Romantic Comedy Box Set (Helen Grey Series Books 1 & 2)

by Hodge, Sibel

  ‘Wrong, try again.’

  ‘Ice-cream man,’ Angie offered.

  ‘Wrong.’

  ‘Ping-pong tester,’ I cackled.

  ‘Nursery nurse,’ he said, and everyone fell about with laughter.

  ‘You change baby’s nappies and stuff?’ Angie asked. ‘Well, I would never have believed it. I used to go out with a bloke who liked wearing nappies – he had a bit of a nappy fetish.’ She waved her hand as a saucy smile crept up her face. ‘But that’s a whole different story.’ She gave the Bear a lustful stare and adjusted her bra strap.

  Mr. Piercings gazed down at Felicity like she was the best thing since the nose-ring was invented. ‘Can I ‘av your number?’

  And to our complete surprise, Felicity, who had never even been on a date before in her life, handed it over quicker than you could say Harley Davidson.

  For a split-second a peculiar feeling of déjà vu chilled my bones. I quickly shook it away. ‘God, what’s the time?’ I demanded with a sudden urgency, grabbing Ayshe’s wrist and looking at her watch. I’d just remembered the stripper was supposed to be arriving at the restaurant at about nine.

  ‘Half past eight. What’s that driver up to?’ Ayshe got up and leaned out of the doorway, gazing into the car park. ‘He’s coming,’ she shouted back to us over her shoulder.

  ‘OK, girls, sorry for the wait. I’ve fixed it now and you can carry on your merry way.’ The driver, covered in oil, wiped his hands on a dirty rag and led the way to the limo.

  Chapter 20

  After we’d managed to prise Felicity away from the dirty clutches of Mr. Piercings, we finally arrived at the traditionally decked out restaurant dead on nine. Our rowdy little hoard was led by an overawed Chinese waiter to a table in the centre of the room, much to the annoyance of the nearby tables and cosy couples who had been hoping for a romantic night out. The place was styled with black and white checked floor tiles and red Chinese lanterns dangled from the ceiling. Chinese scriptures adorned the walls and the table cloths were carefully coordinated in reds and whites. A huge tropical fish tank took up most of the bar area and this led on to the spacious dining room, where the subdued lighting made for a relaxed dining experience. A conservatory to the rear housed a dance-floor and a sound system which was set up for a disco that they held every Wednesday night. I think they must have crammed in a few extra tables for the occasion as they were very tightly packed together.

  A middle-aged couple on the next table studied us with interest as we sat down.

  ‘Hello.’ Angie waved at them, and they turned away.

  ‘I’m sorry, but your other guests have already left,’ the waiter informed us.

  ‘Oh, no! My work crowd has all gone; they must have thought we weren’t coming. I’ll text them and see if they’ll come back.’ Ayshe pulled her phone from her bag.

  ‘Never mind, more food for me. I’m going to keep ordering the starters, I love them.’ Charlie patted his stomach.

  ‘Ooh, this looks good.’ I started to play with the swivelling carousel contraption in the centre of the table which meant we could whirl food around with wild abandonment.

  ‘Gotta get crispy duck,’ Leila insisted.

  ‘Does that say kung poo prawns?’ I showed my menu to Ayshe. Either it was a typing error, or I was more under the influence than I thought and was already seeing double.

  ‘Perhaps you would like some drinks to start?’ the waiter suggested, pen poised.

  ‘Not ‘arf,’ Leila rattled off our order.

  ‘Wonder what this is.’ Ayshe eyed her menu. ‘Fang dang dango.’ She looked round for any offers on the subject.

  ‘Never heard of it. What about this, katrap pong?’ I wondered.

  ‘Do they just do egg and chips?’ Felicity asked.

  ‘No, you’ve got to try something,’ Ayshe insisted. ‘What about tea-smoked chicken?’

  ‘I smoked tea once in college. It was foul. Tasted like shit,’ Charlie said.

  When the waiter returned, we ordered a whole heap of starters and a few main dishes to be getting on with.

  ‘Can we try some fang dang dango, as well, please?’ Ayshe asked him.

  ‘Ah, you like dog, then?’ He snorted as he wandered off, scribbling on his pad.

  I pulled a disgusted face. ‘Urgh, I’m not eating that!’

  When the appetizers arrived, we tucked in with glee. I swung the swivel table round to grab a spare rib, and it knocked my fork flying on to the floor. I swiftly bent down and retrieved it.

  ‘Forking hell!’ I squawked at my own joke, closely followed by everyone else, apart from Felicity, who looked completely bewildered.

  ‘I don’t get it.’ Felicity frowned, scratching her head.

  Half way through a crispy, golden wanton, I glanced over to the bar area. Hiding behind the fish tank, between a large catfish and a very brightly coloured angel fish, I spied a policeman standing with his back to us, talking to a waitress.

  ‘How queer. What’s he doing here?’ Charlie whispered to me.

  I smirked. ‘Wait and see.’

  My phone started meowing and I held it under the table to read it.

  ‘I am your strip-a-gram waiting at the bar. Please rendezvous with me and point out the hen.’

  ‘Just going to the loo.’ I shot up.

  As I got closer to the bar, I realized the policeman was actually Paul-the-Well-Endowed from the art class.

  ‘Well, hello again.’ My jaw dropped.

  ‘Hi.’ he beamed. ‘What a coincidence. How are you?’

  ‘I’m good, thanks. The girl with the long black hair and the black dress is the one getting married.’ I pointed over to Ayshe.

  ‘OK. If you go back to your table, I’ll be over in a minute.’

  ‘I know you!’ Charlie pointed at him as Paul approached our table a few minutes later. ‘You’re the one who’s hung like an elephant. Are you a policeman? You can arrest me any day.’

  Angie’s eyes suddenly lit up, and she feasted them on his crutch like there was no tomorrow.

  Ayshe knew exactly what was coming and turned an interesting shade of crimson. Several of the other diners looked on with interest. I seriously hoped it wasn’t going to put anyone off their spring rolls.

  Suddenly, the song YMCA blasted out of the stereo, and Paul wiggled his butt and gyrated his hips in front of us. Charlie leapt out of his chair, following close behind him singing the complete rendition of the chorus and miming the actions in his exaggerated style while Paul tried to get as far away from him as possible. This just seemed to excite Charlie more.

  ‘Ooh, you are playing hard to get.’ Charlie managed to catch up with him and began bumping Paul’s backside with his own, which caused the whole restaurant to erupt in a fit of giggles.

  ‘Get off me!’ Paul shoved him away and carried on with his routine as Charlie yanked at Paul’s uniform.

  ‘Ooh, that’s on a bit tight. Get it off. Get it off.’ Charlie tugged harder, but it wasn’t budging.

  Paul’s routine then turned into a Saturday Night Fever kind of dance as he pointed his finger in the air and then back down again, with Charlie manhandling him.

  ‘Oi, stop it.’ Paul stifled a laugh, trying hard to maintain a professional façade.

  ‘Get ‘em off,’ Leila and Angie chanted, clapping in time to the music.

  Paul started undoing the buttons on his shirt whilst thrusting his hips in Ayshe’s direction as Charlie pulled at the shirt from behind.

  ‘Get it off,’ he shouted in Paul’s ear.

  Then Angie shot out of her chair and grabbed Paul’s face in her hands, pushed it in between her mammoth boobs – wiggling them around for good luck – and practically suffocated him in the process. Paul’s arms flailed behind him as he pulled his head out, gulping for air. The poor guy was being accosted from the front by Angie and the rear by Charlie.

  ‘You lot are nuts!’ Paul shouted over the music, managing to get his top off unaided and get into
the hip-swivelling action again, undulating back and forth repetitively. He launched himself on to Ayshe’s knee, jiggled around a bit, and then he sat on Angie’s lap. Felicity tried to hide under the table, but she couldn’t escape quick enough and he managed to jump on her before Charlie dragged him off, pulling him down onto his own lap where he held him tight. Paul struggled to get out of his clutches when at last Angie tugged on Charlie’s arm and the captive managed to break free. Then he stood in front of Ayshe and whipped his trousers off in one fluid action – I think the Velcro down the sides must have aided his spontaneous exposure.

  ‘Is that real?’ Angie stared in disbelief at the sight of Paul-the-Well-Endowed, bulging in a bright red, sequined thong.

  ‘Absolutely.’ Charlie’s eyes widened. ‘I’d recognize that humongous thing anywhere.’

  ‘Shush,’ Paul whispered. ‘People will get the wrong idea.’

  ‘Oh, golly.’ Felicity was perspiring so much that her glasses slid down the end of her nose.

  Charlie thought he’d try to assist Paul by ripping off the only piece of kit he still had on, but Paul was having none of it. As Charlie tugged harder, Paul tried to run away, and a big tug of thong ensued.

  ‘Get him off me!’ Paul looked at us for help.

  ‘Come here,’ Charlie muttered.

  There was a big ripping sound as the thong split and came off in Charlie’s hand. Some of the other diners looked shocked and averted their eyes. Even Angie was gob-smacked at the size of it and nothing surprised her. Felicity almost fainted and clutched her chest. That left Leila, Ayshe and me – we were all were doubled over, howling with laughter so much that my stomach hurt. Paul quickly cupped his tackle in his hands and then gave a big wave to everyone in the restaurant. As he ambled off to get changed, Charlie gave him a slap on the bum and chased after him.

  ‘’Ere, I thought you woz lookin’ to meet a new fella.’ Leila poked me. ‘What about that stripper?’

  ‘He looked all right to me. I wouldn’t kick him out of bed,’ Angie said. ‘Especially not with the size of his donger. Haven’t seen one that big before, and I’ve seen my fair share, believe me.’ She nodded knowingly. Angie worked as a nurse in the vasectomy clinic and was always telling us funny stories about different shapes, sizes and other general qualities of penises.

  ‘Well, there’s someone else I’m interested in, actually.’ I giggled, but didn’t want to give too much away and the drink was making my tongue a bit loose.

  ‘Who?’ Angie sat forward.

  ‘I’m not saying.’ I folded my arms across my chest.

  ‘That Nick you’ve got a date with?’ Ayshe asked.

  ‘No, not telling.’ I gave them a sly grin.

  ‘I’ll get it out of her.’ Ayshe put her arm round me and kissed me on the cheek.

  After the excitement of the stripper, our main courses arrived. We devoured them like a flock of velociraptors and were still munching away when the disco started.

  ‘Where’s Felicity gone?’ I asked, realizing that I hadn’t seen her for about fifteen minutes.

  ‘Loo, I think.’ Angie swallowed a mouth full of chow mein.

  Charlie came back looking flushed and sat down for about a second. ‘I’m going to dance.’ He leapt up and launched himself onto the dance-floor, where he pranced around singing full blast in a completely over-the-top kind of way.

  ‘It’s raining men! Hallelujah it’s raining men!’ Charlie grabbed the microphone off the DJ and shouted on the dance-floor.

  I furrowed my brow at one of the dishes. ‘Is that the dog thing?’ No one had touched it.

  ‘I’m not eating it.’ Leila grimaced at it.

  ‘I’d rather eat a red hot poker,’ I said.

  Charlie pulled his top up, rubbing his belly whilst belting out, ‘I’m too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt!’

  ‘Where’s that Felicity?’ I looked around for her, swaying slightly.

  ‘I’ll look in the bogs.’ Leila wandered off in search of her.

  ‘Ain’t no mountain high enough!’ Charlie burst out. We all turned to see him attempting to drag an elderly woman – who was right in the middle of enjoying her chicken and sweet corn soup – off to the dance-floor with him. She prodded him in the groin with her walking stick and he toppled onto the floor.

  ‘She ain’t in there.’ Leila sat down again and then looked at Felicity’s chair. ‘‘Er bag’s ‘ere.’ She bent down to pick it up, peering under the table. ‘She’s fallen asleep under ‘ere.’ She poked Felicity with her foot. ‘Oi, get up.’

  Felicity mumbled something, which sounded like, ‘Fuck off’. But couldn’t possibly have been, coming from her lips.

  We all lifted up the table cloth to have a look. ‘Come on, get up, we’re going for a boogie.’ Ayshe and I both poked her in unison.’

  ‘Dancing Queen!’ Charlie yelled in the background.

  ‘Where am I?’ She rubbed her eyes.

  ‘Can’t ‘andle ‘er bevvies,’ Leila said as we all got up and headed off to join Charlie, leaving poor Felicity under the table.

  I gave the DJ ten out of ten for stamina as he chased Charlie around the dance-floor, trying to put a stop to his one-man karaoke show. Due to my gym-sore legs and the amount of wine we had consumed, I pranced around for a couple of hours like a geriatric on crack.

  Chapter 21

  Thursday, day 11 – You Can Never Have Enough Knickers

  I thought I was dying when I woke up the next morning. No one could have such a bad headache and not have a brain tumour, surely. Note to self: Never, ever drink that much again! The room was still shrouded in darkness and the central heating hadn’t yet kicked in, so it must have been early. I turned over and a searing pain shot through my right eye, but the good news was that the room-spinning had vanished. My tongue felt like I’d been having a secret carpet licking session in my comatose sleep. I snuggled tighter under the duvet, willing the banging in my head to miraculously disappear. When it hadn’t gone after fifteen minutes, I prised my eyelids apart. Reaching inside the bedside cabinet, I pulled out some whopping great painkillers, strategically hidden there for just such an occasion. After downing a couple of them – and an extra one, just in case – I managed to return to the land of nod. The next time I woke, a grey haze peeped through the gap in the curtains and rain drummed hard against the window. A bolt of lightning illuminated the room and thunder grumbled towards me in the distance.

  The pneumatic drill banging inside my brain had disappeared and the room was now stiflingly hot, so I kicked the covers off my feet, turned onto my side and studied the wardrobe, wondering about what would happen when Kalem found out about Emine.

  Would he manage to forgive her and try to salvage their relationship? Or would he not want anything to do with her? Would that leave the door open for me to try and wedge my foot in, or would his family forbid it? Just because I’d suddenly developed some kind of bizarre obsession with him, it didn’t follow suit that he would be having the same ideas about me. Apart from the night at Clarissa’s, where I wasn’t sure if it was part of the act, or whether it had meant anything to him, everything between us was as it always had been. Friends. It was strange, but I couldn’t even tell now when these sensations had started to creep up on me. I’d been so busy trying to get on with my life-changing plan that I hadn’t really noticed when things had changed. One minute he was ordinary Kalem, Ayshe’s brother, who wound me up constantly. And the next, he had become someone I could see myself spending the rest of my life with. Could I be falling in love with him?

  I made a mental list of exactly what it was I liked about him. He was ravishingly attractive with his chiselled good looks, but he was so much more than that. He was funny, caring, he adored children – as I did – and he appreciated the simple things in life. But best of all, he’d always been there for me. In fact, he was the complete opposite of Justin.

  I couldn’t see how it was ever going to go anywhere, though, and if I risked t
rying to tell Kalem about it, it could ruin everything between us and also upset Ayshe – which would go down like a meteor straight through the head. It was all very, very scary.

  So, I thought firmly to myself, what I need to do is put these insane deliberations out of my head and concentrate on getting on with my life. After all, I rationalized, that was why I’d started this whole challenge thing in the first place. But it would be easier said than done, and it didn’t make me very happy.

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed and realized they were still killing me from my impulsive bout of exercise at the gym. I mooched around the flat with difficulty – a foggy head and a miserable, dark mood didn’t help matters – and started to make tea and toast. Well, I tried to make some tea but had to give up after I absent-mindedly put the tea-bag down the spout of the kettle instead of into the mug. I chewed my toast in a trance, staring through sensitive slits – which used to be my eyes – at the bleak world outside the window. It was very quiet this morning. I hadn’t heard a peep out of Charlie, so he must have still been away with the fairies.

  Ayshe told me I had to bring a swimsuit for today’s challenge, so after I’d woken up a bit, I rummaged around trying to find one. I came across a mouldy old thing, which on closer inspection was threadbare around the boob area, making it almost completely see-through. That went straight in the bin. My second attempt was more successful and produced a black halter-neck bikini, purchased in anticipation of a summer holiday with Justin that never happened. I must have stuffed it down the back of the drawer and forgotten about it. Even the price tags were still on it. I shoved it in a hold-all along with a towel and some spare knickers, just in case. After reading Gloria Cox's book I realized that you never know when you might be affected by a bout of incontinence; plus I didn’t have a clue what we were up to today. I threw on a black T-shirt, a warm fleecy jacket and some tatty-looking leggings, which had started life as smooth, skin-tight lycra but were now reduced to a bobbly, baggy-bum consistency. Pulling my hair up into a top knot, I inspected myself in the mirror with disapproval.