Girls' Night In

by Jessica Adams

  Peanuts. Finty detested peanuts. She hated the taste and she couldn’t abide the smell. And now Brett reeked of peanuts. But more loathsome than this was what he was doing to them. He was snatching little handfuls by contorting his fingers over the bowl like the hands of an Action Man doll. He was then bouncing his clutch up and down in his palm as if panning for gold, before pushing his whole hand against his mouth. His trousers. He was wiping his fingers over his trousers, leaving salt there, before doing Action Man Hands and reaching for the bowl again.

  This is nuts. This is crazy. I want Marks & Spencer finger-food.

  ‘How about sashimi?’ Brett suggested. ‘There’s a place near here. We use it for business lunches. They know me.’ For Finty, who’d never ordered anything medium rare in her life, let alone raw, the thought of it turned her stomach at a slightly faster rotation than the peanuts. ‘Stop rubbing your nose,’ Brett said, irritation in his voice manifest in the way he swirled the ice around his glass. ‘Go and blow it, for God’s sake.’

  Ladies Toilets. Haven. Peace and camaraderie. Hair products and perfume and mints laid out by the basins. An attendant handing out paper towels and a part-of-the-job smile behind sad (part of the job) eyes. Finty locks herself in a cubicle and sits there awhile. Her nose itches but there’s nothing to blow. She pulls the chain though there is nothing to flush. She washes her hands automatically and checks her reflection. If there’s sadness behind the toilet-attendant’s eyes, Finty’s gaze is underscored with a flatness. It shouldn’t be so. She should be having a wonderful time. She’s on a date. Being wined and dined. Whined at and to dine on foodstuffs she doesn’t like. But there’ll be sex too. That’s to look forward to. Though she’ll close her eyes and conjure Brad Pitt.

  ‘Gorgeous skirt!’ marvels a stranger.

  ‘Thanks!’ Finty replies, all smiles.

  ‘Nice bloke too,’ says the stranger’s friend, ‘but doesn’t he like his peanuts!’

  ‘Yeah!’ says Finty, wondering why she’s lacing her voice with a hasty approximation of affection, or possessiveness; and suddenly craving her own girlfriends desperately.

  Must call them. Just to say hullo.

  The entrance to the bar is the foyer of the hotel and, though Finty has both battery and strong signal on her mobile phone, she eschews privacy, opting for the payphone.

  ‘Hullo?’ Polly answers, with a voice suggesting outrage that there is such an intrusion on a night when she’s gathered her soul mates around her.

  ‘Hey!’ says Finty with commendable bounce.

  ‘Finty!’ Polly shrieks and suddenly the phone has been given to Sally, then Chloë, before all three attempt to listen and chat en masse. Finty says something about peanuts and her nose and an old man clad in plaid. But the girls are too eager to tell her that she should be there with them, on the third bottle of wine, now called vino-darling, with her stomach full of fancy morsels.

  ‘I’d better go,’ says Finty all breezy, ‘I’ll speak to you tomorrow. Have fun.’

  ‘We are!’ they sing. ‘We are!’

  Finty replaced the receiver and rested her head against the side of the booth momentarily before quite literally pulling herself together.

  ‘Young lady!’ It was the elderly American gentleman. ‘Your nose still itching?’ Finty smiled and shook her head. ‘So you wised up and dumped the guy?’ Finty smiled and shook her head. ‘Steak!’ The man proclaimed, ‘I’m going out to get me a steak. Aberdeen. Angus. Horse. I got to have steak – why don’t you join me?’ Finty smiled and shook her head. ‘More nutritious than peanuts,’ he said. Giving Finty a shrug and a wink, he had the doorman summon a taxi. Comforted that he knew about the peanuts, Finty returned to the bar.

  ‘It’s half-eight and she’s phoned,’ Chloë assesses.

  ‘Wonder why?’ Sally contemplates.

  ‘Hmm,’ Polly ponders, offering more wine and oven chips.

  ‘Any ketchup?’ Sally asks. Polly shakes her head and begs forgiveness.

  ‘Did Finty say where she was?’ Chloë asks. Polly shakes her head. The three of them had forgotten to ask. Unforgivable.

  On approaching Brett, who was very obviously cleaning his teeth with his tongue, Finty was pleased to see the peanut bowl had gone. But it was returned, replenished, just as soon as she sat down. Brett winked at the waitress. And then he winked at his girlfriend. His Action Man hand reached for the peanuts. Finty diverted her gaze for fear of hitting him and scanned the bar with a half-smile fixed to her face. She tuned in to the sounds surrounding her. Animated chatter. Music. Bursts of laughter. Clink and clank of glasses and china and ice. Brett munching peanuts, rubbing his salty fingers on his trouser legs. Her involuntary sigh was loud, but the silence between Brett and her was louder. Sally, Chloë and Polly had each, at some point, marvelled to Finty how wonderful silence between partners could be. Chloë had termed it ‘the ultimate in communication’. Polly had defined it ‘proof of compatibility’. Sally had proclaimed it ‘a seal of safety’. For Finty, it was as uncomfortable as the fake smile she was forcing upon her lips.

  It’s not even a loaded silence – of things left unsaid, or wounds being licked or issues being brooded over, Finty realized, it’s the result of there being very little to say. Soon enough he’ll say, ‘Another drink? Shall we eat?’ and after that, sex and sleep.

  ‘Another drink?’ asked Brett, ‘or shall we go and eat?’

  ‘What’s your favourite colour?’ Finty asked him, turning her body towards him, making an effort and really wanting to know.

  ‘What?’ Brett replied, because he really didn’t understand the question. He frowned at Finty and winked at the waitress who sauntered over with notepad and attitude.

  ‘Film!’ Finty tried. ‘What’s your favourite film?’

  ‘Another G and T?’ Brett asked her, now perplexed to the point of irritation.

  ‘Never heard of that one!’ Finty said lightly, nodding at the waitress to affirm her drink.

  ‘I’m going to the bog,’ Brett said with fatigue, as if to suggest it was a place far preferable to Finty’s company and Top Ten questionnaire.

  ‘Desert Island Discs?’ she implored in vain as he rose and left.

  What are mine this week? She pondered, enjoying how impossible it was to select only eight pieces of music. And then it struck her that she would really rather be on a desert island with no music at all than with Brett, even if he placed the world’s jukebox at her disposal. She glanced around the room. A couple, much her own age, sat locked in each other’s company; no limbs touching, just engrossed, obviously stimulated, undoubtedly in love. Near to them, a group of four women. A gathering, a girls’ night out – replete with the essential alternation between whispering, giggling and shrieking ‘No! Oh my God!’ Their conversation was shared naturally, their laughter and interaction unforced and obviously highly cherished. Finty didn’t want to be on a desert island; she didn’t want to be in the West End. She wanted, desperately, to be in Richmond. The waitress arrived with the replenished drinks. Finty glanced at her watch. It was gone half nine.

  ‘Do you think we could have some more peanuts?’ Finty asked. ‘A large bowl?’

  ‘No!’ PoUy laughed.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Sally shrieked, hiding behind her hands.

  ‘Oh yes indeed!’ Chloë confirmed. ‘And I’ll tell you something for free, it was weird at first – but bloody amazing before long.’

  ‘You old slapper!’ Polly said, clapping.

  ‘Sexual deviant, more like!’ Sally laughed.

  ‘I’m a bit pissed I think,’ said Chloë, theatrically forlorn.

  ‘You’d have to have been,’ Polly snorted, ‘to have done that!’

  ‘Better have some more vino-darling,’ Sally said, all doctor-like. ‘Here’s to you, you dirty, dirty girl!’ The three women raised their glasses and drank.

  There was signal and battery on Finty’s mobile phone but again she went to the payphone in the foyer.

  ‘
Lady! Let me guess, you’re calling for the rescue services!’ the now familiar American voice called softly to her as she was about to drop coins in the slot. Finty turned and regarded him quizzically. ‘Hey! You could have the fire brigade drench him with water, the police lock him up, or an ambulance take him away to a very special hospital.’

  ‘Look,’ Finty remonstrated, though it was against her better judgement, ‘he’s my boyfriend. You’re offending me.’

  ‘No,’ said the man, ‘I’m not offending you. Unnerving you, maybe. Offending you – no. I just had a terrible steak. I left most of it and, for some goddamn reason, a large tip too. I’m going to my room. Come use the phone from there.’

  Finty didn’t think twice about following him into the elevator. But she did think of Brett. Fleetingly. And then she remembered the peanuts and the waitresses to whom he could wink, and she knew he’d be OK. For the meantime, at least.

  ‘I’m Finty,’ she introduced herself before disembarking the lift on the sixth floor.

  ‘And I’m George,’ the American said. They shook hands and he led the way to his room.

  Rooms. The American had a suite.

  ‘Are you drunk?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Finty rued.

  ‘Hungry?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Want to make that call?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Would you like a gin and tonic? And some room service?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  ‘Dial 9 for an outside line.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Hullo?’ Polly answers the phone. Finty can hear singing in the background. She knows it is Chloë doing her Gloria Gaynor. She can almost see Sally collapsed in a fit of giggles on the couch. She can envisage Polly sitting cross-legged on the floor with the telephone crooked under her chin while she rolls a joint.

  ‘It’s me again.’

  ‘Finty!’ Polly trills. Suddenly, the other two join her in a wonderful, if dissonant, chorus of ‘Finty McKenzie! Finty McKenzie!’ The volume is such that Finty holds the receiver away from her ear and the cacophony wafts into the room much to the delight of George.

  ‘Are you having a lovely time with Brat?’ Polly asks while Chloë in the background hisses, ‘Brett! It’s Brett.’

  ‘I’m not with him any more,’ Finty says. ‘I’m with George, in his hotel room.’

  There is silence. She hears Polly repeat her last sentence verbatim, but with dramatic full stops between each word, to the other two.

  ‘Who the fuck is George?’ she can hear Sally gasp.

  ‘Where the fuck is the hotel?’ she can hear Chloë implore.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Polly says, suddenly sounding sober.

  ‘Ish,’ says Finty. ‘Can you come and get me?’

  Sally, Polly and Chloë stare at each other. They are in Richmond. Not so much drunk as utterly sozzled and somewhat stoned to boot. They have a friend in need holed up in a hotel room with a man called George and a boyfriend called Brett in the bar beneath. The information is too much to digest, let alone act upon.

  ‘Finty,’ says Polly.

  ‘George,’ says Sally.

  ‘We need a cab,’ says Chloë.

  Finty replaced the receiver and became engrossed immediately in the chintz of the curtains because it seemed like a safe place to be; lost in the swirls and details of something other than her own life. She was vaguely aware of someone unfolding her clenched fist and placing a glass in her hand, a plate on her knee; of someone stroking her hair and patting her shoulder. When the hand was removed, her shoulder felt chill and so she reached for the hand and placed it back there. She hadn’t the energy to swallow down the lump in her throat, or the wherewithal to prevent a large fat tear glazing and stinging her eye before oozing itself out to splat against the glass in her hand. The noise brought her back to the present.

  ‘Spoiled,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Hey,’ said an American voice soothingly.

  ‘But I have,’ she shrugged, as if it was a fait accompli. ‘I’ve spoiled his evening, your evening, their evening. And my own.’

  ‘Horse shit!’ George protested. ‘And bullshit!’

  ‘But the Gathering,’ Finty stressed, ‘it’s sacred. I turned it down for a man with a penchant for peanuts and the ability to make my nose itch.’

  ‘Well, hon,’ George said after a thoughtful slurp at his glass, ‘I guess you won’t be doing that again.’

  ‘A Man Called George!’ Sally proclaimed to the concierge, giving the counter an authoritative tap. ‘Please.’

  The concierge bestowed upon her a look of great distaste, followed by a withering glance at Polly and Chloë who were sniggering behind the faux fig tree in the foyer.

  ‘George Who?’

  ‘He’s expecting us,’ said Sally, refusing to drop eye contact.

  ‘He’s American,’ Chloë added helpfully.

  ‘And he’s wearing plaid,’ Polly announced as some kind of open-sesame password.

  ‘Hi, I’m George,’ says George, ‘and she’s in there.’

  ‘Hullo, George,’ Sally says, eyes agoggle at his unexpectedly advanced years.

  ‘Hullo, George,’ says Chloë, eyes agoggle at the extent of his plaid-clad attire.

  ‘Hullo, George,’ says Polly, eyes agoggle at the opulence of his suite.

  ‘Hi, ladies,’ says George, ‘she’s in there. She’s expecting you.’

  ‘Finty!’ the girls cry with love and sympathy, rushing to embrace their friend.

  ‘Finty!’ they marvel, looking around and spying two bottles of unopened champagne on ice and platters boasting crustless sandwiches and miniature pastries.

  ‘Girls’ Night In,’ Finty says, very matter-of-fact. ‘George says we should gather here.’

  They all look at George. He reminds Sally of her late grandfather. Polly thinks he must be a fairy godfather and then she thinks she must have had one joint too many. Chloë wonders fleetingly what on earth they are doing here in the sumptuous suite of a kindly stranger at gone 10 p.m. Finty wonders where on earth to start.

  ‘It all began when my nose started to itch,’ she tells Sally, Chloë and Polly who are gathered about her, wide-eyed and jaws dropped as if teacher is about to tell a story.

  ‘Champagne?’ George suggests, dimming the lights, opening a bottle and pouring four glasses.

  ‘Aren’t you joining us?’ Sally asks.

  George looks rather taken aback, and clasps his hand to his heart for emphasis. ‘God no! It’s a Gathering. Out of bounds. Girls only. Anyway, I have business to attend to.’

  And he leaves. He leaves them in one of the rooms of his suite, furnished with champagne and sandwiches. And pastries. And warmth. He leaves the girls, who are now giggling, wrapped around each other on a capacious settee. He has work to do.

  The bar is still full and Brett is exactly where George last saw him and where Finty left him over an hour ago. Not that he seems to have realized. His winks at the waitress have provided fast-track service for his gin and tonic to have been frequently replenished. He’s thought only fleetingly of Finty because, in the three months they’ve been together, he’s only ever thought fleetingly of Finty anyway.

  ‘Peanut?’ George asks.

  ‘Why not,’ Brett responds.

  ‘Some advice?’ George asks.

  ‘Why not,’ Brett responds.

  ‘Don’t date women with itchy noses,’ George says, with a slap to Brett’s shoulder blades, ‘they’re not your type.’

  Jenny Colgan

  Jenny Colgan is the author of numerous bestselling novels – Little Beach Street Bakery and the Top 5 bestseller, Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop of Dreams, which won the RNA Romantic Comedy Novel Award 2013. Meet Me at the Cupcake Café was also a Sunday Times Top 10 bestseller, and won the Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance 2012.

  Dougie, Spoons and the Aquarium Solarium

  Jenny Colgan

  Doug’s toes popped into life
like little exclamation marks hanging over the end of the bed, and he rubbed his sticky eyes and tried not to catch the gunk in his stubble. He let out a groan as last night crept back into his head. How had it ended again? Not well. He spooled it through his mind. OK. He met a pretty girl in a nightclub, they’d danced, grinning foolishly at each other because it was too loud to talk, they’d come back here, they’d drunk whisky, they’d skirted the whole snogging issue by talking drivel about his record collection for hours, then he’d finally managed to snog her. That much he was sure of. More than snogged her? He turned his head, and his face crinkled at an opened condom packet. Huh. He had definitely more than snogged her. So why the sense of utter foreboding?

  She – Chloë, that was her name – was a dental assistant, which sounded revolting to him, but he’d liked her, definitely liked her – absolutely – wasn’t sweetly asleep and facing him on the pillow … Just in case he’d gone blind, he stuck out his hand and patted all around the bed and under the mattress. Nope. She was a thin girl, but not Flat Stanley.

  Tentatively he sat up and stared round his twelve-by-twelve room. The cupboard was a possibility, but an unlikely one. It struck him what was wrong. She was gone, but her clothes were strewn all over the floor. Therefore, unless she was flapping along a mile away in an enormously long shirt and clown shoes, it meant that, well, it had happened again …

  ‘CHLOË?’ he shouted, hoping vainly that he might be able to do this without having to get out of bed and touch the icy floor. This didn’t feel like summer at all, as per bloody Doncaster usual.

  ‘CHLOË?’ There was no response. Sighing, he pulled the duvet round himself and landed heavily on the floor, then performed a speedy duvet-to-dressing-gown manoeuvre which didn’t involve exposing his entire naked body to the elements at any one time. He opened the door, but couldn’t see her on the landing.