Читать книгу How We Met - Katy Regan - Страница 8

‘Sssh, don’t move.’

Still half asleep, Fraser Morgan had the vague notion that he was being held up at gun point in his own bed. Something was pressing firmly into his back. And he had an erection, which was a bit odd. He could even get an erection when his life was in danger?

‘That nice hun? Mm?’

It was only when the voice spoke again, whispered into Fraser’s ear, a warm flood of breathiness that Jesus Christ that stank of booze, that he woke up, with a start, the awful truth hitting him in the face. Or was that the back?

KAREN. Fraser’s eyes shot open.

Karen from the Bull was in his bed. She was naked, pressing her pelvis into him and playing with his cock, which went without saying was really quite pleasant.

Fraser lay there, motionless, blinking into the half-light, staring at the radio alarm clock on his bedside table: 10.53 a.m., 6 March 2008.

Sixth of March.

He closed his eyes again.

How? How could he have let this happen? Exactly at what point of last night did he ever think this was a good idea?

‘I said, is that nice …?’ She was purring, kissing the nape of his neck now. Breathing pure alcohol fumes into his skin. Fraser tried to speak but it came out a couple of octaves higher than intended, so that he sounded like a pre-pubescent boy on the brink of his voice breaking. He cleared his throat and tried again.

‘Yeah, that’s um, yeah, very nice.’

Fuck it. Fuck IT! Panic consumed him. How the hell was he going to get out of this? How had he even got into this?

‘Good, good, very glad to hear it. Well don’t go away, handsome, I’m just popping to the loo but I’ll be right back to carry on the good work.’

Karen leant over, pecked him on the cheek and got out of bed.

Fraser turned his head, very slowly. Ow, that killed. Why did his neck hurt? Just in time to see what was – it had to be said – a rather sizeable arse disappear round his bedroom door.

Thank fuck for that. Fraser turned onto his back, pulled the duvet over his head and let out the breath he’d been holding since he woke up. GOD he felt tragic. His heart was palpitating, his head throbbing as he tried to piece together the events of last night. It was all very vague, involving beer, wine, tequila and, at one point, her showing him her yogic headstands, which he’d then tried too, before breaking the coffee table, and very nearly his neck. Oh, that’s why his neck hurt.

He vaguely remembered coming to his senses for one brief moment after that – must have been the rush of blood to the head – to say to her, ‘Come on, you don’t want to go to bed with some drunken stranger …’ just as she was removing her blouse (he’d noted with some alarm that that was definitely what you’d call a blouse). But she’d just sat on his bed in the white bra that Fraser imagined he could fit his head into and said: ‘Oh, I think I do.’

So at least he’d made some effort to avoid this. However, the fact remained that he’d slept with her. He’d slept with Karen from behind the bar of the Bull – was this really the end of the world? She wasn’t a horror story; in fact she was a perfectly lovely girl. God knows, she’d scraped him off the floor of that pub enough times in the past eighteen months, chucked him in a cab well past closing time after another night of him drowning his sorrows and talking shit to whoever he could find in there – mainly her.

But she was also forty-two. Shitting hell, forty-two! That was practically middle-aged. Old enough to be his mother in some parts of her home town of Hull, Fraser felt sure. As old as … Fiona Bruce.

He winced as he remembered a conversation – the bit where she’d asked him how old he thought she was and he’d said (thinking he was being flattering, this was before beer goggles took over and he’d even considered doing anything with a woman in her forties), ‘Don’t know, Forty-two? Forty-three?’ And she’d blinked at him and said, ‘Forty-two,’ which was followed by a nasty silence before he moved swiftly onto … DOLPHINS! Oh, God, how could he forget the dolphins? Karen from the Bull had two-inch nails with dolphins painted on them. Was this a normal girl thing to do and he’d just never seen it before?

He winced again as bits of that particular conversation also came back to him: her telling him she’d adopted a dolphin from a sanctuary in Florida, that this dolphin was like the baby she’d never had, and he, in an effort to appear interested and engaged, telling her he once swam with dolphins in Zanzibar. Which was a lie. A pointless, outright lie. He’d never even been to Zanzibar. Why the fuck had he said that?

Oh, God, she was back now, padding towards the bed, naked except for a pair of lacy, black knickers that had largely disappeared up her behind and clutching her massive, Christ, GIGANTIC breasts. Fraser sat up, pulled the duvet right up to his chin and arranged himself in the most asexual, un-come-to-bed position he could muster. But she got in anyway, so he moved right up against the wall.

‘So,’ he said, brightly. ‘Coffee?’

Brilliant. There was no better feeling, decided Mia, ten minutes later, than sitting down with a half of Carling and a baby still asleep – even if it was minus five and blowing a gale. This is how she got through the week, these days, by finding the odd little pocket of time to herself and guarding it with her life. At least there was that about being a single mother – you really got to appreciate your own time. What on earth had she done with it all before she had a baby? Work and drink she imagined. And lots of face-packs.

Sometimes, Mia dreamt of her old life, before she’d moved in with Eduardo in Acton – not one of her better ideas – and Liv had moved in with Fraser to start her new teaching job in Camden, when she, Liv and Anna had shared a flat in Clapham and she was working all hours God sent for Primal Films as an art department assistant.

She’d wake up when it was still dark, thinking she was back in her old bedroom on the Ikea futon and that she had ten minutes to chuck on some clothes before jumping in the car and driving through the silent city to Shepperton Studios for another thirteen-hour day. She’d loved those days. She loved the exhaustion she’d felt, an excited kind of exhaustion, totally different to the tiredness that comes with motherhood.

Barely conscious, she’d then imagine the noise she could hear was Liv and Anna making a racket downstairs in their gloomy Victorian kitchen with the huge table all six of them had spent so many hours drinking at. Then she’d come to, realize it was Billy crying and that it was just the two of them, alone in their boxy new-build flat in Lancaster with its woodchip and ubiquitous laminate.

Still, things had improved lately. Yes, definitely, things had improved. She still wondered occasionally if her son didn’t rate her that much, or wasn’t that impressed with the whole set-up, really, what with it being just the two of them in a poky flat and a dad who only turned up when he felt like it.

She still didn’t really know how to talk to him and found herself stuck for words when it was just him and her. She marvelled at mothers who seemed to be able to coochie-coo so naturally in public, whereas she just felt like a dick a lot of the time. Then Billy would get that look of wounded entitlement on his face as if to say, ‘Seriously, is this all you’ve got?’ And she’d wonder if she was really cut out for this motherhood thing at all.

But at least the panic had gone. She didn’t worry about him dying every night any more, which was something, and now Melody and Norm had moved back up North to Lancaster, they sometimes offered to help, which was really sweet, even if Melody drove her mad by suggesting single motherhood was somehow ‘romantic’, that Mia was like J. K. Rowling, writing an award-winning film script in a freezing cold flat she couldn’t afford to heat, when in reality she wasn’t writing anything at all, was reading OK! magazine and tucking into the wine in a flat she couldn’t afford to heat and feeling thoroughly guilty that her brain was probably half dead by now.

Mia put her hood up, took a sip of her lager and took her mobile out of her pocket so she could text Fraser to see if he was still on track for tonight, and check he was surviving the day so far. When she looked at her phone, however, there was a text from Anna:

was at a party in Kidderminster last night so there’s a SMALL chance I might be late but WILL BE THERE I promise. Start without me.

Spanner x

Mia rolled her eyes; she knew ‘a SMALL chance’ translated as ‘am still in Kidderminster and will be two hours late’, and composed her message to Fraser, wondering whether she had time for another rollie.

Then her mobile went. It was Eduardo. Her heart sank. Do not do this to me, she thought. Please, please, do not do this to me. Not tonight. To add insult to injury, him calling had also woken Billy.

She picked up.

‘Hi, Eduardo.’

‘It’s me.’

‘I gathered that.’

She told herself to keep the tone neutral, but it was hard – so very, very hard.

‘What’s going on?’ he said.

Oh, fuck off, she wanted to say. Why did he always have to use that accusatory tone?

‘Nothing’s “going on”.’

‘Why is Billy crying then?’

Because I’m strangling him, what the hell?! He was a baby. Babies cried. He’d know that if he spent any time with one.

‘Where are you?’ said Eduardo, sharply, before she had time to answer.

‘At the pub.’

He snorted.

‘The pub?’

Yes. We’re having a pint – three in fact – and we might follow that with a tequila chaser. She thought better of it. She wasn’t in a position to piss Eduardo off. She needed him, that was the most galling thing of all.

Eduardo sighed, in that martyred way he did. She knew just from that sigh what was coming next.

‘Anyway, look Mimi …’

Mimi? Stop calling me bloody Mimi.

‘… work have just called and—’

‘Er, NO.’ Mia felt the rage rise like bile in her chest. ‘Come on, Eduardo, you are not doing this to me.’

Billy was wailing now, rubbing his eyes. Mia pushed the buggy back and forth.

‘You know how important tonight is, what day it is today, you’ve known for ages.’

Silence.

‘Mia, this is not about choice, is it?’

She hated how he did that. Always put ‘is it?’ on the end of everything, so subtle and yet so successful in making her doubt herself. ‘I need the money. I’m late on my rent, I’m fucking desperate here, I don’t have the luxury—’

Luxury? HA! Don’t fucking talk to me about luxury, thought Mia, you total lying, manipulative bastard, but she stood there, the wind howling, Billy crying now, and she knew it was pointless.

‘Whatever, Eduardo,’ she said. ‘I can’t be arsed any more. Go. You go to work.’

Then she hung up, tears of frustration already running down her face. And what she really wanted to do was to call her best friend, but of course she couldn’t.

Where were those fags? He could have sworn he’d hidden a couple in here. Fraser was now in his freezing kitchen, rummaging futilely in the kitchen drawer in his dressing gown. The fridge. Maybe he’d put them on top of the fridge? Right at the back so he wouldn’t be tempted but they’d still be there, just in case of real emergencies like this one he was currently facing, a moment of true, genuine need.

He patted his hands on top but couldn’t feel anything. Perhaps they’d fallen down the back? He steadied his feet and wrapped his arms around the fridge to move it, giving it an enormous hug, relishing the coolness against his hot, toxic skin, thinking maybe it would be nice just to stay here for a few minutes, just him and the fridge in their cool embrace. He pulled and pulled but he was too weak, too sleep-deprived, too fucking hungover to manage it. When he finally let go, the door flew open and a cucumber shot out, hitting him on the chest like a missile.

He gave up, leant against the kitchen worktop, breathless, his head pounding, thinking what to do next. Maybe he could go to the corner shop for cigarettes? Then just do a runner? Just not come back! Ah, that only really worked when you were in someone else’s house though, didn’t it?

Fuck it. Fuck it, you moron.

He was giving himself a talking-to now, firm but sort of kind. He knew who that reminded him of.

He held the heels of his hands to his face, stretching the skin outwards, watching his reflection in the greasy microwave door as if, if he did it for long enough, he might actually be able to escape his own skin. He thought of tonight, of approximately eight hours from now, of walking into the pub to face his mates. God, he wanted to hurl.

What was really bothering Fraser was how comfortable Karen seemed to be in his bed. How happy. No sign of post-bender jitters whatsoever.

If she’d just been some flirty barmaid who’d wanted a bit of sexy time then that would have been fine. Not fine, but finer; he would have felt less guilty. But she liked him, she’d liked him for ages, she’d told him last night. Which was just brilliant, just the absolute best.

He considered his options:

 Be nice, go for breakfast with her, ask for her number then never call her. Of course all this meant that he could never drink in the Bull again; or, if he did, he’d have to wear a disguise. He briefly went through how this might work in his head and decided it never would.

 Say he was going out (which he was, just not for another four hours but Karen didn’t need to know that …) wait till she was safely out of view then go back to bed. The thought of bed, alone, right now, was amazing. Truly amazing.

 Tell her the truth: Say he’s sorry, she’s a lovely girl but he was drunk, he’s still grieving his girlfriend and it should never, ever have happened. Can they be friends?

 Fuck that. He didn’t want to be friends!

Anyway, right at this point, all three sounded hideous. Especially the last. He felt sure the last would guarantee tears and the last thing he could handle today – especially today – were tears from a barmaid he barely knew.

Norm. That’s who he wanted right now: simple, unjudgemental, chilled-out Norm. Norm, who he’d known since he was nine.

He took his phone off the side, sank down onto the kitchen floor in his dressing gown and texted him:

So guess who woke up today in bed with Karen from the Bull? What a cock. Head in bits. Need some Norm wisdom.

A reply buzzed immediately:

You cock.

Fraser groaned and half laughed at the same time – he knew Norm didn’t really mean it, that that level of genuine harshness was beyond him.

He texted back:

I know, it’s not normal. Today. Any day but today! What’s wrong with me?

He held the phone in his hand, waiting for a reply, and something caught his eye: the photo of Liv held against the fridge door with a magnet in the shape of a beer bottle. He reached forward and took it in his hand. This was his favourite photo of her. They were at a fancy dress party – Anna’s twenty-third birthday. It was a ‘come as a London Underground Station’ party and Liv had gone as Maida Vale.

‘I simply made myself a veil …!’ she’d said, standing on his front doorstep, in a voice like a posh, wooden TV presenter from the 1970s . It made Fraser giggle even now.

He stared at the photograph. She was wearing her homemade veil and a French maid outfit that revealed her comely thighs – she always had fantastic legs – and which plunged at the neck (her cleavage was pretty fantastic too). She was holding a cocktail with an umbrella in it and standing in a naughty-postcard-type pose, doing an exaggerated wink, her wide mouth half open, revealing her lovely teeth. Liv had the best teeth: big, naturally white teeth with a tiny gap in the middle. That was his favourite bit of her – that little sexy gap. Fraser smoothed out the frayed corners of the photo, kissed it and put it back.

A text from Norm:

Mate, chillax. Nothing’s normal for any of us today. See you at 8 in the Merchants, you oaf. Cuddles and kisses Norm x

Fraser smirked and shook his head. Cuddles and kisses? Norm was such a plonker. Then he stood up, rather too quickly so that the blood rushed to his head and he had to put his head between his knees so he didn’t pass out, climbed the stairs to his bedroom, and prepared to face the music with Karen.