by Robert Young
*
And go to her voicemail.
This is a significantly unpleasant development and there's a second of blind panic about how best to approach the tricky and potentially fatal subject of leaving a message - Bright and breezy? Self assured and in control? Squeaky and terrified? - before I remember that I've strapped my knackers back on and I slip smoothly into autopilot. Rather, what I mean is, with no time to decide on a tactic, I'm just me for twenty seconds or so, and I don't put anything on.
'Sally, hi, it's Tom from the other night. You very kindly - and, slightly inexplicably - gave me your number when I spoke to you at Kings Cross. I hope I didn't embarrass you in front of your colleagues or anything. Umm, anyway, I said I'd call so I am. Love to hear back from you if you've not yet come to your senses,' I do this bit sort of laughing, only a genuine laugh instead of a creepy insincere one, 'so give me a call. Bye.'
All I need to do now is worry about every conceivable word, syllable, inflection and tone of voice in the message I've left her and whether she really has come to her senses and changed her mind about the idea or whether me using that phrase might actually prompt it; worry about whether or not she has my number at all; whether this means that I might have to call again if she doesn't ring me back because she may be not ringing back not through reluctance or good sense or naked fear but because she physically cannot do so. But this might mean that she doesn't want me to ring back at all because she is avoiding the call altogether and therefore that second phone call might just be unutterably awful and if she does call back later tonight I might be pissed when she does and I'll have to either answer it drunk which could be a terrible decision and sink this particular vessel before it gets out of the harbour, or one of the lads might answer it for a joke or thinking its Mel and that would sink this particular vessel right on its moorings, right on the bloody harbourside before launch in fact.
Yes, it would rather appear that all that coffee was a bad idea. I don't suppose all the sugar in the chocolate fudge cake helped matters.
In times of both meteorological and emotional storms, the British male has always sought refuge in the one place he knows he will be safe and warm. Its Pub o'clock.
Chapter 8