My Single Friend (13 page)

Henry buys his beer, rolls back his shoulders and finally looks ready for action.

‘Before I do this,’ he turns to me, ‘can I ask you something?’

‘Anything.’

‘Could you two go somewhere else?’

Erin and I exchange looks.

‘And
not watch
?’ he spells out.

My heart sinks. ‘Don’t you want us to assess your technique? I think it might help to have our feedba—’

‘No, Lucy,’ he tells me. ‘I don’t want you to assess my technique. As grateful as I am for everything you’ve done, having you assess my technique is about as appealing as watching my parents have sex.’

‘You feel quite strongly, then.’

‘I do.’

‘Of course we won’t watch,’ says Erin decisively. ‘We’ll tuck ourselves away in one of the booths. Henry, you don’t have to worry about a thing.’

‘Good,’ he nods. ‘Well, here goes.’

‘Great!’ I say, waiting for him to move.

‘There’s a free booth over there,’ he tells us.

‘Okay, we’ll head for that one,’ I grin, still waiting for him to move.

‘Go on then,’ he says.

‘You go on then!’ I reply.

‘Oh, Lucy . . . just bugger off, will you? I can’t do this with you watching.’

‘Fine, fine,’ I mutter, as Erin and I head for the free booth. ‘God, he’s a spoilsport sometimes.’

‘This is killing me,’ I say. ‘We can’t hide here all night. Go to the toilet again – go on.’

‘I’ve been twice in the last hour and each time was a nightmare,’ replies Erin. ‘Why is it so busy in here? It’s normally quite civilized.’

‘I’ve no idea. Maybe it’s pay day. Oh, come on, Erin. Do it for Henry.’

She frowns. ‘If I go again, people will think I’ve got a bladder complaint.’

‘Do you think
I’d
get away with going again?’ I ask.

‘I doubt it, if Henry spotted you the last three times, like you suspect. We should let nature take its course. He’s still over there, so he must be doing something right.’

‘We
think
he’s still over there,’ I clarify. ‘He could have gone anywhere in the last three minutes.’

‘Pop up your head again, if you must.’

‘Okay,’ I nod.

I clamber onto my hands and knees and spin round on my seat in preparation for my latest reconnaissance mission. I have this down to a fine art now. Pop up head; identify subject; zoom in to establish latest state of play; pop head down. From start to finish it takes about one and a half seconds. If I haven’t managed to get a proper look I repeat the exercise.

I like to think that I look like a Bond girl, preferably one of those sexy Russian double agents. Except of course I’m not from Vladivostock, or in the box of an Austrian opera house trying to assassinate someone. Instead, I’m on my hands and knees on the seat of a pub, trying to clock how successful my friend’s chat-up lines are. Apart from that, the similarities are uncanny.

I count to three and pop up my head, scanning the room stealthily, before popping it down again.

‘Did you get a look?’ asks Erin.

‘No, I think he’s moved, the crafty devil. Let me try again.’

My head emerges from behind the booth, I survey the scene from left to right, then dip again.

‘Definitely moved,’ I huff. ‘That should be against the rules.’

‘Is everything all right, madam?’ asks a voice.

I scramble round, fixing my top, until I am upright and staring at someone who appears quite cross.

‘I’m the manager,’ he announces. ‘Our staff have noticed you’ve been behaving oddly for the last hour or so.’

‘Oddly?’ I repeat indignantly, as my face turns crimson. ‘Not at all. I was looking out for my friend.’

‘I’m sure,’ he smiles, clearly unconvinced. ‘Only, Mr McAfee is a long-standing celebrity client of ours, and when he’s here, we like to make life as comfortable for him as possible.’

I scrunch up my nose. ‘Who’s Mr McAfee?’

He raises an eyebrow in irritation. ‘I think we both know, madam, that you’re very aware of who Tom McAfee is.’

I think for a second. Tom McAfee, the Australian Supermodel, has been seen in the city several times in the last couple of days in advance of a big football match this weekend. As a well-known Liverpool Football Club supporter, it’s not the first time he’s been here, but he’s so unfeasibly glamorous that he attracts attention everywhere he goes.

‘Tom McAfee’s
here
?’ I scrunch up my nose.

He throws me a look as if to say I must think he was born yesterday. ‘Over there, madam.’ He indicates a booth right in front of where Henry was standing.

‘Bloody hell,’ says Erin, getting out her lipstick. ‘I wondered why it was so busy.’

‘Only, for your information, we don’t tolerate stalkers in this establishment,’ continues the manager.

‘Stalkers?’ I yelp.

‘We work hard at making well-known figures feel as relaxed as possible.’

‘I, well, I . . .’ I bluster, outraged. ‘That must be very nice for them. But I promise you I’m not a stalker.’

He purses his lips.

‘The only celebrity I’ve even been within three feet of was Björn Borg – and that was to get his autograph for my mum’s birthday,’ I tell him furiously.

‘I see.’ He doesn’t appear to be buying this.

‘That in itself was enough to put me off stalking anyone. I explained to his bodyguard that I didn’t trip up the woman in front on purpose – she fell. After queuing for forty minutes, what was I supposed to do? Personally drive her to Casualty? Or take advantage of the situation and ask Björn to scribble on my napkin? The only thing—’

‘Is everything all right, Lucy?’ Henry is standing next to the manager, looking perplexed.

‘Henry!’ I leap out of my seat. ‘This is my friend,’ I say to the manager, ‘the one I was looking for.’ I fling my arm around Henry possessively with a triumphant grin. ‘The one I mentioned.’

He turns to Henry and looks him up and down. ‘I see.’

‘Can I help you with anything?’ asks Henry coolly.

‘No,’ says the manager cautiously. ‘No, everything’s fine. Enjoy your evening.’ He throws me a look and marches away.

‘What was all that about?’ asks Henry.

‘No idea,’ I say innocently. ‘It’s no wonder people complain about civil liberties, honestly.’

‘Where’s Dominique?’ he says.

‘Still chatting to Johnny Depp over there,’ I reply. ‘Now, spill the beans: did you get that girl’s number?’

Henry shifts in his seat. ‘Not exactly.’

‘What do you mean, not exactly?’

‘I mean . . . no.’

‘Did you not get on?’ asks Erin.

‘We got on very well,’ he tells us. ‘Fantastically well. Norah was a lovely woman, absolutely lovely. And Tracy, her friend, was lovely too.’

‘Well, if Norah wouldn’t do, couldn’t you have got Tracy’s number instead?’ I ask.

‘No,’ Henry tells me decisively.

‘Why not?’ I demand.

‘Look, it was good practice. I enjoyed talking to them. They were interesting people. Norah recently returned from Canada and—’

‘Henry, I don’t care if she recently returned from another galaxy. If you got on so well, why didn’t you ask for her number? She could have been your first date.’

‘She couldn’t,’ he argues.

‘But, she could!’

‘No, she couldn’t.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they were gay.’

‘Gay?’ Erin and I exchange looks.

‘Henry,’ I frown, ‘you’re telling me that on the first night we take you to try out your flirting techniques, on the night we unleash you onto the female population of this city with the express intention of getting you together with one of them . . . you spend half of the evening chatting up a lesbian couple.’

‘Not chatting up. Well, I started off trying to chat them up, but when they told me their circumstances, it became less of a
chatting up
and more of a . . .
chat
.’

‘Why didn’t you leave so we could find someone heterosexual?’ I feel exasperated.

‘It would have been rude. And they were nice.’

Erin sees the funny side and starts laughing. ‘Oh Henry. What on earth are we going to do with you?’

I roll my eyes and Henry spots me.

‘I had a feeling you wouldn’t be impressed,’ he says.

Henry’s next seduction attempts aren’t a great deal more successful. And although Erin and I aren’t supposed to be monitoring him, in the event it’s a good thing we do. Everything – and I mean
everything
– he learned in our practice sessions is forgotten when he’s within ten feet of a real, live female.

The main problem is how unsettled he looks. Every time he approaches someone, his worried eyes make them glare at him suspiciously, as if wondering whether they might have to use their rape alarm on him.

When he finally engages with a woman at the bar, she’s so drunk she can barely stand up, let alone focus on him. After five minutes of ‘conversation’ – which on Henry’s part means blathering away at 210 words a minute and on her part involves a lot of dribbling – she slips off her chair and onto the floor.

Henry rushes to her aid and is grabbed by the shoulders by a seventeen-stone bloke with a face like a querulous bulldog. He turns out to be her brother. Henry tries to placate him, but Erin and I step in before things get messy and instruct him to leave.

‘This isn’t going well,’ says Henry as we decamp to the other side of the bar. ‘Maybe I’m not cut out for it.’

‘Nonsense,’ I tell him, thrusting another bottle of beer in his hand. ‘You just need to relax. Seriously.’

‘I don’t think relaxation is the issue, Lucy. I’d have taken up aromatherapy ages ago if it was.’

‘No, Henry – I’m with Lucy on this one,’ asserts Erin. ‘Remember what we told you. Remember how good you look. You’ve as much right to be chatting up a woman as anyone else here.’

‘How’s it going?’ asks Dominique, appearing from nowhere with a smile on her face.

‘So-so,’ I say diplomatically.

‘Oh? How many phone numbers have you got, Henry?’

‘Don’t ask,’ he replies. ‘Look, I’m sorry if I’ve let you all down, but it’s not working. It was totally different in our living room.’

Dominique takes him by the hand.

‘Where are we going?’ He looks as if he’s been apprehended for breaking a bail condition.

‘You’re coming with me,’ she says, and they march across the room together.

‘God help him,’ I mutter.

Erin smirks and starts peeling the label off her bottle of Sol. ‘Have I told you that Darren, James and Amanda are going travelling?’ she asks.

These are Erin’s old friends from college. Unlike me, who is terrible at keeping up with old friends (Henry aside), Erin religiously stays in touch with almost everyone, even the kids at her primary school, with whom she now has nothing in common, apart from a similar portfolio of milk-bottle-top collages.

‘Didn’t you once have a crush on Darren?’ I ask.

‘Oh, that was ages ago,’ she smiles. ‘I fancied him like mad at university but nothing came of it. We did lots of flirting but either he was seeing someone else or I was.’

‘Where are they travelling to?’

‘All over the place. Europe first, then the Far East. The aim is to see as many countries as possible before ending up in Australia after a year.’

‘Wow. Aren’t they a bit old for a gap year? What about their jobs?’

Erin shrugs. ‘Amanda’s been freelancing for ages and is sure she’ll pick up work on her trip. The others have been saving up and will work when they need to.’

‘I’m not sure that appeals to me any more. Henry and I did three months round Europe in a VW campervan after university and that was fantastic, but I’m too used to my creature comforts to do it now.’

‘I know what you mean. I must admit I’m a bit envious though.’

‘Really?’

She nods. ‘Part of me wonders whether, now Gary and I have split up, I shouldn’t consider something like that.’

‘But what about your house, your job?’

‘Mad, isn’t it? That’s part of the appeal.’

‘Well, it could be good for you,’ I admit. ‘Just don’t go doing something like that because you don’t want to bump into Gary here, okay?
You’ve
done nothing wrong, remember – it’s not for you to go running away.’

‘I know.’ She’s clearly grateful for my concern. ‘And I don’t want you to think after our conversation this afternoon that I’m not getting over him. Most of the time I feel okay about it. I just have relapses. This afternoon was one of them.’

Dominique reappears and flops into the seat next to Erin.

‘Mission accomplished,’ she declares, looking at her watch. ‘There might be only ten minutes before this place shuts, but I have finally left Henry chatting someone up.’