laughed. ‘Yes, I suppose so. So what are you going to do about it?’
‘Nothing,’ Shelley replied, pouring herself more Diet Coke to avoid having to look at Briony’s smirk. ‘Anyway, how do you know so much about Aidan?’
‘I’ve been looking at his CV.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t play the innocent, I know you googled him after the Christmas party.’
‘Don’t be disgusting!’ Shelley snapped. ‘I did not!’
Briony sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘I mean you looked him up on Google.’
‘Oh … yes. Yes, I did,’ Shelley agreed. ‘I thought googling meant something else in that context.’
Briony looked puzzled for a moment.
‘People these days like to write about themselves on social networking sites, you know, like Facebook or MySpace. If you want to know about someone, you just look them up. Aidan Carter’s MySpace page is very revealing.’
‘Really? What does it say?’
‘It says he’s single and looking for love. His ideal woman is his intellectual equal, someone who gives as good as she gets, in the office and the bedroom.’
Shelley wilted.
‘Well that’s me out then,’ she said.
‘You’re not his equal in the office?’ Briony asked, smirking.
‘I meant the bedroom,’ Shelley replied.
‘Nonsense,’ Briony said. ‘You’re just out of practice.’
‘Fat chance of getting any of that in the near future, the hours I’m working,’ Shelley said.
‘You’re making excuses. Your problem is that you don’t put yourself out there enough, you never go out these days, you’ve had three dates in the last two years … how many times have you had sex in the last year?’
‘I had sex at my birthday party,’ Shelley retorted a bit loudly, drawing interested looks from the neighbouring tables. ‘With that accountant,’ she went on, in a hushed tone.
Briony went back to smiling. ‘So that was a fumble in the cloakroom at Jerusalem, with a spod, two days after your 25th birthday, and when was the time before that?’
Shelley had to think hard. Then it hit her. ‘It was at my 24th birthday party. With the guy from the video store.’
‘Which was a week before your actual birthday,’ Briony said. ‘So that means …’
‘I didn’t have sex once during my entire 25th year,’ Shelley completed, now thoroughly miserable.
As a coup-de-grace, Briony whipped out her magazine, already open at an article titled ‘Women’s sexual peak now at 25’.
‘That’s not true!’ Shelley cried. ‘Everyone knows it’s 40 for women. I was looking forward to it.’
Briony shrugged. ‘Sorry, Bird. Scientists are never wrong about these things.’
Shelley took a mouthful of lettuce and munched thoughtfully. It wasn’t that she didn’t like the idea of sex, it was just that … well, just she had never been any good at it. As soon as she got naked with someone, she just froze up. She’d read all the magazines. She had a collection of steamy novels and she even had some videos. She knew the theory, but that almost made it worse, she knew the things she was supposed to be doing, and the fact she wasn’t doing them preyed on her mind and caused her to seize up even more. All she could think about was how awful the man must be finding it. There had even been times back at university where men had made excuses and left without finishing. Even back then Shelley had known that for a man not to finish was a pretty big deal.
Briony interrupted her thoughts. ‘So what about Gavin?’
Shelley stared at her, outraged. Realisation crept in.
‘So that’s what this is all about? You still want me to go out with Gavin?’
‘Actually, Shelley, I want you to stay in with Gavin and fuck him till his cock breaks off.’
Gavin was Briony’s ex-boyfriend’s best mate. Shelley had been introduced to him at a party. She suspected that, being slightly geeky herself, she was paired off with him in the way that one might pair off the only two estate agents at a magazine launch. They’d better fancy each other cos there’s no-one else. Shelley had fumed. Didn’t they appreciate there is a geek hierarchy? Shelley was slightly geeky, Gavin on the other hand was an ubergeek. He looked the sort of person who’d designed and built a robot to cut his hair. And he was positively chubby; not that looks were everything. Gavin spent the evening following her about talking about Manga, which, as far as Shelley was concerned, were misogynistic Japanese comic books with terrible punctuation.
Briony had apparently told him that Shelley was single and a real Manga fan.
‘Why did you tell him that?’ Shelley hissed at her while Gavin was off on one of his regular toilet breaks.
‘I didn’t know Manga was comics,’ Briony had said in self-defence.
‘What did you think it was?’
‘I thought Manga was a Spanish film director,’ Briony replied sheepishly. ‘You’re into that kind of thing, aren’t you?’
To make matters worse, Briony had given Gavin Shelley’s phone number and told him to call her to arrange a date. Shelley and Briony had had a falling out over this that involved ashtrays being thrown and the subject was still raw.
Briony went on. ‘I sort of told him you might like to see him tonight.’
‘You did what?!’
‘Well you told me you weren’t busy. He said he had tickets to the Abba thing, you like musicals …’
‘I don’t like musicals.’
‘Course you do, you’re always off down to Theatre Land.’
‘Yes, to the theatre, I like going to the theatre. Do you ever actually listen to what I say?’
‘Theatre, musicals, same thing. Anyway, I thought that since you can’t seem to get your act into gear then I’d have to do it for you. I’m going to make sure you get some sex soon, and I’m not fussy about who you do it with.’
The man at the next table was definitely interested now. He kept trying to catch Shelley’s eye. She shook her head in disbelief. ‘Honestly Briony, you’re a good mate and you’ve always stood by me, and I know you’re trying to help, but not Gavin. There’s just no way. Sorry.’
‘Look, he fancies you. What more do you want? How many other men have asked you out lately?’
‘Oh God,’ Shelley groaned, head in hands. ‘You know you’re a minger when only other mingers ask you out.’
‘You’re not a minger, Shell,’ Briony said. ‘You’re actually very pretty and you know it, but you need to start off on mingers until you get your groove back, then you can play with the big boys again. You know, work your way up through the grades.’
‘You sound like a boxing coach.’
‘That’s how you should think of me. I’m your coach, I know what’s good for you and I’m going to make sure Gavin gets into your ring.’
‘Oh you’re vile, Briony. Stop it.’
‘It’s not as if he’s an axe-murderer,’ Briony pleaded. ‘We know him.’
‘Yes we know him,’ Shelley hissed, ‘and may I just remind you that it was only a couple of weeks ago that you yourself referred to Gavin as a “cartoon-reading salad-dodger”. Now let’s