Girls’ Night In
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It’s not even a loaded silence – of things left unsaid, or wounds being licked or issues being brooded over, Finty realized, it’s the result of there being very little to say. Soon enough he’ll say, ‘Another drink? Shall we eat?’ and after that, sex and sleep.
‘Another drink?’ asked Brett, ‘or shall we go and eat?’
‘What’s your favourite colour?’ Finty asked him, turning her body towards him, making an effort and really wanting to know.
‘What?’ Brett replied, because he really didn’t understand the question. He frowned at Finty and winked at the waitress who sauntered over with notepad and attitude.
‘Film!’ Finty tried. ‘What’s your favourite film?’
‘Another G and T?’ Brett asked her, now perplexed to the point of irritation.
‘Never heard of that one!’ Finty said lightly, nodding at the waitress to affirm her drink.
‘I’m going to the bog,’ Brett said with fatigue, as if to suggest it was a place far preferable to Finty’s company and Top Ten questionnaire.
‘Desert Island Discs?’ she implored in vain as he rose and left.
What are mine this week? She pondered, enjoying how impossible it was to select only eight pieces of music. And then it struck her that she would really rather be on a desert island with no music at all than with Brett, even if he placed the world’s jukebox at her disposal. She glanced around the room. A couple, much her own age, sat locked in each other’s company; no limbs touching, just engrossed, obviously stimulated, undoubtedly in love. Near to them, a group of four women. A gathering, a girls’ night out – replete with the essential alternation between whispering, giggling and shrieking ‘No! Oh my God!’ Their conversation was shared naturally, their laughter and interaction unforced and obviously highly cherished. Finty didn’t want to be on a desert island; she didn’t want to be in the West End. She wanted, desperately, to be in Richmond. The waitress arrived with the replenished drinks. Finty glanced at her watch. It was gone half nine.
‘Do you think we could have some more peanuts?’ Finty asked. ‘A large bowl?’
‘No!’ PoUy laughed.
‘Oh my God!’ Sally shrieked, hiding behind her hands.
‘Oh yes indeed!’ Chloë confirmed. ‘And I’ll tell you something for free, it was weird at first – but bloody amazing before long.’
‘You old slapper!’ Polly said, clapping.
‘Sexual deviant, more like!’ Sally laughed.
‘I’m a bit pissed I think,’ said Chloë, theatrically forlorn.
‘You’d have to have been,’ Polly snorted, ‘to have done that!’
‘Better have some more vino-darling,’ Sally said, all doctor-like. ‘Here’s to you, you dirty, dirty girl!’ The three women raised their glasses and drank.
There was signal and battery on Finty’s mobile phone but again she went to the payphone in the foyer.
‘Lady! Let me guess, you’re calling for the rescue services!’ the now familiar American voice called softly to her as she was about to drop coins in the slot. Finty turned and regarded him quizzically. ‘Hey! You could have the fire brigade drench him with water, the police lock him up, or an ambulance take him away to a very special hospital.’
‘Look,’ Finty remonstrated, though it was against her better judgement, ‘he’s my boyfriend. You’re offending me.’
‘No,’ said the man, ‘I’m not offending you. Unnerving you, maybe. Offending you – no. I just had a terrible steak. I left most of it and, for some goddamn reason, a large tip too. I’m going to my room. Come use the phone from there.’
Finty didn’t think twice about following him into the elevator. But she did think of Brett. Fleetingly. And then she remembered the peanuts and the waitresses to whom he could wink, and she knew he’d be OK. For the meantime, at least.
‘I’m Finty,’ she introduced herself before disembarking the lift on the sixth floor.
‘And I’m George,’ the American said. They shook hands and he led the way to his room.
Rooms. The American had a suite.
‘Are you drunk?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Finty rued.
‘Hungry?’
‘No.’
‘Want to make that call?’
‘Please.’
‘Would you like a gin and tonic? And some room service?’
‘Yes please.’
‘Dial 9 for an outside line.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Hullo?’ Polly answers the phone. Finty can hear singing in the background. She knows it is Chloë doing her Gloria Gaynor. She can almost see Sally collapsed in a fit of giggles on the couch. She can envisage Polly sitting cross-legged on the floor with the telephone crooked under her chin while she rolls a joint.
‘It’s me again.’
‘Finty!’ Polly trills. Suddenly, the other two join her in a wonderful, if dissonant, chorus of ‘Finty McKenzie! Finty McKenzie!’ The volume is such that Finty holds the receiver away from her ear and the cacophony wafts into the room much to the delight of George.
‘Are you having a lovely time with Brat?’ Polly asks while Chloë in the background hisses, ‘Brett! It’s Brett.’
‘I’m not with him any more,’ Finty says. ‘I’m with George, in his hotel room.’
There is silence. She hears Polly repeat her last sentence verbatim, but with dramatic full stops between each word, to the other two.
‘Who the fuck is George?’ she can hear Sally gasp.
‘Where the fuck is the hotel?’ she can hear Chloë implore.
‘Are you OK?’ Polly says, suddenly sounding sober.
‘Ish,’ says Finty. ‘Can you come and get me?’
Sally, Polly and Chloë stare at each other. They are in Richmond. Not so much drunk as utterly sozzled and somewhat stoned to boot. They have a friend in need holed up in a hotel room with a man called George and a boyfriend called Brett in the bar beneath. The information is too much to digest, let alone act upon.
‘Finty,’ says Polly.
‘George,’ says Sally.
‘We need a cab,’ says Chloë.
Finty replaced the receiver and became engrossed immediately in the chintz of the curtains because it seemed like a safe place to be; lost in the swirls and details of something other than her own life. She was vaguely aware of someone unfolding her clenched fist and placing a glass in her hand, a plate on her knee; of someone stroking her hair and patting her shoulder. When the hand was removed, her shoulder felt chill and so she reached for the hand and placed it back there. She hadn’t the energy to swallow down the lump in her throat, or the wherewithal to prevent a large fat tear glazing and stinging her eye before oozing itself out to splat against the glass in her hand. The noise brought her back to the present.
‘Spoiled,’ she said quietly.
‘Hey,’ said an American voice soothingly.
‘But I have,’ she shrugged, as if it was a fait accompli. ‘I’ve spoiled his evening, your evening, their evening. And my own.’
‘Horse shit!’ George protested. ‘And bullshit!’
‘But the Gathering,’ Finty stressed, ‘it’s sacred. I turned it down for a man with a penchant for peanuts and the ability to make my nose itch.’
‘Well, hon,’ George said after a thoughtful slurp at his glass, ‘I guess you won’t be doing that again.’
‘A Man Called George!’ Sally proclaimed to the concierge, giving the counter an authoritative tap. ‘Please.’
The concierge bestowed upon her a look of great distaste, followed by a withering glance at Polly and Chloë who were sniggering behind the faux fig tree in the foyer.
‘George Who?’
‘He’s expecting us,’ said Sally, refusing to drop eye contact.
‘He’s American,’ Chloë added helpfully.
‘And he’s wearing plaid,’ Polly announced as some kind of open-sesame password.
‘Hi, I’m George,’ says George, ‘and she’s in there.’
‘Hullo, George,’ Sally says, eyes agoggle at his unexpectedly advanced years.
‘Hullo, George,’ says Chloë, eyes agoggle at the extent of his plaid-clad attire.
‘Hullo, George,’ says Polly, eyes agoggle at the opulence of his suite.
‘Hi, ladies,’ says George, ‘she’s in there. She’s expecting you.’
‘Finty!’ the girls cry with love and sympathy, rushing to embrace their friend.
‘Finty!’ they marvel, looking around and spying two bottles of unopened champagne on ice and platters boasting crustless sandwiches and miniature pastries.
‘Girls’ Night In,’ Finty says, very matter-of-fact. ‘George says we should gather here.’
They all look at George. He reminds Sally of her late grandfather. Polly thinks he must be a fairy godfather and then she thinks she must have had one joint too many. Chloë wonders fleetingly what on earth they are doing here in the sumptuous suite of a kindly stranger at gone 10 p.m. Finty wonders where on earth to start.
‘It all began when my nose started to itch,’ she tells Sally, Chloë and Polly who are gathered about her, wide-eyed and jaws dropped as if teacher is about to tell a story.
‘Champagne?’ George suggests, dimming the lights, opening a bottle and pouring four glasses.
‘Aren’t you joining us?’ Sally asks.
George looks rather taken aback, and clasps his hand to his heart for emphasis. ‘God no! It’s a Gathering. Out of bounds. Girls only. Anyway, I have business to attend to.’
And he leaves. He leaves them in one of the rooms of his suite, furnished with champagne and sandwiches. And pastries. And warmth. He leaves the girls, who are now giggling, wrapped around each other on a capacious settee. He has work to do.
The bar is still full and Brett is exactly where George last saw him and where Finty left him over an hour ago. Not that he seems to have realized. His winks at the waitress have provided fast-track service for his gin and tonic to have been frequently replenished. He’s thought only fleetingly of Finty because, in the three months they’ve been together, he’s only ever thought fleetingly of Finty anyway.
‘Peanut?’ George asks.
‘Why not,’ Brett responds.
‘Some advice?’ George asks.
‘Why not,’ Brett responds.
‘Don’t date women with itchy noses,’ George says, with a slap to Brett’s shoulder blades, ‘they’re not your type.’
Jenny Colgan
Jenny Colgan is the author of numerous bestselling novels – Little Beach Street Bakery and the Top 5 bestseller, Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop of Dreams, which won the RNA Romantic Comedy Novel Award 2013. Meet Me at the Cupcake Café was also a Sunday Times Top 10 bestseller, and won the Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance 2012.
Dougie, Spoons and the Aquarium Solarium
Jenny Colgan
Doug’s toes popped into life like little exclamation marks hanging over the end of the bed, and he rubbed his sticky eyes and tried not to catch the gunk in his stubble. He let out a groan as last night crept back into his head. How had it ended again? Not well. He spooled it through his mind. OK. He met a pretty girl in a nightclub, they’d danced, grinning foolishly at each other because it was too loud to talk, they’d come back here, they’d drunk whisky, they’d skirted the whole snogging issue by talking drivel about his record collection for hours, then he’d finally managed to snog her. That much he was sure of. More than snogged her? He turned his head, and his face crinkled at an opened condom packet. Huh. He had definitely more than snogged her. So why the sense of utter foreboding?
She – Chloë, that was her name – was a dental assistant, which sounded revolting to him, but he’d liked her, definitely liked her – absolutely – wasn’t sweetly asleep and facing him on the pillow … Just in case he’d gone blind, he stuck out his hand and patted all around the bed and under the mattress. Nope. She was a thin girl, but not Flat Stanley.
Tentatively he sat up and stared round his twelve-by-twelve room. The cupboard was a possibility, but an unlikely one. It struck him what was wrong. She was gone, but her clothes were strewn all over the floor. Therefore, unless she was flapping along a mile away in an enormously long shirt and clown shoes, it meant that, well, it had happened again …
‘CHLOË?’ he shouted, hoping vainly that he might be able to do this without having to get out of bed and touch the icy floor. This didn’t feel like summer at all, as per bloody Doncaster usual.
‘CHLOË?’ There was no response. Sighing, he pulled the duvet round himself and landed heavily on the floor, then performed a speedy duvet-to-dressing-gown manoeuvre which didn’t involve exposing his entire naked body to the elements at any one time. He opened the door, but couldn’t see her on the landing.
Sighing again, he picked up her bra and used it as a glove puppet.
‘CHLOË! ’E ’ees ’olding me ’ostage! Save me! Save me!’
‘I’m out here, you twat.’ The voice sounded hostile.
Doug went out to the landing, but it still seemed empty.
‘Ah – good one.’
‘Up here.’
Chloë, entirely nude, was crouched trembling on top of the old wardrobe that stood in the hall to contain shit he hadn’t got round to throwing out yet. Doug stared at her.
‘Hello again. Ehm, is this a sexual thing, or are you just a really fanatical duster?’
‘Is it gone?’ growled Chloë.
‘Would you like some breakfast? I’ll make you break-fast-in-wardrobe if you like.’
‘IS IT GONE?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Doug, talking Fluffy out of his dressing-gown pocket.
Chloë screamed her head off.
‘You know,’ said Doug patiently, ‘he’s only a very baby python.’
Chloë continued to scream. Doug considered the situation.
‘I don’t suppose there’s any point asking you for your phone number, is there?’
‘Eek! Eek! Eek!’
Doug left the house for work eating a slice of toast and giving bits to Fluffy.
‘Why can’t we meet a nice girl, eh, Fluff? I mean, we’re nice guys, aren’t we?’
He turned into the road.
‘Hmm. I hope she doesn’t want to use the bathroom. I forgot to mention we had your dad staying for the weekend.’
From inside the house came the sound of glass breaking.
‘Eek! Eek! Eek!’
Doug and his fat friend Spoons had set up the Solarium Aquarium with the money Spoons got when his dad was hiding it from his dodgy road-haulage business. The Solarium had been Spoons’ idea: ‘People can come in, get all their reptile needs and a suntan at the same time – and it rhymes! Brilliant, eh?’
Doug took care of the reptile end, and didn’t quite share Spoons’ vision. He personally wouldn’t mind lying down completely naked and defenceless amidst lots of writhing dangerous things, but lots of people, apparently, did. The solarium wasn’t going too well at all, although it did mean Spoons got to be bright orange at all times. This didn’t help his pulling tactics though, as being fat, snaky and bright orange isn’t actually that much more attractive than, say, just being fat and snaky. Doug, being tallish, and ruggedish, was a bit of a looker for a herpetologist, and supplied much of Spoons’ fantasy requirements.
‘Tops?’ asked Spoons avidly.
‘Yes,’ said Doug.
‘Fingers?’
‘Yup.’
‘You did it?’
‘Yes, yes, yes.’
‘And you’re miserable?’
‘Spoons, I’m a sensitive guy, OK? Maybe I’m just looking for that little bit more.’
‘What, like up the bum?’
‘I just don’t understand it. Every time I meet a nice girl she goes screaming in the opposite direction.’
‘Yeh, that happens to me too.’
‘After she’s met Fluffy. But I’m just … I just need to meet a girl who shares my interests, you know what I mean.’
‘If I met a girl who shared my interests,’ reflected Spoons gloomily, ‘we’d just wank all the time. I’d never see her.’
Suddenly, outside the shop, loud yells were heard and there came the sound of a car crashing. The shop bell tinkled. Spoons and Doug looked at each other and raised their eyebrows.
Into the shop strode a dramatically beautiful woman, all shiny black hair and slashed red lipstick. She was wearing a long, expensive and unnecessarily fiddly coat which looked designer. However, none of these things screamed attention to themselves quite as much as the eight-foot boa constrictor draped round her neck like a – ahem – boa.
‘What a beauty!’ said Doug and Spoons both at once.
‘Thank you,’ said the woman, flushing.
‘We meant the boa,’ said Spoons.
‘I know,’ said the woman.
Spoons nudged Douglas unnecessarily hard.
‘Get off with her!’ he whispered loudly.
‘Can I help you, madam?’ said Doug, gulping.
‘It’s Jumbo,’ she said. ‘We’re new in town. I’ve come to buy him everything he needs – no expense spared. Also, do you know of anywhere I could get a fake sun-tan around here?’
Doug and Spoons’ eyes grew as round as a cross-section of the rare Australian ring snake.
Her name was Maia, and she had been brought up in Indonesia. She took to the Fluffster immediately, coiling him round her little fingers like a rope trick. The Fluffster, however, didn’t take to Jumbo AT ALL and scuttled back to the safety of Doug’s inner pocket after realizing he was – at this age at least – being pretty comprehensively out-snaked.
Maia was a primary school teacher, but had had to leave her last school after an incident she didn’t seem to want to talk about too much; although now, six to eight weeks on, there were still definite signs of distension in Jumbo’s belly.
Doug was in love.
‘Would you, ahem …’
Maia had wandered out of the solarium covered only in a very slinky towel and Jumbo, which reminded Doug all too pleasantly of Nastassja Kinski. Spoons was gulping and quietly trying to stop hyperventilating in the background.
‘Yes?’ she purred.
Doug sighed. Asking girls out wasn’t normally one of his problems. It was usually about the six-hour mark that his troubles started … but this one had him floored.
‘I mean, if you’re new in town …’
It occurred to him for a second that Doncaster probably didn’t have a great deal to offer somebody this exotic. Maia, however, smiled widely.
‘Oh, could you show me around? Do you know any good chip shops?’
Behind him, Spoons made a high-pitched whining sound.
Doug wandered up on time to Harry Ramsden’s. Jumbo appeared to have a long piece of leather string coming out of his mouth attached to another woman’s hand. She looked a bit shellshocked, and Maia appeared to be giving her two hundred pounds.
‘Just two,’ she said to the shocked waiter as they swept into the restaurant. ‘Jumbo’s already eaten.’
Maia launched ahead, just as Doug noticed Chloë getting up to leave with a clutch of squealing girlfriends. She raised her eyebrows at him.
‘Playing with the big boys now, I see.’
He stopped.
‘Look, Chloë, I’m sorry about the other night …’
‘Oh, don’t worry about it at all. I’m clearly just not slimy enough for you.’
‘Snakes aren’t slime – Oh, forget it. And I am sorry.’ He’d forgotten how pretty she was. She looked like a dancer, even just pulling her coat on.
‘Well, if I ever start up a tarantula collection, I’ll ring you.’
‘Douglas! Our table’s ready!’
Chloë smiled and walked out of the restaurant, giving him an extremely wide berth.
‘Spoons, please, just stop panting like a dog. You’re steaming up the cases.’
‘I just … Oh, please tell me. Please.’
‘There’s nothing to tell. We talked a lot about snakes and the shop. Entirely, in fact, about snakes and the shop. She’s thinking about opening up a branch in Melton Mowbray.’
‘That’s brilliant! Global entrepreneurs, definitely. Er … were you feeling her up whilst you were doing it?’
‘No. To be honest, I wouldn’t have felt entirely secure vis-à-vis Jumbo and my right hand.’
‘What – you mean you didn’t score?’
‘Nope.’
Spoons slumped.
‘Fuck! Dougie, I could have taken her out and managed that.’
‘I’m just … I mean, she’s everything I’ve ever wanted – she’s bright, she’s beautiful, she loves members of the reptile family …’
‘She tans …’
‘She tans …’
‘And the problem is, exactly?’
The bell tinkled. Maia stalked in looking like a Bond girl in a tight red leather jacket, Jumbo practically caressing her left breast. She looked breathtaking.
‘Darling, which football team do you support?’
‘Ehm, Newcastle. Why?’
‘I thought so …’ Maia drew a team strip and two tickets out of her bag. ‘And here – I bought an extra sock and cut the foot off so that Fluffy can wear a strip too.’
Doug reached out his hand and held Spoons up before he fainted.
‘Where’s the office? I’ll go and put it there for you, and you can try it on when you’re not scooping out gecko poo.’
‘Ehm, uhm, it’s through the back …’
She sashayed off and vanished.
‘If I were you I’d take one of those little garter snakes over there and use it as a WEDDING RING,’ predicted Spoons.
‘I would too,’ said Mr Nebbington, who came in every day to stare at the animals in a vaguely disconcerting way for hours on end.
Fluffy popped out of Doug’s pocket. He was obviously just looking around – but it looked weirdly like he was shaking his head, that was all.
‘What’s she doing in the office?’ asked Spoons, fifteen minutes later. ‘Maybe she stripped naked and is rolling herself in butter and Smarties,’ he added thoughtfully.
‘Hmm,’ said Doug, and went through to have a look. Maia and Jumbo were hunched over what looked like a huge pile of files. He cleared his throat, and she straightened up guiltily.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Ehm … actually, I was looking for a catalogue. I, ehm, want to buy Jumbo a little cowboy hat.’
‘Are you sure that’s wise?’
She shrugged. ‘Well, he ate the beret.’
Doug looked back at the papers. ‘I’m not sure …’
‘No, definitely not – Ooh, look! My shoelace is untied!’
Before Doug had a moment to think, she stretched fully over from the waist, bending away from him. Her skirt hitched up and up …
Doug shook his head. His life didn’t usually feel much like a porn film. He had, in fact, not quite believed that woman actually ever behaved like this. But the fact was, unless she was wearing a very bizarrely patterned pair of knickers, Maia didn’t have any pants on. He wondered briefly if she’d possibly just forgotten, but his reliable trouser snake rather thought otherwise.
She turned her head up to him coquettishly from somewhere near the floor.
‘Will I get to see you tonight?’
‘Uh-huh-huh huh, ehm, rather!’
He watched a part of her beginning with ‘b’ sashay out the door. And, sadly, it wasn’t her brain.
The problem, thought Doug to himself as he put on his tie, was … could this maybe be perhaps just a little too perfect? It was like ordering a pizza and getting a five-course banquet delivered to your door, made up of all your favourite foods – say, in Doug’s case, five different types of pizza. He wasn’t quite sure what he’d done to deserve it.
‘So did you think up the solarium idea all by yourself?’
‘No, that was Spoons. He thought it would be good ‘cause it rhymed.’
‘Wow. How did he raise the internal necessary backing capital … er, I mean, you know, the cash to buy the shop and stuff?’
They were sitting in a Café Flo. The management had found them a whole private section, which seemed amazing. Well, he assumed it was the management. Certainly the room had got up and walked out en masse.