‘No! But I sure can SKAAAAAATE!’
So the three of us ended up in one of those forced friendships that come together extremely quickly out of necessity in early college. Kate quickly decided that Josh was her own personal property, which annoyed me. OK, so both of them had flat stomachs and good posture, but I didn’t like the assumption that as Kate was prettier than me I should butt out, especially as I didn’t even fancy Josh and in fact assumed pretty much from the start that he was gay, rather than, as I later found out, completely and utterly confused.
Kate hadn’t cottoned on to this, however, and insisted on treating me as an annoying kid sister hanging round with the grown-ups, her repertoire including: ‘You again, Holly?’ ‘You don’t mind, do you, but I’ve only got two cups?’ and ‘Sorry, Holl, but it’s only a plus-one.’ Soon their status as monied and classy students at a poor and common college became clear, and I started going out with a greasy sports science student who once tried to teach me kung fu and chipped my collarbone, so I pretty much left them to it – which doesn’t mean to say that she didn’t really fuck me off, Kate being the accepted sucking pig to Josh’s sow and my runt. An analogy bordering on the disgusting, but that’s how it was.
In time, of course, Kate realized that simply because her and Josh went to a lot of places JUST THE TWO OF THEM, it didn’t actually mean they were a couple. But not before I got my revenge…
In a misguided attempt at collegiate unity, two socially inadequate but horrifically bouncy ‘ents officers’ – to be involved in ‘ents’ of course meaning you are anything but – arranged a ‘Corridor Convulsion’ early on in our first term. There was a good and complicated reason for it at the time, but what it meant in effect was an excuse to haul in lots of weepingly cheap alcohol and stuff it down the faces of naïve but nubile eighteen-year-olds in the hope that they might accidentally strip their tops off and run down the corridor. Actually, maybe that was the official reason and it just sounded all right in those days.
Josh of course would do anything of a community nature enthusiastically and Kate was still in the ‘gamely joining in’ stage, before she realized that she could dress up as a giant antelope and it still wasn’t going to make her sexually attractive to Josh, so we all trawled into the hallway to figure out what was happening.
What was happening was what happens anywhere with horribly diverse sects of shy and socially inept people away from home for the first time and unsure of their very identities: groups of twos and threes stood in small corners grunting nervously at each other and downing obscure former communist bloc spirits as fast as they possibly could. A group of rugby- or aspirant rugby-playing lads started getting rowdy in the corner, and the ents officers gibbered around, excited yet again at the possibility of not being one of the 29 per cent of students who leave Coventry certified virgins. What they didn’t yet know was that 100 per cent of ents officers leave 100 per cent of all institutions certified virgins.
A petite, very pretty blonde girl who wore enormous fleeces and was clearly out to score with a rugby boy – Why? being the only unanswered question – became the first person, at around 10.30 p.m. and after a lot of goading, to take off her top and flee down the corridor, bouncing merrily, to massive applause. After that, about fifteen of the men immediately tried to do it with their cocks out – what is it about British men and being completely naked for no good reason? I’ve seen someone play the piano with his.
Anthropologists would have had a field day with all this, given, truly, how few of us that year had yet seen another buck-naked human being we weren’t blood related to.
Finally, and it all starts to get a bit hazy around this point, pretty much everyone had done a quick streak and been accepted into the gang. Mine would have been sexier had I not stumbled over somebody’s outstretched foot and made a noise which sounded like a fart (but wasn’t) on my way down. Josh skipped along his, to yells of ‘faggot’, but generally good-natured ones.
And at last there was only one more person to go. Kate would clearly rather have died than take part in anything so vulgar. She had that faraway look in her eyes she got whenever she dwelt on what romantic and glistening evenings she could be having at Oxford right now. I started egging her on, and pointing out to people that she was the only one who hadn’t done it, just in case she got away with it.
‘Shut up, Holl,’ Kate hissed.
‘Kate hasn’t gone! Kate hasn’t gone!’ I shouted loudly to the rugby players.
‘KATE! KATE! KATE! KATE!’ they started chanting.
Kate flushed redder than ever.
‘Everyone else has,’ I said petulantly.
‘Go on, Skatie,’ said Josh, who, due to his upbringing, was completely unable to understand why someone wouldn’t want to take part in group-enforced humiliation in the name of fun. The rugby boys name-calling had failed to abate and formed an increasingly ferocious background.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ said Kate, furious.
‘KATE! KATE! KATE!’
Kate pulled up her top extremely quickly and made a sprint down the corridor. Immediately, silence fell. Quite simply, Kate had the flattest chest anyone had ever seen.
Of course, nowadays, that doesn’t matter. Kate Moss resembles a boy who’s been stung by two bees and nobody bats an eyelid. But when you’re nineteen and desperate to find yourself attractive …
To cut a long story short, that was never a moment when anybody needed me to inadvertently expostulate:
‘Christ, they look like two Pop-Tarts!’ loudly enough for everyone to hear.
Kate handed me one of the glasses of wine.
‘Sorry, I didn’t hear that … what did you say you were up to again?’
‘Ehm, I’m … I’m a florist.’
‘Still! My goodness. Is it … fulfilling?’
‘Huh?’
Fulfilling? I couldn’t even conceive of what that might mean, and was standing with a confused expression on my face until I remembered that when Kate asked a question, she required a logical answer quickly – time being money, etc.
‘Yes, it is,’ I said. ‘The pay is shit and the hours are crap and your hands are wet all day, but apart from that it’s fantastic.’
She smiled thinly. ‘Never mind, eh? You’d probably hate a career job anyway.’
‘This is a …’
‘Where do you work?’
‘Actually, I’m freelance at the moment …’
Well, I couldn’t commute to Hackney Flowerarama any more, but I did have a chum at New Covent Garden who was going to let me help out.
‘Oh, so you’re like a temp florist? How funny!’
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I went and helped Josh, who was chopping onions for spaghetti bolognese. I could see Kate reflected in the kitchen window. She did look fantastic – tired, but fantastic. Her dark hair was glossy and tied back in a chignon, and she was wearing an expensive fawn suit. I wiped my hands on my pinafore and sighed.
‘Tell me about your mystery flatmate. Is he away?’ I asked Josh.
Josh and Kate looked at each other and smiled.
‘Away?’ echoed Kate. ‘Addison doesn’t do away.’
‘What – you mean, he’s in the house?’
I felt nervous suddenly. I’d been stomping about merrily for two hours, singing and making loud noises in the toilet, and all along there had been an additional presence. Spooky.
‘Oh yes,’ said Josh. ‘I’ll probably