Talking to Addison

‘Get some sleep.’

‘OK.’ I toyed with the idea of feigning a few internal injuries so that he’d have to undress me, but remembered the other night and wisely decided against it.

I slept for ten hours, all the adrenaline flushing its way through my system. When I woke up the next afternoon, I rediscovered the envelope Johnny had given me. Inside were practically two weeks’ wages.

Josh couldn’t believe I’d been in a fight. He was unbelievably jealous. We’d decided that beer was really the only response to my ordeal – or white wine spritzer, if you were Kate – and the three of us had repaired to a new pub round the corner which, ideally for my benefit, mistook having the place in practically complete darkness for atmosphere.

I had pondered long and hard about whether to try and smother my eye – now vicious shades of yellow and green – in foundation, but this had only made me appear even more like a startled panda bear than I normally did, so I’d nitched that and gone the other way entirely, making up my right eye with dramatic eyeliner and green shadow. From a distance, it wasn’t too bad; I just looked like I’d escaped from a glam rock band, and sufficiently tarty and hard that you wouldn’t want to get any nearer. Close up, I was terrifying.

Kate, once she’d established that I hadn’t been raped or anything, could barely stop laughing. And Josh kept asking me stupid questions about whether or not the blood had rushed to my head. I pointed out that it had, and that it kept on rushing, straight out of my nose, and could he possibly be a bit more sensitive about it?

‘Yes, these playground warriors can get a bit uptight about their traditional fighting techniques,’ chided Kate. ‘Watch out, or she’ll give you a killer Chinese burn.’

‘Ha ha ha,’ I said, but stopped with my mouth hanging open as this unbelievably gorgeous guy loomed out of the darkness right in front of me.

Forgetting for a moment that I was tarted up like Marilyn Manson, I immediately tilted my profile up towards him, so that I could feel even more stupid when he swept right past me and went up and introduced himself to Kate.

Josh shot me a look of utter horror – how could this chap simply walk up to a group and introduce himself to a complete stranger? Then he sat back and waited for Kate to give the guy a good rude brush off. Josh really doesn’t know much about women.

I mused for a moment that, if it weren’t for my black eye, Mr Deeply, Deeply Suave – who was wearing a grey cashmere top and a Burberry trench coat which matched Kate’s exactly – would have been after me first, but I couldn’t even kid myself: I got the nerdy scientist guys, Kate got the rich ones. He even seemed familiar, in an American way.

Sure enough, he was American, and soon Kate was giggling away – not one of nature’s gigglers, but she was giving it her best shot – and chatting happily to him, and the very next moment a bottle of champagne had miraculously arrived out of nowhere and he was pouring her some. Not us, only her. I assumed she would remedy this deeply unfair state of events immediately, but when I looked at her I noticed she had subtly adjusted her body language so it seemed as if she hadn’t even come in with us. And their heads were bent very close together. I was sure, still, that I’d seen him before.

Josh scuttled his chair round to me, muttering crossly.

‘I’m sorry, but we appear to have been barred from the international Burberry convention,’ I said to him, and he grunted. Then his face lit up.

‘I know, why don’t we have champagne? We can have fun, right?’

Kate and big beautiful thingy suddenly let out a pealing laugh.

‘Josh, their definition of fun is probably comparing international money markets. But I would very much like another Becks, if you’re buying. And some salt-and-vinegar crisps, which are essential medicine in the treatment of black eyes.’

Ridiculously, as the bar was trying to be trendy, it sold those cute teeny bottles of Moët & Chandon, and Josh returned laden with my beer, the crisps between his teeth, and a quarter bottle of champagne to himself, which he sipped morosely through a straw. I couldn’t help laughing and had to restrain myself from rubbing him on the head with my knuckles.

‘Don’t worry!’

‘How can I not worry? I’m twenty-eight years old and I haven’t had a girlfriend for three years!’

‘Or a boyfriend.’

‘Would you stop with that already.’ He pouted. ‘Some of us just … take a bit longer to get round to things than other people.’

‘What, like puberty?’

‘Do you want to be homeless again?’

‘No!’ I said emphatically.

‘And anyway, I’ve got a right to complain – you’ve got a date and Kate’s obviously met her soul mate, and you’ll all move out and have a squillion babies and I will die all alone.’

‘I know!’ I said brightly. ‘When I marry Addison, we’ll stay in the house and you can babysit our beautiful and brainy children.’

‘Oh, right. And I’m the sad fantasist.’

‘Not at all. He put this Elastoplast on my cheek. I’m going to keep it forever as a symbol of the first time we touched.’

Josh looked appalled.

‘I think I’m going to be sick. Holly, please don’t go all gooey over Addison …’

‘Too late!’ I exclaimed triumphantly.

‘… I really think there’s something a bit wrong with him. You know, like that weird form of train-spottery autism thing that boys are meant to get?’

He thought for a minute.

‘I wonder if I could get it.’

‘You could count things, I suppose. Then memorize them.’

‘Ah yes. I can see the appeal.’

‘Josh,’ I said, ‘don’t worry about me and Addison.’

Kate, unsurprisingly – well, a little bit surprisingly, I’d have assumed she was a ‘Rules’ girl as it had the kind of anal, personality-smashing techniques she tended to like – chatted to the beautiful thing all night then swanned off with it to dinner somewhere. Le Caprice, I assumed. I had no idea what Le Caprice might be like, but it sounded the kind of place that people who wore designer underwear (I knew Kate did, because I stole a pair of her pants out of the drier once, but I couldn’t get both legs in them) might go.

Josh and I hadn’t stayed long. He’d decided he had to get back to gen up on some football scores.

I hung around the next morning, Saturday, to see if she’d come in or not and was disappointed to find that she had and therefore clearly hadn’t gotten into something drunken and debauched, which would have been enjoyable for me. She swanned into the kitchen at around ten, carrying the Financial Times and looking composed and well rested. I busied around, pretending to be making coffee, and bursting to ask her what had gone on, however she calmly sat down and opened her newspaper. I tried to contain my frustration.

‘Coffee?’

‘Decaf, thanks, if you’re making it. Black, no sugar.’

I looked over at her.

‘That’s a very pointless cup of coffee.’

She raised her eyebrows at me.

‘Actually, it consumes more calories than it contains, like celery.’

‘Aha.’ I poured the water out. ‘So that’s what coffee is for.’

She smiled primly at me and went back to her paper. I tried again.

‘It’s my big date today. You know, at the Natural History Museum.’