City Girl in Training

A dryer? I quashed the thought that my mother wouldn’t approve and grinned. ‘Thanks, Kate.’

‘You’re welcome,’ she said. ‘Now I’d better go and make sure that my sulky little sister isn’t lacing your tea with something unpleasant. Don’t stand on ceremony. A bathrobe is as formal as it gets around here at this time on a Friday.’ And she grinned. ‘Just follow the sound of Sophie’s teeth gnashing when you’re ready.’

CHAPTER THREE

It’s dark and raining. Your room-mates have gone out and you’re on your own in a strange flat. As you turn on the cooker to prepare some absolutely vital comfort food you blow the fuses. Do you:

a. remember that there’s a pub on the corner? You can get something to eat there and find a bloke who knows how to fix a fuse. Excellent.

b. go next door for help? The guy who lives there never leaves the house in daylight, but, hey, it’s dark, so that’s not a problem.

c. ring the emergency services and cry?

d. keep a torch and spare fuse wire by the fuse-box? You fix the fuse yourself.

e. just cry?

‘FEELING better?’

Kate was on her own in the kitchen and waved in the direction of the teapot, indicating that I should help myself.

‘Much,’ I said, although I felt a little self-conscious in my aged bathrobe, with my hair wrapped in one of the thick soft towels that had been left for me. I’d never shared a flat with girls my own age before but I had friends who were quick to tell me that it was a minefield.

Rows over who’d taken the last of the milk, or bread. Rows over telephone bills. And worst of all, rows over men. At least that wouldn’t be a problem. I had enough trouble holding my own man’s attention against the incomparable glamour of a carburettor, let alone attracting any attention from any of theirs.

Kate seemed friendly enough but I didn’t want her to think I was freeloading. ‘I need to go shopping, stock up on the essentials, if you’ll point me in the direction of the nearest supermarket,’ I said as I filled a cup.

‘Don’t worry tonight. So long as you don’t eat Sophie’s cottage cheese you’ll be fine.’

‘No problem,’ I said, with feeling, and we both grinned.

‘Do you know anyone in London, Philly?’

I shook my head. Then said, ‘Well…’ Kate waited. ‘I met the man who lives next door. We hailed the same taxi and since we were going in the same direction it seemed logical to share. Not that I knew he lived next door then, of course.’

Kate looked surprised. Actually it did seem pretty unlikely, but it wasn’t the coincidence that bothered her. ‘You got into a taxi with a man you didn’t know?’

I was still feeling a little bit wobbly about that myself.

‘It was raining. And he was prepared to let me take it. He was really, very…um…’ On the point of saying kind, I was assailed by a vivid recollection of impatience barely held in check behind fathoms-deep sea-green eyes. Of his heel grinding my attack alarm in the pavement. Of his sharp ‘wait here’. And my mouth dried on ‘kind’.

‘Yes?’

‘Actually, I owe him an apology.’ I swallowed. ‘And probably a new umbrella.’ Kate’s brows quirked upwards. ‘It’s a long story.’

‘Then it’s one that’ll have to keep. I’ve got a date with a totally gorgeous barrister. I’d have cancelled when I realised you would be arriving today, but I have long-term plans for this one and I’m not risking him out alone on Friday night.’ And she grinned as she pushed herself off her stool. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not leaving you on your own with Sophie. She’s going to a party. I would have asked her to take you but, in her present mood, I couldn’t positively guarantee you’d have a good time.’

‘No,’ I said. Relieved. The thought of going to a party, being forced into the company of a roomful of strangers, with or without Sophie, was not appealing.

And when, an hour or so later, Sophie drifted into the kitchen on high, high heels, ethereal in silvery chiffon, a fairy dusting of glitter across her shoulders, her white-blonde hair a mass of tiny waves, the relief intensified.

If I’d walked into a room alongside her fragile beauty, I’d have looked not just like a mouse, but a well-fed country mouse.

‘Will you be all right on your own?’ Kate asked, following her, equally stunning in the kind of simple black dress that didn’t come from any store that had a branch in Maybridge High Street. ‘There’s a pile of videos if there’s nothing on television you fancy and a list of fast-food outlets that deliver by the phone.’ And she grinned. ‘We don’t cook if we can help it.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ I said, trying not to dwell on the fact that, for the first time in as long as I could remember on a Friday night, Don would not be bounding up to my front door ready to fall in with whatever I’d planned for the evening. Even if it did involve sitting through a chick-flick. I tried not to picture him down the pub with his car-crazy mates—no doubt encouraged by his miraculously restored mother not to ‘sit at home and brood’. Instead I gestured ironically in the direction of the washing machine where my knickers were going through the rinse cycle. ‘I’ve got plenty to do.’

Kate laughed. ‘Whatever turns you on,’ she said as the bell rang from the front entrance.

‘Come on, Kate, that’ll be the taxi,’ Sophie said, with a pitying glance in my direction before she went to let the driver know they were on their way.

But Kate hesitated, turned back, the slightest frown creasing her lovely forehead. ‘Was it Gorgeous George or Wee Willy?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Did you share a taxi with George or Willy?’

On the point of explaining that we hadn’t actually exchanged names, I realised how lame that sounded. On the other hand, while neither name seemed to suit my unfortunate Galahad, no one in their right mind would have referred to him as Wee Willy…

‘Gorgeous George?’ I repeated. A question, rather than an answer.

‘Tall, dark—’

‘That’s the one,’ I said.

‘And very, very gay.’

‘Gay?’

She gave me an old-fashioned look that suggested I might be even more of a hick than I looked. ‘You didn’t realise?’

Gay? He was gay?

No, I hadn’t realised. I’d been too busy falling into his hypnotic green eyes…

I pulled myself together, managed a shrug. ‘I wasn’t paying that much attention,’ I said. ‘And he was more interested in chasing his umbrella. In fact I should make sure he found it. Which side does he live on?’

Not that I intended to do more than put my apology—along with an offer to pay for repairs or a replacement—in writing and slip it beneath his door. He would undoubtedly take the hint and respond in kind. After that, if we ever passed in the hall, neither of us would have to do more than nod, which would be a relief all round, I told myself.

‘Out of the door, turn right. End of the hall. Number seventy-two.’ Then she grinned and said, ‘Don’t wait up.’

‘Gorgeous George?’ I repeated as the door banged shut behind Kate and Sophie. Trying to get my head round the idea. Trying to work out quite why my heart was sinking like a stone.

Clearly it had nothing to do with the man who lived next door. It had to be because I was alone on a Friday night in a city where I had no friends. My parents were thirty thousand feet above terra firma in another time zone and the man in my life, if he wasn’t cosied up with his beloved car, was down the pub having a good time without me.

So I did what I always did when I felt down. I opened the fridge.

What I needed—and urgently—was food. But Sophie could relax; her cottage cheese was safe from me. I wanted comfort food.