Where Have All the Boys Gone?
Jenny Colgan
For my beloved boys, Mr and Baby B.
Table of Contents
There is a very small envelope of seduction time available between the stages ‘just pissed enough’ and ‘disastrously over-pissed’, and suddenly, Katie wasn’t sure she was going to make it.
This man sitting in front of her wore little heels on his shoes, she remembered, swaying slightly. She’d noticed under the chippy, awkwardly tiny bar table in this stupid new bar called Square Root. OK, he was her first date in four months, and she had her best bra on, but still, she really ought to have paid more attention to the shoes…it was just, it had been a difficult week.
It had started on Sunday. Louise was still on her international bang-athon, leaving her and Olivia, who came around on Sundays to avoid getting inky fingerprints on her pristine white sofa, studiously reading the papers, watching EastEnders and ignoring the obvious sounds of sexual intercourse coming from the spare bedroom.
‘How come Kat Slater is really fat and covered in slap and millions of men are in love with her?’ Katie had asked.
There was a particularly vigorous grunting noise.
‘Umm,’ Olivia squeezed her eyes shut. ‘For the same reason everyone’s in love with Phil even though he looks like a barnyard animal. Drugs.’
‘OK,’ said Katie loudly, ‘I UNDERSTAND.’
There was an endless tense moment next door as everything went quiet. The two girls looked at one another. There was a pause. Then the ritual banging started again.
‘Jesus,’ said Olivia. She looked at Katie. ‘Couldn’t you have bought a bigger flat?’
‘In North London?’ Katie nodded. ‘Sure! I should have gone for the rooftop swimming pool. And the maid’s quarters. I’m a complete idiot.’
‘I’m just saying.’ Olivia believed in karma and therefore probably did think having a tiny flat and a huge mortgage in Kentish Town was Katie’s fault.
Katie loudly turned the page.
‘Bloody hell!’ she exploded.
‘What? New revolutionary soundproofing spray just invented?’
‘No.’
‘New laws make it easier to expel noisy tenants?’
‘No.’
‘Sex makes you put on more weight than Atkins’ diet?’
‘Look,’ said Katie, pointing at the paper.
Olivia squinted at it upside down.
‘“Women Going Men Crazy,”’ she read out loud. ‘You really have to stop buying these women-hating papers.’
They both read the article rolling their eyes. It asserted that their generation of women was a clutch of uncontrollable pissed-up hose-monsters on the loose, terrorising the five nice remaining men in the world. The problem was, from the sounds next door, it was tricky to disagree.
‘It says here that there’re no men left and we’re all going barking. Well, that would explain a lot,’ said Olivia.
‘If that’s true, why is it him in there who’s doing the barking?’
Suddenly there was a high-pitched wailing sound.
The two girls looked at each other.
‘I’d start a round of applause,’ said Olivia, ‘if I’d heard even the tiniest little peep out of Lou.’
‘Also, we want to pretend absolutely nothing just happened,’ said Katie, turning back to her paper. ‘It