Doug starts to snore quietly, but I’m so excited that I’ll be lucky to sleep again this year. I look at the clock – 2 a.m.. Who’s likely to be awake at this time?
I pad through to the lounge and call Carol. She answers immediately.
‘George, I told you to fuck off,’ she yells, before slamming the phone down.
Okay, I’ve obviously missed an episode in her life. I thought her and George had kissed and made up? I try again. ‘Carol, don’t hang up, it’s me. Are you okay?’
‘No!’ she cries.
Oh, shit. Trust me to walk right into the middle of a crisis. I knew today was too good to be true.
‘I’ll be right there,’ I promise, slamming down the phone. I find my dress, but the only thing it can be used for now is dusters. Bugger it. I grab Doug’s trousers and belt, then slip on his shirt and tie it in a knot. I pause to look at him before I leave the bedroom. He is truly beautiful. And he loves me! I would dance, only my legs are so sore they’d probably buckle.
In the lounge, I search for a pen and a piece of paper.
Doug,
Carol’s had a crisis and I’m the only available emergency service. Last night was amazing. Please call me in the morning (mobile: 0911 234231). Can’t wait to speak to you.
Luv,
Cooper.
I call a cab, then realise that I don’t know where I am. I run outside, check the street name and house number and try again. How is it possible for a night to go so far down the toilet in such a short space of time? This is a record even for me.
Twenty minutes later, Carol lets me into her flat. She’s still sniffling and her eyes look like burst plums.
‘What’s happened?’ I ask as I give her a cuddle.
That does it – Niagara gushes down her face.
I pour her a large brandy, then an even larger one for me and order her to lie down on the sofa. I get a flannel from the bathroom, run it under the cold tap, then return to the lounge and put it over her face.
‘Don’t say anything for a moment,’ I tell her.
After a few minutes, I remove the cloth. That’s better – she only looks mildly disfigured now.
‘Tell me what happened,’ I urge again.
She’s silent for a long time.
‘George asked me to marry him.’
I’m confused. ‘And that’s bad, why?’
‘Carly, look at me. How did I end up like this? I’m thirty-one years old and a guy who’ll soon qualify for a bus pass is the closest I can get to a stable relationship.’
‘But I thought that was the whole point. I thought that was what you wanted – older, rich guys that have their lives sorted.’
‘I know, Carly, it was, but it just all seems so pointless now. I mean, how can I spend the rest of my life with men who take an afternoon nap. What have I been thinking?’
I’d forgotten about the golden rule of being female. It’s our prerogative to change our minds at any given time, without warning and expect the rest of the world to understand and fall in line.
‘So what do you want now?’
‘I want a real relationship. One that’s not based on bank balances and being a trophy girlfriend. I want children and a house and a life.’
Well, knock me over and call me Kate Moss.
‘Carol, you can have all that. You’re beautiful, you’re successful, you’re funny, you’re intelligent and you’re a good person. You could have any man you wanted.’
She wipes her nose on her sleeve. Remind me never to borrow that jumper.
She thinks for a moment. ‘But look at you. You’re all those things too and you still haven’t found anyone.’
A stake through my heart.
‘Yes, but that’s because I’m officially hopeless.’
She laughs.
I take that as progress and press on. We talk until the sun comes up, until I have to sleep before my body collapses in a heap.
‘Right, from now on, you will accept all offers of dates that you receive from any men under forty-five, regardless of their bank balance. You’ll only be drawn to men who are younger than your dad and you’ll stop socialising in the Help the Aged canteen. Okay?’
She smiles, then clutches her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, shit, Carly. I’ve been so busy talking about me that I forgot to ask how your date with Doug went.’
I wrinkle up my nose and grin like a deranged maniac. ‘Well, we ended up in bed making lurve.’
She doesn’t miss a beat. ‘Okay, so that took care of five minutes, what about the rest of the night?’
Crisis over. Carol is definitely back to her wonderfully sarcastic self.
Friends. Who’d be without them?
I wait all day for Doug to call, but he doesn’t. At four o’clock, I capitulate and call him.
‘Doug, it’s me. I’m really sorry about leaving last night, but it was an emergency, honest.’
He explodes. ‘Carly, I don’t want to hear it. You show up after all these years, I tell you how I feel about you, then you fucking disappear again. I’m not playing your stupid games any more.’
Do I detect a note of unhappiness? I pull on kneepads and grovel, offering every piece of mitigation I’ve ever seen on re-runs of LA Law. I finally resort to that old girl’s favourite. ‘Look, Doug, it was a gynaecological thing. You see what happened was…’
‘Stop!’ he bellows. It works every time. I’ve not yet met a guy who can bear to discuss anything to do with a woman’s reproductive system. He finally concedes. ‘Look, I can’t see you tonight. I play football on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. But I’ll pick you up tomorrow night at seven, okay?’
I feel like a cat who’s just discovered that she’s got ten lives.
I spend hours preparing for dinner the following
