Brand New Friend (2 page)

‘What’ve you done wrong this time?’ asked Phil.

‘It’s a long story. And it’ll get even longer if she rings back and finds the phone engaged and that it’s not me trying to call her back.’

‘All right, Bobman,’ said Phil. ‘I was just calling to see what time you’d be down here.’

‘How many times did I tell you today that I wasn’t coming out tonight?’

‘Ten or twenty,’ replied Phil, between sniggers.

‘So why are you tormenting me like this? Normally it’d be fine, you know that. But with things the way they are between me and Ash the last thing I can afford to do is fail to greet her after her long journey because I’m in the Queen’s drinking too much and falling over, like the weekend before last.’

‘You are so under the thumb,’ said Phil, chuckling. The phone went muffled, and then there was a roar of laughter. Rob was imagining what he was missing – a pint, conversation, the feeling that the weekend had really arrived – when a male voice yelled down the line, ‘Rob, you big girly tosser,’ which brought him to his senses. It was his friend Woodsy, a.k.a. Peter Woodman, a.k.a. Rob and Phil’s unofficial semipermanent house guest.

‘Are you all right, mate?’ enquired Woodsy.

‘I’m fine,’ replied Rob.

‘Phil says you’re coming to the pub,’ said Woodsy.

‘No, mate, I can’t. Ashley’s on her way.’

‘Oh, you have to come.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Please.’

‘I can’t.’

‘She won’t mind.’

Rob laughed. ‘Oh, yes, she will.’

‘Hang on,’ said Woodsy.

There was another long pause, filled with the sounds of the Queen’s Head.

‘Mate?’ said Phil.

‘Yeah?’

‘About the pub.’

‘What about the pub?’

‘Are you coming, then?’

‘I’ve told you I can’t,’ replied Rob. ‘I don’t understand why you’re torturing me like—’

Another burst of laughter at the other end of the line prevented him finishing his sentence.

‘Sorry about that,’ said Phil, a few moments later.

Suddenly Rob felt even sadder about his lost Friday night. ‘Is it good?’ he asked.

‘What?’ said Phil.

‘Is the pub good?’

‘It’s the pub,’ said Phil laughing. ‘How good can it be?’

‘But I’m not missing out on anything good, am I? I mean, who’s out tonight?’

‘Everybody,’ said Phil.

‘Like who?’

‘Okay . . . Ian One’s here . . . and Ian Two . . . and Kevin called to say he’d be down before last orders – oh, and Darren’s at the bar.’

‘Really?’ asked Rob.

‘Yeah, really,’ said Phil.

‘And what have you all been doing?’

‘What kind of question is that? We’ve been drinking mainly – and talking.’

‘Talking about what?’

‘Do you really want to know?’ asked Phil.

‘Yes,’ replied Rob. ‘I do.’

He could hear Phil repeating the question to their friends.

‘Okay,’ said Phil, back on the line. ‘The boys have helped me do a quick recap. We’ve been talking about dangerous things we did when we were kids, will a socialist Utopia ever be possible, some new girl in Ian Two’s office who’s supposed to look like a young Sophia Loren, bands whose second albums were better than their débuts, work in general, Ian One’s broken computer and finally, “In which video does Kylie Minogue wear those gold hotpants?”’

‘“Spinning Around”,’ said Rob automatically.

‘Are you sure?’ asked Phil. ‘Because I reckon it’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head.”’

‘You are so wrong,’ insisted Rob. ‘You’re a whole album out, mate.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ said Phil. Rob heard him ask the others. ‘Okay,’ he said, after a few moments. ‘I stand corrected. You’re right – this time.’

‘Of course I am,’ Rob replied, desperately wishing he was there to be smug in person.

‘So, are you coming down?’ asked Phil.

‘I can’t,’ said Rob. ‘The first ten minutes of being together in a long-distance relationship are crucial. You haven’t seen each other all week, you’ve both been under a lot of stress, you’re tired, and maybe a bit grumpy. You’re a ticking time-bomb waiting to go off. If World War Three isn’t going to kick off, you both need to have your wits about you and I don’t think I will have if I come down the pub.’

‘Fine,’ said Phil. ‘But don’t wait up for me and Woodsy. We’re thinking about going to a club in town, then back to Ian One’s because his missus is away and he’s just bought the uncut version of
Enter the Dragon
on DVD.’

‘
Enter the Dragon
,’ echoed Rob, longingly. He sighed and glanced at his watch. ‘Look, I’d better go. Catch you later, mate.’

If it had been up to Rob he would have spent the rest of the evening lamenting what he was missing but the second he ended the call the phone rang again. A small-voiced Ashley piped up, ‘I’m sorry,’ and started to cry.

‘I’m sorry too,’ Rob replied, then added, ‘But, sweetheart, you can’t cry when you’re driving. You might have a crash. You’ve got to concentrate.’

‘Is that all you care about?’ sniffed Ashley. ‘The car?’

Her response flustered him. Was he wrong to worry about her crashing? Should he encourage her to let it all out while she was in control of a vehicle travelling at seventy miles an hour in the middle lane of the M6? In the end he decided to ignore her comment because, most likely, even she knew that it didn’t make sense. He had to say something to appease her, though. And he had to say it soon. ‘I love you, babe,’ he whispered. ‘You’ll be here soon and everything will be all right.’

‘I love you too,’ said Ashley. ‘I’ll speak to you when I’m closer to London.’

Rob and Ashley had first met at a leaving do for Ian One. In the time that Rob had known Ian One (whose real name was Ian Quinn) he had graduated from marketing junior to marketing manager with a team of ten people under him. At the pace he was climbing the career ladder, it was only a matter of time before he went to a bigger firm. Ian One’s leaving do was the stuff of legend. His company coughed up for a free bar all night and he invited not just work colleagues and major clients but his friends too.

At the time Rob and Phil were both at the Orange Egg design consultancy in Shoreditch, working on print ads, corporate websites and general design, but they were thinking about starting up their own company. The rest of their friends were at the party too: Ian Two (whose real name was Ian Manning), Woodsy, Darren and Kevin. The six were standing together in a large group at the bar when Rob spotted Ashley coming through the door.

As far as relationships went, Rob had been going through a dry patch that was threatening to turn his whole life into a Sahara. It wasn’t that he never met any single women, rather that he didn’t meet any single women who came up to his self-imposed, stringently high standards. His last girlfriend, Trish, had been a part-time model and fashion student who, as well as being exceptionally easy on the eye, had a great sense of humour and, most important of all, got on with his friends. For the two years they had been together Rob was convinced that he had found the
yin
to his self-confessed difficult-to-fit
yang.
Then she had graduated from the Royal College of Art, announced that she was desperate to go to New York to get into fashion and wanted him to go with her. For several weeks Rob wavered, trying to make up his mind, and at one point sent his CV to a few design studios and advertising agencies in Manhattan. The crunch came, however, when an ad agency forwarded his CV to a small design studio in the process of setting up. They contacted him immediately and practically offered him a job over the phone. The second his east-coast pipe-dream looked like it might become reality, he had realised that he didn’t want to go. He couldn’t pinpoint why – it would have been a brilliant opportunity – but no matter how he looked at the situation it didn’t feel right. When he had broken the news to Trish she told him she was the best thing that had ever happened to him and he’d live to regret not taking that chance. And Rob was sure she was right. A year later, he’d met loads of single women but hadn’t been interested in any of them. As he’d explained to Phil, ‘They’re just not Trish.’

Then he met Ashley.

‘Now
she
is amazing,’ said Rob, to his friends.

‘Out of your league, mate,’ pronounced Phil.

‘Absolutely,’ added Ian Two.

‘What is my league?’ asked Rob.

‘She’s a nine,’ said Darren, ‘and you’re a six and a half.’

‘A seven tops,’ added Kevin.

‘I’m an eight and a half at
least.
’

‘In your dreams, mate,’ said Woodsy. ‘You’re a six and a half. Stick with what you deserve, mate.’

‘Right,’ said Rob. ‘We’ll see about that.’ Without taking his eyes off Ashley he went over to Ian One on the other side of the bar. ‘Any chance you know who that girl is?’ he asked, pointing at Ashley.

‘Don’t know her but I do know the woman she’s talking to,’ said Ian One. ‘If you ask me she’s way out of your league, mate. She’s young, attractive and well dressed – what could she have in common with a scruffy graphic designer like you who has more pairs of trainers than a sports shop?’ He laughed. ‘Nothing I’m saying’s going to stop you, though, is it? You up for some smooth talking or what?’

Drinks in hand, the two men made their way across the room and Ian One opened with a kiss for his work colleague, Michelle.

‘I can’t believe you’re really leaving,’ she said, hugging him. ‘You’re like part of the furniture.’ She turned to the woman standing next to her. ‘Ian, this is my baby sister, Ashley.’

‘Hi, nice to meet you,’ grinned Ian One. ‘And this is my mate Rob.’

Ian One, ever the perfect wingman, began to ask Ashley about herself to draw her into the conversation. She was twenty-four. She was a medical student at Manchester University Medical School. She’d come to London to see her sister for a few days. Then he made an excuse to take her sister aside, which left Rob with the perfect opportunity to break the ice with Ashley.

‘So,’ began Rob, ‘you don’t look like a medical student.’

‘I’m not sure how to take that,’ replied Ashley, smiling.

Rob winced. ‘Why don’t you tell me what I look like and then we’ll be even?’

She laughed, then looked Rob up and down as though he were an item of clothing she liked but wasn’t sure she wanted to take home. ‘You look like you work in a record shop,’ she replied.

‘I’m a graphic designer.’

With certain girls Rob had found that “I’m a graphic designer”, with its implied creativity, had a certain cachet. Ashley, however, didn’t seem to be one of them.

‘What’s that, then?’ she asked.

‘I’m like an artist,’ explained Rob, ‘only I work in the commercial world. I design things like ads, billboards, posters, book jackets, packaging, corporate logos, websites – that sort of thing.’

Over the next half an hour they talked, uninterrupted, about their lives. There was something easy about their conversation – it wasn’t forced, just flowed naturally – but Rob couldn’t escape the feeling that it was simply a means to an end. They didn’t know each other, might not have anything in common, but they wanted to know each other so conversation was the only avenue open to them. As far as he was concerned Ashley might have been reciting the times table and it wouldn’t have mattered. The result would have been the same because the conversation was just a jumble of personal details. It was the fact that they were having it that said everything – and primarily: ‘The more we do this the more I want to do it.’

As Ashley was about to reply to ‘What’s your favourite film?’ Michelle returned, without Ian One, and reminded her sister that they had a table booked at a restaurant in Piccadilly for nine thirty.

Ashley looked at Rob. ‘Do you want to come?’ Then she turned to her sister. ‘It wouldn’t be a problem, would it?’

‘No, of course not. More the merrier.’

Ashley’s eyes met his. ‘So, how about it?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t,’ he said. ‘It’s Ian’s leaving do.’

‘Oh, he won’t mind,’ said Michelle. ‘The way he’s going, he won’t even remember.’

They all gazed at Ian One who, now jacket-free and tieless, was dancing exuberantly with a middle-aged woman.

‘Yeah, I know,’ said Rob, ‘but I’m with the rest of my mates, too, and it’s frowned on to leave parties early.’

‘I could understand what you were saying if you were an eleven-year-old and you’d spent the day playing out on your bikes, but you’re a grown man,’ laughed Michelle. ‘At least, I thought you were.’

‘It’s a friends thing,’ explained Rob, ‘and there’s a certain etiquette with these things.’

‘You make it sound like you belong to an exclusive golf club,’ said Ashley.

‘It’s something like that. The fact is, if it wasn’t Ian’s leaving do – say we were just down the pub – it wouldn’t matter at all. I could leave without giving my mates a second thought.’

‘And why’s that?’

‘Because a night down the pub is a regular occurrence.’

Ashley nodded. ‘But a leaving do isn’t so you have to be seen to be doing the right thing.’

‘Exactly,’ replied Rob.

‘Well, it’s your loss,’ said Michelle.

Suddenly Rob realised she might have a point. Some sort of masculine brain malfunction had caused him to talk himself out of having dinner with an attractive twenty-four-year-old medical student. What was he thinking? She was the first woman he’d been properly attracted to since Trish. And Ashley didn’t even live in London – how would he get a second stab at making something happen between them if they didn’t live in the same city?

‘On second thoughts,’ he began nervously, ‘maybe I could get some sort of papal dispensation from Ian to make it all right.’

‘No,’ said Ashley, touching his hand. ‘You stay with your friends.’