P gave me one of those hugs-while-walking things, which is always exciting with height differences like these, let alone gin. My friend bestowed a kiss on the top of my head, gave me a final squeeze, and then withdrew to safer walking practises. There was a sniff, though.
“What?”
“Kath smelled like that and all.”
I sniffed myself and grimaced. “I spilled some on me. Or rather, we did.”
“Ah, yes - I did hear there was sambuca-lighting.”
“Yes, in the wake of a Dyke-Spotting Guide.”
“Oh?”
I outlined the premise.
“Ah. I think I’ve heard things like this before from you lot, only not as... stratified...”
“Yeah. Kath now has - or has now revealed - something she calls the Sal Effect.”
“Eh?”
“Pretty, femme, exotic straight girl - lots of eye contact plus that lazy, slow smile she does,” P nudged me, smirking, “leads to blushing. Oi!”
“What?”
I frowned.
“Yeah,” said P, “that’d do it.”
“She - Sal - had tested me already anyway. Her own test. Apparently I still come up dyke.”
“What’s Sal’s test?” asked P, wide-eyed.
“Nail varnish, apparently.”
“They pay good money for that kind of thing on the internet, you know!”
“Baaad money.”
“No biscuit,” P agreed.
We both smiled at that.
“So, why was she testing?”
“Guess.”
“She... hold on, remember what happened last time I guessed?”
“Is Angeline going to make a reappearance?”
“This could be your lucky night.”
“Shit.”
“Zackly.”
“All right, she was testing because of Dan.”
“Dan.”
“Yes.”
“Dan-Dan.”
“No.”
“Dan The Man.”
“Yes.”
“Dan-Dan the...”
“Stop it.”
“Hah!”
“Anyway, er, this brings me on to an awkward question which, were I less tired I’d probably... Oh, fuck it.”
“What?!” P’s still-slightly-erratic gait had been occupying an appreciable portion of concentration.
I sighed, teetering. Now I came to think of it, there’d been a lot of sighing on this journey. Maybe I was just tired. A good night’s... no! Focus! Concentrate! Bugger me, my inner adult had returned. Where were you in the Corridor of ArtRagePain? Never mind that now - you have to choose whether or not to ask P for this information as otherwise you probably never will but either way zie’s not going to push it as zie’s... What’s this ‘zie’ stuff? Don’t you remember? The gender-neutral pronoun. What the fuck?! Are you going to ask? Piss on it.
“Sorry?” said P.
“Ugh,” I said, to avoid sighing again. “I was just swearing at myself. Can I ask you a serious question?”
“You can try,” said P, merrily.
“Seeing as he’s come up in conversation, can we get onto the postponed ‘What My Friend Really Thinks of My Current Boyfriend’ discussion?”
“Oooo-kay.”
“Cool,” I said, sighing this time in relief (and, okay, trepidation). “Thanks.” I pointed to a wall, raised my eyebrows and made to sit on it.
“Nah,” said P, “I’d rather stand for the minute. My gran always told me you could get haemorrhoids from sitting on a cold wall.”
“It’s not that... er... co-o-o-ld...”
“Yeah, right, anyway.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Silence.
I raised my eyebrows.
“I’m trying,” said P, “to think of a way of encapsulating what I mean without running down a whole bunch of little things, which would take like waaay, and then anyway not serve the p...”
“Go on, don’t worry, you don’t need to...”
“Yeah, okay, just trying to...”
“... explain, just say what you need to.”
“Okay.”
I waited.
After a while: “I, er, it’s -” said P, atypically.
“Well?”
“I dunno, it’s just - I don’t think he looks after you very well, is all.”
I gaped. Yes. Yes, I actually gaped at my friend. “He w... he look...” I stopped. Breathed. “What?!”
“I don’t think he looks after you very well.” P, utterly miserable but having committed to the phrase, was slower and firmer.
“Oh, he d-” I was shriller. I hate that.
“Oh, he does all that running around stuff, sure - dramatic, action-boy antics and everything, but...”
“P,” I explained, “I don’t need looking after.”
“Love, you’re one of the strongest women I know, fuck’s sake, but everyone needs looking after. That’s why we get together with people.”
“What if it’s that you want to look after them?”
“You look after each other.” P looked at me flatly. “That’s the deal. That’s always the deal or there’s no deal.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, after a while, “what if I accept that’s true... why do you say he doesn’t look after me?”
“Oh,” said P loudly and irritably with a hand flap, “tell me all about crazy adventures and all-night, all-day sex with barely a break for food, but tell me about the last time he cooked for you?”
“Eh? I...” I slumped. “Okay.” There was then a pause while I filtered and percolated. Then rallied: “Look, okay, firstly, it’s a new rela...”
“Well over six months,” P’s tone flat, unemotionally emphatic; a bad sign if I’d noticed it, but I blundered on in self-defence:
“Okay, granted, nearly seven months since we started seeing each other, but he’s been away a lot of that time. How can he be cooking? He’s coming back to mine each time, and...”
“... and it’s not exactly taxing to his strength to lift a pot when he gets there, is it?”
I felt my face go still, in that way that my friends say is as much signal as when my voice gets lower, slower. I shifted on the wall, fingertips rubbing together. “So, I said quite slowly, “a straight bloke doesn’t like to cook and we’re all surprised and concerned why?”
P frowned. Clearly thought were coming with less ease and speed than that accustomed to. “That’s not the point,” came eventually.
“What is the point, then?”
P’s mouth was small, eyebrows very lightly creased, eyes a weird, almost oblong shape. A breath was heaved. “He doesn’t...”
“Look after me, yeah, you said - got anything else? You’ll need a lot more - and a lot better - to...”
“Okay,” P said loudly. “What do you want - you want a list?”
“Yeah, all right then,” I said, rising to my feet. Neither of us seemed to be noticing the temperature now.
“He doesn’t cook; he very rarely comes out with us, so you stay in when he’s here; he finds the thought of speaking any language other than English risible. He hides his nervousness around the rest of us inverts by being incredibly loud and engaging in arguments he doesn’t need to take on.”
“You could make him feel more welcome...” I glared, jaw clenching against harsher words.
“We’ve tried. He doesn’t know us and doesn’t seem to want to. And you, you get all... passive around him - defer to his judgements without even a thought, and seem to relish being his little woman. You’re...”
“Enough!” My jaw unclenched.
“These are all the things you think.”
“You’re just jealous.”
“What?! Of bloody whom?”
“Just coz you can’t command all of my time now...”
“That’s not... look, I miss you, yeah, but god knows you and I do things with other people all the damned time. That’s not the point.” Pause. “No, it is the point, because I miss you. I miss,” said P, finally helplessly, “my Jen.”
I looked at P aghast. “P...?”
“My Jen is strong and decisive, coz she has to be, and she’s sure of her own judgement and...”
“P...” to my horror, I could hear my voice wobbling.
“God knows, I don’t hate the fella, but I could, if you - if he took you and...”
“P, please...”
“’sides,” said P with reckless disdain for occasion, “he’s a bloody Southerner - how’s that gonna...” and was interrupted by a ballistic hug.
I disengaged quickly; only someone who knows me well will know just how rare that action had been.
“Steady on,” said P, with a suspicious hint of a sniff, “we don’t want to dent your butch image, after all.”
I laughed, far too shakily, rescued from tears by my friend’s perennially inappropriate humour. “Monkeyfucker.”
P’s head inclined. “Your mother, Geordie.”
I growled. “Near enough a fuckin Southerner yasel - from the Midlands an’ all laike y’are.”
“It’s the heat, it’s gone to your brain. Must be really uncomfortable without your shellsuit.”
I glared, mock-ferocious. “I want you to know that I have a really good comeback to that, but I’m waiting for the right moment to unleash it - while you’re least expecting it.”
“Okay, Kato.” Then P looked brisk. “Right, let’s get you home, shall we?”
“There goes my butch image again.”
“We’re closer to yours, fool, and you can walk me next time, ’kay?”
“’kay.”
We walked on in relative silence after that, though P at one point hummed something - Keane, I think - sotto voce, and I swore when I slipped in the same damned rotted cardboard as the last time I’d walked along here at night. I mean, it couldn’t be, but it bloody looked it.
“Pizza box, I think,” said P.
“Mmm,” I said, scraping my shoes rapidly on the curb.
We strolled in silence for a bit, P now whistling. Then: “Hey,”
“Yeah?”
“What time is it, anyway?”
“Probably,” I dug for my mobile, “Yes - 4am.”
“Why’re you doing that?”
“Eh?”
“Where’s your watch, anyway?”
I was putting my mobile back. “Huh? What watch?”
“Your new watch.”
“My what now?”
“Your new wa...”
“You’re mixing me up with another of your friends who doesn’t mind wearing watches.”
“The one,” said P, slightly impatiently, “that you bought on...”
“Oh...”
“Thursday.”
“Shit...”
“For...”
“Interviews.”
“You remember?!” P sounded pleased and a little excited.
“No,” I shook my head grimly. “I’ve remembered the thought I had that I should have a watch to look more slick for interviews so that I could...”
“... turn off your mobile so it wouldn’t go off and still know the time. And coz it looks more...”
“... grown-up to have a watch,” I finished, slowly. “Fuck.” I slumped.
P put an arm around me and tugged me forward up the street. “Don’t worry, Jen, I’m sure it was a really crap watch anyway.”
“You suck.”
“Whenever I can.”
We scuffled onwards.
Once at mine, I turned at the door to face P. “You sure you won’t come in?”
“No,” P’s head had already been shaking. “And neither will I permit you to ring for a taxi. I’ll be fine. And,” stepping closer, “so will you.”
I smiled. “Okay, you win.”
“Always.” P turned away. “Sleep well.”
“I’ll try.”
We waved. And I went in. P knows I don’t like saying that word.
Even when I want to stomp, a certain instinct kicks in and I creep upstairs, especially when we’re almost at the stage when late becomes early. And so, with only the most furtive of creaks to accompany my ascent, I made my way safely to the flat, let myself in, breathed, and crept, rather less cautiously, to my room. Mel is notoriously hard to wake; so as long as I avoided saying her name or anything that sounded like her name, I could be a little freer.
I then span on my right foot and made tracks for the kitchen and a nice cold glass of water. And then to my room.
“Hello, precious,” I cooed under my breath. “Are you going to wake up for Mummy?”
This could take a while.