CYCLING BACK TO St John’s I was trying to remember when I’d last been on a date. As I pushed my bike through the main gate, I realized I never had. As a teenager I’d had boyfriends, probably more than most girls – I was no angel – but I’d met them on street corners, on park benches, by climbing the railings of children’s playgrounds after dark. We’d met, hung around, drunk cheap booze and smoked. The snogging and the petting had gone further and further, until by sixteen there wasn’t much I didn’t know about sex.
At seventeen I’d left home and had spent time living rough. I’d hit rock bottom and then discovered there are places even worse. Gradually, though, I’d pulled myself up and sorted myself out. I’d joined the RAF reserves, then the police, studied for a law degree and established a career. It hadn’t left much time for socializing and, besides, I’d decided long ago that I couldn’t allow anyone to get close. Which pretty much ruled out boyfriends.
I certainly wasn’t afraid of men. Until recently I’d had a pretty active sex life, I just didn’t try to convince myself that the men who passed through my life were about anything other than sex. Now I was in my late twenties and on the verge of my first date. With a man who might just be a monster in human form. Well, they did say dating was a minefield.
I could hear heavy rock music from the other end of the corridor. I opened the door to a wall of sound and found Tox sitting in the middle of the rug. Her plum-coloured hair was twisted up on top of her head. It looked like she hadn’t combed it in weeks and seemed to be held in place with a pair of chopsticks. She was wearing pink leggings with a hole in the bum. One leg, her right one, was twisted up and doubled back so that her ankle rested behind her head. The other leg was curved in front of her. Her hands were by her side for balance. Her eyes were closed. She didn’t open them as I came in.
Shaking my head – kids! – I walked past her and into my own room. In spite of what I’d told Evi, I still didn’t feel great. I had two hours to let paracetamol, strong coffee and hot water work their magic.
The music died. ‘Hi, hon,’ I heard Tox call from the main room, when my ears had stopped pounding. ‘Can you give me a hand a sec?’
I walked back. Tox hadn’t moved, except to shuffle round a bit on her bottom so that she could face me. ‘I’m stuck,’ she said. ‘Can you just, like, unhook me?’
She was winding me up. ‘You can’t be stuck,’ I said. ‘Just bend your head forward.’
‘Doesn’t work,’ she said, and in fairness, she was looking a bit red in the face. ‘My leggings are caught on the back of my choker. I can’t unfasten it. I’ve been fiddling and fiddling and I’ve just made it worse. There’re some scissors in my top drawer.’
I bent to look. Sure enough, several strands of wool had got caught on the fastening of the thing she was wearing round her neck. I tried to release the choker, but the wool was wrapped round both sides of the fastener.
‘It’s not going to unfasten,’ I said.
‘Scissors,’ said Tox. ‘For God’s sake, I’ve been like this for an hour.’
After I’d cut her free, she used both hands to unhook her leg from the back of her neck and lower it slowly. Then she stretched out and rolled over on to her stomach, her face pressed against the rug.
‘Yoga?’ I said, when she’d stopped groaning.
‘Tantric,’ she muttered to the carpet. ‘Does wonders for your sex life.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ I replied, glancing at her iPod on the floor beside her. ‘And the Killers were to drown out your screams?’
She reached out and picked up the iPod. ‘The Killers were to attract attention,’ she said. ‘I knew sooner or later someone would come and complain.’ She reached back and started massaging the flesh of her right buttock. ‘Oh, Christ, I’m in pain,’ she said. ‘I think I’ve pulled something.’
‘I’ll run you a bath,’ I offered.
‘I know you’re laughing, you unsympathetic cow,’ she called out to me as I walked down the corridor to the bathroom.
Nearly two hours later, I’d followed Tox into the bath and soaked until I was in danger of coming out wrinkled. Then I’d dosed myself up on codeine and paracetamol. I’d drunk another gallon of water and a couple of cups of very strong coffee. I was feeling better and probably as good as I was going to short of ten hours’ sleep.
Tox, having hobbled up to the Buttery for food and back down again, was kneeling on one of the easy chairs, her buttocks presumably still too sore to sit down properly. ‘Town or gown,’ she called to me.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Your date. Town or gown?’
‘Six stinky old fellows and a couple of moustached lesbians,’ I replied, finding my jeans from the wardrobe. I’d told her I’d been invited to a departmental dinner. She hadn’t looked convinced.
‘You are shitting me,’ she said, watching me wriggle into them. ‘Those are fuck-me jeans. There is actually a hole at the crotch.’
‘There is not,’ I snapped, although, strictly, it was debatable. The jeans were a pair I’d bought a couple of years ago in Camden Market. They were made of old, distressed denim and would have been skin-tight had they not been more holes than jeans. All the way down each leg, the denim had been slashed in a series of horizontal tears. They were Lacey jeans, not at all the sort of thing Laura would wear, but if I was going to get through the evening I was going to have to let Lacey out of her box for a while.
‘You are going to get frostbite,’ my self-appointed mother-stand-in went on. ‘Do you know it’s actually snowing outside?’
She had a point. Sometime over the last couple of hours soft white powder had started to collect in the window corners. Not that I had time to rethink and change. I pulled my sweater over my head. Ten minutes to go. Was there any chance of getting rid of Tox before Nick arrived?
‘Are you actually staying in tonight?’ I asked her.
‘Shit no,’ she said. ‘I’d be chewing the furniture by ten o’clock. Barney’s team’s been playing away, though. He’s not back for another hour. That is a great colour on you.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. The sweater was powder blue, the fabric a poor-woman’s cashmere. I was never entirely sure about it, always wondered if it was a bit …
‘And I love the two styles screaming at each other. You know, rock-chick-slut and the postmistress’s grandmother.’
‘That’s what I was going for,’ I said, wondering if I did maybe have time to rethink and change.
‘You know what, I have the perfect pair of earrings for that outfit.’ Tox had climbed down off her perch and was hobbling to her own room.
‘Actually, I don’t really do earrings,’ I called after her. ‘Earrings are a bit wasted when you have long hair.’
She was back, brandishing a pair of huge, dangly earrings as if she were presenting me with the Holy Grail. ‘Absolutely perfect,’ she said, holding them up against my sweater. ‘You need something to get your hair out of the way though.’
She disappeared again. Each earring was several powder-blue feathers hanging from a miniature mirror ball. They looked like something that might tumble out of a cheap Christmas cracker. At that second there was a knock on the door. When I opened it, a man with snowflakes in his copper-coloured hair stood on the other side. Just nudging six foot, I judged, the perfect height for a man.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Yowsa,’ said Tox from behind me.
‘This is Talaith,’ I said without turning round. ‘But unless you’re about to take up holy orders, you have to call her Tox.’
‘You can call me anything you like,’ said Tox, as I stepped backwards to let Nick come in. From the corner of my eye I saw she had dropped the hobble and was slinking across the room like a cat teaching deportment class. She held out her hand to him as if she were the Queen Mother.
