‘Drop dead. Try it again and I’ll smack you.’
Rachel against ten rugby players was a prospect unlikely to make them skid their pants in fright, but I still felt I had to assert myself.
‘I won’t try that again,’ said hobbit rugby boy. ‘Can I check, is this not allowed either?’
He reached out and squeezed my left breast, as if it was the horn on a vintage car. The rugby boys started braying with laughter.
‘Hey!’ I shouted. ‘You arsehole!’
‘Sorry, sorry, that was wrong,’ he said. ‘It was actually this right one that caught my eye.’
He performed the same indignity on my other breast and I went to slap him, hard. He caught my wrist before my palm connected with his lumpy cheek. I’d seen this move in bad soap operas and didn’t think anyone had fast enough reactions in real life. He had a horrible, clammy claw-of-a-vice grip. I couldn’t wrest myself free and started to feel panicky.
‘Gerroff me!’ I shrieked, to more raucous laughter. I could still feel the imprint of his nastily rough fingers. I’d lost control and felt my lungs constrict.
I was suddenly aware of a presence at my side. My wrist was abruptly released. I turned in time to see Ben lunging towards the spotty groper, his fist connecting hard with his jaw in a wet-sounding crunch.
‘Ow!’ he cried. ‘I—’
He didn’t get a chance to say anything else as Ben punched him again, quite ferociously, this time knocking him off balance and sending him sprawling to the floor. I momentarily worried that his friends might defend him and square up to Ben. Instead they stepped back and watched him flailing. Nice guys.
‘Apologise!’ Ben shouted. Actual real violence had taken place and I felt like I was going to throw up. This was the halls bar, not some terrifying pub in Moss Side.
‘Sorry,’ said spotty man, rubbing his cheek and looking wary of getting another right hook.
‘Not to me, to her!’
‘Sorry,’ he sulked, casting a very quick look up in my direction.
‘Idiot,’ Ben said, injecting the word with great feeling. He picked up the last two pints and I followed him back to our table.
As we walked away, spotty man shouted, at a volume that brought the whole bar to a standstill – or the small part of the bar that wasn’t already watching: ‘Ben, I didn’t know she was your girlfriend!’ Pause. ‘I DIDN’T KNOW SHE WAS YOUR GIRLFRIEND!’
I cringed. I was absolutely certain Ben cringed. When we reached our group, everyone demanded to know what had happened.
‘They were being idiots,’ Ben muttered, taking his seat next to Emily again.
‘He indecently assaulted me!’ I wailed, covering my self-consciousness with theatrics.
‘How do you mean?’ Caroline asked.
‘He grabbed my baps,’ I said, feeling I had to explain that Ben’s reaction was within the range of reasonable response.
‘And you smacked him?’ Caroline said to Ben in awe, her crush clearly going nuclear.
‘Congratulations,’ Ivor said. ‘I’ve been hoping someone would do that since I met them.’
‘Yeah, cheers, that was heroic,’ I said, thanking Ben for the first time. He didn’t seem to want to look at me, or anyone else for that matter, draining his pint in great gulps.
‘I didn’t know you were hard!’ Mindy said. ‘I might have to secretly fancy you from now on.’
‘I’m not hard, my knuckles are killing me,’ Ben said, putting his glass down and rubbing his hand. ‘I don’t know if I did it right.’
‘What a great fella you’ve got,’ cooed another girl in our group to Emily. It was then that I noticed the stunned expression she was wearing. It was as if she’d been punched. She must’ve been so worried he was about to get a pasting, I thought. Even though I hadn’t asked for my secondary sexual characteristics to be mauled, or for Ben to step in and defend them, I felt peculiarly guilty and anxious.
A week later, word reached me that Ben and Emily had broken up.
40
Ivor is awake when Mindy and I drag ourselves out of bed, Caroline having disturbed him on her way to the gym. He’s sitting up on the sofa, bespectacled and bare-chested, drawing the coverlet around him when we emerge.
‘Are you hoping we’ll admire your buffness and forget the sickage?’ I say.
‘My t-shirt was somewhat soiled,’ Ivor says. ‘Christ, was I very bad?’
‘Was he very bad, Rach?’ Mindy turns to me, sarcastic, hand on hip. ‘Was he very bad?’
I scratch my head, yawn. ‘How do I put this? Bonfire of the dignities, Johnson.’
I make cups of sugary tea and when I deliver Mindy and Ivor’s, she’s climbed under the covers next to him.
‘I hear you were trying to show the twenty-three year olds how it’s done?’ I say, returning with mine, settling into an armchair.
‘White Russians,’ Ivor says, blowing on his tea. ‘They were more like Beige Russians with all the Kahlua. I feel like dungy hell. My tongue’s like a Ryvita.’
‘I take it Jake won?’
‘Oh no,’ Ivor says. ‘I won.’ He gestures at his half-dressed, bedraggled form. ‘This is what success smells like, ladies. The cologne of victory. Inhale deeply.’
Mindy and I laugh.
‘Think I was drinking to forget,’ he says, putting his tea down and rubbing his eyes under his glasses, making them flip up and down like a music hall act. Ivor without glasses always looks wrong. ‘Major misdemeanour, the night before last.’
‘Did you snap when a Belgian teenager levelled their troll before you did on World Of Warcraft?’ I ask.
‘Nah …’ He rubs his head. ‘It was Katya.’
Mindy’s head, resting in the crook of his arm, snaps up. ‘You haven’t let her extend her notice? Ivor, what is wrong with you?’
‘No, she’s still leaving.’
‘So?’ I say.
‘We got smashed on her homemade damson wine.’
Ivor gives me a mischievous, bashful smile that I think I interpret correctly.
‘You didn’t make her eat meat, did you?’ Mindy says, into his armpit.
Ivor starts laughing and then winces. ‘Don’t say funny things, it hurts.’
‘Why is that funny?’
‘It’s funny in the context of what we did do.’
There’s a pause, then Mindy moves away from Ivor as if propelled by the blast of her own verbal explosion.
‘WHAT?!’
Ivor’s startled by the force of the reaction and for a second, speechless.
‘You shagged her?’ Mindy demands, rounding on him.
‘Uh. A bit.’
‘This isn’t funny, Ivor! This is gross!’
‘We were drunk. It was a one-off. I’m not going to let her stay on or anything.’