I tugged on Fran’s sleeve. ‘Look –’s Nicholas.’
Fran looked roughly over. ‘Wanker,’ she said.
Had Fran not said wanker about every bloke we’d mentioned for the last hour and a half I might have listened to her and saved myself some trauma. Instead, I waved at him in huge circular motions. ‘Knickerless!’ And I dissolved in giggles. He flew over and gave me a big kiss. Oh, we must have been old friends, then.
‘Melanie, fantastic to see you. I’ve just been having another crazy night out with the accountants.’
I squinted to make out anyone else who’d been at the other end of the bar, but they all seemed to have mysteriously disappeared.
‘God, we’re mad. Can’t see us getting home tonight without a police caution! Chaw chaw chaw!’
‘Buy’s a drink, Nicklas! You’re loaded!’
‘Sure, babe.’ And he did so with the fervour of a man who knew only too well just how much alcohol he usually had to get down a woman to get her to sleep with him.
In normal circumstances I would have run six miles from Nicholas, whom I had accidentally slept with at a party once because he was, er, very tall. He’d phoned me up constantly since and I’d realized that, tall though he might be, he was also the most boring bastard who’d ever lived. In fact, he was the most boring accountant who’d ever lived. After the inevitable grilling I’d caught from Fran when he turned up to pick me up in stonewashed jeans and pink cowboy boots, I’d made Linda answer the phone for a month. Now here he was again, and he was desperate, and I was desperate for attention – a deadly combination.
Ensconced in a corner next to Fran – who looked half-asleep, but with a drowsy look that said she could still bite you on the face if you thought about trying anything – Nicholas started telling me all the latest pranks him and his fantastic accounting mates had been up to. By the time they’d finally got on the coach they’d hired to go see Bryan Adams, I was about to gnaw off my own hands in despair. With impeccable drunk logic, I decided I’d better kiss him to get him to shut the fuck up. It wasn’t the easiest of tasks; almost on a par with climbing a tree. While pissed out of your head. So, once I got to the top, I decided I’d better stay until the tree fell asleep. I’d crawled from under the wreckage the following morning.
‘So now what am I going to do?’ I complained to Fran. ‘There’s a big stinky man in my bedroom, whom I hate, and if I go in and wake him he’ll start telling me hysterical stories about tax again.’
‘So?’
‘So, ehm, could you go … like, ask him to move?’
‘Me! Why me? You’re the one with all his saliva! Anyway, plus, what if he’s naked?’
‘Oh, right, you’ve never seen a naked man before?’
‘Not one that’s six foot seven. It’ll put me right off my sausage sandwich.’
Suddenly my ultra-loud doorbell rang, which made us both jump. Fran and I looked at each other and I limped dourly towards the door to stop the infernal noise.
WHOP! Straight out of my bedroom, an absolutely starkers, very hungover, six foot seven man ran full into me in panic, and it didn’t look like he had the faintest idea what galaxy he was in.
‘IS THERE A FIRE?!’
We stood for a while, looking straight at each other like rabbits caught in headlights. Then my psyche made an independent decision to turn me into my mother for as long as necessary.
‘No, Nicholas, of course there’s not. Go get dressed immediately! Now! – before I open the door.’
He blinked and retreated without saying a word, headed for the bedroom, then did a quick U-turn and made a bolt for the loo, where I could soon hear him having a six foot seven pee. Well, it was either him or a passing horse had got in there. So I had solved one problem – getting him out of my bedroom – and discovered another. Maybe I could keep him locked in there for ever and the neighbours would let us use their shower.
Finally, I opened the door, putting on an ingratiating look – not that the fat postman on the doorstep gave a toss.
‘Parcel.’
I signed for it, trying not to get too excited, but this was one huge parcel. Perhaps I had a secret admirer who was sending me precious gifts because they were totally rich and also perhaps completely famous.
Fran wandered through to try and use the loo. The fat postman noticed her – every man noticed her.
‘Hello, fat postman,’ she said. Then, indicating the parcel: ‘Hey, is that for you?’
I turned it over in anticipation. ‘No, it’s for Linda. Bum bum bum.’
‘God, what is it – the latest in the Woodland Farm Princess Diana Star Wars plate collection?’
‘No, too heavy.’
The postman wobbled off. As ever, we looked at each other, wondering how a man who walked ten miles a day could get that fat.
‘Books?’
‘Linda doesn’t read books. She eats them.’
‘Is that true, or is it just that you don’t like her?’
I looked at my feet.
‘It’s just that I don’t like her.’
‘Well then, can we open it?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Why not? She wouldn’t mind.’
‘Fran, I believe she might, in fact, mind.’
To be honest, I had no idea whether she’d mind or not. In fact, all I knew about Linda was that she worked in a bank – I couldn’t remember which one – was an only child, and had inherited money from her grandmother to buy this lovely flat and cover it in pastel tat. And I had learnt all this from the flat interview, where I had tried to look unbelievably fascinated, thus moving in under false pretences – which was a huge relief, as at the time I’d been on the run from a cabal of physiotherapists who were terrorizing me out of my shared flat in Edmonton, a period of my life I normally only flashed back to at four o’clock in the morning, wide awake and sweating.
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