Max’s quiet gaze switched to the big stubbly man playing with some paper.
‘There’s nothing wrong, I’m just thinking. I’ve got to text this girl, Iris. The one I met on Friday night. I know you’ve been helping me and have sorted out what I’ve got to wear. But what should I say? She’s, you know, quite amazing.’
Rachel and Molly cooed, ‘Ohhh’ in unison and instantly felt their hearts melt a bit with empathy.
‘Who is quite amazing? I won’t mind if you say it’s me.’ Suze rejoined the table with a cappuccino in one hand and a set of cutlery in the other.
‘There’s a girl I really like. I met her a couple of days ago and, you know, I want to talk to her again. Soon.’
Molly bit her lip. Rachel sat on her hands. Suze played with her fork.
‘I know you all want to advise me – that was sort of my invitation for you to do so.’ Sitting back, folding his arms under his armpits, Sam shook his head and looked down at his (new, as chosen by Rach) trainers. He did his best Dr Evil impression. ‘Throw me a frickin’ bone here.’
‘For starters, I’d never, ever do that impression again,’ Suze said firmly to Sam, putting one hand on her chin. ‘But, late nineties’ references aside, what’s the situation so far? Has a text conversation begun? Who said they’d call first? How do you feel about taking texts to a flirty place?’
Sam rubbed his hands together and began to look just a smidge pleased. ‘This is what I’m talking about: mission control. OK, so the 441 is I took her number the other night and said I’d be in touch about going for a drink again soon. But when do I call her and how soon is soon? Or can I just text? Or is that wimping out?’ Sam fluffed up his hair with his fingertips, then flattened it down again with the palms of his hands.
Rachel leapt in with a suggestion. ‘I think texting is OK, as it’s this soon. There’s probably a direct ratio, actually; the sooner it is post-number-exchange, the more acceptable a text is, especially if it’s funny. But if it’s like four or five days after then it should be a call. Because a text will look a bit too laid-back then.’
Suze nodded in agreement.
Sam widened his eyes as he took a sip of Carling. ‘This is why I am now so grateful I let you guys into my sad little world. I had no idea women thought like that. I thought, you know, what’s a couple of days? What’s the difference between a text or a call if, like, you get the same information across? When to meet, stuff like that. But, in fact, exchanging texts is more like taking on a Chess Grand Master – one tiny move in the wrong direction and the whole game falls apart. Phew.’ His sips turned into gulps now.
‘Let’s put together a draft, shall we?’ Molly gratefully handed back the observant little Max to Suze and promptly swiped Sam’s phone from the table. She then held out her other hand for the receipt. Molly looked up into the pub’s greying ceiling, thinking hard. ‘The tone should be funny, but not arrogant; encouraging of future romance, but not clingy; relaxed, but not careless or lacking in effort.’ Sam’s forehead was creasing into extra wrinkles with each condition. ‘Above all, it should be like you’ve written it on the spur of the moment.’
‘But in fact it will be the result of half an hour’s drafting?’ asked her little brother.
‘Exactly!’ Rachel chimed in, raising her mug to him in a mini toast.
‘So start with,’ Molly’s thumbs were speedily tapping out a new message on Sam’s phone, ‘Hey Iris, excellent to bump into you last night. Insert in-joke here. Are you free for a drink on Thursday? I know a really nice insert quiet venue here. Rach, long enough?’
‘Um,’ Rachel chewed her bottom lip thoughtfully. ‘Could be a bit longer, I suppose, but no shorter. And I take it you haven’t used any of those horrible abbreviations? I always think men sound about twelve when they say “C U later” or something. Oh,’ she turned to Sam, remembering something vital, ‘don’t ever get tempted to use a smiley. Really, DON’T. They’re a stronger contraceptive than, say, four condoms worn at once. She will run for the hills, trust me.’
‘OK, OK! No smileys. I get it.’ Sam held up his hands in surrender.
Molly had been half-listening to them as she ran the message over and over in her head, wondering if it sounded enthusiastic enough but was also suitably far away from being too enthusiastic. Tricky.
‘OK, so is it long enough? And what do I have to ‘insert’?’ Sam asked his daydreaming sister, unfortunately at the exact moment the rest of the table went very quiet.
‘Hello, what have we been missing? And do the Coopers need some serious therapy, by any chance?’ Bryan laughed from his end of the table.
A flushed-looking Sam turned away from the shouts of laughter coming towards him and lowered his voice to his sister, ‘Somehow you always manage to make me look like a berk.’
‘Yes, but I don’t have to try very hard,’ Molly murmured Rachel swallowed a laugh as Suze rolled her eyes, with a smile. ‘The “inserts” I can’t help you with. You must have shared some little joke with her last night, or discovered something you had in common? Show her that you were really listening and that it was a memorable night for you, something special.’
With a scratch at his cropped curls, inspiration struck Sam. ‘Aha. We were talking about food and she hates marmite, just like I do.’
‘Sam, love, engage brain and try again, won’t you?’ Suze asked. ‘She can’t feel special for being one of millions of people who think it tastes like pond scum boiled with salty sea dog hair. There must have been something else?’
‘Childhood memories are always a good place for bonding, I think,’ suggested Rachel. Always a little bit more careful with her criticisms than the direct duo, Molly and Suze, Rachel used a calm but firm voice with Sam. Like she was training a puppy.
‘Um … oh!’ Sam’s eyes lit up with triumph. ‘We both confessed to being scared of clowns. You know, the thick make-up, the desperate attempts to make people laugh, the bad clothes. It’s like being attacked by a Loose Woman.’
Rachel and Molly looked at each other. They looked at Sam.
‘Marmite. Clowns. I’m worried about your date chat, Spam.’ Rach brushed off her jeans as she stood to go to the loo. ‘We might need a whole other afternoon of pub chat to sort that out.’
Sam exhaled like a stroppy teen as Rachel sauntered off to the ladies’. Molly gave him a light punch on the arm. ‘Chin up there, Samwise. Some women like the, er, individual approach. And you’ve shared feelings, which is more than some men do in an entire marriage. This is a good start, trust me. Just put in “We can bolt at the first sign of a circus”. That would work.’
With a few taps at his touch-screen phone, Sam had finished. ‘Right, done that. And the venue?’
‘Oh for the love of Noel!’ Deal or No Deal had become almost a staple in Molly’s life – one of the benefits of setting your own working hours and tea breaks. Noel Edmonds had achieved a weird God-like status within her mind, and she now felt strangely attracted to men in bad shirts with over-managed facial hair. ‘Is she a South London girl? Just bring her here if you can’t think of anything else. It’s nice and relaxed enough. Plus, I always instantly trust a man that has a local – it shows he can at least commit to something.’
* * *
‘That was … a nice thing … you did … for Sam,’ Rachel wheezed, pushing back a strand of her shiny blonde hair from her cherry-red face.
‘Squeeeeeeeeze!’ a loud American voice called from the back of the room. ‘And now four, three, two, one. Squeeeeeze!’
Molly sat back into yet another standing squat as her thigh muscles squealed in protest. What do you need big thigh muscles for? they seemed to complain, You don’t even ski!
‘How can you … even talk … let alone think right now?’ Molly spluttered, silently cursing her friend for devising this new plan to get them both in shape. Legs, Bums and Abs sounded like the perfect exercise class on paper – they should emerge like buff Amazonian lovelies in no time – but in rea
lity it involved being shouted at by the ever-trim Californian beauty who led the class. Her flawless skin concealed a heart of stone. Molly and Rachel soon thought of her as The Punisher, but the two friends figured that this much pain and sweating had to be doing them some good.
As everyone changed positions to kneel on all fours and kick out their right legs to an excruciating angle, Rachel continued on with her spare bit of breath. ‘Seriously, he’s like a new man. No more moping … or hopeless dates. He’s … normal. At last.’
Molly changed to the left leg as the instructor hissed to the assembled class. ‘Where are your balls, ladies? You’re giving me lazy when I want crazy!’
‘Thanks. I suppose,’ Molly replied to Rachel. ‘It seems like it’s … going well with Iris. It’s been … oh, two weeks now. They’ve barely … spent ten minutes without the other. True lurve.’ Molly made a stupid kissy-face at Rachel to put her off her leg lifts. Unfortunately The Punisher chose that moment to check up on the ‘slow’ back row, as she called them.
‘Oh, so now all of a sudden you’ve found your core strength. So you don’t need to pay attention to my carefully devised and practised cardio programme?’ The Punisher produced a look of 90% derision, 10% contempt as she looked down at the exposed bit of Molly’s flesh, where her bleach-stained T-shirt (a Guinness freebie she got during her university bar work) had ridden up. ‘I didn’t think so. See you next week. And the week after.’ The Punisher marched off to lead the class from the front again, eyeing the exercising women as they began reps of tummy-tightening and soul-destroying crunches.
‘Good for him,’ Rach forced her head off the mat, her hands at her ears, her knees now seemingly miles away from where she had left them. Her sports kit was a little less shabby than Molly’s – Rachel wore grey leggings and a teal stretchy vest – but it didn’t seem to be helping her in sporting endeavours. ‘It’s good that he’s getting out there, trying out a new relationship. People should do that when they’ve been single for a while.’ Rachel realised her hint was falling on deaf and sweaty ears. ‘Helping him like that, you’re like a modern-day Doctor Dolittle – you can talk to the animals!’
Molly laughed as best she could with a strained face. ‘He wasn’t that bad. But I think I cracked the way to get through to him: stay logical, be blunt, positive reinforcement at all times. Like when I let him have the last Jaffa Cake because he cleaned the entire kitchen after cooking Iris dinner.’
‘Sod Dolittle, I’m calling you Pavlov from now on.’ Rachel giggled, flopping back on her gym mat and turning over to attempt the dreaded ‘Plank’. She was pretty sure women weren’t supposed to be able to support their whole body weights on just their polished toes and knobbly elbows. It felt wrong, and it made her want to vomit a little bit each time. But The Punisher didn’t take projected stomach contents for an excuse in the pursuit of perfect abs. Rach tried to channel her inner Davina – Queen of the workout DVD, bar none. ‘If only you could sort out the rest of mankind into attentive, clean boyfriends. Then I might find someone who I can fall in love with but who doesn’t also make me want to pull my eyelashes out in despair.’ Rachel took a deep breath, tried to stop the jelly-like wobbling of her legs, stomach and – well – everything. ‘But not even Harry Potter has got a wand that big.’
‘That’s not what they said when he did Equus.’ Molly’s dirty little remark had Rachel face-down on her mat in seconds, trying to swallow her laughter as quickly as a bag of chocolate mini eggs. The Punisher was doing the rounds and she couldn’t handle another ten seconds of doing the Plank. She’d rather walk the plank, frankly.
‘Saucy wench,’ Molly’s sweaty friend answered as she managed to stop her laughing long enough to kick Molly gently on the bum with her Nikes.
As they warmed down with slightly embarrassing lunges ten minutes later (nothing like seeing yourself lunge in a floor-to-ceiling mirror to put steely conviction into your diet plans), the thought of the perfect – but therefore improbable – man lingered in Molly’s busy brain.
Chapter Six
Molly had heard of whirlwind romances, people knowing the second they’d found their soul mate, some click being almost audible when they set eyes on ‘the one’. But she’d never thought it actually happened – she thought it was just something that kept Jennifer Aniston in lead movie roles and fuelled the wedding industry. Maybe Molly had become cynical; started to look at things too much like a balance sheet, just because her few long-term relationships had fizzled out. But, maybe, she was just being realistic.
So when, after two months of intense courtship with the lovely Iris, Sam plonked himself down on the sofa next to Molly while she was doing a stint of Internet research, she had no idea that something dramatic was about to unfold.
‘This bloody laptop,’ Molly growled, tapping furiously at the space bar. ‘Gah, it’s useless. I can’t work on it!’ The truth was, Molly had been ‘working’ on her laptop all night but no Google search of ‘exciting ways to make money’ was ever going to lead to anything but Bustybabes.com. Not the career move she was ideally hoping for.
Sam peered over at Molly’s screen, and then down at his watch. ‘You can have mine if you like,’ he said, breezily.
‘Your what?’ Molly carried on scrolling fruitlessly while her computer just sat there and merely thought about responding.
‘My laptop. I’m not going to be using it for a while.’ He rubbed his hands together and then moved his watch up and down on his wrist.
‘Why? Has some big hefty patient crushed your fingers? I hope you have insurance for that kind of thing.’
With a half-sigh that didn’t really dent his chipper mood, Sam replied. ‘Far from it. The thing is, Iris and I are going travelling. For a year. We leave in a few weeks.’ Sam held his breath as he anticipated Molly’s reaction.
‘You’re what? For how long? When? What? Sam!’ Molly was yo-yoing between excitement for Sam and his lovely new woman and utter panic at what his absence would mean for her. Her skin prickled with worry – she couldn’t afford the mortgage alone right now, she could hardly afford tea bags alone.
‘Sis,’ Sam’s arm circled Molly’s shoulders and squeezed her towards him affectionately, ‘I know what you’re thinking. Well, I already have the solution. I did one of those Facebook page things about having a spare room and Patrick’s workmate John needs somewhere to live. He could move in just in time and then we’re all happy as Larry. Whoever Larry maybe. Maybe it’s Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen’s nickname. He certainly always seems cheerful.’
‘Hang on, I’m still not really catching up to wherever it is you’ve gone.’ Molly put her laptop down on the coffee table with an accusing look, the way you’d put a naughty child in the corner to think about what they’d done.
‘This guy, John, is going to move in while I’m away. Patrick says he’s totally fine. A cool guy.’ Sam’s smile was still unwavering. It had been almost non-stop since that night in Liquorish, when Iris’s red top called to him like a lighthouse bringing a ship safely to shore. Molly had helped him keep clear of hidden rocks on his way to her – he almost bought her garage flowers once – but now they were most definitely in the big L.
‘I need to know more about John than he’s a bit “cool” if I’m going to share my most intimate space with him.’ Molly’s voice was getting just a touch shrill.
‘Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far for a flatmate, but you just need to let him use the bathroom now and again.’
‘That’s what I meant! A woman’s bathroom is her temple. I can’t have any old Tom, Dick or John using my cotton buds incorrectly or using the best guest hand soap as shaving gel.’ She shot a pointed look at her little brother.
Sam’s face clouded over just a touch. ‘That was once! And I replaced it.’
Molly rolled her eyes. ‘With some Boots Lemon Zing liquid soap. It was pure Molton Brown that you rubbed on your chops!’ Suddenly, Molly realised her own cheeks were going red and she was in danger of
losing her temper altogether. Calm, Molly, she thought to herself. What would Margaret do? She’d just put up with Sir Alan’s little moments with a calm smile and a nod. ‘OK, obviously that’s not really relevant now.’ Molly slowed her words on purpose and adopted a more Zen-like zone, as hard as that was with such an annoying little brother. ‘But I don’t know this “John”. I don’t even know who this Patrick is, who supposedly thinks John’s so cool.’
‘Molly, it amazes how short your memory is. It’s like you’re the love child of a particularly slow goldfish and a sieve. Patrick is one of my oldest friends – Patrick from university? Patrick from my halls? Any little flicker of recognition, Mollypops? He’s the one who sleeps naked—’
‘—and got himself locked out in the kitchen on his first night! Naked Patrick, yes, of course I remember him. You should have said it was Naked Patrick. So he knows this John guy really well?’
Sam nodded, his smile creeping back. ‘Yup, he worked with him in recruitment for a couple of years, before Patrick set up on his own. John needs a place pretty soon.’
‘Why?’
‘Breakup.’
‘Ohhh.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Well, let’s go for a drink then, all together, and I can suss him out in person. If I detect so much as a whiff of a drum and bass DJing habit or spot a Dungeons and Dragons collector’s card in his wallet then I hold the right to veto. Instantly.’
* * *
Luckily, Molly pronounced John relatively sound (for a man) when they all chattered over a few beers later that week. It was agreed he’d move in just for a year, while Sam was blissed out with Iris on beaches across the world. Molly could sense that slight brittle edge to John, all too common amongst the newly-dumped. She thought she spotted him double-taking any brunettes that passed by; John was still in the stage where his unconscious longed to see his ex walk through the door. Poor git. But apparently Molly had a whole year to get used to John. She only had a few weeks, however, to get used to the idea that Sam was going to be disappearing for twelve actual months.
The Bad Boyfriends Bootcamp Page 4