because she was screwed up.
And she hated herself for it.
Shelley slumped in her seat, trying to avoid Freya’s simpering look of faux-sympathy, and Briony’s told-youso eyes. She felt the welcome buzz of her phone in the purse she had on a lanyard round her neck. She checked the text.
‘Oh hell’, she muttered under her breath. Bloody Gavin.
She popped off to the loo, not wanting Briony peering over her shoulder while she tried to rid herself of the pest. She locked herself in a cubicle and read the text.
Hi Shel, U gong 2 Alex prty then? CU there?
She rapidly texted back
Sorry am busy tonight.
She sat and closed her eyes for a while trying to clear her head of racing thoughts. Then she pulled herself together and made to put the phone away. It buzzed in her hand. Gavin again.
U at pub near ur work? We could meet there?
She groaned and flexed her thumb, trying to figure out the best way of getting rid of him, she didn’t want to be rude, but …
Am on way home with tummy ache.
That should do it, she thought. She snapped the phone shut and made to open the door, but stopped when she heard someone enter. She wasn’t in the mood to have a loo chat just now so decided to wait. Someone barged into the cubicle next to hers and sat down heavily.
Then she heard Freya’s voice.
‘I really can’t see Shelley staying, you know?’
‘Why do you say that?’ Karen said from the next cubicle.
‘Well, the new focus of the magazine, it’s not really her thing, is it? What does she know about sex? She doesn’t even have a boyfriend.’
‘She’s a good writer,’ Karen said. Shelley smiled at this surprise bit of support. ‘Excellent grammar.’
There was a pause as Karen flushed and moved to the sink. ‘You’re right about her being sex-starved though, according to Briony, she gets as much action as a comatose nun.’
Freya giggled while Shelley fumed. She took a deep breath and prepared to fling open the door when her phone buzzed. Gavin again.
Oh sorry to hear that – RU going to the Manga convention on Sun?
She heard the toilet door slam, her opportunity to confront Freya and Karen now gone.
No.
As she pressed send, she felt a brief pang of regret. She wasn’t sure though whether that was because she was being unnecessarily mean to Gavin, or because she was wondering whether she shouldn’t just do exactly what Briony was suggesting and sleep with him. No, she wasn’t that desperate.
Not yet anyway.
She finally left the cubicle and re-joined the table.
‘So go on then, Shell,’ Briony said, apparently having realised belatedly it was time to change the subject. ‘Tell us about your new assignment. You can’t keep it secret for ever, you know.’
‘Yes, Shelley, what’s it all about? We’ve all told you what we’re up to,’ Freya pouted.
The others, further up the table leaned in, anxious to hear this. Shelley shrunk in on herself. She hadn’t even decided if she was doing it yet. How could she pretend to be a sex addict when she wasn’t even a David Schwimmer?
‘Erm, it involves being away for a few weeks, going undercover …’ Shelley began, hoping to keep it vague.
‘Undercover as what?’ Karen asked.
Shelley’s phone buzzed again, offering an escape route.
I h8 prties, wanna cum to mine instead and shag till dawn?
Shelley flipped the phone shut and turned to Briony. ‘What have you been telling him?’
Briony blinked innocently. ‘Who?’
‘Right, that’s it,’ Shelley said finally, pouring herself a large drink. ‘I’ll tell you what I’m doing. I’m getting the hell away from London, away from Gavin the pervert, Aidan the sex fiend and you bunch of unsympathetic, unamusing nymphomaniacs. God alone knows what I’ll find at the sex addiction clinic Aidan’s booked me into, but I doubt they can be any more obsessed with knobbing than you lot.’
And with that, she drained the wine, grabbed her bag and walked out, but not before she heard Freya screeching behind her.
‘Sex addiction clinic! Old maid’s clinic, more like. What a joke!’
‘Sorry about last night, Shell,’ Briony said the next morning. ‘We took it a bit too far. We were only teasing.’
‘It’s fine,’ Shelley replied, smiling at her across the debris covering the sitting-room floor. It looked like rooms in films when the hero returns to find mysterious agents have turned the place upside down looking for a secret diary. Something had happened here last night involving at least two men and an electrical device. Shelley had woken to hear crashing, giggling and the occasional screech. Well used to this, she’d stuffed her ears with two sets of earplugs and turned on Classic FM. Even so, after the wall behind her head started wobbling in synchronism with someone getting a firm rogering she began to wonder if she shouldn’t have gone to Gavin’s after all.
‘Are you going to be writing about this, er, encounter?’ Shelley asked as Briony buttered some toast for her.
Briony snorted. ‘God no. Neither of them was very inventive. I had to finish myself off in the end. Literally.’
Over coffee, and trying to ignoring the gentle snoring from one of the men behind the sofa. Shelley fired up her BlackBerry and checked her mail. As she’d hoped there was a message from Aidan.
‘He’s sent me my cover story,’ she told Briony who’d come to join her. Briony eagerly peered over Shelley’s shoulder at the tiny screen. The girls read for a while, Shelley scrolling. Aidan hadn’t gone into too much depth but nonetheless had included a small amount of quite raunchy background information.
‘Hmmm, interesting that Aidan would think this sort of thing when he thinks of you.’
Shelley was to tell the psychologists at the clinic that she was a nurse with a tendency to hop into bed with her patients. That she had some kind of deep-seated urge not only to nurse sick men back to health, but to nurse them to orgasm too. Not just patients either, doctors, other nurses, anyone vaguely connected with the medical profession. Aidan was acting as her concerned brother trying to save her sanity as well as her career after a complaint had been received from her previous hospital.
Aidan promised more details later. In the meantime, she was to make her way to the clinic, start getting some sizzling real-life stories and e-mailing them back to the office via her BlackBerry.
‘Shell,’ Briony said softly, from behind her left shoulder.
‘Yes?’ Shelley replied, waiting for the snide remark.
‘I think you’re going to be brilliant at this.’
Shelley turned around to look at her friend, expecting to find her suppressing a sarcastic cackle. But Briony returned her gaze levelly. ‘I mean it, Shell. You’re a great writer, a great journalist.’
‘Thanks Brie,’ Shelley replied filling up a bit. ‘That means a lot. I’d made up my mind to do it anyway, but it helps to know I have some support. I’m leaving today in fact. I won’t be back for a couple of weeks.’
Briony smiled. ‘That’s probably just as well, really. You don’t want to hang around here too long.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘I