The Good
After Freddie had hip-squeezed and guilt-tripped me into toast-making, football-watching submission, the rest of the week passed in faintly flirtatious harmony. On Thursday Jamie had friends over for dinner. Freddie sat next to me, his arm possessively on the back of my chair, and drank most of my wine and made unflattering whispered remarks about a male guest who kept trying to flirt with me, reducing me to shocked giggles. Laura took me aside afterwards to tell me she was glad I was making an effort with him, and Jamie thanked me profusely for keeping things so civil while his friends were round. I marveled inwardly at their failure to realize that I’d just succumbed to the worst infatuation of my whole life, and admitted awkwardly that I’d misjudged Freddie ‘a bit’. On Friday night we watched Have I Got News For You while Freddie ironed (topless) and I applied mascara, and both of us said we didn’t really feel like going out but sort of had to. ‘You look fucking hot’, he told me as we left the house for our respective parties, ‘behave yourself and be home by midnight’. I giggled and blushed and told him to shut up.
Cora came over on Saturday morning for brunch, and we were sitting in the garden, discussing the day ahead and concluding that the park was the only thing for it, when Freddie came downstairs. No shirt, horrible pajama bottoms. I gazed, lovingly. ‘Morning, Ally,’ he said, nodding at Cora and stealing a piece of toast from my plate with a provocative grin in my direction. ‘Morning, Freddie,’ I sighed blissfully at him, wriggling happily as he leant over me and used my knife to spread his purloined slice with some of my St. Dalfour marmalade whilst bombarding me with a reassuring blast of something that might not have been Lynx, but was definitely not Tom Ford.
‘How are you today?’ I murmured into his armpit. ‘Yeah,’ he replied, straightening up and munching contentedly, ‘I’m alright, thanks. Can I steal some of your tea?’ I nodded, conscious as I did so that I was leaning pathetically towards him and smiling stupidly while Cora gaped from the other side of the table. ‘What are you DOING?’ she hissed furiously as soon as Freddie had gone into the kitchen for a mug, ‘he’s SOOO BAAAAD’. I shrugged helplessly and smiled some more as he sat down next to me. ‘We’ve got some pain au chocolat as well if you want’, I babbled, made moronic by his proximity, and then, afterthoughtishly, ‘Oh, this is my friend Cora’, as she kicked me under the table.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said, still looking at me. ‘Charmed’, said Cora, disgustedly. ‘So,’ he said, after a pause during which he reached over me for the aforementioned pain au chocolat, ‘what are you girls up to today, then?’ He grinned at Cora, who looked affronted and busied herself with a text message. ‘We’re going to sit in the park and have a picnic’, I told him, ‘you should come too if you don’t have plans.’ Cora shot a filthy look at me across the table as Freddie slurped his tea and said, ‘Yeah, alright, I’ll come and join you when Neenee’s up. Whenever that is.’ He glanced restlessly up at his bedroom window and remarked, ‘Bloody hell that girl’s lazy.’
While I suppressed a sudden urge to snatch back my delicious French pastry at this unwelcome reminder that he was not, by any means, my man, and that this was probably not such a misfortune after all, Cora rolled her eyes and darted a venomous look at her new enemy. ‘That’s not a very nice thing to say about your girlfriend,’ she remarked icily. Freddie shrugged. ‘I suppose I won’t say it when she’s my girlfriend, then’, he replied, almost as coldly, the ambiguity of ‘when’ making my heart and eyelashes flutter with hope and hate. Cora glared at him and began gathering up the breakfast things. ‘I’m done, Alice,’ she said briskly, ‘and so are you, by the looks of things. Let’s go, I want to get some sun.’ Freddie looked incredulous. ‘Cora,’ he said, ‘this is a garden. There is sun in it.’ He looked at me sorrowfully. ‘Don’t go yet, Ally, I’ll be bored.’ I looked at him, and looked at Cora and didn’t move. She smiled. ‘Those are lovely pajamas, Freddie’, she began, bitchily. I looked at her again. It was clearly only going to get worse. ‘You’re right, Cora,’ I conceded, ‘I’ll put my shoes on.’
‘What were you DOING?’ I squeaked, out on the pavement, ‘that was so MEAN.’ ‘You were NEVER going to leave,’ she replied vindictively, ‘I had to get you OUT of there. He’s APPALLING and you were PATHETIC. He’s viler than ALEX. He’s my WORST.’ I shrugged miserably. ‘It’s my fault you think that, I shouldn’t have been so horrible about him,’ I said weakly. ‘Yes you SHOULD,’ she cackled. ‘Until he drowned your brain in his disgusting tsunami of testosterone your descriptions did him perfect justice. Let’s just hope he and poor old Whorebitch don’t find us in the park. God.’ I had to agree with that, at least, but as I trailed wistfully after her to Wholefoods I found myself dwelling on the word ‘when’ and the memory of Freddie’s knee pressing against mine under the garden table. Either I was being ruthlessly used for beverages and baked goods, I thought, or Neenee was going to have to find some other man’s room to be lazy in.
