs in.
By 3 p.m., I’d had a bath, eaten seven pieces of toast and honey, drunk three cups of tea and I was lying on the sofa watching an old DVD of Three Men and a Little Lady. I’d also carefully stalked Callum on Instagram and spent two hours wondering idly whether I could follow him. Then my phone vibrated with a WhatsApp from Bill.
You get home safely?
I typed out my reply, unsure whether he knew anything about Callum. I could tell him tomorrow. Didn’t feel up to it now.
Yes! Thank you for dinner! How’s the office?
Alright. But listen, do you mind if I don’t come for lunch tomorrow? I’m seeing Willow for a drink.
COURSE, don’t be silly. Where you guys going?
Dunno. Southbank maybe. Good date place, right?
I sent back a row of thumbs-up emojis and then flicked back to Callum’s Instagram again. Mostly pictures of rugby games and foreign beaches. Bit boring, if I was honest. Why was I obsessing over it?
I woke the following day feeling human again after spending the evening horizontal on my sofa, spooning Thai green curry and sweet clumps of coconut rice into my mouth. Lex had changed our lunch date to brunch, which seemed unlike her because she wasn’t much of a morning person. Eggstacy was a café in Notting Hill which, as its ludicrous name suggested, specialized in breakfast. Great folds of buttery scrambled eggs with Gruyère cheese grated over the top, creamed mushrooms, ramekins of smoky beans, thick slabs of white bread. Butter by the bucketful. I made myself walk there from the flat in preparation, given my supper the night before. It had not been a good weekend for calories.
Lex and I had known one another since we were eleven, when Mum and I moved to London. That was the year I left my primary school in the country, where I’d been taught by a teacher like Miss Honey in Matilda, and went to a secondary school near Mum’s flat in Battersea. The same school as Lex. There were no Miss Honeys there. Instead, I found classmates who were already into boys and eyeshadow and something called Take That. Lex took pity on me in the way that you might take pity on a cowering stray on the street.
‘Do you want to look at my sticker book?’ she said one lunchtime, which is still the best pick-up line that anyone’s ever used on me. And so, in the sweetly uncomplicated way that children do, we became friends. And we stayed friends.
We went on to Leeds together, both reading English, as did Bill, to study Physics. We formed an unlikely trio. The science nerd (Bill), the short, sex-obsessed blonde (Lex) and me, the tall, frizzy-haired romantic who was fixated with Sense and Sensibility and on the lookout for my own Willoughby.
Lex was already at a table by the time I got to Eggstacy, sweating from the exertion of walking up Holland Park Avenue. I waved at her from the door and pushed my way through the clusters of tables to the back.
‘Hi, love,’ I said, as she stood to hug me. ‘Welcome home. How was it?’
‘It was…’ She smiled at me coyly.
‘What?’
‘It was… Well… This happened.’ She thrust her hand towards me.
‘Lex, oh my God!’ There was a diamond ring on her finger. I took her hand in mine and pulled it towards my face. A diamond the size of a broad bean in the middle of the ring, surrounded by lots of smaller diamonds. ‘Are you kidding?’
‘No! It would be quite a weird joke, wouldn’t it?’ she said, smiling at me.
‘You’re engaged? To Hamish?’
‘Yes! Again, it would be quite weird if I’d got engaged to anyone else since I’d last seen you.’
‘Right, yes, ’course. Bloody hell. You could blind someone with that thing,’ I said, looking at the ring again. ‘I mean, congratulations.’ We were still both standing up so I reached over the table to hug her again. It felt weird though. Not the hug. The news. Lex was engaged. To Hamish. To someone she’d only been going out with for, what, a year? To someone I wasn’t wholly sure about. And I mean what’s the deal in this situation? When your best friend gets engaged to someone you’re not sure about?
‘Could I have a coffee?’ I said to a nearby waitress. ‘A really strong Americano?’
She nodded and went off.
A quick summary. Hamish was Lex’s boyfriend. Fiancé, I suppose I should call him now. He was a former rugby player-turned-banker with lumpy ears who Lex met in a pub in Kennington. I’d never been sure about him because he was the sort of man who made jokes about women staying in the kitchen. But whenever I asked why Lex put up with him, she’d smiled in a pathetic way and said that she liked him. After a couple of months of dating, she’d said that she loved him.
We sat down. ‘I mean, blimey,’ I went on. ‘Sorry. I’m just trying to process it. I had no idea,’ I said. ‘Did you?’
‘No, not really,’ she said, holding her hand out in front of her. The broad bean caught the bulb overhead and twinkled as if it was winking at me.
‘How did he do it?’
‘In bed in the hotel, classic Hammy.’
I nodded slowly. The way that Lex sometimes called Hamish ‘Hammy’ made me feel ill. Where was my coffee?
‘It was just after he tried to strangle me with my own hair actually,’ she went on.
‘What?’ I frowned at her.
‘Well, it was New Year’s Eve, in the morning. And we were in bed, just indulging
