As if hearing our thoughts – or, more likely, she’d had her ear up against the door earwigging our entire conversation – Linda stomped out into the corridor from her big bedroom at the back of the house, managing not to look either of us in the eye, even while grabbing the parcel out of my hand. She was short and round, with a definite aura of moustache. As she stomped back to her room, Fran and I swapped our familiar ‘Linda’ look.
‘Erm, guys … ha ha …’ came a strangulated voice, ‘can I, er, come out of the bathroom now?’
Fran raised her eyes to heaven. ‘Any time you like, darling. We’ll be right here.’
I started to giggle.
‘Right, OK, right …’ came the voice. Then there was a pause, during which we didn’t move back to the kitchen.
Finally, the door started to open and Nicholas emerged, with a mass of tissue paper covering his genitals. And I mean a mass.
‘Bwah hah! Corking night, eh, ladies!’ he hollered, putting on a good front, I have to say. ‘What’s for breakfast?’
‘For you, a number sixty-eight bus,’ said Fran. ‘They deliver.’
‘Haw haw haw – I’ll get my dancing trousers on and be right with you. And how are you, my darling?’
We both looked round, till I realized he was talking to me.
‘Oh, you know, some variation of fantastic,’ I said, hunched over, still in my towel. ‘The negative one.’ Suddenly I saw something on the floor which I hadn’t seen previously. I picked it up. It was a postcard, and this time it was for me.
‘Fra-an!’ my voice quavered as I followed her into the living room. ‘It’s a postcard.’
‘So I see. Oh, and look over there, Nicholas – it’s a door!’
‘Cwah cwah!’ came the voice from the other room. ‘Just wait till I tell the boys at work about this.’
I sighed. ‘Look,’ I said urgently. ‘Look who it’s from.’
The postcard was of the Empire State Building, almost completely obscured by a close-up of a woman’s breasts. On the other side it said simply: Darling, I’m so sorry – big mistake. I’m coming home. Alex.
There was a long dramatic pause. Or, well, there would have been a long dramatic pause, except that Nicholas chose that moment to launch into the room wearing purple trousers (I hadn’t noticed they were purple; the effect was like a terrible plum-canning factory accident), shouting, ‘Hey, I know what would be hysterical – let’s make some French toast!!’
Fran gave him a Paddington Bear hard stare. ‘Go look for some chocolate, Nicholas.’
I was in shock, and scarcely noticed when Nicholas disappeared, then returned obediently with a dozen chocolate mini rolls. I was too busy staring straight ahead without blinking and trying to work everything out: Alex, Alex, Alex – my ‘one true love’, according to me. Alex, Alex, Alex, that ‘low-level rat bastard’ according to Fran and pretty much everyone else in the world.
The first time I ever saw Alex I thought, ‘Phwoar, I’d like to get into his pants!’ And he looked at me and thought exactly the same thing: it was a true meeting of minds. Oh! That shitty West London party (well, I should have known better than to go to parties in West London and expect to have a good time, but just that once it paid off).
I was searching for the more expensive beer that hosts hide at the back of the fridge, when:
‘Is it just me,’ growled a tall voice, ‘or does everyone here look like they’ve got something uncomfortable up their bums?’
‘That’s trendy,’ I hissed. ‘You’re supposed to be envying them. They’re only pretending not to be having a good time.’
‘Ohhhhh, now I understand. Right. So I can either try and get out of West London …’
‘Can’t be done,’ I pointed out.
‘True … Or I could get absolutely wasted and do something awful which I could later abdicate any responsibility for.’
This was so pointed that I gulped and took a closer look at this six foot two, dark-haired, unruly-looking character with the most heavy-lidded, pointy-lashed brown eyes I’d ever seen.
‘That,’ I said, ‘sounds like it would be completely out of character.’
Eighteen astonishing hours later, damp, grubby and absolutely starving, lying in an unfamiliar bedroom having my tummy tickled with a tea bag, I realized I was on to something.
A year later I was blissful, swanning around with Alex, who was trying to make it as something in the music industry. He knew everyone; we always ended up at a party and all his friends were louche, slightly dodgy but with terribly nice accents. I was with the band: it was great. He wasn’t exactly the most romantic character on the planet, but I didn’t care; here I was, Melanie Pepper, twenty-six and watching minor pop-stars throw up in the corner of filthy nightclubs. Life was cool.
More than that, though, I absolutely adored him. I loved his cool long floppy hair, and his sad brown puppy eyes, and was constantly trying to get him to notice me. I would jump up and down trying to reach him, and he would give me his big lazy grin and check out who else was in on the conversation. Occasionally he would indulge me with his attention, and I would be like one of those pathetically affectionate little dogs they’re always rescuing on programmes about the RSPCA. Other times he’d flirt with women for ages and I would be distraught. In short, he was not that good a boyfriend, no doubt about it. But in his leather trousers … well, you know, a girl is a girl, and leather trousers and pop-star friends are leather trousers and pop-star friends, so of course I did what the cool girls should NEVER do, which is fall in love with the cool boys. It blows the whole thing.
Still, he’d been coming round. I’d notice the occasional look of tenderness on his face. Or he’d phone me, for no reason. Or come home early from a gig. He was coming round, I could sense it. He loved me. He even passed the ‘Would you mind just picking me up some Tampax on the way over?’ test. So I was just about to suggest that we … possibly … think about moving in together – not seriously or anything, just a casual moving-in thing because, after all, all that toothbrush expense just didn’t seem worth it, ha ha – when he vanished. Off the face of the earth.
I waited for him to call one weekend and he never did. It was that simple. Assuming it was an X-Files type incident and could have nothing to do with me, I let twenty-four hours go by before I finally phoned his flatmate, Charlie, who lived in Fulham. Charlie wasn’t best pleased to have to put up with Alex’s shit, and too posh to be kind. He informed me wearily that Alex had gone to the States to find himself, and was sorry he hadn’t told me but it seemed easier that way.
Not even a desultory note! Alex had dumped me by moving continents and leaving a message with a laconic friend!
For weeks I was too strung out even to cry. It felt like someone had scooped out my insides with a cold spoon. Fran was wonderful then; I’d never known anyone with a fuller range of colourful epithets and hexes. She spat venom for me; I sat in corners and rocked myself. I felt embarrassed just walking down to the shops for more crisps, with the sheer humiliation I felt must be written all over my face. It was pain like I’d never known, worse even than when I got the Spangles papers stuck up my nose (I was