‘Have you ever seen a hermit you’d like to shag? No? There you go, then. As I was saying, unless you’re planning oncelibacy, you will be, at the very least, doubling your numbers of sexual partners at some point. Regardless, come on, babe! I haven’t seen you inages.’
‘We went for coffee last week.’
‘Twenty minutes. You were there twenty minutes, and you almost fell asleep in your latte. All you’ve done lately is work. Work, work, bloody work!’
‘Yes, well, that’s because the bank has this annoying rule that the mortgage has to be paid on time. Every month!’
‘I might be able to help you there,’ she answers quickly, ‘but first, tell me you’ll come out with me this weekend.’
‘Fine,’ I say, in the manner of someone worn down and not very happy about it.
‘Yes!’
‘But nowhere ridiculously expensive.’ I can barely afford to feed myself, never mind find money for Soho prices.
‘As if we’ll be paying for our own drinks,’ she scoffs.
‘No, Mel. I mean it, no men.’
‘Of course,’ she says. ‘No men for me, at least. I’m sure Tim wouldn’t like it.’
I sit straighter, earning myself another malevolent glare from the cat. So I flip him off.
‘How is Tim?’ I ask... because that’s what friends do. ‘Are you still enjoying playing happy families?’ Mel was recently having a new bathroom fitted at her place when the workmen discovered a leak from the ground floor. Hundred-year-old mains had been pumping water into the foundations of her bijou palace, which was a perfect excuse to move into her boyfriend’s apartment.
‘I prefer to think of it as allowing him to realise how much he loves having me around.’ As I begin to chuckle, the cat stretches disdainfully before thumping his bulk down from the couch, unamused at the disturbance. ‘And speaking of families...’
Something about her tone puts me immediately on edge. Mel is rarely tentative. We’re opposites in lots of ways. I watch, she demands. I’m dark, she’s like a bright flame. I’m short, and she is statuesque. She’s bossy, and she has been since she’d turned up on my doorstep within a few days of my family moving to the UK. I was ten and moody and not very receptive as she’d announced,I’m Melody, your new best friend. As it turns out, she was right. She’s been organising me since then.
Or trying to.
‘I have a little bit of a dilemma. But it’s one that you might be able to make use of.’
‘Okay.. .’ Suddenly, my Melody-senses are tingling. She’s up to something.
‘You remember how I suggested you rent out one of your spare rooms?’
‘Nope,’ I reply firmly. We’ve already had this discussion on more than one occasion. ‘I don’t want a housemate—a stranger living in my place.’ Medical school was bad enough. ‘I’d rather work seven days a week and live on ramen again.’
‘This is not a housemate. Well, not a housemate, per se. More like you doing me a huge favour while getting a little extra towards your mortgage. Also, not a stranger,’ she adds in that strange air again. But she had me atmortgage,and she probably knows it.
‘Go on,’ I reply warily.
‘I need you to let Ben stay with you.’
‘Ben? Your brother Ben? The same Ben who flushed my beloved goldfish down the pan?’
‘No, Ben, the man from Mars. Of course, I mean my brother Ben.’
Honestly? I’d much rather open my home to an alien than Ben Monroe.
Chapter 2
PENNY
‘That’s not very nice,’ she says even though she’s laughing. And that’s about when I realise I’d said that out loud. But come on, Ben was a blight on my childhood!
‘Not very nice?’ I repeat, though in a different tone. ‘Maybe that’s what you should’ve said that time he peed in the hot tub, instead of laughing along with him.’ She was on the patio at this point, out of the offending liquid-ick.
