No-One Ever Has Sex on a Tuesday (23 page)

Alison looked questioningly into his eyes as he prayed for the unlikely event that she would agree and vow never to see Ben again. She glanced to her side, presumably to check out the proximity of the next table before she let him have it.

‘How dare you?’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘What gives you the right to tell me whether I have enough to cope with?’

‘I’m just looking out for you,’ Matthew insisted. ‘You’ve just had twins. Surely they need your undivided attention right now?’

‘What are you implying?’ spat Alison. ‘That I can’t cope? That I’m not looking after my children properly?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Well, it certainly feels like it. All you ever do is interfere. Like you think you can do better.’

‘No, I don’t!’ Matthew said defensively.

‘You keep trying to butt in,’ she ranted. ‘I
know
what I’m doing.’ She glared at him, eyes bulging.

‘I’m good at it,
really
good at it,’ she continued, working herself up into an emotional state and now on the brink of tears. ‘And at least
Ben
can see that. At least he makes me feel like I know what I’m doing even if my own husband doesn’t.’

Matthew gasped. The last thing he wanted to hear was that Ben was doing something he wasn’t.

‘But you don’t even like Ben,’ he protested weakly. ‘You used to think he was an idiot too.’

‘He needs me, Matthew. He listens. He appreciates what I’m doing.’ She paused for a second before blurting out, ‘He told me I was eye candy.’

She stood up and thrust her napkin onto the table, then picked up her mobile phone and ran towards the door.

He stared after her, her last words going round and round his head, oblivious to the stares of the adjacent tables. His phone beeped in his pocket. Perhaps it was her.

He lifted it out and read the new text. It was from Ian.

Have you shagged her yet?

Chapter Twenty-Three

‘I cannot believe the Brewery Tap closes at midnight,’ declared Braindead as they marched through the damp, drizzly streets of Leeds. Their hands were thrust deep in their pockets and their shoulders hunched, as though rigidity would keep out the biting chill of the bleak January night. The Christmas cheer of December had well and truly disappeared, leaving the city feeling hollow and naked, leading to thoughts of hibernation rather than joy and goodwill to all men.

‘I just don’t understand the licensing laws in this country,’ Braindead continued. ‘I thought it was all sorted. You could stay open as long as you wanted. Seems to me the rubbish places can stay open as long as they like, whereas it’s the quality pubs still shut early. What’s that all about?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied Ben. He’d drunk too many pints of Midnight Bell to really care. Still, he was disappointed too that time had been called, as he knew he wasn’t ready to go home and face Katy. ‘It’s probably down to customer demand or something,’ he offered Braindead.

‘Well, I’m a customer and I demand that only the decent pubs are allowed to stay open late and the crap ones have to shut early. That way the crap ones are incentivised to improve. Actually, that’s genius. Why has no-one thought of that?’

‘I think because it depends on how you define decent and crap. Your crap could be someone else’s brilliant.’

‘My crap could be someone else’s brilliant?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re just trying to confuse me now.’

‘No, I’m not. Bloody hell, it’s cold.’ Ben pulled his arms in as tight as he could to his body.

‘You’re telling me,’ said Braindead, shivering beside him. ‘Why couldn’t I have been born somewhere like Spain? A country where you never need a coat, that’s where I’d like to live. You can go straight out at night without agonising for hours on end as to whether you want to spend all night freezing your tits off or all night worrying about where to put your coat. And to think, in
Spain you never have to lose your coat. How brilliant would that be? I would save a fortune.’

‘You’re right, Braindead, you should move to Spain,’ Ben muttered.

‘And all the bars open all night, don’t they? You go there on holiday and everything’s open. The crap bars
and
the good bars.’

‘But they all sell crap beer,’ Ben reminded him. ‘Last time we all went to Spain you didn’t stop moaning because all you could get was weak lager.’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Braindead, his shoulders sagging slightly. ‘I’ll just have to put up with this country then.’

They turned right, down another street, and both came to an abrupt halt.

‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Ben. ‘What on earth is going on in there?’

They surveyed the long line of short-skirted, vest-topped young women who were jostling two or three abreast in a long queue to get into the Pink Coconut nightclub, located halfway up the street.

‘Oh my days,’ declared Braindead, his eyes lighting up. ‘Christmas has finally arrived. Will you look at that? Women. Everywhere. I don’t care what’s going on in there,
we
are going in.’

‘Seriously?’ exclaimed Ben. ‘What on earth do you want to go in there for?’

‘Er,’ said Braindead, pulling a face. ‘To meet a woman, of course. It’s my one criticism of the Brewery Tap that your chances of meeting an unattached woman in there are slim. But look at this,’ he said, spreading his arms wide. ‘Surely I can’t fail amongst all this?’

‘I’m not going in there,’ said Ben, shaking his head.

‘Oh come on,’ replied Braindead. ‘I can’t go in on my own. No-one will come near me.’

‘You won’t pull anyway. Not anyone decent. No-one ever pulls anyone decent in a club.’

‘You did,’ replied Braindead.

Oh yeah
, Ben remembered. He’d forgotten that he’d actually met Katy in this very club.

‘It was a theme night, though,’ he defended. ‘Don’t you remember? You were with me. It was one of those stupid school discos.’

‘And theme nights are different, are they?’

‘Yeah. Non-clubbers go to theme nights. Neither me nor Katy would have been there if it hadn’t been a theme night. In fact, we were both there under duress because other people had begged us to go. It was pure chance that we met in a club really.’

It seemed like a whole other lifetime ago. Ben had hated every minute of seeing grown women run around in school uniform, given that he was a teacher and predisposed to find nothing at all attractive about it. Katy had been there with some new, younger mates, as all her real mates had long since married and had kids. Ben had accidentally thrown a pint of lager down her front when she’d bumped into him whilst storming off the dance floor because one of her party claimed never to have heard of Paul Weller. He’d offered her the compensation of an escape route and a kebab, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Was that really only two years ago? Unbelievable. And here he was, back again outside the Pink Coconut. He could see the same kebab shop at the end of the street, a steady stream of revellers already partaking of post-alcohol comfort food.

‘Let’s just go for a kebab, eh, mate?’ he said.

‘Noooooo,’ said Braindead. ‘Heeeeeelp me find a woooooooman?’

Ben considered his options. He could go inside the club with Braindead, have a few more drinks then end up sitting on his own feeling miserable whilst Braindead tried to chat someone up, or he could go home and just be miserable whilst having a difficult conversation with his fiancée.

Fifteen minutes later they were in the club. They’d handed over an exorbitant amount of money then queued another ten minutes to hand over yet more money and their coats through a dark cubbyhole where the likelihood of ever getting anything back seemed negligible. Finally, when they emerged into the main area of the club, Ben wished with all his heart he was home, even if he did have to face Katy.

It was all wrong. He didn’t belong here any more. He felt like he was visiting a zoo. When he’d last been here at least he’d felt like part of the zoo, albeit an animal that wasn’t quite sure why it was there and hoped to be released as soon as possible. Memories of awful music, sticky floors, stinking
toilets, understaffed bars and terrible drinks came flooding back, and for the second time that night he was relieved that being in such a grim establishment was no longer a necessity. He was a father and fiancé, which had secured him a Get out of a Nightclubs free card.

‘Need a slash,’ said Braindead, tapping him on the arm and diving off into the crowd. Ben wondered how long he would have to wait for Braindead to return before he could decently claim he’d searched high and low then assumed it was Braindead who’d gone home.

‘You came. Oh my God, you came!’ came a shriek in his left ear accompanied by a pumping of his left arm.

Ben looked down to see Charlene grinning like a Cheshire cat whilst sucking on a straw inserted in a bottle full of some hideous bright pink liquid.

‘Hi Charlene. I’m not really here,’ he boomed at her. Charlene wasn’t listening; she’d turned away and was waving her arm wildly.

‘Abby. Abby!’ she was screaming. ‘Look who’s here! Ben’s come. Look, he’s here. Bring everyone over.’

‘I’m not really here,’ he shouted again at her. ‘I’m just here for Braindead. I’m going in a minute.’

‘What?’ said Charlene. ‘You can’t go now. You have to stay and meet everyone, and Zack McFrank hasn’t even been on yet.’

‘Zack McFrank?’

‘Yeah. The DJ has just said he’ll be on stage any minute.’

‘Who’s Zack McFrank?’

Charlene’s mouth dropped open and she pulled the straw away from her mouth for the first time since he’d bumped into her.

‘Six-Pack Zack McFrank from
Britain’s Got Talent
. He’s doing a special appearance.’

Ben had no idea who she was talking about.

‘What’s special about it?’ he asked.

‘He’s getting his six-pack out.’

He was starting to understand why the crowd appeared to be ninety-five percent women.

‘We had no idea,’ Ben shouted back. ‘Braindead just saw all these women and demanded we come in.’

‘Beeeeeeeeeen!’ came a squeal and Ben found himself face to face with Abby.

‘Is it really him?’ asked another girl who had appeared next to Abby. Then another three girls materialized, all in their late teens and early twenties, and stared right at him

‘It so is,’ said Abby, looping her arm through his. ‘This is our friend Ben, otherwise known as Stay-at-Home-Super-Hero-Dad.’

‘Oh my God,’ said one of the other girls. ‘Wow. Here, can I have a selfie?’ she asked as she pushed Abby out of the way to get close to Ben and thrust a phone out in front of them.

‘What’s she doing?’ Ben asked Abby, disturbed by all the bodily contact and phone being thrust in his face.

‘She wants a picture of you,’ she replied.

‘Why?’

‘Because of your video, of course.’

‘What video?’

‘You remember. The one of you at the music class, that Charlene put on Facebook.’

‘Fucking brilliant,’ one of the other girls shouted in his ear. ‘
I’m going home to listen to the Arctic Monkeys very loud
. Just genius. We all get together now on a Thursday morning and turn Kanye West on full blast. The kids love it. The neighbours aren’t too happy, though.’

‘See,’ cried Charlene. ‘You are an inspiration.’

Ben was just standing with his mouth open.

‘I thought I’d told you to take it down?’

‘Oh my God, girls, look,’ shouted Charlene, distracted by something over Ben’s shoulder. ‘Zack McFrank is coming on. We have to get down to the stage
right now
.’

And they were all gone. Pushing him out the way to get to someone trying to make the most of his fifteen minutes of fame. All apart from Abby, who snaked her arm through his again.

‘I knew you’d come,’ she breathed before lifting a straw to her mouth and sucking on it suggestively through glistening lips.

He was just about to tell her he was leaving because this was all too weird when he spotted Braindead over her shoulder, searching for him.

‘Heeeelp,’ shrieked Ben over Abby’s shoulder. ‘Over here, Braindead.’

Braindead turned around and caught sight of Ben just as Abby raised her hand and laid it on his cheek. Assessing the situation, he gave Ben a quick thumbs up and a grin, then turned his back to leave Ben to it.

‘Fucking Braindead,’ muttered Ben under his breath, as Abby loomed closer and closer.

He grabbed her hand from his cheek and ducked under her arm.

‘You remember Braindead?’ he shouted at Abby as he dragged her over to where his friend was standing. ‘In the coffee shop?’

Braindead winked at Ben as they approached.

‘Nice one, son,’ he said in appreciation of Ben’s achievement at attracting a crazy lady within five minutes of entering a club.

‘Getting married. Have a daughter,’ said Ben, pointing to himself.

‘Oh yeah,’ said Braindead, as though it had just occurred to him. ‘What the fuck are you doing, man?’

‘Nothing,’ replied Ben. ‘She’s . . . aggressive.’

‘Really?’ said Braindead. ‘Would you mind if I . . . I quite like the look of her.’

‘Be my absolute guest,’ replied Ben. ‘Abby, you do remember Braindead, don’t you?’ he shouted in Abby’s ear.

‘Shots?’ Braindead shouted at Abby.

Ben gasped. No
hello
. No
good to see you again
. Was it any wonder that Braindead couldn’t get a girlfriend? To his amazement, Abby grinned back at Braindead and then at Ben.

‘Don’t mind if I do,’ she replied, and headed off to the bar, leaving the two of them to follow.

Half an hour later after four shots each at the bar, Ben was starting to feel his legs wanting to go in an entirely different direction to his body. The sniff of potential woman had turned Braindead from a dedicated worshipper of craft beers to the happy round buyer of various luminous liquids at Abby’s request. Zack McFrank had attracted all but the totally hammered or male to swarm
around the stage, leaving the bar clear to allow the three of them to line up in front of Kevin, their own personal barman. Behind them Zack teased his audience in the build-up to him revealing a jaw-dropping six-pack, but Abby no longer seemed interested. She’d dropped Zack like a ton of bricks, apparently more attracted by Braindead with his nervous, pathetic chat-up lines and open wallet.