Swine Flu Freddie and Ally Cat

Look on my Saturday evening, ye readers, and despair for me...:

I arrive home with Becky, who is supposed to be eating dinner with me after an afternoon in the park, to find Freddie lying on the sofa, surrounded by piles of damp-looking man-size Kleenex and empty mugs, with the remote control dangling limply from his left hand and a self-pitying expression on his slightly gray face. ‘Hello, Freddie’, I say coolly, hoping to beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen, ‘this is Becky. Becky, this is Freddie’. ‘Hi Alice’, he groans at me, annoyingly, as he struggles into a sitting position and rudely ignores Becky. ‘How are you? Good day?’ I pause in the middle of the living room, faintly exasperated by his desire for a conversation. (I have Mad Mary to blow coffee-breath and sickness into my face all week, I certainly don’t need Freddie doing it all weekend.) ‘Fine, fine’, I say, and then, with an apologetic glance at Becky, and because I really see no way of avoiding it, ‘are you alright?’

He nods, pathetically. I sigh. ‘You don’t really look it, Freddie.’ He sighs too. ‘I don’t feel very well’. He does look wretched and my maternal instincts begin to misbehave within me. ‘Do you think you’ve got a temperature?’ I ask, sinking into an uncomfortable half-sitting position on the other sofa. He shakes his head and mutters something about being fine. ‘Freddie, you’re not fine,’ I say, because it’s manifestly true. He blows his nose loudly. ‘Do you want me to get you some more tea?’ I ask. He gazes at me gratefully. ‘I’d love that, Alice. That would be very sweet.’ I reach over to pick up his flotilla of used coffee cups and head for the kitchen, with Becky twitching slightly in my wake, obviously desperate to say something.

As soon as we’re out of sight, she explodes into stage whispers. ‘THAT is FREDDIE?’ she chokes, unable to contain herself. ‘Yes’, I reply. ‘THAT is Freddie. He’s sick. I’m going to make him tea.’ I put the kettle on. ‘He’s FIT’, she gasps, gripping my arm. ‘Mm, not right now. Right now he is unfit,’ I say absentmindedly. (Becky thinks a startling range of men fall into this category). ‘ALICE’, she squeaks, beside herself, ‘he’s GORGEOUS. You should definitely have sex with him.’ ‘BECKY!’ I explode, appalled, ‘He’s HATEFUL. He threw away my toothbrush and groped me in the middle of the night after using his awful friend to flush me out of my room. He is a BAD man and I am not having sex with him.’

She stands grinning at me. ‘You fancy him,’ she says provocatively. I roll my eyes. ‘No, Becky. At best, I tolerate him. At worst, I actively dislike him. I definitely do not fancy him. This is not a Rom-Com. In real life, Becky, when people don’t like each other it’s because they don’t like each other, not because they secretly want to have sex with each other.’ ‘Yes you do,’ she interrupts, with unreasonable disregard for my entire argument, ‘you’re making TEA for him AND –‘ (as I begin loading the dirty cups into the dishwasher), ‘you’re cleaning up after him’. I straighten up and look at her to see if she’s serious. She is. Ugh. ‘He’s SICK and I’m being NICE. That’s all that’s happening here.’ ‘You like him’, she insists, unperturbed. ‘No. I DISlike him,’ I tell her, grimly, ‘I am currently thinking that swine flu would be an appropriate karmic punishment for his revolting ways, though despite the fuss he’s making, man-flu is more probable.’

‘You fancy him,’ she says again, grinning some more. ‘And I’m going home now. You should spend time alone together, and anyway, I really don’t want to get sick. I have a date with Paul on Tuesday’. I gape at her, appalled. ‘Which one’s Paul? Wait, you’re LEAVING? I bought things for dinner. DON’T be stupid. Look, I’m sorry he’s here, I thought everyone was out tonight.’ She shrugs. ‘Seriously, he looks really ill, though also hot. He probably HAS got swine flu. Give him the dinner.’ The kettle boils and as I make Freddie his tea, Becky makes her escape. ‘Bye, Freddie’, I hear her warble as she goes, ‘have a nice night with Alice. She’s making you dinner.’

Teeth clenched, I go back into the living room carrying Freddie’s tea. ‘Ally’, he sighs at me, blissfully, ‘thank you so much for making me dinner. I’m really hungry. You’re so lovely.’ ‘No, I’m not -’ I begin, before crumbling into a begrudging ending of, ‘that’s alright, I’m cooking anyway.’ Half an hour later, Freddie is eating my salmon fishcakes and vegetables and mumbling compliments. An hour later we’re watching The Bourne Ultimatum in companionable silence. Two hours later, he’s asleep and I wash up and then go upstairs to find a blanket for him. Two hours and fifteen minutes later, having covered him with the blanket and found myself thinking that he’s really quite nice when he’s sick, I realize that Becky’s right. He’s not bad looking…

---

And then, of course, I remembered that good looking or otherwise, he is also Freddie, and frightful and overbearing and rude and probably sexist. And just to prove the point, as I bent down to pick up his dirty tissues he lurched into consciousness for long enough to pat my hip and mumble into the cushion he’s probably been drooling on, ‘You’re a great little nurse, my little Ally Cat.’ HIS LITTLE ALLY CAT? Oh god. And I made that man dinner. I swatted his horrid wandering hand off and ran upstairs to shower and exfoliate and Yin Yang myself into something approaching cleanliness. I’m going to sleep now. Angrily.