The Love Shack (5 page)

‘Actually, I could’ve rented but my mum insisted on doing the girls’ ironing and sorting their tea out every night. I wasn’t going to say no to that.’

‘Besides,’ I interrupt, ‘I’m not “still living at home”. This is a temporary arrangement while we save up enough for the house we want.’

Pete looks at me. ‘So what time’s your curfew?’

Jade laughs. Then: ‘Ooh, Dan, while I remember: my friend’s over from America in a few weeks. What bars shall I take her to? You know all the trendy places.’

‘Hmm . . . I’ll have a think,’ I reply.

‘
I
know some good places,’ Pete leaps in.

‘Oh, okay,’ she shrugs.

‘I could come with you, if you like.’

‘Oh. You wouldn’t mind?’

For a moment he looks as though he’s experiencing some sort of transcendental awakening; his eyes are virtually rolling into the back of his head with joy. ‘Of course not. It’d be a pleasure.’

Then her face drops. ‘Oh bugger. I forgot. I said we’d have a girls’-only night. She’s just been dumped. You’d be bored stiff.’

‘I wouldn’t!’

‘God, you would – it’d be awful for you,’ she insists. ‘We just want to spend the night slagging off men.’

‘
I
can slag off men,’ he offers.

‘You’d hate it.’

‘I’d love it!’

‘Let’s do it another time, shall we? I’m sure my mum’ll agree to babysit again. Maybe some point next year.’

By the time we get upstairs to the office, he’s inconsolable. ‘That’s it. I need tips,’ he says, flopping onto his chair.

‘Don’t look at me for some sort of insight,’ I tell him.

‘Come off it. When I first met you, there wasn’t a night out that didn’t involve some woman thrusting her phone number into your trouser pocket.’

‘You exaggerate.’

‘You were a great big slag and don’t deny it.’

‘Am I supposed to defend myself?’

‘No,’ he sighs. ‘You’re supposed to tell me how to do it.’

To listen to Pete, you’d think I was some sort of Aldous Snow figure in my pre-Gemma days. But we’re talking about a few flings, not six dancing girls and a two-litre bottle of Durex Play every week night.

I will admit though that the first time Gemma and I crossed paths, the idea that one day we’d contemplate buying a house together would have filled me with . . . surprise.

The reason wasn’t just because we’d have looked an unlikely couple physically, though at the time that was true, nor because I didn’t fancy her (also undeniable). It was because we were both on a date – with other people.

I was nineteen, back from Cambridge for Christmas after my first term and technically living at home with Mum. In reality, I spent that break bunking in with people, including an old mate from school nicknamed ‘Stringfellow’, who’d quit Cardiff University to set himself up as a nightclub entrepreneur.

I’d agreed to take my date for the evening to an insalubrious bar on the edge of Duke Street because two ‘contacts’ had offered ‘Stringfellow’ the unmissable opportunity of buying a stake in it. He wanted my opinion on the place while he cut his teeth at the bar, serving Cider and Black to Goths, bikers and miscellaneous reprobates, none of whom looked overly impressed with my nice V-neck jumper and Shockwaved fringe.

My date, Terri, was small, blonde, stupendously bosomed and had the eyes of a possessed Barbie doll. I’d handed my number to her in a club the previous weekend, in such a drunken blur that I barely recognised her now. She’d brought with her this unfeasibly small handbag, from which an array of eyeliners and lipsticks kept tumbling. The solution, she decided, was getting ‘her man’ (that, apparently, was me) to put them in my coat pockets.

It was clear when we pushed open the door that she wasn’t massively enthusiastic about the venue. In fact, she looked at the clientele as if she’d been presented with the still-beating hearts of two slaughtered lambs.

Still, Terri decided to make the best of a bad job and seduce me. Unfortunately, I couldn’t dredge up a flicker of attraction to her. Besides – date from hell that this probably makes me – my interest was already diverted: to a girl with a nose ring, dreadlocks and – I swear this is what I thought – the face of an angel. Poetic, I know.

From her body language – the crossed arms, the lack of eye-contact – her evening was not going well either.

The guy she was with, a skinny, tattooed bloke with an explosion of facial hair, was pleading with her, flirting with tears one minute and rage the next. She’d clearly had a few and was tiring of his advances, though was too polite to punch him in the face, despite how tempting it must have been.

I was mesmerised by her. The defiant crook of her brow. The smart, glittering eyes. The full mouth I knew would light the place up when she smiled.

As Terri encouraged me to engage in a conversation about the merits of stockings and suspenders, I asked her to pause while I ordered more drinks. But when I turned back from the bar, the girl who’d caught my attention was gone. Her date was left standing, the only guy in the place who hadn’t realised she was probably never going to return from the ladies, at least not this decade.

The next thing I knew, Terri’s arms were around me and she was running her tongue along my ear, like she was trying to fish something out of it. I can’t remember much after that, nor indeed the exact events that led to Terri storming out after I’d failed to ravish her.

I do remember sitting there in a haze of alcohol, giving Terri a couple of minutes’ head start, before I threw on my coat and left. Outside, the weather had turned biblical, hailstones plummeting from the sky as if Someone was pelting me from up on high for being a less than gentlemanly date.

I pulled up my collar and ran to the closest taxi rank I knew, as water seeped into my boots. When I reached the end of the queue, it eased off slightly.

‘Not your type of pub?’ It was the girl with the dreadlocks and defiant brow. She sneezed and held the back of her hand up to her face self-consciously. Rain slid off her nose and black trails of make-up swam down her cheek. I decided there and then that she was beautiful, though I got the impression that she either didn’t know it, or at least refused to acknowledge it.

‘Not my type of date, if I’m honest.’

She smiled briefly, then crossed her arms and turned back to the queue. It wasn’t moving. The rain was picking up again.

I assumed by the fact that I was staring at the tiny seashell tattoo on her shoulderblade that our small talk was over, until she turned and said, ‘We’re going to be at least fifteen minutes here. You do realise we’re going to get drenched?’ Her eyes flickered to my jacket.

‘Oh, sorry,’ I said and slipped it off my shoulders to offer it to her. She burst out laughing and I felt like the new boy at school wearing shit trainers. ‘I wasn’t after your coat, honestly,’ she assured me.

I needed to up my game. I’d spent the last couple of years coming up with a repertoire of amusing, self-deprecating pickup lines. I needed to say something now with a pinch of flirtation, a soupcon of irony and just the right amount of cheeky, wide-boy candour.

‘Just thought you might want to stop your hair getting wet.’ Brilliant. Just brilliant. Why she didn’t run a mile at these new depths of gormlessness is anyone’s guess.

‘I suspect you spent longer on your hair than I did,’ she teased, as rain fell onto her cheekbones. I must have looked put-out. ‘Sorry, I was just joking with you. Your hair’s very nice.’

‘That’s overwhelming, thank you,’ I said snarkily in a bid to regain some self-respect.

She’d have been within her rights to tell me to piss off right then, but I’m happy to say that she just smiled and said, ‘Where do you live?’

‘Staying at a friend’s in Waterloo. Normally Cheshire.’

‘Hmm, very posh,’ she smirked.

‘Not really.’ Then her teeth started chattering. ‘You sure you’re okay?’

She shrugged. ‘Starting to think I was a bit hasty about your coat.’

I took it off and thrust it round her shoulders, feeling a tug of self-satisfaction. It was huge on her, a big tent of fabric that swamped her frame. I liked the look of it on her bare arms.

‘Are you at university here?’ I asked.

‘Yep. Doing English Lit. You?’

‘Economics. Not here though. Cambridge,’ I said.

‘Ah . . . definitely posh then.’ And when she smiled this time, it was big and warm and her whole face shone.

As the taxi queue disappeared, I attempted to manufacture a moment when I could ask for her number. But when that moment came, near the front of the queue, she opened her bag and gasped.

‘What is it?’

‘I’ve lost my purse! Oh, bollocks, I’ve lost my purse!’

A frantic minute ensued in which she persuaded half the queue to scramble through the gutter, before the car at the front got fed up and started beeping. ‘Oh Gawd,’ she sighed, looking at the heavens. ‘Looks like I’m walking.’

This was my opportunity to do something heroic, something gallant that couldn’t fail to make her want to throw herself at me, or at least consider a snog.

‘Take this,’ I said, thrusting my last £20 in her hand.

She opened her mouth to protest, then decided against it. She looked genuinely touched, genuinely impressed. I was quite taken aback myself.

‘Have you got enough yourself? To get home, I mean,’ she said, concerned.

‘Ah, don’t worry about me, I’ll walk,’ I replied coolly, as if I was at home in even the most treacherous of conditions; this wind was so strong it could have flattened my fringe with one gust.

‘You can’t do that – I feel terrible now,’ she said.

‘I insist,’ I replied.

She handed back my coat, clambered into the taxi, then turned to look at me. ‘Give me your number. I’ll pay it back immediately.’

‘Gladly.’ The boy was back in business. ‘Have you got a pen?’

She rustled around in her bag then looked at me, dejected. ‘No.’

The taxi driver was thoroughly pissed off by now. ‘Hurry up, Romeo and Juliet, shut the bloody door.’

‘Sorry, mate,’ I mumbled, then a flash of genius hit me. I rooted in my coat pockets and pulled out one of Terri’s lip-liners.

‘Here. This’ll work.’

I held Gemma’s hand and crayoned my number on the back of it, in bright pink digits. She looked up and blinked, clearly lost for words.

‘Nice colour,’ she said eventually.

The implications of this compliment hit me like a 4-ton freight train. ‘The lipstick isn’t mine!’ I blustered.

‘It’s cool,’ she shrugged. ‘I’m very open-minded. Thanks again.’ And at that, she closed the taxi door and trundled away up Mount Pleasant.

I slipped my coat back on and felt light-headed as her scent drifted around me. Then I started the four-mile walk home, which should have been the most miserable journey of my life. I was drunk, broke, soaking wet and shivering. But my head was swollen with thoughts of her.

If she phoned like she said she would, I could explain that, while I too am ‘very open-minded’, I am not in fact flirting with transvestitism, and if I were, I’d choose a better lip colour.

But after two days, the smell of her perfume had faded from my coat, and I couldn’t remember what her face looked like. I was annoyed that I’d failed to ask for her number, and that the only new entry I’d been able to put in my contacts book was a doodle of her seashell tattoo on the front cover.

Instinct, I’m afraid, was starting to tell me that she wasn’t going to phone.

And, as ever, instinct proved to be right.

Chapter 6

Gemma

Dan has been really evasive about buying a car in which to commute to work from his mum’s.

Buddington, where she lives, is only a fifty-minute drive to Liverpool, but local public transport is dire, offering little more than a Noddy train that leaves approximately every six days; travelling by donkey might be easier.

I’ve been pointing out the increasing urgency of the situation in the four weeks since we handed in our notice to the landlord – as well as the fact that I’ve managed to part-exchange my own vehicle (sob) for an eight-year-old Fiat Punto, in an attempt to swell our coffers.

This afternoon, with less than twenty-four hours before we are due to leave our flat, Dan finally phones as I’m heading into a meeting to tell me he’s bought one.

‘Oh good!’ I say brightly, as I hurry along the corridor to
The Think Bubble
, which used to be known as Meeting Room One. ‘Where did you get it?’

‘From a friend of a friend of Pete’s. Or maybe a friend
of a friend
of a friend of Pete’s.’

I feel a shiver of unease.

‘Pete’s coming with me first thing tomorrow,’ he continues.

‘But the move’s tomorrow.’

‘It’ll only take half an hour to pick it up, I promise – then we’ll load up both of our cars and make the trip to my mum’s.’

I pause in front of the door as Sebastian strides past and gives me a salute. ‘Okay, I’ll have some last-minute packing anyway. How much did this car cost? You didn’t go over budget?’

‘The car more than fulfils all criteria with regards cost-control.’

My ears prick up. ‘Go on, how much?’

‘Honestly, not much.’

I glance into the room and realise they’re waiting for me. ‘The fact that you’re refusing to tell me means it was either too expensive or so cheap it’s falling to bits,’ I hiss.

‘Which would you prefer?’

‘Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t do things on the cheap, but given that the object of this exercise is saving money, the latter. You could turn up in a baked bean can and I’d be pleased.’

‘Great,’ he replies. ‘Just remember those words when you see it.’

That evening, as we sit in the living room of the flat surrounded by boxes, he shows me the advert that Pete’s friend of a friend
of a friend
had listed on eBay. There’s no picture, but what it lacks in photographic evidence, it makes up for in descriptive prose:

1999 ALFA ROMEO 145 T-SPARK 16V SILVER

A hero of a car.

Gutted to lose her due to shitty 12-month driving ban.