Brand New Friend (29 page)

‘Mine was fine about it because she had nothing to worry about. With me and Jo it was just about friendship.’

‘Liar,’ said Marissa. ‘Of course you fancied her. If you’re a bloke and you’re hanging out with some woman who’s not your girlfriend it has to be because you fancy her. Straight men aren’t capable of being just good friends with women.’

‘That’s not true,’ said Leah. ‘I think they can . . . But it’s hard.’

Rob looked at Marissa. ‘Are you telling me you haven’t got any male friends?’

She grinned. ‘I’ve got plenty of male friends but there’s always been a little frisson of sexual tension between us at some point.’

‘I haven’t got any male friends,’ admitted Leah, cheerfully. ‘I don’t know why.’

A mobile phone rang inside Marissa’s bag on the floor. ‘It’s John,’ she said to Leah, as she answered it. ‘I can barely hear him above all the noise in here. I’m going to speak to him outside. Will you be okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ said Leah, smiling. ‘Just come back when you’re done.’

Rob and Leah watched as Marissa left the bar, then turned to each other. ‘Where are you from?’ asked Rob. ‘You don’t sound local.’

‘I grew up in a place called Nuneaton.’

‘I know it,’ said Rob. ‘It’s not far from Coventry.’

‘That’s the one.’

‘When I was about sixteen I went on holiday with some mates to Malaga and I had a holiday romance with a girl called . . . what was her name? That’s it! Corinna Massey. She lived in Hinckley, which isn’t far from Nuneaton. Her idea of a big day out was to go into Nuneaton town centre. I fell madly in love with her and she dumped me for some guy who had left school and had a car.’

‘The promise of a backie on some spotty youth’s BMX is hardly going to compete with being driven to the Lakeside Superbowl in Alex Kennedy’s Mini Cooper,’ laughed Leah.

‘Alex Kennedy, eh?’ joked Rob. ‘Did the two of you last long?’

‘Put it this way,’ she replied, ‘it wasn’t one of the best relationships I’ve ever had but it was a long way from the worst.’

‘And which one would claim that title?’ asked Rob.

Leah was about to answer when Marissa returned to the table. ‘I’m really sorry, sis,’ she said, ‘but I’ve got to go. John’s having problems with the kids. Molly’s been screaming the place down since I left the house. I think it’s her teeth again.’

‘Poor John,’ said Leah. ‘Of course we’ll go right now.’ She looked at Rob apologetically. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It was nice to meet you.’

Leah smiled. ‘It was nice to meet you too. That whole let’s-be-friends thing was a great chat-up line. If you’d picked someone a little less battle-scarred you might have been lucky tonight.’

‘It
wasn’t
a line,’ said Rob.

‘But it isn’t how people make friends in the real world, is it?’ said Leah. ‘It’s how people have one-night stands that they bitterly regret the next day.’

Rob watched them leave, and as the glass doors closed he realised she was right: making friends was all about context. If he’d met Leah at work or been introduced to her through mutual friends she wouldn’t have had a qualm about seeing him again. But because they were strangers and had met in a bar it was never going to happen. People didn’t make friends with strangers in bars, no matter how much they liked them. Especially when one was a man and the other a woman.

The following weekend Rob had planned to go to London to see Phil and whichever of the boys he could persuade to come out for a weekend involving drinking in the Queen’s Head on Friday night, a house party in Camberwell on Saturday night and five-a-side football in Hyde Park on Sunday afternoon. At the last minute, however, he called Phil and cancelled, claiming he was ‘feeling like he was coming down with something’, even though he was fine.

Rob had come to an epiphany of sorts. He was sick of running away from Manchester and tired of depending on his old friends for a social life. He told himself that he needed to try to stand on his own two feet and find a way of making life work in Manchester.

On Friday night he stayed in with Ashley, a home-delivery pizza and
Top of the Pops
(when he should have been out with Phil and Woodsy in the Queen’s). On Saturday morning, (when he’d planned to be sleeping off the effects of a night at the Queen’s) Rob found himself in town with Ashley, in search of a new shower curtain, a set of wine glasses, embroidered cushions and cinnamon room spray. Around midday (when Rob should have been ordering a fried English breakfast from the Sunshine café on Tooting Broadway) he was in Stock on Norfolk Street, discussing potential honeymoon destinations over seafood linguine. And on Saturday evening (when Rob should have been enjoying a pre-party drinking session at the Queen’s) he was at home, surrounded by Ashley’s friends, with an evening of drinking, finger food and board games ahead of him.

Among the usual crowd who came to Ashley’s impromptu gatherings, like Christine and Joel, Luke and Lauren, Jason and Louise, Mia and Edwin and, of course, Neil, was someone Rob had never met before: Justine, Neil’s relatively new girlfriend. At the beginning of the evening he had a chat with her. Justine worked in advertising in London and they knew some people in common. Rob would have talked to her for longer but he made the mistake of pausing to change the CD and when he returned she was discussing house prices with Mia and Christine. Disheartened, he left the room to get a beer.

Crouching over the fridge, Rob stared inside looking for inspiration: there were bottles of Budvar, which Joel had brought, Luke’s cans of Boddington’s bitter, Jason’s Löw-enbraü and Neil’s Red Stripe, but there was no Guinness or Carlsberg. Rob hated Budvar, loathed Boddington’s, balked at Löwenbraü and was scornful of Red Stripe, but the fact remained that he wanted a drink. He scanned all the bottles and cans again and found himself reaching for a Red Stripe. He promised himself that if it was too disgusting he would throw it down the drain and run to the off-licence even though it was raining.

Grimacing – as if he was about to be poisoned – he opened the can and took a swig, waiting for his taste buds to recoil. They didn’t. In fact, the opposite happened. They practically purred.

‘Didn’t know you liked Red Stripe,’ said a voice from behind Rob.

Rob turned to see Neil.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. ‘You’re right. I don’t normally drink anything but Carlsberg or Guinness but, well, this stuff’s all right.’

‘Can you grab one for me?’ asked Neil. ‘I only came in to get away from Mia and Christine banging on about house prices but I might as well make the journey worthwhile.’

Rob handed him a can. ‘I suggest we stay here until they’ve finished.’

Neil opened his beer. ‘That could be a while. I’m pretty sure after Chorlton they’ll be on to Didsbury.’

‘And then Wythenshawe,’ added Rob, grinning.

‘And up-and-coming Withington.’

‘Not forgetting highly desirable Crumpsall.’

‘How long do you reckon it’ll take them to do the whole of the north-west?’

‘All night. And maybe into the early morning.’

‘Well, we might as well make ourselves comfortable,’ said Neil, and sat down at the kitchen table.

‘That,’ said Rob, ‘sounds like a great idea.’

Rob couldn’t tell whether it was the Red Stripe that they finished off or the Budvar and Löwenbraü that they started on, whether Neil was behaving differently because of his girlfriend or whether he himself was relaxed because he had drunk so much, but their mini drinking session was a turning-point for the two men. Suddenly the awkwardness between them disappeared. Rob laughed so hard at a few of Neil’s jokes that he couldn’t breathe. Riding this conversational high Rob discovered a host of things he hadn’t known about him. Neil revealed, for instance, that the first record he’d ever bought was the seven-inch single of ‘Welcome to The Rat Race’ by the Specials and his first album was
Eat To The Beat
by Blondie – which impressed him, and even more so when Neil revealed that he had been only eight at the time.

From this point the conversation went up a gear and the revelations came thick and fast. Neil, too, had a minor obsession with eBay but rather than collecting toys from his childhood he bought cult sixties and seventies first-edition paperbacks (everything from British pulp fiction to obscure novelisations of Italian horror films). He, too, thought that
Scarface
was one of the world’s most overrated films; he, too, had given up buying Radiohead albums until they stopped being so wilfully experimental. But the moment when Neil finally stopped being ‘Neil’ and became someone far more interesting was late in the evening when Rob had insisted he should hear a song that would change his life for ever. He turned up the volume of the stereo and, air guitar at the ready, pressed play. Within three seconds of the intro Neil yelled, ‘“Dreams”, van Halen.’

‘How did you know?’ asked Rob, dropping his air guitar.

‘Misspent youth,’ explained Neil. ‘Back in the day I had long hair and too-tight jeans.’ He laughed. ‘How do
you
know it? I’d never imagined you’d have a closet rubbish-rock-music phase to confess to.’

‘No rock phase,’ said Rob. ‘My mate Phil sent it to me ages ago.’

‘Well, tell him from me,’ said Neil, grinning, ‘he’s got great taste in music.’

‘Morning, babe,’ said Rob, rubbing his eyes, as a fully dressed Ashley entered their bedroom with the cordless telephone in her hand.

‘Afternoon, more like,’ she replied.

Rob stared at the alarm clock on her bedside table. ‘Is this thing right?’

‘Do you mean, “Is it really four o’clock in the afternoon?”’ She laughed. ‘If so, yes, it is!’

‘I feel terrible,’ he said.

‘Really? I wonder why. Could it be that you and Neil were boozing downstairs until the early hours?’

‘Last night is a bit of a blur,’ he confessed.

‘Hmm,’ said Ashley. ‘So I take it you can’t recall promising your new best friend that you’d go for a drink with him tonight?’

Rob winced. ‘He won’t remember. We’d had too much to drink and got carried away. A one-nighter. Definitely not to be repeated.’

‘Is that right?’ said Ashley, grinning, and handed Rob the phone. ‘So why is Neil on the phone to check that you’re coming out tonight?’

Despite his thumping headache Rob agreed to meet Neil in BlueBar, on the condition that they limited themselves to a quick pint before last orders.

It was a repeat of the previous night: lots of laughs, good conversations and anecdotes. In fact, it was such a success that afterwards Rob went back to Neil’s flat in Didsbury where they listened to a few CDs Neil had bought over the weekend. Rob didn’t get home until a quarter past three when, to make matters worse, he remembered he’d left his house keys in his office. He had to ring the bell for Ashley to let him in.

When she opened the door with ‘What time do you call this?’ Rob laughed and fell over. And that night although he had to sleep on the sofa and was forced to spend the rest of the week apologising he didn’t mind because he was sure he’d made a new friend. Soon he was seeing Neil regularly for a drink and spending the rest of his time with Ashley. And everything was great. His life was back on track. Jo was history.

It was just after nine on Rob’s big night out with Neil’s friends and Rob was in his element. So far he and the others had discussed topics as diverse as ‘Will there ever be peace in the Middle East?’ posed by Gavin, right through to ‘John or Paul? Which was the most talented Beatle?’, Jonesy’s offering.

‘Okay, then,’ began Paolo, ‘who’s the most attractive screen actress – living or dead – of all time, and in what film did they look their best?’

‘I’m off to the gents, gents,’ announced Rob, who had been resisting the urge so that he didn’t miss any top-quality conversation. ‘But that’s a brilliant question Paolo, mate, and the answer, without any doubt, is Ingrid Bergman in
To Have and Have Not.
Women really don’t get any better than her in that film.’

Paolo and the others laughed and immediately offered their own suggestions. As Rob headed across the room towards the loos he wore a huge grin. He was happy. He was enjoying himself. He even decided to come up with a few extra nominations in case his friends were still talking about actresses when he got back to them. As he entered the gents he wondered whether Jean Seberg in
À Bout de Souffle
, Halle Berry in
Die Another Day
or Maria Grazia Cucinotta in
Il Postino
would join Ingrid in his ultimate top three. In the end he concluded that although Seberg might beat Berry on the grounds that she had made better films, Seberg might ultimately lose to Grazia Cucinotta who really was a babe. Rob was so focused on his internal New Wave French cinema versus hot Italian actresses debate that when he came out of the loos he didn’t see the woman coming towards him and walked right into her.

‘I’m so sorry—’ he began, then stopped when he realised that the woman in front of him wasn’t a stranger. She was Jo.

For several seconds neither spoke. Instead they stared at each other, at a loss for something to say. In the end Jo broke the silence. ‘Rob,’ she said quietly, ‘I was on my way to the loo.’

‘It was my fault,’ said Rob, making sure that his voice betrayed no flicker of emotion. ‘My mind was elsewhere. Really, there’s no need for this to be a big thing. You carry on doing what you were doing and we’ll pretend it never happened.’

‘How have you been?’ asked Jo.

‘Good, thanks.’

‘I’ve put my house on the market and handed in my notice at work,’ she said brightly. ‘Sean and I are moving to London at the end of next month. I don’t know what I’ll do yet – anything but what I’ve been doing for the last ten years.’