‘Cheeky bastard. He walks out and then calmly rings up all but requesting I be in when he gets there so that we can talk,’ Katie looked down at her phone and then back up at Jen.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Nothing. Apart from have the locks changed so that he can’t get in. Then I’m going to pack my things and move back to my own flat. He’ll have to kick the bloody door down if he wants to get in tonight.’
‘Nice one,’ Jen smiled, ‘Serves him right as well. Shall we go now?’
After paying for the lunches they set off about their afternoon’s business. Within an hour the two women had thrown Katie’s things into various bin liners and suitcases and had crammed them into the back of her Polo. As Katie completed a last hurried look around the flat to see if anything had been overlooked, Jen dialled the number of a locksmith she’d found in the yellow pages.
‘He’ll be here in twenty minutes. I told him there’d been a break in.’
Katie said nothing, instead choosing to sit on the edge of the black, pine effect, coffee table and look around the flat that now had almost no traces of her ever having lived in it.
‘You all right?’ asked Jen, seeing the look on her friends face.
‘It just seems such a waste. I feel like I’ve wasted the last ten months of my life on him.’ Tears formed in Katie’s eyes and as she lowered her head to focus on her car keys, held tightly in both hands, they crept over the rims of her eyes and trickled haphazardly down her nose and cheeks.
‘Hey, come on,’ said Jen in the cheery, yet supportive and understanding, tone that friends are obliged to adopt at such delicate moments, ‘I’ve thought of something which will really put the icing on the cake when he gets here tonight’.
Katie looked up, ‘What?’
‘Do you know Dave’s credit card number at all?’ asked Jen, a devious smile crossing her lips as she spoke.
‘Of course. I’ve still got one of them in my purse.’
‘Then I think he should pay for the locks changing. After all, it is his flat.’
Katie smiled as the realisation hit her. Dave would be angry when he found he was unable to get into his own flat. He would be annoyed that she’d left so quickly and without seeing him first, especially if he was after a last fling as Jen suspected. But when his credit card statement arrived he’d hit the roof.
Katie smiled again as they closed the door of the flat behind them, the new lock clicking into place behind them. The smile faded, however, as she wondered if she hadn’t been carried away by Jen’s enthusiasm to cause as many problems as possible. Wouldn’t it have been better to have spoken to Dave? Would it have been so bad if they had ended up in bed? It was too late now. She’d no choice but to wait and see how he would react.
Chapter Four
Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!
‘So there we were. Off our fuckin’ faces on some stuff that one of the lads had brought. Mental it was!’
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
Katie nodded her head as she tried to continue dancing despite the attentions of this boy.
‘You’re really nice looking,’ bellowed the boy as he put an arm around Katie’s waist.
‘Thanks,’ she shouted back over the music.
Thump! Thump! ‘Feel the bass.’ Thud! Thud!
‘Really nice,’ continued the boy. As he said this he pulled Katie towards himself with the arm that was now gripping her right buttock. He lowered his face so that he was looking straight at her and began the approach for the dance floor kiss.
Being just drunk enough not to care and not wanting to cause a scene, as she would have to in order to remove herself from the evidently well practised bum grabbing manoeuvre, Katie let the lad have his way. She even kissed him back a little, more out of politeness than anything.
Almost immediately the Boy Wonder decided he was on to a winner and tried to progress to the hand inside the top stage via the both hands on the arse and the hand holding the back of the head technique. As he attempted to work a sweaty hand down the inside of her top, she grabbed it and pulled it back out before any more dignity was lost.
Katie was on a girl’s night out with Jen and a few of her friends. She hadn’t wanted to go but, as Jen had pointed out more than once, she hadn’t been out at all since she’d moved back to her loft apartment on Timber Wharf almost a month ago. Eventually Katie had agreed; she’d little choice since Jen had threatened to bring her friends to her flat if she insisted on staying in. Besides, Jen was right. In the weeks since she’d left Dave and the flat she’d begun to see as their home, she’d adopted moping around as her pass-time of choice. She would go through the motions of getting up and going to work, but would then go straight home and sit in front of the television with the lights off and the telephone next to her on the sofa.
On the one occasion Dave had phoned since he effectively evicted her from his flat and his life, she’d broken down little over a minute into the exchange. He’d wondered how she was and said how sorry he was. She was pleased that he was so angry over the changed locks but less happy when he mentioned that he’d met someone else through work. Katie had cried and Dave had said he’d talk to her soon. Now, over a fortnight later, the lying shit was evidently not going to ring no matter how much she stared at the phone. So, when Jen had suggested, or rather insisted, that they go out she’d finally relented. She’d only ever met Jen’s other friends in passing but they seemed all right. Besides, Jen was superb in group situations and made sure nobody ever felt left out.
They’d met at Baa Bar on Deansgate Locks, since it was fairly close to everywhere and they all knew it. When Katie arrived, Jen waved her across to join the rest of the girls at a booth in the corner nearest the window.
‘Hiya mate. Glad you came. I got you a drink in.’
‘Cheers. You didn’t leave me much choice did you really, you sly cow?’
‘Sod off. You needed a night out and you know it. Everyone, this is Katie. Katie, this is Sophie, Kath, Leanne and Rhia’. Jen pointed at each of her friends as she made the introductions and, after all the usual ‘hello’ and ‘all right’ pleasantries, Katie sat down.
Even though it was only half past eight, the bar was busy, full of young, trendy people like themselves, looking to let off steam after a week of work. It was almost ten before the group left, ambling a few doors down the street to Revolution.
The bar was packed with people, and very hot. After spending several minutes pushing through crowds to get to the bar, Jen decided to buy in bulk to avoid the hassle of queuing for more drinks. She bought them a cocktail each and a shot of strawberry vodka, then led the way downstairs in the hope of finding some seats. Katie felt drunk and her feet were killing her, but she was having a great time and she’d hardly thought about The Tosser all night.
They were in the midst of a discussion about blow jobs, who swallowed and who didn’t, who’d had anal sex and who hadn’t, when lights flashed to signify last orders. They stumbled outside, the fresh air stimulating their dulled senses, to hail a taxi, since one of the girls had suggested a club.
They’d arrived at Friday Vogue, at the Ritz, at about midnight and it was packed with all the usual Friday night clientele: teenage girls wearing more make-up than clothing, regardless of shape or size, and teenage boys wearing the Ben Sherman/Rockport uniform with extensive hair gel application to their uniformly short hair. Then there were the more mature women wearing as much make-up as the teenage girls and similar dresses. The final group consisted of the lone men. Those who go to a club on their own and try not to stick out like an older man on his own in a club full of kids.
Katie decided that she and her friends fell somewhere in between the teenagers and the slappers. They’d all mastered the subtleties of foundation application, unlike many of the orange faced, white-throated females wandering around, and all their outfits were the correct fit and didn’t come from New Look. However, she did feel old surrounded by such a vast amount of
teenage flesh and resolved to get horribly drunk in order to blot out her negative thoughts. It was while she was at the bar that her current teenage admirer had attached himself to her like an extra shadow.
After declining his offer to buy her a drink Katie had spotted some of the other girls dancing and decided to join them. During their brief conversation, which Katie had missed most of owing to the noise; her would-be suitor had introduced himself. He hadn’t bothered to ask her name yet and she’d no intention of volunteering the information.
They were making the usual bobbing and swaying movements to the lyric free, bass-driven noise when Rhia - at least Katie thought that was her name - came over and shouted in her ear.
‘Looks like you’ve pulled there.’
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
‘You what?’
‘I said you’re in there. With the baby.’
Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!
‘Get lost. He just won’t leave me alone.’
Rhia laughed and danced away. When Katie turned back to face the chancer he was grinning from ear to ear.
‘Talking about me?’ he shouted, leaning in towards her.
‘She wondered who you were.’ Katie yelled back.
It was then that he’d made his various moves and shortly after this that Jen had grabbed her and said that the rest of the girls were leaving. Katie informed the confident young thing that she was going with them and he took that as his cue to follow her outside, still with his arm clamped around her, his hand squeezing her right buttock at regular intervals.
As they walked to the taxi rank to join the queue of drunken revellers with their post-club kebabs and pizzas, he kept telling Katie how pretty she was and hinted that he’d like to get to know her more intimately.
‘Why don’t you come back to my place?’ Was one of his less adventurous questions.
‘Come down here for a minute.’ Was another of the more daring comments he made as they passed an alleyway. As Katie looked down the alley she saw two entwined bodies making no attempt to conceal themselves, evidently doing what her admirer wanted to do to her.
‘I don’t think so,’ she replied to this latest proposal, ‘I’ve got to get home.’
‘I could come back with you,’ he suggested earnestly, leaning in to nuzzle her ear. In his drunken state all the Boy Wonder actually managed was to slur his comments into her ear before running his slobbering tongue all over the side of her face.
‘I don’t think so, I’m staying with one of the girls,’ and with this Katie removed the arm that was clamped to her bum and climbed into the taxi that Jen had procured for them.
‘He was well keen to get into you!’ Jen teased as they all flopped back into their seats.
‘Thanks for all your help,’ Katie said sarcastically, ‘He wouldn’t leave me alone. I’ll have thumbprints on my arse for a week now.’
The rest of the girls laughed and she had to admit she’d enjoyed herself despite her earlier reservations.
‘At least you got some interest, even if he was only a kid.’
Katie lifted her head forward from the seat she’d been resting against in the back of the taxi. It was Rhia who’d spoken.
‘Stop whinging. You’ve had more than your fair share recently.’ It was Jen who made the comment and Katie wondered briefly what she’d meant but was more than happy to rest her back on the seat and say nothing. No more was said and the girls were dropped off one by one. The taxi reached Katie’s street and she said goodbye to Jen and one of the other girls, the only two left in the taxi, and went inside.
The following day, Saturday, Katie telephoned Jen to thank her for dragging her out the previous night, and to invite her out for lunch.
‘Oh, hi, Katie, good night wasn’t it?’ Jen sounded as chirpy as ever.
‘Yeah, brilliant. I’m really glad you made me come. The others were nice too. We’ll have to do it again soon.’
‘So it cheered you up a bit then eh?’
‘Too right it did,’ she replied enthusiastically.
‘Good. It seemed to do Rhia a favour as well. She’s been a right bloody misery lately,’ said Jen as if the thought of it made her weary.
‘Why, what’s up with her?’ Katie vaguely recalled the comments made in the taxi the night before.
‘Oh, she’s a pillock really. She’d been living with this bloke for a while and then she only goes and has a one nighter with one of his mates. Now the dopey bitch is pregnant.’
‘Fucking hell, does her bloke know?’
‘Does he hell. She only went and left him in the middle of the night and hasn’t spoken to him since. Poor sod probably thinks it’s his fault. Rhia being Rhia, she hasn’t the faintest idea what to do next.’ Jen sighed again. It sounded as if she’d been putting up with this for a while.
‘God, what a mess. Haven’t you got any friends who don’t have man trouble?’ Katie joked in an attempt to change the subject.
‘No, I surround myself with hopeless cases like you and Rhia so I feel superior. Do you want to go for lunch somewhere?’
‘That’s why I phoned actually,’ Katie replied.
‘Cool. I want to do some shopping, so how about a quick sandwich from Pret?
‘Great, I’ll meet you at half twelve.’
The arrangements made, Katie reflected upon what she’d learned about Rhia and was glad that her own situation with Dave hadn’t been complicated by her being pregnant. Especially since The Tosser had now met someone else. That would be fantastic when people asked where the father was, ‘Oh, he kicked me out of his flat and went off with someone he met at work. Yes I did love him actually.’
Chapter Five
Ben had slept very little on the whole since Tits-up Tuesday. He’d attempted to contact Rhia to try and get some sort of explanation for her sudden departure, but so far he’d been unsuccessful. Fran, her bitch of a sister, had refused to let him speak to her and Rhia never answered her mobile or replied to any of his messages.
It had been almost three weeks since Rhia had left and Ben still had no real idea why, although he reasoned that it must have something to do with their argument on the night she’d left. It had started off about something fairly insignificant but, like most of their fights, they’d ended up shouting about children.
Ben saw himself as a natural dad. He’d always wanted to settle down and have kids, even though, as a bloke, he was supposed to be against all that until he’d worked his way through loads more women. At least, if he allowed himself to believe half the crap he heard from the blokes at the office or on the few occasions he went to a pub. But he’d found Rhia and they’d fallen in love.
He remembered meeting her as he came out of Pierre Victoire on Peter Street with some friends. She was walking in at the same time and he’d held the door for her. The first thing he’d noticed was her hair, long and blonde then, with an expensive looking sheen, and almost black eyes giving her face a Mediterranean look. Then her perfume had hit him, Cerruti 1881, still her favourite now. She was quite tall, with long tanned legs that looked great with the short grey skirt she was wearing that night. They had exchanged greetings then walked away, bumping into each other repeatedly all night, until they’d started talking.
They’d clicked straight away, she’d laughed at Ben’s jokes and there hadn’t been any awkward silences where they’d resorted to people-watching. At the end of the night, Rhia had offered her phone number. Ben called her the same night to check it was her real number and arranged to meet her the next day. They’d been together ever since.
Ben thought that was it and it seemed, to him at least, that children were the next step. Rhia, however, had been off the idea from the start. In fact, they’d even ended up sleeping separately on occasions and sex between them had become a very rare event.
Despite this being the most likely reason for her to have left, he couldn’t see why she’d gone in the middle of the night and had been avoiding him so completely since. They�
�d discussed, and argued about, children countless times; this latest fight had been fairly tame in comparison, yet she’d gone. The more Ben thought about it, the more not knowing aggravated him.
He looked revolting; little surprise since he was drinking every night and still wasn’t sleeping. His work had suffered and people in the office had started to make the odd comment. Only the other day, Em had asked how the Rhia situation was. She’d also wondered if he was all right since he was looking a bit grey. He’d told her he was fine, he’d little choice in the middle of the office, but it was becoming more apparent that he wasn’t.
Ben had always liked a drink, especially after a long day stuck behind a desk converting great swaths of Scandinavian trees into pointless reports which he was sure nobody ever read. For one of Ben’s first dates with Rhia they’d gone to see Brassed Off at the local cinema. Rhia liked Stephen Tomkinson and he liked Tara Fitzgerald, especially when she got her kit off. The film had been rubbish, a nude scene featuring Tara would, in his opinion, have helped a lot, but Tara spent the entire film in some stupid purple suit. One line had stuck in his head though. Tara’s job in the film was similar to Ben’s, churning out reports for faceless higher management to read. At one point in the film she confronted her boss about the reports and said to him, ‘They have to be seen to be made, but they aren’t made to be seen’. That seemed to sum up Ben’s entire job in a sentence and he’d wanted to challenge his boss, just like Tara. He had, of course, never uttered one wrong word in the office and never would, but he regarded his position with J.D. King as utterly futile from then on.
Even after meeting Rhia and later moving in with her, Ben had his evening drink. He’d come in from work and pour himself a generous measure of whiskey, which he would drink on his way upstairs to change out of his suit. Then, on a typical night, he’d have several more whiskeys before dragging himself up to bed. Since Rhia had left, however, what he considered his just reward for a hard days work had turned into a hobby of sorts.
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