I?’
We start walking again, I shift the weight of my bag to the other shoulder. ‘It’s definitely playing dirty. If Gretton finds out, he’ll go ape.’
‘Sorry. He was so nasty about her I thought it served him right.’
‘I know. Bear in mind you could’ve messed it up for all of us. The public don’t tend to make much distinction between good journalists and Grettons. A lot of them don’t even understand about open court. They’re amazed they can’t have us thrown out.’
‘I’m really sorry.’
‘Ah well … sensitive “our pain” interviews aren’t his forte, I can’t see him cosying up to the mum, so it probably won’t become an issue anyway. And he’ll hack them off by doing lots of gratuitous exploding arse stories during the trial.’
Conversation’s interrupted while we negotiate road crossing. When we resume progress, Zoe says: ‘My mum’s large.’
‘Really?’ I glance doubtfully at her sapling limbs.
‘I got my dad’s metabolism,’ she says. ‘Yeah, she looked into gastric banding at one point. But she was too big.’
‘Why would they …’ I start again. ‘Isn’t that the point?’
Zoe mutters something about surgery and anaesthesia risk.
‘Then she finally lost the weight and got the band, and started drinking those chocolate-flavoured protein shakes for body builders.’
‘Right. Liquids are probably best, at first. What with the smaller space.’
‘Not if you chug them all day and end up the size you were when you were turned down for surgery.’
‘Ah,’ I say. Poor Zoe – her jet-propelled ambition is probably a result of wanting to get a long way from problems at home.
‘Gretton hit a nerve,’ she concludes.
I feel bad for telling her off. I squeeze her arm.
‘Gretton hits all our nerves. Don’t dwell on it.’
‘Should I take back what I said? Tell the mum I misheard or something?’
‘I doubt she’d forget the ice-cream gag. Nah, leave it. Thanks for pointing her my way, too,’ I add, not wanting to sound ungrateful.
‘Any time,’ Zoe says. ‘We’re a team. Lunch is on me today. I’m going to try a Piscine Ploughman.’
‘A pissing ploughman?’
‘Smoked salmon sandwich.’
‘Oh.’
‘I made that up.’
‘Thank goodness.’
‘They call it Fishy on a Dishy.’
‘You’re ordering,’ I say, opening the pub door and ushering Zoe through. ‘I suffer enough humiliation without going looking for more.’
25
‘Oi!’ Caroline shouted, over the aircraft-like noise of my travel hairdryer. I clicked it off. ‘Ben for you!’
I galloped down the stairs of our student house to the hallway. We rarely made outgoing calls – our landlord had installed a payphone at his own rate that gobbled up coins like a sweating diabetic with Giant Smarties.
‘Ron! Culinary SOS!’ Ben said. ‘I’m making dinner for Georgina and it has TURNED TO SHIT.’
‘You’re cooking?’ I said, laughing and simultaneously envying Georgina for being the kind of woman men sweat over a flambée to impress. ‘Why not go out?’
‘She got the wrong end of the stick and I didn’t know how to set her straight. She was all …’ Ben affected the breathy, 1950s starlet voice she used with men rather well ‘… I can’t wait to try your cooking, Ben.’
‘Haha, this is going to be great! You best call on the little hombre from Homepride.’
‘She’s not the kind of girl who’s going to find it funny to be served a Findus Crispy Pancake sandwich, is she?’
Ben lived with boys who re-used dirty plates by putting clingfilm over them instead of washing up. Georgina was going to need a robust constitution and all her vaccinations, I thought.
‘I can’t vouch for her sense of humour but I’ve never seen her crack a smile. Even in those laugh-a-minute linguistics lectures.’
‘Help! What do I do?’
I gave an exaggerated sigh.
‘How long have you got until she comes round?’
‘Three hours … no, wait, two hours forty-five minutes!’
‘And what’s my budget if I go to the supermarket on the way to yours?’
‘Whatever it takes! You’re my angel.’
‘Yeah yeah.’
I turned up at Ben’s house in my knitted woolly hat carrying misshapen supermarket bags with steadily lengthening handles in each hand.
‘Lemme in, these are going to break,’ I said, barging through the porch and plopping them unceremoniously on the hallway floor.
‘Ah Ron, bless you.’ Ben rescued a tub of crème fraîche as it rolled towards the coat-stand.
‘I’ve bought you flowers too,’ I said, producing a cellophane cornet of white hothouse roses from one of the bags. ‘I feel as if I’m seducing someone by proxy, like Cyrano de Bergerac.’
‘Superb!’
I knew I must’ve been fond of Ben, ’cos I sure as hell didn’t want to be seducing Georgina Race with anything more than a bouquet of stinging nettles, severed rat tails and tampon strings. And yet, apparently, I was.
With the help of supermarket recipe idea cards, we assembled something fairly respectable: asparagus starters, stuffed chicken breasts, potato gratin, white chocolate mousse with raspberries. I delegated tasks to Ben and he put music on while we worked. He actually proved quite an able deputy. The fridge gradually filled up with foil-wrapped dishes.
‘I didn’t know you could cook,’ he said.
‘I can’t, really. I’m making it up as I go along.’
‘Now she tells me.’
‘Here are the timings.’ I jotted down oven temperatures on a scrap of paper and tucked them behind the kettle. ‘Follow them in that order and give her the bubbly as soon as she arrives. You can get away with much imperfection when people are pissed. What are you wearing?’
‘A shirt?’ said Ben, uncertain. He was in a red ’66 World Cup top. It directly contravened Article 7.1 of Rhys’s Wanker Law that stated you didn’t advertise any event you hadn’t attended, any place you’d never been, or any band you didn’t really listen to.
‘Think smart. No sports-related casual wear.’
‘Got it.’
‘I’ll leave you to get ready.’
I pulled my coat on, picked my hat up. ‘Good luck,’ I said.
‘You are my angel and your reward is in heaven,’ Ben said.
‘It’s certainly not on earth,’ I grumbled.
As I walked back to my house, something niggled, and it wasn’t the fact I’d cooked a meal I wasn’t going to eat.
Knocking