Читать книгу Fen - Freya North - Страница 13

Wherever you are, it is your own friends who make your world.

William James

I’ll just nod, Jake decides over a mouthful of Chicken Madras. I’ll just nod and not comment.

Matt was remarking on the physical similarities between a girl on a TV advert for dandruff shampoo and Fen McCabe.

I won’t comment, Jake thought, I won’t say, ‘Yes, but you said that one of the girls we chatted to in the pub last night looked like her’. I’ll just nod.

‘Fen’s face doesn’t have that hardness, though.’

I won’t ask you how Fen can look like that girl on the adverts and the girl in the pub and Gwyneth Paltrow and your very first girlfriend.

‘Not that willowy, though. Just normal height, I suppose.’

I mean, if she looks like all the above, she probably doesn’t look remotely like any of them. A crazy mixed-up kid – which is what you’re sounding like, Matthew Holden. You can’t possibly go for a healthy rebound brand of zipless fuck with someone occupying your thoughts as much as this Vanilla girl.

‘Don’t fuck the payroll,’ Jake says.

‘I’ve no intention of doing so,’ says Matt, who feels suddenly just a little vulnerable, as if he’s been caught out. ‘I’m just saying that it’s refreshing to have a nice view at work. She seems like a laugh. Like we could be mates.’

‘Like you want to mate her,’ Jake counters, offering to swap the foil container with his Madras for the remains of Matt’s Rogan Josh.

Matt shrugs. ‘Nah,’ he says, feigning indifference by appearing incredibly interested in Newsnight.

‘Anyway,’ says Jake, ‘if she looks like a hybrid of that model crossed with Gwynnie and the girl in the pub, if she’s intelligent and a laugh and all that – well, she’s probably happily ensconced with some lucky bloke whom she blows to heaven and back every other night.’

‘Probably,’ Matt agrees, after a moment’s thought. It made sense that Fen would already be taken. ‘Bugger Newsnight,’ Matt says, ‘let’s go for last orders.’

‘How’s Matthew Hard-on?’ Abi asks Fen whilst wrestling to uncork a second bottle of Sauvignon.

‘I had lunch with Otter today,’ Fen replies, taking the bottle and deftly wielding the corkscrew. ‘He’s recently broken up with a long-term girlfriend.’

‘I thought Otter was gay?’ Abi says.

‘Huh?’ says Fen, ‘Oh. No. I mean Matt.’

‘Ah!’ says Abi, messing Fen’s dark blonde long-crop.

‘Aha,’ says Gemma, twiddling her dark curls herself.

‘I mustn’t get involved,’ Fen says.

‘Nope,’ cautions Abi, ‘he’ll be on the rebound.’

‘And the impression you ought to be making at your new job is of archivist extraordinaire,’ says Gemma.

‘Not slapper,’ says Abi.

‘You’re right,’ says Fen. ‘Anyway, I don’t really know him at all, do I? I just find him attractive because he seems like a nice bloke and he’s really sexy looking.’

‘When really he might be a total prat,’ muses Gemma, having had one too many of those.

‘Or a complete sod,’ Abi warns, having had one too many of those.

‘Exactly,’ Fen says decisively. But she goes to bed planning on what to wear the next day. Perhaps she’ll be loitering with intent, accidentally on purpose, outside Publications near enough to lunch-time.

Bugger! I can’t. I’m lecturing at the Tate at lunch-time. Just as well. Just as well.