Josh had a mortgage, but he was also a complete sweetie pie who could be endlessly relied upon in a crisis, as I knew and had shamefully abused in the past.
We finally pulled up in front of his dilapidated Victorian pile in Pimlico.
‘I see you’ve still not got the builders in.’
‘No, I couldn’t afford them,’ said Josh, hopping out of the car without opening the door and pulling up two bin-liners of my stuff. ‘Until now,’ he smiled sweetly in my direction.
‘Ah yes, about that …’ I followed him in, clutching my socks and pants bag, my cheese plant and Frank Sinatra the bear. One of the reasons that I’d wound up in Harlesden in the first place was that being a freelance florist and general under-achieving free spirit didn’t exactly pay very much, and Pimlico was basically posh these days.
He told me, and I breathed a sigh of relief. The going rate for coffins wasn’t so bad after all.
The flat was quiet inside. It was big and tatty and comfortable, and I’d always liked it. Josh had bought right at the top of the market and paid a stupid amount of money for it – apart from being infested with dry rot and woodworm and all sorts of other nasty moving things, it needed a new roof – but it was a good homey home. The kitchen was large, with nasty old units, a rickety table and four chairs in the middle, cracked floor tiles, and a huge window at the back which opened on to a rusty excuse for a fire escape. I pottered about in my tiny new room, mostly leaning against cupboards to get them to shut and stuffing things under the bed.
‘Umm, sorry about the mess,’ hummed Joshua when I went back into the kitchen for a cup of tea. ‘It’s not usually … Well, in fact, it is.’
‘Great!’ I said.
He smiled weakly at me. I leaned across the table.
‘Josh, thank you. I’m sorry I forced you into this. I promise I’ll be a good tenant. You’ll see. I promise.’
He grinned back at me.
‘Good. And I could do with the company, to be honest – Kate works all the time and Addison is, well …’
‘Yikes!’ I pounced immediately. ‘Tell me the gossip about Kate.’
‘Oh, she’s a complete bitch, as ever,’ said Kate, striding into the kitchen and dumping a Marks and Spencer’s bag, an enormous briefcase, a Nicole Farhi raincoat and an expensive leather handbag on to one of the rickety chairs.
‘Hello, Holly. Josh left me a message on my voicemail. Which I got about ten minutes ago. But never mind, eh? Welcome anyway.’
I went to give her a hug or something, but she was already en route to the bottle opener. Josh touched her lightly on the arm.
‘How was your day, Skates?’
‘Great. Great. As usual. Two sexist comments, four reports to do this week, one irregular forecasting, and I have to be in Dublin for 8 a.m. tomorrow morning, to give a presentation on a report I haven’t even read yet. Then back in the office by noon to account for myself, two more meetings and a 4 p.m. deadline for the Kinley account. Oh, and then a client dinner with a bunch of ghastly old bores who’ll try and feel me up in the Met bar.’
Josh nodded sagely. Kate pulled the cork with a savage ‘pop’ and poured out three humongous glasses of wine.
‘So, Holly, what are you up to these days?’
Kate had always intimidated me. We’d only really met because the three of us were on the same corridor of student halls. We’d both stayed friends with Josh – most people did – but never really got on with each other. She was rather more of a pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps-type person – she didn’t actually say ‘lickspittle’, but you could tell when she was thinking it.
She’d done business studies and got some hugely well-paid and prestigious job in the City, which hadn’t helped relations between us particularly. I always felt she was just about to offer to buy a Big Issue off me.
Actually, that wasn’t quite why we didn’t get on. Specifically, well, you know in Freshers’ Week, one is often, er, tacitly encouraged to get … Well, anyway. Originally, there were the three of us in a row on one of those grotty endless corridors that was distinctly not the Brideshead University model I’d always dreamt of. It was in Coventry for a start.
Students were still sharing showers, a good life lesson for future flatshares in how much YEUCH people are actually made of, and how, just when you think you’ve seen everything, there’s always a new variety of repulsiveness.
Josh had opened his door on the very first day and sat there crudely beaming at everyone who walked past, a technique which probably wouldn’t have worked so well if he hadn’t been so blond and pretty. I wandered in there by accident, already worried by how keen my dad and Blondie had been to leave me, but faintly reassured by the seemingly enormous cheque now burning a hole in my pocket. It worked out to a lot of Caramac bars, although, as I found out four weeks later, not that many beers and taxis.
‘Hello,’ said Josh. ‘This place is nice, isn’t it?’
‘It’s a shit hole!’ I said, looking around at the regulation stained walls, stained carpet and dodgy pinboard.
‘Oh yes …’ He took in the room. ‘So it is. Oh well – only three years to go.’
‘And a week,’ I said.
‘Of course. Hmm. What do you think the cooking facilities are like?’
‘I don’t know – what’s a cooking facility?’
Through the paper-thin walls we could hear loud, fairly dramatic sobbing. We raised our eyebrows at each other.
‘What is this, primary school?’ I said, a tad callously.
‘Maybe she misses her mother,’ said Josh.
I sniffed derisorily, something I’d been practising throughout my teens to great effect.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s go cheer her up.’
‘Ah, the beginning of my crazy university years,’ I said, but I followed him dutifully outside.
Next door, perched on the narrow bed, with the door open, sat Kate, thin and a little pinched-looking, and dressed head to toe in immaculately ironed Benetton separates. Even though she appeared distraught with grief, she still had been composed enough to hang up lots of perfect shirts, I noticed.
‘Hello there,’ said Josh. ‘I’m sure it won’t be as bad as all that. When I went to boarding school I cried for my mother for four days. Mind you, I was six years old at the time.’
‘My mother?’ said Kate, spluttering. ‘I don’t miss my mother! I just can’t believe I didn’t do better in my A-levels than to end up in this shitty place!’
‘Didn’t you work hard?’ I asked her. That was my excuse.
‘Of course I worked hard!’ she said, looking up. ‘I had a fucking place at Magdalene.’
‘Oh, I see. They only want really tall girls, don’t they?’ I said sympathetically.
‘What the fuck’s nervous anxiety, anyway?’ Kate went on, ignoring me. ‘I’ll tell you what it is: it isn’t enough to get your exam marks upgraded. I wish I’d had a fucking full-on nervous breakdown. Then they’d have had to let me in.’
‘Have one now,’ I suggested. I knew she wasn’t actually shouting at me, but she was certainly shouting in my direction.
‘Don’t