She rolled her head so that her left cheek was now on the Formica, and she squinted to focus.
It couldn’t be! She jolted up. Nope, it wasn’t. But it was pretty damn close. If she was squinting. In a dark alley. Wearing sunglasses.
So a bloke who, on reflection, had nothing in common with Johnny Depp, except long, brown un-brushed hair and gorgeous hazel eyes, was standing in front of her with an expectant grin on his face.
‘Hi,’ he said.
Okay, not exactly knocking her out with super-smooth chat, but hey, he was male, he was relatively good-looking and he didn’t appear, on first impression, to have any psychotic personality disorders–he therefore qualified in the category of ‘reality distraction’. She briefly wondered if he’d just stand at the desk all day and allow her to look at him and perhaps fondle his man parts on an hourly basis to ease the inevitable boredom. If she wasn’t off men, that was. And she was. Definitely. Until hell froze over or the real Johnny Depp appeared in front of her wearing nothing but a ‘Roxy Be Mine’ badge.
Farnham Hills Porn Prevention Officer chose that moment to reappear.
‘Oh, hello Mitch, love, how are you this morning? Fancy a Penguin?’
‘I’m grand, thanks, Mrs Wallis,’ he burred in a soft Irish accent. ‘Where’s Ginny then? Having a day off today?’
‘A few days off, actually. She’s gone up to London for a wee bit of excitement. You know how you young things are these days. Anyway, this is our Roxy, Vera from the doctor’s surgery’s daughter. Her and our Ginny have been best friends since they were still peeing in nappies.’
Toes re-curled. Jaw reset into manic grin.
Violet turned to Roxy. ‘And this is Mitch. Father Murphy’s nephew. He’s over from Ireland and staying at the chapel house with his uncle while he finishes writing his new novel. Imagine, a real writer in Farnham Hills!’
Roxy was indeed imagining. Mitch. Laptop. Naked.
Mitch held his hand out. With only a slightly embarrassing delay while she attempted to surreptitiously reopen those top two shirt buttons, Roxy reciprocated the gesture.
‘Pleasure to meet you,’ he said. ‘I usually call in every morning to have a coffee and a read of the papers. Hope that’s okay with you?’
Yep, Roxy thought, perhaps this life detox was going to work out fine–just as long as she went with the flow, took the ups with the downs, and managed to nip to the chemist in her lunch hour for a new diaphragm. She re-evaluated her strategy–perhaps the generic term ‘penis embargo’ had been too all-encompassing. Perhaps what she’d really meant was that she was avoiding Felix’s penis. Yep, why should the rest of the world suffer for one man’s sins?
An irritated voice cut through her contraceptive/copulation contemplation. ‘Morning, Violet, morning, Roxy.’
Strange, that someone could manage to say the word ‘Roxy’ in such an insidious tone that it sounded like something you’d throw up after eating raw chicken. She’d almost have preferred it if he’d had the balls to be upfront and greet her with, ‘Morning, have I told you today that I’d prefer you dead? No? Okay, brutal torture, slow demise–lovely.’
Roxy sighed as she turned to face her nemesis. Darren Jenkins. She loathed him. She’d always loathed him. Although under the influence of alcohol or physical torture, she might be prepared to concede that this negative emotion was born around the same time as she offered to show him her boobs in second-year Woodwork in return for his Sony Walkman and he knocked her back. She’d been horrified when Ginny had started seeing him a couple of years later, and over the following decade she’d pretty much avoided straying within a hundred yards of his super-toned thighs.
She had never understood what Ginny saw in him. He might be fit, he might be easy on the eye, he might be testosterone fuelled…but he was about as exciting as a daytrip to a morgue and just as warm. And he didn’t exactly treat Ginny as well as she deserved–last year he’d bought her a steamer for her birthday. A steamer. What the fuck was that about? Who woke up and thought, ‘D’you know what, I’m going to prove to my fiancée how much I adore her by buying a household item that aids the production of healthy vegetables’?
What. A. Prick.
Roxy suddenly realised that a tiny part of her hoped Ginny would meet someone else in London and dump this bore before he had time to save up for a matching sandwich toaster for Ginny’s Christmas present.
She snapped out of her musings when it became clear that they’d all been standing in awkward silence for about ten seconds, Darren staring at her with the type of expression more commonly seen on men who have bodies stored under their kitchen floorboards.
Johnny Depp-ish picked up on the tension and made himself scarce. Brilliant. The first time her hormones had stood to attention in weeks and Darren the Prick had scared him off.
‘Darren, love, I’ve brought in a nice smoothie I made for you last night–mango, kiwi and pineapple. The pineapple was just chunks out of a tin, but I don’t suppose it’ll matter. I’ll just nip back and get it for you.’
As Violet disappeared, Roxy contemplated reattaching her head to the desk while waiting for the inevitable explosion.
‘So, care to tell me what kind of insanity you’ve involved Ginny in this time?’
Houston, we have lift-off. And he was just getting warmed up.
‘You can’t bloody leave her alone, can you? What’s the problem, Roxy? What inconsequential, superficial little blip on your horizon have you blown out of all proportion and roped Ginny into sorting out for you this time?’
Roxy bared her teeth with a smile she pitched at ‘carefree while maintaining an appropriate level of undiluted evil’.
‘Oh, nothing really. I just decided that she was far too happy so I thought I’d fuck things up for her by selling her body to an Eastern European slave trader.’
Darren shook his head as his face cracked with irony. ‘You know, Roxy, you’re priceless. You just use and abuse everyone who has the misfortune to stumble into your screwed-up, pathetic existence.’
Roxy very maturely folded her arms, looked heavenward and ignored him, determined not to even dignify his accusations with a reply.
‘You’re toxic. Always have been.’
She stayed silent. He was a grown man who wore Lycra, for God’s sake. Who cared what he thought of her? She’d never stoop to his level. She’d just take this on the chin and handle it in a manner Ginny would be proud of. Ginny had made her promise to deal with this in a sensitive manner and she would. After everything Ginny had done for her she deserved it. St Roxy of the Blessed Martyrdom–it had a ring to it.
‘And I’m sick of you interfering in Ginny’s life. Why can’t you just piss off and leave us alone?’
Aw, fuck the sainthood.
‘Listen, you twat, if you want a reason that Ginny’s not here, go look in a fucking mirror. You take her for granted, you walk all over her and you bore her baps off. Ginny hasn’t gone to London to save my ass, she’s gone because she was desperate for some excitement, desperate to do something other than sit on a bloody couch night after night waiting for you to honour her with your presence. You have a problem? Take it up with your fiancée and don’t shoot the messenger.’
Silence. Stunned silence. Until a troop of Young Catholic Mothers marched in to have their buttocks remoulded. As Lycra Man backed off in the manner of an armed robber with a hundred SWAT guns pointing at him, Roxy had a feeling of impending doom.
The 1960s telephone burst into life. Roxy snatched up the receiver to hear an anxious Ginny on the line.
‘So did you break it to him gently?’
Roxy