‘That’s the whole summer, isn’t it?’
Toby sucks air between his teeth. ‘Oh, Steeley,’ he says, squeezing my shoulders. The something fluttering between my legs is positively flapping now. ‘Sharing your space with a whole other person? How are you coping?’
‘Not very well, actually. There’s stuff all over my flat.’
‘Oh no. Not stuff. In flat?’
‘Piss off!’ I nudge him in the side.
Shona groans. Poor Shona. She’s worked with Toby and I nearly a year now and the constant sexual tension by proxy must be beginning to wear thin.
‘And what about her not leaving the cushions lined up symmetrically? Leaving the tap dripping? Spoiling your one-woman efforts to save the Great Barrier Reef?’
I slap him over the head as he twinkles his swimming-pool-blue eyes at me.
‘You’re so rude! And this morning she dyed her hair in my bathroom – purple dye all over my brand new Italian bathroom.’
Toby bursts out laughing. ‘Fuck, I’m surprised you made it into work.’
‘How old is she?’ asks Shona
‘Seventeen.’
Toby almost falls off his chair.
‘Seventeen?’ Health and Safety Heather swings around and sighs dramatically, but we all ignore her since she does this several times a day. ‘You didn’t tell me you had a seventeen-year-old sister!’
‘Half-sister,’ I correct.
‘That is so cool,’ says Shona. ‘I would have killed my three brothers for a sister when I was a kid.’
Toby and I frown. Shona often saying things that make people frown.
Toby put his feet up on my desk. ‘So what’s she like? Is she a—’
‘Delaney!’
‘God, Delaney,’ agrees Shona.
‘What?’ he says, wide-eyed at the injustice of it all. ‘A student, was all I was going to say. Thanks a lot, you two.’ He stabs at a ball of Blu-Tack with his pen ‘What do you two take me for? I’m a responsible, married man.’
‘Well, since you’re such a fan of responsibility, maybe you’d like to volunteer as a fire marshal? Eh? Clever clogs. Whaddya think about that?’
Our ‘crisis meeting’ – obviously just an opportunity for Toby to laugh at me – is suddenly cut short by Heather, playfully hitting Toby across the head with her Fire Safety manual.
‘Fifty quid for the first three takers and an hour with me, to show you the ropes.’
‘That, H, is a very hard offer to refuse,’ says Toby, as Heather swings back and forth on her court shoes, clearly delighted by her opening gambit. ‘But I think I’m going to decline, on this occasion. It’s more Caroline’s sort of thing, isn’t it, Caroline?’ And then he smiles in a way that makes me want to punch and snog him all at the same time.
So that’s how I get roped into being one of the office’s three fire marshals – me, Heather and Toupee Dom from payroll. I spend the next hour learning how to use the fire extinguisher and sitting in a special chair used to evacuate disabled people from the office, whilst Toupee Dom almost knocks me out with his body odour. I try Lexi several times but, worryingly, get no answer until, finally, around lunchtime – just as I get stuck into my PowerPoint presentation, in particular a very well-executed pie-chart, detailing what’s currently driving the growth of oral hygiene goods in Asda – comes the shower scene noise from Psycho. I immediately grab my phone from the table, but it flips about in my hand like a live trout. There’s a text.
Am up town. This oldie just tried to flog uz xtc! I
WMPL!
C u l8r
DWBH. [smiley face] Ha ha. lol. Lex xxxxxx
What?
‘Am up town’ is all I can make out. So she’s in town, but where in town? Soho? Shoreditch? The arse-end of Hackney?
I immediately email Toby. He’s got a nineteen-year-old brother. He’ll know what she’s on about.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
This text from Lexi, do I need to worry?
Am up town. This oldie just tried to flog uz xtc! I WMPL!
C u l8r
DWBH. [smiley face]
Ha Ha. lol. Lex xxxxxx
Five seconds later, an email pings into my inbox.
Subject: translation services from down-wiv-the-kidz From: [email protected]
She’s been offered class A drugs by a geriatric. This made her wet herself laughing. She says, don’t worry, be happy!
To: [email protected]
Don’t worry? I am SO worrying. I don’t think I can hack this responsibility for another human being/space-sharing thing, you were right.
He emails back.
From: [email protected]
Relax woman. It could be fun. I sure wish I had a seventeen-year-old lolling about my gaff all summer. Although, it has occurred to me, I don’t know whether it has you. Does the fact you’ve got your sister staying change the book club? Like, do we need to re-locate??!
I email back.
That, Mr Delaney, is the last thing on my mind.
CHAPTER FOUR
When I get home from work, Lexi’s in the back garden, sunbathing. It’s only when she removes the copy of Time Out she is reading to talk to me in comedic deep voice (I am finding she rarely uses her normal one) that I realize she is topless.
‘Afternooooon. You’re early; good day at the office?’
‘Yeah, good, thanks.’ I don’t know where to look, so I take a sudden interest in the doorframe. ‘Very productive.’
‘Great.’ She smiles brightly. Her long legs are stretched out on the sun lounger. She’s wearing bright red lipstick and enormous square shades. ‘So, what do you think?’
‘About what?’
‘My tattoo, you chump!’ She sticks her right arm out in front of her.
I look in horror at the anchor (an anchor?) splat in the middle of her upper right arm. I can’t believe this. Dad will kill me. I have an overwhelming desire to head-butt the wall.
‘You got that done today?’
‘Yes, don’t you like it? It’s like the one Amy Winehouse has, kind of ironic, you know, sailor iconography?’
‘Who did it to you?’
‘A tattoo artist did it to me.’ She laughs. ‘A very sexy, Paolo Nutini lookalike tattoo artist, if you must know.’
Who the hell was Paulo Nutini?
‘Where?’
‘Camden Market. That place is awesome. I could have spent a fortune. And guess what? I got a job!’ She sits up on her elbows and I have to look away so it doesn’t look as if I’m leering at her bosom. ‘I met this guy called Wayne.’
‘Wayne?’ I grimace. ‘Unfortunate name.’
‘I know, but he had the most wickedest shop – well, it’s not his, it’s his mate’s, but he’s working on it part-time. We got chatting, coz he’s originally from Sheffield and his accent stood out. I said I’d just landed for the summer and he said he needed some help at weekends and occasionally during the week, so …’
‘Hang on. Who is this Wayne?’
‘He runs a shop in Camden Market, like I said. And he lives in Battersea!’
‘Where?’
‘On a boat, how special is that? Anyway, do you wanna see the stuff I bought?’
‘Yeah, sure.’ I decide to come back to the Wayne thing later; this was all going way too fast. So then she’s up, padding across the garden, legs as skinny as a stork. She gets hold of my hand.
‘Come to my boudoir,’ she says, which sounds ridiculous in her thick Yorkshire accent, and I follow her, helpless. We go through the lounge.
‘Soz about the mess,’ she says, trampling all over the cushions she’s tossed on the floor earlier. ‘I was trying my new stuff on and was just about to start tidying up when you came home.
‘That’s okay!’ I lie, quickly replacing all the cushions on the sofa.
We get to the guest bedroom.
‘Okay, you stay there,’ she says, hands on my shoulders, pushing me against the wall. And then she goes inside and closes the door so I am left staring at it, suddenly feeling like a stranger in my own home. Five seconds later, music is on.
