Not That Easy

Chapter 8

‘Ohmigod, ew, what the fuck is on her face?’

‘It looks like … dried blood.’

I pulled the duvet over my head. ‘What’s happening?’ I groaned.

A bright light seared through my eyes as my duvet flew off me.

‘And she’s naked,’ a male voice said.

I clutched my boobs and looked around me wildly as my pupils slowly dilated and my room came into focus. Emma was sitting on my bed scratching her nails, Will was dramatically shielding his eyes with my duvet, and Ollie was politely looking at his battered Nike high-tops at the far end of my room.

‘What are you all doing?’ I asked with as much dignity as I could muster with my hands over my nipples.

‘Babe, do you wanna put some clothes on?’ asked Emma. ‘We thought we’d all wake you up and hear the goss about your first online date, but then we saw this … blood on your face.’ She held up her sparkling green nails at me, and I saw flakes of JT’s dried nose-blood on the tips of her talons.

I sighed loudly. ‘Right, OK,’ I said. ‘Why doesn’t everyone turn around and I’ll put my dressing gown on?’ Obligingly, my housemates turned their backs to me and I grabbed my fluffy dressing gown from the floor and wrapped it around me. ‘OK, we’re good,’ I said.

‘Thank God,’ cried Will, as he lowered my duvet from his face. ‘I was starting to pass out in this thing. When did you last do a whites wash?’ He saw my face and switched topics. ‘Anyway, never mind about your washing. How was JT?’

‘And … the blood?’ asked Emma.

I looked at Ollie’s face and sighed. He was never going to see me the same way again. Not that it really mattered. I took a deep breath and began.

‘So, I got to Angel and looked for the man in the red scarf, but he was forty and wrinkly with a beer belly.’ There were shocked gasps and I smiled proudly, knowing my date horror story was worse than any of theirs. ‘So, naturally, I ran away. But whilst I was trying to get away, I tripped on the pavement.’

‘Oh my God,’ screeched Will.

‘So I was lying on the pavement, terrified, when someone came up to me. It was JT—only, the real one. He was normal aged with a slightly different red scarf, and the first JT was just a massive mistake.’

‘Oh,’ said Will. ‘I thought you were going to say the blood was from some kind of perverted sexual assault.’

‘Um, no,’ I said slowly. ‘If that had happened, I would have called the police and would not be telling you this so casually.’ He shrugged and I carried on, ignoring my pounding hangover. ‘Anyway, JT was gorgeous and normal and I even ate a second dinner for him. Then we went for drinks and he paid for everything and we snogged loads. Only, then he went to the loo and the barman told me I had stuff on my face and … it was blood. Because he nose-bled on me.’

All three of my flatmates stared at me in revulsion.

‘Fuck me, that’s disgusting,’ cried Will.

‘Oh yeah? Coming from the guy who uses conditioner as lube?’

Ollie grinned. ‘Shit, Ellie, that is one hell of a date story.’

‘Thanks, I guess.’

‘It’s hysterical,’ he said. ‘But … did you go home with him after?’

I paused as I tried to remember what happened next. The rest of the night was a warm fuzzy blur of—

‘Oh God,’ I cried. ‘I went to the loo to wash it off, then I hid in there from him and fell asleep. Until the hot manager came and took me out the secret fire escape.’

Emma and Will started howling with laughter, but Ollie stared at me. He looked kind of impressed. ‘A hot manager?’ he asked. ‘Shit, your night sounds pretty wild.’

I shrugged, hiding a grin. My night did sound dramatic. So much for ‘single Ellie with her single bed’—I so almost had a one-night stand. ‘Yeah, I guess it was. Does it make you miss your single days?’

He stared straight into my eyes and I felt my knees go tingly. ‘Sometimes,’ he said softly.

‘That’s fucking ridiculous,’ gasped Emma. She was rolling on my bed with Will, still snorting with laughter. ‘It reminds me of the time you got with the only emo in Mahiki.’

‘Emma, you weren’t even there that night,’ I snapped.

‘And then you slipped on your friend’s come in your bath,’ she gasped.

Will sat up straight. ‘Come … or conditioner?’ he asked and then collapsed with laughter again.

I rolled my eyes at them. ‘Guys, get over it. We’ve all had bad dates.’

‘Uh, yeah, but I’ve never abandoned mine after they bled on me,’ cried Will. ‘Mainly because they’ve never bled on me.’

‘EWWW, the blood,’ shrieked Emma, as she remembered it was on her hands. ‘I’m covered in a strange man’s blood. OHMIGOD, AIDS!!’

‘Fuck,’ I cried in panic. ‘You don’t think …?’

Will groaned loudly. ‘You’re both so fucking stupid sometimes,’ he said. ‘AIDS is a severe form of HIV and you’re not going to get it from his nosebleed unless it’s gone into an open wound on your face. Do you have a cut on your face, Ellie?’

I raced over to my full-length mirror and examined my face. ‘OK, no,’ I admitted.

‘Then, my darling, you are AIDS free,’ he said. ‘Congratulations.’

I hobbled downstairs to the kitchen to find breakfast and stop my hangover. My head was banging and I needed carbs to soak up the alcohol. But all I had was Sainsbury’s own-brand Crunchy Nut Cornflakes.

Forlornly, I tipped the packet into a bowl and reached for the milk. I was pouring it in when I realised there were small black lumps floating in my bowl. What the fuck were they?! I grabbed a spoon and lifted a few out to examine them closely. They looked like rabbit poos, only smaller.

Then I froze. There were sounds coming from my cornflakes carton. I took a deep breath and moved towards it. I held on to the sideboard to steady myself and hesitantly peered inside. There was a tiny grey lump moving in my cornflakes. I opened my mouth and screamed.

Will walked into the kitchen. ‘Seen a mouse?’ he asked nonchalantly, as he pushed past my trembling body to get to his cupboard.

‘IT’S IN MY CORNFLAKES!’ I shrieked.

‘Yeah, there’s a few in here,’ he said. ‘I saw a bunch running out of the bin bags last week.’

I stared at him aghast. ‘Are you fucking kidding me? You’ve seen mice in here, and you didn’t think to tell anyone?! What’s wrong with you, Will? We need to buy traps and … and poison.’

‘Ellie,’ he said, ‘we live in London. Obviously we’re going to have mice. Besides, we have a four-bed in Haggerston with a living room and only pay £550 each. We’re lucky we just have mice.’

‘As opposed to?’ I asked. ‘Oh fuck, do you mean RATS?’

‘Calm down.’ He sighed. ‘You can’t have mice and rats at the same time.’

‘They’re … mutually exclusive?’

‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Anyway, are you going to eat those cornflakes? I’m starving.’

‘There is a mouse in the box,’ I said slowly. ‘Do you not get this?’

‘Whatever.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll just take the mouse out.’

I stared at him in incomprehension and backed out of the kitchen quickly, straight up the stairs to Emma’s room.

‘Em,’ I cried, as I pushed open her door. ‘There’s loads of mice and Will doesn’t care. What do we do?’

‘Ugh, I know,’ she said, as she paused the programme she was watching on her laptop. ‘I’ve just been getting Serge to bring me food or staying at his more.’

‘Right, well, some of us don’t have a boyfriend to rely on, so … shall we buy some traps and try to get rid of them?’ I asked in frustration.

‘Meh, I don’t think they really work,’ she said. ‘Besides, it’s not like they’re rats.’

How was my best friend OK with mice living in our cereals? I shook my head at her and went straight to Ollie’s room. I knocked and waited for him to reply.

‘Come in,’ he called.

I pushed open the door and walked into his room. It was all grey, and the only effort he had put into decorating it was a collage of pictures of him and Yomi stuck onto his wardrobe. They were both so attractive that they looked like a celeb couple. She had massive green eyes and a weave that made her look like Beyoncé. Ugh.

I walked straight past her smiling face and sat down on his bed.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘Mice,’ I announced. ‘Apparently they live with us and I found one in my cornflakes.’

He laughed. ‘Shit, I can’t believe they got into your food.’

‘I know. Who knew mice love own-brand cornflakes?’

‘Glad to see we don’t have middle-class mice. Maybe we should name them,’ he suggested.

‘Or,’ I said, ‘perhaps we could, um, exterminate them all?’

He scrunched up his face at me and I stopped myself running over to touch it. ‘How do you propose we do that?’ he asked.

‘Traps? Poison? Pest-killing men?’

‘I think the men only come in for rats and stuff, and I reckon they’d be pretty expensive, but I guess we could try the others. The only thing is that poison means the mice will eat it, then die wherever they are. We could have dead mice living in our walls.’

‘Ohmigod, ew.’

‘Exactly.’

‘OK, so traps?’ I asked.

‘Two options—lovely humane cages that just catch them without hurting them but cost loads, or cheap traps that snap their legs and get blood everywhere,’ he said.

I groaned and collapsed back onto the bed. It smelt musty but in a sexy kind of way. Ew, it was probably his and Yomi’s sex smells. I sat up again. ‘You don’t want to do anything either, do you?’ I asked him.

‘The others want to leave the mice alone too?’

‘Yeah, and I can tell you do as well. Am I the only one who wants to eat food that’s not contaminated by mice poo?’

‘I think so,’ he said. ‘But, hey, if we keep the house extra clean for a bit, they’ll go away on their own. Or, at least, there’ll be less of them.’

‘OK.’ I sighed. ‘And there was me thinking that living in an East London flatshare would be glamorous.’

‘Nothing glamorous about earning the minimum wage in our twenties,’ he said.

‘But at least you have an actual job,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t advertising pay well?’

‘Not in your first year, and not when every graduate in London is willing to do it for free as an internship.’

‘Ah, yeah, that would be me.’

‘Don’t worry. I did my fair share of interning too. And journalism is way cooler than advertising, so I reckon it will pay off in the long run.’

‘Mmm, maybe,’ I said. ‘Anyway, on less depressing topics, how’s stuff with Yomi?’

‘Yeah, good,’ he said. ‘But, I guess … well, four years is a long time to be together and long distance is hard at the moment. It will be easier when she’s not still up in Bristol and she’s back here in London.’

‘Yeah, definitely.’ I nodded, as though I was highly experienced with long-term, long-distance relationships. ‘I’m sure it will get easier soon.’

‘I hope so,’ he said. ‘It’s getting to that weird time where I’m twenty-five and I’ve had the same girlfriend for four years. I kind of miss playing the field.’

Oh my God. My dreams were coming true. Ollie wanted to break up with Yomi. I forced myself to breathe calmly. I couldn’t suggest they break up or it would look bad. I had to be subtle.

‘Maybe you should?’ I asked. Subtle was overrated.

‘Ah, who knows what will happen. You’re lucky you don’t have to deal with any of this crap.’

‘Mm, yeah, so lucky that no one wants to date me. They just want to bleed on me.’

He laughed. ‘That’s more action than I’ve got all week. Anyway, are we going to go clean this kitchen or what?’

‘Let’s do it,’ I said. ‘Maybe my man-repelling powers will work on these mice. Fingers crossed they’re male.’

‘What if they’re gay mice? They’ll be all over me.’

‘Ha ha. They’d be over Will more like.’

‘Hey, I’m not that bad.’

‘I know. I mean, I, uh … Kitchen?’

He grinned at me. ‘Kitchen.’

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