My Single Friend (30 page)

Then I open my eyes and see that he’s moving away.

‘What’s the matter?’ I whisper.

‘Should we be doing this, Lucy?’ he breathes. ‘Should we really be doing this?’

My eyes ping wide open, scrutinizing his face. The answer is no, we shouldn’t. Of course we bloody well shouldn’t. We’ve got years of history together and we’re jeopardizing it.

‘I don’t know,’ I confess, my inner logic battling with my inner lust.

But that’s all it takes. He pulls away, lifting my bra strap back into place. He swallows self-consciously.

‘I want you, Lucy.’ His eyes can’t meet mine. ‘I
really
want you. But this would make our friendship impossible.’

‘Henry, it wouldn’t—’

‘Of course it would.’ He forces himself to look into my eyes. ‘You know it would.’

Now I swallow. Then I nod, vigorously, crossing my arms over my chest in embarrassment.

‘Good decision,’ I tell him. I cough, straighten my vest again, and stand, flustered. ‘I’d better go to bed.’

He nods. ‘Me too.’

I turn round and go to leave, when I hear his voice.

‘Lucy,’ he says urgently.

I spin round and look at him, but he clearly doesn’t know what to say. By now, I am on the verge of tears and I want to get out of here.

‘Goodnight,’ I mumble, and flee for the safety of my room.

I’ve had some bad mornings, but none have come close to this. It’s horrible. I lie in bed for what feels like hours, listening to Henry move about the flat and praying that he leaves before I have to get up. Sadly, he doesn’t. As I toss and turn, biting my nails and whipping myself into a nervous frenzy, I start to wish that four years ago, when we moved into this flat, I’d chosen the bedroom with the fire escape.

Eventually, I get up, get dressed and – when I hear Henry flick on the kettle and conclude he’s in the kitchen – dive in the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth.

Even that part of my morning ritual is far from positive. As I reach the sink, I wonder for a second why our anti-bacterial bleach wipes – the ones I used yesterday to clean the seat of the loo – are sitting where I expected my make-up remover wipes to be.

I realize why, when I glance in the mirror and see my face: I look as if I’ve undergone a skin graft.
Oh God.

Only I, Lucy Tyler, would encourage my best friend to nuzzle his face into my boobs
and
remove my make-up with household bleach in a single evening. How do I manage it?

I splash my face with water, wincing as it stings my skin. Tears prick in my eyes and I force myself to look away from the mirror.

Come
on
, Lucy.

If there’s any chance of salvaging things between me and Henry, I’ve got to march out there as if nothing has happened. Things would have been easier if nothing
had
happened . . . but there you go. I make a big effort to compose myself.

At least I’m not the only one in this boat. Henry’s going to have to face me too.

The thought sends me into a wave of panic. What the hell is
Henry
thinking?

I hope he doesn’t want to move out.

I hope he doesn’t think I’m easy.

I
really
hope he doesn’t think my boobs are too small . . .

‘Lucy? Are you all right in there?’

I drop my electric toothbrush and it clatters to the floor, spraying toothpaste over the toilet pedestal and a leg of my jeans.

‘Um . . . yep!’ I cry.

I straighten my back and, before I’ve got a chance to think about it, I march to the bathroom door and open it decisively.

‘Morning!’

I steam past Henry to the kitchen and put on the kettle.

He follows me. ‘Good morning,’ he replies, sounding thoroughly calm.

I don’t look at him long enough to see his expression, even though I’m dying to. In fact, I don’t look at him at all. I busy myself with rooting around in the kitchen cupboard for something. Anything.

‘What are you after?’ Henry asks eventually. ‘There’s plenty of tea in the caddy.’

‘Hmmm?’ I refuse to remove my head from the cupboard. ‘I fancied a cup of Earl Grey.’

‘I thought you hated Earl Grey.’

‘Used to. Love it now.’

‘Oh,’ he says.

I eventually locate an old box of Earl Grey tea bags and set about rearranging the crockery cupboard.

‘Fancy one?’ I ask cheerily.

‘Go on then,’ says Henry. ‘Though I’ll have a PG Tips.’

‘Okeydokey,’ I reply. Oh
God.

Henry sits at the table and waits for me to do the same. Instead, I bend down to the cupboard under the sink and start scrambling around in it, not knowing why exactly.

‘Lucy . . .’

I grab a bottle of Cif and, flicking up the top purposefully, pour some on a cloth and begin polishing the kitchen tap.

‘Lucy . . .’

‘Hmmm?’ I say, refusing to stop despite the muscles in my arm feeling as if they’re about to ignite.

‘Lucy . . . why don’t you sit down?’

‘Just a sec.’ I’m getting a hot flush or something.

When my arm can take no more, I fling the cloth in the sink, splash some boiling water into our tea cups, followed by some milk, and plonk Henry’s cup in front of him.

‘Right.’ I take a slurp of mine. ‘Must dash.’

‘Lucy –
wait
,’ insists Henry. I stop in my tracks, my back still facing him. ‘Come and sit down.’

Reluctantly I turn round, walk to the table and sink into the chair opposite him. My eyes are glued to my cup.

‘The thing is . . .’ He pauses. ‘God, what’s wrong with your skin?’

‘Nothing,’ I reply self-consciously. ‘It’s feeling sensitive, that’s all.’

It’s not the only one.

‘The thing is,’ Henry repeats, staring into his tea, ‘I think we should talk about last night.’

‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ I say, shifting in my seat.

‘But there is.’

‘Henry, really.’ I force a smile. ‘The worst possible thing would be for us to make a big deal out of it.’

‘It
is
a big deal.’

‘No, it’s not,’ I gulp.

‘But—’

‘Look, it was a mistake. A stupid mistake. Mistakes happen all the time, don’t they?’

He looks at me, saying nothing. I refuse to meet his gaze.

‘We need to accept that it was a ludicrous, ill-judged, drunken . . . thing . . . that never should have happened,’ I ramble. ‘And be thankful that it didn’t go further. The sooner we can put it behind us, the better. That’s the way I see it. Don’t you?’

I finally look up. I can’t make out his expression. His jaw is locked, his eyes intense. ‘I think there’s more to be said than that.’

Part of me is dying to know what else Henry has to say. But mainly, overwhelmingly, I can’t bear to continue this discussion.

‘Honestly, Henry,
I
don’t. We both know that we’d never have done anything like that if we’d been sober. I know I wouldn’t. God – the very idea of it. You and me. Ha!’

He frowns.

‘Things will be back to normal in no time,’ I gabble. ‘What am I talking about . . . they already are, aren’t they? I mean, I don’t fancy you in the
slightest
in the cold light of day. Not in the
slightest
. And I know the feeling’s mutual. There – see? All back to normal.’

He looks at me strangely and sips his tea.

‘Right,’ I smile stiffly. ‘I’m off shopping. Do you want anything?’

It is hard to describe the atmosphere in the flat over the next two weeks. Things couldn’t be weirder if Marilyn Manson had signed up as our cleaning lady.

At first Henry seems to be there every time I go home – which is hard to get used to, given that his presence had been so rare before. He makes repeated attempts to talk about what happened, but I cut him dead every time.

This defies everything I’ve learned from the lifetime of study I’ve devoted to problem pages – and I’m certain that Mariella Frostrup wouldn’t approve. But I can’t help it. I am mortally embarrassed. Terminally ashamed. Permanently wishing I lived somewhere else. Like Saturn.

I still haven’t discussed what’s going on with Dominique or Erin. And I definitely haven’t told them what happened on the night of the Caribbean Monkfish Stew. I’ve thought about it, of course, but it’s as though discussing my feelings for Henry makes them more real – and I’d rather pretend they weren’t real, thanks very much. I’d rather they went away.

So my strategy is to pretend it never happened; to maintain a stiff upper lip. It’s
sort of
working. At least, Henry eventually stops raising the issue, even if he still lingers in the flat, desperate to clear the air.

I should stress that I too want to clear the air, obviously – only it’s easier said than done. My thoughts about Henry used to be blissfully straightforward. I loved him as a friend and nothing more. Now my head is a riot of confusion and emotions that are impossible to deconstruct.

In its simplest form, I mourn the way things were; our pure, platonic friendship that existed effortlessly, devoid of romantic stirrings. I miss the casual banter, the conversations that are only possible between two people who know each other inside out and always have. I cringe at the strain in our voices, the attempts to recreate our uncomplicated relationship faltering every time.

In short, I know that nothing will make things return to how they were, with the exception of time. Lots of it. The hope I am clinging to is that, if Henry and I pretend that nothing has changed, over time it’ll become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But there’s a spanner in the works: I fancy him. I fancy him like mad.

How shallow must I be that all it takes to whip me into a girlish infatuation is for my flatmate to go on a shopping spree and get a half-decent haircut?

More importantly,
this is Henry we’re talking about. Henry, for God’s sake. I
cannot
fancy Henry.

Yet, patently, I do.

Why else would I experience repeated flashbacks to our Caribbean Monkfish Stew night; ones that involve him slipping down my bra strap and . . . oh, you know what happened.

It’s getting ridiculous. We can’t be in the same room together without my heart racing and blood rushing to my neck. When his hand brushes mine – though we jump away like there’s a cattle prod in our backs – my knees go weak.

It was so bad at one point that I prayed he’d go out more. Then he did – and now I miss him again. I have no idea who Henry’s seeing at the moment because I don’t ask. It feels wrong to discuss his love-life. I prefer to stick to safer subjects. Such as the state of the economy. Or the refit at the pizza shop round the corner. Or the fact that the bathroom tiles need regrouting. No wonder he wants to get out of the house.

Despite how much I hate what’s going on between us, there is one thing keeping me going. A memory. One that proves that we
will
get over our ill-judged moment of passion – no matter how messy it’s made things.

You’re probably wondering why I’m so confident. Well . . . how can I put this?

It’s not the first time that it’s happened.

Henry and I had one previous
indiscretion
when we were fourteen, though to call it that makes it sound far more sophisticated than either of us were.

It was the summer of 1996. The Fugees were at number one, everyone was hoping England would win Euro 96 and I’d recently made friends with Simone Hemmings. Simone was the teenage daughter no parent wants: physically precocious (she’d been in a B-cup when I was still watching
Scooby Doo
) and obsessed with boys.

I sat next to her in French and one day, when we were supposed to be learning to complain about an over-priced train ticket, she passed me a note. I unfolded it under my desk and read it while trying to appear fascinated by a passage in my
Voila!
textbook.

What do you think of Ben Bachelor? I think he looks like Gary Barlow
.

I pressed the paper on my leg and wrote:
More like Ken Barlow
, before passing it back to her stifled giggles.

In the following weeks, it became a ritual. Even when I swore I’d concentrate on lessons in the run-up to the exchange visit that summer, I was sucked into corresponding with Simone over everything, from who we thought would be the best kisser in the class, to Jake Roberts – a friend of Dave’s – and his spectacularly cute bum. I’d secretly fancied Jake for three months, but hadn’t told anyone except Henry, and now Simone.

At the end of each class, I would stuff the notes in my bag among pencil-case tins, a copy of
Just 17
, a Rimmel cover stick and two compasses. After seven weeks of French lessons I had enough stray paper to ignite a small forest fire.