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Authors: Mike Gayle

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BOOK: His 'n' Hers
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‘I know all this,’ I say to Nick. ‘What am I going to do? I really wanted this to work with Alison. If I have a bad first date on a Monday I know I won’t get the opportunity to have a second date on any other day of the week.’
‘Why didn’t you tell her?’
‘She wouldn’t understand.’
‘You’re in a right mess,’ says Nick. ‘Have you ever actually been on a Monday-night date?’
‘Twice. The first one was in 1987 with a girl called Katie Jones. It resulted in us sitting in an empty cinema watching
Teen Wolf
, which neither of us enjoyed as we both had a geography exam the following morning. The second time was in 1988 with Gina Marsh, who I met at a sixth-form disco and insisted on a Monday-night date because the rest of her week was so busy. We ended up going for something to eat at a curry-house, which was so empty the entire waiting staff had nothing better to do all evening than watch our disastrous date unfurl before their very eyes as if we were an afternoon soap opera with the worst kind of wooden acting ever.’
‘I think you’re knackered,’ says Nick, laughing. ‘There’s no way you can get out of this one.’
6.45 p.m.
My housemates and I are sitting in the living room in a post-
Songs of Praise
pre-
Last of The Summer Wine
Sunday-evening slump playing with Disco. She’s already become one of the family and we’ve taken great delight in buying catfood and various treats for her from the corner shop down the road. In return Disco entertained us all afternoon rolling around on her back on the floor, getting scared of inanimate objects for no apparent reason, using her claws to climb the curtains in the living room to dangerously high levels, and even clichéd kitten stuff like playing with a ball of wool. I’m just about to stand up and get her a treat from the bag on the kitchen table when there’s a knock at the door. ‘Are we expecting anyone?’ I ask my housemates. ‘Because if we are I’m not dressed for visitors.’
Everyone shakes their head. Quite often one of my housemates’ boyfriends drops by unannounced, which is okay if I’m looking half-way decent but not if I’m not. Right now I’m not. I’m wearing virtually the same outfit that I’d worn to Blockbuster on Friday night, even down to having the same elastic band tying up my hair. The only difference between Friday night’s look and tonight’s is I have a smear of baked-bean tomato sauce on the front of my hooded sweatshirt.
‘I suppose I’d better go and see who it is,’ I say. ‘But whoever it is I’m not letting them in, okay?’
I peer through the spyhole and see Jim standing on the step. As I open the front door I receive my second shock: I’m hit by the aroma of Indian takeaway emanating from a brown paper bag in his hands.
‘Hi,’ I say, grinning hugely, while trying to distract him from my dishevelled attire.
‘Hi,’ says Jim. ‘I can tell from the look on your face you’re wondering what I want. The thing is, I was just passing with an early Monday-night date.’
‘A Monday-night date?’
‘You know how everything is prepackaged these days,’ he continues. ‘Well, they now do dates in a box.’ Jim looks at the bag in his hands. ‘Well, actually this is more of a bag than a box. A bag containing a takeaway for two and a video.’
‘I still don’t understand.’
‘Look,’ he says, ‘I should’ve explained to you on the phone. I can’t do Monday-night dates.’ He then begins to expound to me his long and convoluted theory on Monday-night dates. ‘That’s why,’ he says in conclusion, ‘I’m standing here on your doorstep bringing our date forward by twenty-four hours. This is a tricky time for new relationships and we don’t want to jinx it, do we?’
‘No,’ I say, laughing. ‘We don’t.’
So after apologising profusely to my housemates Jim and I have our first date on the green-velour sofa in the living room. We eat Chicken Rogan Josh and pilau rice from plates on our laps, share a naan bread and play with Disco well after everyone else has gone to bed.
11.55 p.m.
‘What do you want to do now?’ I ask Jim. The house is deadly silent and we are huddled on the sofa.
‘I don’t mind,’ says Jim.
‘We could talk.’
‘What do you want to talk about?’
‘I’m really glad you came round tonight. I know I’ve been a bit useless when it’s come to you and me.’
‘You could say that. It’s taken us . . .’ he pauses, working it out ‘. . . a long time to get together.’
I laugh. ‘Well, all I really wanted to say is that despite all my attempts to put you off –’
‘– and there were many –’
‘– I’m glad I didn’t succeed.’
‘But why did you try to put me off? Is this always the way you go about things? Did Damon have to work so hard to get you or was this a special test that you dreamed up for me?’
‘Apart from Freshers’ Night, which was more because I thought you were a nutter, I suppose it was a case of the more you like someone and the longer you like them the more there is at stake. And, let’s face it, it’s taken us quite a bit of time to get to where we are now.’
‘It was a long time,’ he says, ‘but it was worth it.’
Monday, 1 March 1993
7.33 a.m.
It’s morning and I wake up next to Jim. I make him toast and then he leaves to go across the road to get changed and shower. He comes back ten minutes later and we get the bus into town together.
1.22 p.m.
Revolution Records is on completely the opposite side of the city centre to Alison’s bookshop. Even so, during my lunch-break I walk all the way to Kenway’s just to say hello to her for fifteen minutes. In the end I’m in such a rush to get back to the shop that I miss my lunch. I have to survive the rest of the day on three cups of coffee and a packet of Polos.
6.20 p.m.
Jim meets me after work and we go for a drink in the Cathedral Tavern. Jim’s so hungry that when he orders drinks for us he returns to the table with two pints of lager and five packets of dry-roasted peanuts. I take him home to mine and make him five slices of toast with two tins of beans.
Tuesday, 2 March 1993
7.13 a.m.
I suggest to Alison that we should both call in sick to work. Alison decides she’s going to have a cold with overtones of a fever that will suggest she might be coming down with flu. I go for food poisoning and, for the sake of my boss, I go into explicit detail about how it’s coming out of both ends like a fountain. After the calls we go back to bed and sleep so late that by the time we wake up we’ve missed the midday episode of
Neighbours
.
2.02 p.m.
We have a leisurely breakfast/lunch of cornflakes, toast and jam, then take up residence on the sofa, watching the cream of afternoon television while working our way through two packets of crisps and a large bag of toffee popcorn. When Alison’s housemates arrive home from work they discover us asleep in front of
Countdown
surrounded by crisps packets and popcorn bits.
Wednesday, 3 March 1993
11.09 p.m.
‘I don’t want you to take this the wrong way,’ I tell Alison, at the end of another evening together, ‘but I think we should spend the night apart. I’m shattered, aren’t you? Every night since we’ve been together we’ve stayed up really late. I fell asleep at the till this afternoon. It was only for a split second but the only thing that woke me up was Patrick, my boss, slipping on the new Napalm Death album and cranking the volume right up. I yelled so loudly everyone in the shop looked at me as if I was some sort of lunatic. We need sleep. So, let’s just take the night off, okay?’
Alison looks disappointed. ‘Do we have to?’
‘Yes . . . no . . . yes . . . At least, I think so.’
At the door she gives me a long kiss goodnight. ‘Shall I walk you home?’ she asks.
‘Will you stop at nothing to seduce me?’ I ask her. ‘I live across the road, I think I’ll be all right, somehow.’
11.37 p.m.
I’ve been lying in bed for all of five minutes when I realise I already miss Jim too much to go to sleep. It might have been easier if he’d lived miles away but I keep thinking about him, wondering what he’s doing, what expression is on his face, whether he’s asleep or not. By the time it gets to a quarter to twelve I’ve put my shoes back on, loaded my bag with spare underwear, deodorant and a clean top for work. When I tell Jane I’m going over to Jim’s because I miss him she laughs like a drain and shakes her head in pity.
Thursday, 4 March 1993
12.02 a.m.
As I walk along the path to the front gate and cross the road, I’m in a world of my own until a voice breaks my concentration. ‘Great minds think alike,’ says Jim.
I look up and he’s standing right in front of me. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Yours,’ he explains. ‘I couldn’t sleep. I kind of missed you. Where were you off to, like I don’t already know?’
‘It’s pathetic, really. Look at us. We’re like a couple of lovestruck teenagers. We’re twenty-two. We shouldn’t be acting like this, should we?’
Jim looks at me and shrugs. Then, hand in hand, we go back to mine.
6.33 p.m.
After work we get the bus back to Kings Heath, but on a whim I decide to make Alison a meal from scratch, using the kind of raw materials you only find in a supermarket. We get off in Moseley and go to Kwik Save.
‘I love this,’ says Alison, as we walk up the first aisle in the store, which contains cereal, biscuits, fruit juice and other drinks. ‘I’m so excited.’
‘Well, if Kwik Save gets you going.’ I say, ‘tomorrow I’ll take you to Poundland.’
‘I’m not excited by Kwik Save – although who couldn’t be excited by a store where you have to buy your own carrier bags? – I’m excited because I’m shopping with you. I normally do my shopping with the girls. Which is fine. But it has just occurred to me that I’ve never been supermarket shopping with someone I’m going out with.’
‘You never went to the supermarket with Damon?’
‘It just never happened. There’s something really nice about shopping together, don’t you think? It’s because it’s so domestic, isn’t it? I love watching couples doing their shopping together, don’t you?’ She points to a couple in their late twenties – a man in a suit and a girl in jeans and trainers. ‘People like them. They’ve spent the day apart and now they’re here getting stuff they need: a couple of bananas, loo roll, washing powder, cereal.’
‘You mean the kind of stuff we all buy every week?’
‘Yes, but it’s different when you buy things as part of a couple. Supermarket shopping is like the biggest symbol of togetherness. It’s nice. It’s comfortable . . . It’s cosy.’
‘Here’s to togetherness,’ I say cheerfully, as I drop a packet of Kellogg’s Fruit ’n’ Fibre into our trolley.
Sunday, 7 March 1993
9.03 a.m.
‘It’s like this,’ I explain to Jane in the kitchen, as I make the first cup of tea of the day. ‘I want to kiss Jim constantly. I want to make him breakfast in bed. I want to hold hands with him and take long walks in the park on sunny Sunday afternoons. I want to buy him clothes. I want to kill dragons for him and rescue him from the clutches of anyone who wants to do him harm. I want to tell anyone who will listen: “See this wonderful, intelligent, handsome bloke by my side? This is my boyfriend, Jim.”’
PART THREE
Then: 1994–96
1994
Tuesday, 4 January 1994
7.30 p.m.
It’s our first night back in Birmingham after the new year. I’m over at Alison’s and, with Disco, we’re watching
Coronation Street
, which is one of the many programmes I’d never seen until I got together with her (including other non-Australian soap operas, any programme featuring injured pets and breakfast television).
‘How long have we been together?’ I ask her casually.
‘Ten months.’
‘That’s a long time.’
‘I suppose it is.’
There’s a long pause.
‘You know what?’ I tell her. ‘As girlfriends go you’re all right, you know.’
‘All right?’
‘Yeah, all right.’
‘Good,’ she replies. ‘I think you’re all right too.’
‘Well, that’s good,’ I reply, and then we carry on watching TV.
Wednesday, 5 January 1994
9.05 p.m.
‘I think Jim’s trying to tell me he loves me,’ I say to Jane, the following night, when we’re in the Jug.
‘How do you know?’ she asks, simultaneously offering me a cigarette.
I look at the packet. ‘I’m trying to give up,’ I reply. ‘New Year resolution and all that.’
‘Sorry,’ says Jane. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘Jim’s always telling me . . .’ I lower my speech and adopt the Voice of Doom ‘. . .
THESE THINGS WILL KILL YOU
.’
We both laugh, then I reach out and take a cigarette.
‘I thought—’
‘It’s only the one,’ I say, interrupting her, then giggle. ‘I’ll give up tomorrow.’ I light up and continue my story. ‘He did that whole bumbling thing blokes do and then told me that he thought I was “all right”.’
Jane laughs. ‘“All right” is good, but when will blokes learn that it’s not good
enough
? What did you say back?’
‘I told him I thought he was okay too.’
‘Disappointed he didn’t go all the way?’
‘A little bit. I’ve known for months now that I’m in love with him. But I’m determined I’m not going to say anything until he’s ready to say it to me.’
‘Trust me, he’s a boy,’ says Jane, ‘so you might be in for a long wait. A very long wait.’
BOOK: His 'n' Hers
7.18Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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