The Plus One. Sophia Money-Coutts
advert three years earlier, when I moved out of my mum’s place. I was too old to have my knickers ironed for me, I’d decided back then. And Joe had since become a sort of surrogate boyfriend-slash-brother figure, a proper friend to both me and my mates. Our flat was above a corner shop run by a large Jamaican lady called Barbara who was obsessed with horoscopes. I’d go in there to buy bacon on a Saturday morning and come out half an hour later, having been told how my weekend would pan out. It was always bad news. Barbara would suck in her cheeks and say that Mars was doing something weird with Jupiter and that Saturn was all over the shop, and so I should be very careful about any mysterious men that crossed my path.
‘No. I’m feeling a bit delicate this morning. Can you put the kettle on?’
‘How was last night?’
‘Oh, you know. Dinner at Bill’s. Brought someone back here to have sex for the first time in nine hundred years, nearly choked to death giving him a blow job before he Ubered straight out of here.’
‘Polly, my darling, how dramatic. Why didn’t he stay?’
‘Beats me.’ I collapsed on the sofa and caught sight of the vodka bottle on the kitchen counter. ‘I don’t know how I manage it.’
‘Who was he?’
‘A mate of Bill’s. Kind of handsome. Lives around here somewhere.’
‘So, is this grand romance going to continue?’ Joe sat down in the armchair opposite me with his plate of toast.
‘I doubt it. And anyway he plays golf.’
Joe shuddered. ‘Revolting.’
I sighed. ‘Why can’t I be a normal person and have any kind of normal, functioning relationship? Or not even a relationship, just normal, straightforward sex? The only thing I’ve had in my vagina recently is a speculum.’
‘More poisson in the mer, my darling. Beating ourselves up won’t help. What plans for the weekend?’
‘Well, first I’d quite like you to close that gaping hole in your boxers,’ I said, my gaze accidentally dropping to his crotch. ‘Then I might kill myself. And not much else really. Going over to Lex’s tomorrow. And seeing Bill maybe. What about you?’
‘The usual, just a bit of light pillaging. Got a date this afternoon.’
‘Who with?’
‘Lovely chap called Marcus, he plays the French horn.’
‘Does he indeed. Where did we find him?’
‘Teaches at the academy. He’s got an arse like Tom Daley’s. It might be love.’
It was ‘love’ quite often with Joe. In the past few months, various of these loves had passed through the front door. There had been Lee, a waiter from a pub in Kilburn; Josh, who Joe had picked up in the Apple Store buying a new iPhone; Paddington, a footman from Buckingham Palace, and Tomas, an Argentine polo player who insisted he was straight, but liked Joe to do unmentionable things to him with various leather props that he kept under his bed in a box. I tried never to go into Joe’s room in case this box was lying open.
The thought of Joe’s box made me feel a bit weak again.
‘I’m going to go back to bed actually, forget the tea.’
‘Okey-dokey, my petal, I’ll be quiet later. It’s only a first date, don’t want to scare the poor boy. And don’t worry about your boyfriend running off like that, happens to the best of us.’
‘Does it?’
He paused. ‘Well, not me, no.’
‘Great, that’s very helpful, thanks.’ I plodded back to my bed and put my earplugs in.
By 3 p.m., I’d had a bath, eaten seven pieces of toast and honey, drunk three cups of tea and I was lying on the sofa watching an old DVD of Three Men and a Little Lady. I’d also carefully stalked Callum on Instagram and spent two hours wondering idly whether I could follow him. Then my phone vibrated with a WhatsApp from Bill.
You get home safely?
I typed out my reply, unsure whether he knew anything about Callum. I could tell him tomorrow. Didn’t feel up to it now.
Yes! Thank you for dinner! How’s the office?
Alright. But listen, do you mind if I don’t come for lunch tomorrow? I’m seeing Willow for a drink.
COURSE, don’t be silly. Where you guys going?
Dunno. Southbank maybe. Good date place, right?
I sent back a row of thumbs-up emojis and then flicked back to Callum’s Instagram again. Mostly pictures of rugby games and foreign beaches. Bit boring, if I was honest. Why was I obsessing over it?
I woke the following day feeling human again after spending the evening horizontal on my sofa, spooning Thai green curry and sweet clumps of coconut rice into my mouth. Lex had changed our lunch date to brunch, which seemed unlike her because she wasn’t much of a morning person. Eggstacy was a café in Notting Hill which, as its ludicrous name suggested, specialized in breakfast. Great folds of buttery scrambled eggs with Gruyère cheese grated over the top, creamed mushrooms, ramekins of smoky beans, thick slabs of white bread. Butter by the bucketful. I made myself walk there from the flat in preparation, given my supper the night before. It had not been a good weekend for calories.
Lex and I had known one another since we were eleven, when Mum and I moved to London. That was the year I left my primary school in the country, where I’d been taught by a teacher like Miss Honey in Matilda, and went to a secondary school near Mum’s flat in Battersea. The same school as Lex. There were no Miss Honeys there. Instead, I found classmates who were already into boys and eyeshadow and something called Take That. Lex took pity on me in the way that you might take pity on a cowering stray on the street.
‘Do you want to look at my sticker book?’ she said one lunchtime, which is still the best pick-up line that anyone’s ever used on me. And so, in the sweetly uncomplicated way that children do, we became friends. And we stayed friends.
We went on to Leeds together, both reading English, as did Bill, to study Physics. We formed an unlikely trio. The science nerd (Bill), the short, sex-obsessed blonde (Lex) and me, the tall, frizzy-haired romantic who was fixated with Sense and Sensibility and on the lookout for my own Willoughby.
Lex was already at a table by the time I got to Eggstacy, sweating from the exertion of walking up Holland Park Avenue. I waved at her from the door and pushed my way through the clusters of tables to the back.
‘Hi, love,’ I said, as she stood to hug me. ‘Welcome home. How was it?’
‘It was…’ She smiled at me coyly.
‘What?’
‘It was… Well… This happened.’ She thrust her hand towards me.
‘Lex, oh my God!’ There was a diamond ring on her finger. I took her hand in mine and pulled it towards my face. A diamond the size of a broad bean in the middle of the ring, surrounded by lots of smaller diamonds. ‘Are you kidding?’
‘No! It would be quite a weird joke, wouldn’t it?’ she said, smiling at me.
‘You’re engaged? To Hamish?’
‘Yes! Again, it would be quite weird if I’d got engaged to anyone else since I’d last seen you.’
‘Right, yes, ’course. Bloody hell. You could blind someone with that thing,’ I said, looking at the ring