Sam pulled a face. ‘Landlady’ sounded so curlers and pink nylon housecoat. Friend would have been better…or flatmate…
‘Sam, this is Toby, and he’s just going.’
Toby blushed, even more awkward than he had been moments earlier. Sam had to hand it to Gem. She was bucking every so-called trend and single-handedly proving that there were plenty of single men out there if only you weren’t too dismissive at first sight. She hadn’t even offered him any breakfast.
Sure enough, five minutes later Toby had been consigned to recent history and Gemma had set up camp by the toaster while Sam vigorously attacked the soon-to-be-much-whiter sink with a ‘new and improved’ product she had invested in less than an hour ago. They did have a cleaner, but she never really seemed to do very much. A bit of ironing, cushion-plumping, plant-overwatering and ornament-shuffling. Well worth the eight pounds an hour.
‘That’s looking great.’ Gem stretched and yawned, revealing a naturally toned tummy. Sam subconsciously clenched her abs and winced as a searing hit of lactic acid reminded her that they’d been crunched enough already. ‘Guess I better hit the shower in a minute…it’s about time I started my day before you finish yours… Just out of interest, what time did today start Washington time?’
Sam ignored her. ‘So, he was about twenty-four, was he?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. At least twenty-six.’ Gemma laughed.
Sam scrubbed resolutely. ‘And you met him where?’
‘Hey, Mum, what’s up with you this morning?’
‘Nothing.’ It was too dismissive to be totally true.
‘You just seem a bit—well, a bit on edge…’ Gemma took a contemplative slurp of her tea and Sam reminded herself that, all things considered, she was just fine. What was it with everyone? Now even her moods were public property. ‘You just don’t approve…’ Now Gemma was planting opinions.
‘Hey, I’m just your landlady. It’s none of my business who you see…’
Sam rinsed the scouring pad. It wasn’t that she was unequivocally anti the one-night stand. There were certainly times when she wanted someone to snuggle up to. Someone who didn’t purr or exhale meaty fish. But she’d also definitely been at her loneliest the morning after the night before. Gemma sipped her tea, safely staring into the middle distance, whilst the timer on the state-of-the-art toaster ticked like a time bomb behind her.
‘Sorry, Gem, I’ve just got a lot on my mind. So, do you think you’ll see him again?’
‘Doubt it.’ Gemma seemed relieved at Sam’s overture to normality. ‘Not bad in the sack, though…a huge improvement on Sean. He was an anticlimax—and I mean literally. Plus it saves me going to the gym later. All these women pumping iron when all they really need is a good shag…’
Sam felt herself redden and instinctively clenched her pelvic floor muscles, managing ten repetitions whilst wrestling the stuffed liner from the bin. It was one thing letting a room to a former classmate, but quite another when she had (a lot) more sex and telephone attention than you did. Plus, Gemma was only too quick to volunteer the details.
‘Anyway, Toby’s a Capricorn. Astrologically we couldn’t be more wrong for each other…’
As far as Sam could remember, birth dates were definitely a second or third date question in her book. Unless in these days of heightened security she was asking to see a driving licence or passport for ID purposes.
‘Then again, he saved me half a taxi fare home, he paid for the take-away, and—well, my granny always used to say you never know until you try…’
Sam was sure Gemma’s grandmother had meant foodstuffs, not fellatio.
‘Now, if he’d been a Sagittarius it could all have been very different…’ Gem trailed off mid-sentence as she observed Mr Muscle’s more glamorous sidekick hard at work. ‘Stop. Please stop. I swear I was going to give the kitchen a bit of a tidy when I got up, but I should’ve known your first thing and mine are about four hours apart. Sorry.’
Her good intentions pre-empted Sam’s well-worn washing-up mini-rant. While Sam would admit, if only to herself, that her intolerance of dirty dishes was possibly teetering on the brink of obsessive behaviour, she had to hand it to Gem. Unless she was a bloody award-winning actress, most things really didn’t bother her. As for bringing a bloke back to the flat—to Gemma, having sex was like Sam having a swim. Just about making the effort. And, judging from the Pisa-esque tower of toast and Marmite that Gemma had just made herself, it had a similar effect on her appetite.
Sam wiped the crumbs off the work surface without even realising what she was doing, before grabbing an apple and following Gemma into the sitting room.
‘How’s your job going?’ Anything. Sam would rather talk about anything than leave her mind to wander today. It kept trespassing into restricted areas. And Gemma was the perfect distraction. Just chatty enough to require concentration, just day-to-day enough to allow simultaneous magazine flick-through and general multi-tasking.
‘I could do this one standing on my head, but it pays pretty well considering I spend most of my day sending personal e-mails around the world and surfing the net. In fact, I was checking out the Friends Reunited website this week…’
‘You haven’t got into all that, have you?’
‘It’s brilliant. Most of our year have registered, and it’s great to see what they’re all up to. Loads of them are married.’
‘Mmm.’ Sam didn’t mind weddings. She just didn’t view marriage in the glorious Technicolor of many of her peers. She had trouble visualising the bit at the altar. Or maybe it was visualising the person waiting for her at the end of the aisle that was her main stumbling block.
‘Can’t believe it’ll be Sophie in a month… Anyway, between you and me I’m sort of hoping Dominic Pearson will get in touch. He was so damn sexy.’
‘He was pre-pubescent.’ Puffer Pearson had been smoking twenty-a-day in ten-packs from the age of fourteen and spent his early teens loitering behind his fringe at the bus stop, wearing a denim jacket over his blazer. Needless to say he and Gemma had often had to be prised apart at the bitter end of house parties. ‘And it’s all very well getting nostalgic, but life’s all about moving forward.’
‘But your schooldays are supposed to be the happiest of your life.’
‘Don’t believe the hype. I have no interest in re-establishing contact with people who spent their lives poking fun at me.’
Probably not the best time for Gemma to mention that she’d registered Sam on the site, then.
‘They were just jealous. You were annoyingly good at everything.’
‘I was asked to give up Art.’ She’d liked to think she’d been more of an abstract artist. The Kandinsky of the Greenside High School for Girls art department. So what if she couldn’t sketch a still life of a vase or a feather? She probably could have pickled a sheep or a cow in formaldehyde quite successfully, and with the right palette she was sure she might even have been able to give Mark Rothko a run for his money.
‘Fantastic. You’re not perfect after all. I’ve found your Achilles’ heel.’
‘No need to look quite so delighted. See, this is the problem.’
Sam’s mood had definitely shifted again. Gemma decided to return to non-controversial tales from the typing pool.
‘Anyway, the agency are going to send me somewhere new. The first few days anywhere are always the most fun…that’s when I get to save the day. Once I’ve