‘Over there,’ Gemma said.
‘To make our acquaintance,’ Abi said, ‘to see if he passes muster and whether he warrants our seal of approval and, therefore, whether we grant you our go-ahead.’
‘Oh God, he’s seen me. I’m going to the loo,’ said Fen, who didn’t need to go and didn’t know why she wanted to disappear. She went, though, and stood by the sinks for a while trying to compose herself, compose what to say. She was simultaneously excited yet felt a certain timidity too. She was bemused.
Abi and Gemma were also bemused.
‘Shy? Fen?’
‘Why?’
‘That girl has spent far too long persuading herself that art nourishes her every need,’ said Gemma.
‘And she’s spent far too long listening to us bang on about the Inevitable Bastard Element Of All Males,’ said Abi, ‘though it’s a risk she’ll just have to take. I mean, we do, don’t we?’
‘We do,’ Gemma confirmed, ‘and it’s often Fen who picks us up when we’re in pieces.’
‘But we invariably go for the wrong ones,’ Abi rationalized.
‘And Fen doesn’t go for anyone at all,’ Gemma continued, ‘so, though Matt might not be a Wrong One, she probably doesn’t want to find out the hard way. Hence taking the easy route direct to the loo. Or home. Or back to the bronze of a nineteenth-century sculptor’s studio.’
‘Oh blimey,’ Abi sighed, ‘she might so be missing out!’
‘That’s the risk she’d probably rather take,’ Gemma qualified.
‘She won’t let us give her a helping hand,’ Abi mused, ‘so let’s just shove her right in there.’
Gemma regarded Abi, knowing the idea would be fine if it was she whom Abi was setting up, but just slightly concerned that they were meddling too deeply, too fast, for someone like Fen.
‘Feeling brazen?’ Abi asked slyly, eyeing up Jake just as much as he was eyeing her.
‘When am I not?’ Gemma sighed as if it was some great affliction, eyeing up Jake just as much as he was eyeing her.
Oh God, no!
Fen?
Cows!
What’s the problem?
They’re over there – with Matt and that bloke. I’m not prepared.
You can’t map out life like you plan a lecture, you know. See – Matt’s spotted you. He’s raising his glass. He’s grinning. They all are. Just a bunch of people chatting. Go and join them. Go on.
Sometimes, a good cliché is hard to beat. Sometimes, it’s priceless, especially if it is obvious that the person delivering it is doing so quite intentionally. Even more so, if they are doing so because it is quite obvious that they need it as a prop, a shield, without which they wouldn’t quite know what to say. Therefore, Matt’s opening line of ‘Fancy seeing you here’ – though it was met with Jake raising his eyebrows and Abi and Gemma swallowing down a snigger – made Fen grin.
‘Do you come here often then?’ she countered.
Refusing to be out-clichéd, Matt retorted, ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?’
Gemma couldn’t resist, ‘What makes you think that Fen is a nice girl?’ and Fen, who was floundering for a cliché to bat back, didn’t mind this in the least.
Jake murmured to Abi, ‘Can’t really say that nice girls are my bag. I like them naughty.’
‘I’m downright dirty, mate,’ Abi responded, staring at him straight before turning her back on him to give Matt the Spanish Inquisition.
‘What does Abi do?’ Jake asked Gemma.
‘She edits a teenage girls’ magazine,’ Gemma told him. ‘And you?’
‘Advertising,’ Jake said, ‘I’m afraid. You?’
‘I,’ said Gemma, pausing to make sure her lips were parted to great effect and that her eyes had darkened, ‘do most things. But I draw the line at animals.’
Matt and Fen talked mainly about work. But they nattered nineteen to the dozen and were excessively interested in what the other had to say. Even though some would argue that a noisy pub in Camden Town wasn’t quite the venue for a lecture on Fetherstone’s deconstructionist foray 1927–29. Nor was it a convivial setting for Matt’s stories of homesickness at boarding-school from the ages of nine to eleven. But the anonymity of the setting, the background noise, beer and vodka, the unexpectedness of it all, made it seem safe. Fun too.
‘See you in the morning, then,’ said Matt, because last orders had been and gone and the bar staff had stopped begging the punters to leave and were now demanding they do so.
‘Mine’s a cappuccino,’ said Fen cheekily, ‘and a pain au chocolat.’
She winked, did Fen McCabe. She even winked. She didn’t even think to marvel at the disappearance of all that previous timidity. But Gemma and Abi did. And they knew it could not be attributed to vodka alone. The girls walked home, Fen swelling with pride and joy as her friends assured her that Matt didn’t just pass muster but scored very highly on their excessively exacting set of standards.
‘Stringless sex?’ Jake tosses casually as he and Matt make their way down Parkway hoping to hail a cab before they reach Camden Town tube station and have to suffer the Northern Line to Angel. ‘Zipless fuck?’ Jake bandies yet detects a momentary discomfort in Matt. ‘Fanbelt Macbeth?’
Matt shrugs. ‘Taxi!’
‘Well, if you don’t, mind if I do?’ Jake hazards, not because he has any designs on Fen, but merely to elicit a response of more satisfying proportions from Matt.
‘Yes, I bloody do!’
Aha! Jake thinks. ‘You couldn’t have stringless sex with her anyway,’ he declares.
‘Why not?’ Matt says defensively.
‘Because she has you nicely knotted up already,’ Jake defines.
‘Sod off,’ says Matt, unnerved by Jake’s perception.
‘It’s true!’ Jake says. ‘So my advice is not to venture to Vanilla McCabe until you’ve had a good poke elsewhere.’ Matt hopes that his expression doesn’t register “why ever not?” but obviously it has. ‘You do need time out,’ Jake defines. ‘You can’t go from one straight into another. It’ll be out of the frying pan into the fire.’ Jake assessed it was time to lighten up. ‘If she’s out of my bounds,’ Jake says, with a change of tone, ‘what about her flatmates then? The raven-headed sultry Gemma; the feisty blonde sprite, Abi?’
‘Be my guest,’ says Matt, relieved to deflect the attention away from himself and Fen. ‘Which one?’
‘Either,’ Jake shrugs, as is his way.
Matt raises his eyebrows.
‘Both,’ Jake shrugs, as is his way.
ELEVEN
Fen wasn’t quite sure what the score was with personal phone calls. Her job didn’t require much time on the telephone; just the occasional call, made or received, to a gallery or museum. But on this, the last day of her first week at Trust Art, Fen wanted desperately to make a call. Should she ask? Even if the response was laughter? Or a frown of disapproval? Would Bobbie’s switchboard sound the alarm, start flashing in another