In Bed With Lord Byron

But look . . . I’m here, all
alone, totally bored, and I was just watching
Celebrity Big Brother,
and my heart went out to you. I mean, dumped by your boyfriend on TV!’
    ‘He’s not my boyfriend.’
    ‘Well, I’d still be upset. I was thinking anyway that we didn’t really get a chance to meet properly over dinner, did we? I mean, we didn’t have a girlie chat. Why
don’t you come over? We’ll let down our hair and have some wine and chocolate.’
    I was half suspicious and half sucked in. Finally, a masochistic desire to find out everything I could about her and Anthony prompted me to say yes.
    I wished I’d dolled myself up before going over. In my fraught state, I barely gave a second thought to my jogging bottoms and T-shirt, an old navy one with a picture of Dougal, and
WOOF
in kitsch letters over the top. When I arrived at Anthony’s flat, however, Kerry greeted me wearing a flared white skirt, kitten heels and a slinky sleeveless silk top.
Immediately I felt small and ugly and I wanted to turn back and go home. How could I have imagined I’d find comfort here?
    My comfort zone shrank even further when I saw the effect she’d had on Anthony’s flat. Whenever I’d stayed over at Anthony’s, we always joked about how I managed to turn
his spotless pad into a tip within one night, leaving his floor scattered with clothes and his bathroom a wreck. But Kerry had kept the place spick and span, and added all sorts of feminine
touches: a bowl of flowers on the mantelpiece, embroidered cushions on the sofa.
    To my surprise, however, as I stepped in, she pulled me to her for a tight hug. And then she passed me a box of Maltesers and a glass of wine.
    ‘Wow.’
    ‘Don’t look so surprised.’ She nudged me. ‘Don’t worry, Lucy, I’m a girl’s girl.’
    Oh God. People are always the opposite of how they seem, and I knew from experience that women professing to be girl’s girls were normally nothing of the sort and usually had a tremendous
penchant for competitiveness and cattiness.
    Then I noticed that the TV was on, the volume turned down low. Lord B. was asking Germaine, if she could pick any men in the world to go to bed with, who her top three would be.
    Pretending not to have noticed it, I collapsed on to the sofa, downing my glass of wine and cramming as many Maltesers as I could into my mouth.
    ‘I’ve just been panicking like mad.’ Kerry paused to eat a Malteser. She had a ladylike approach to them: she nibbled off the chocolate and then slowly crunched the honeycomb
centre bit by bit. The whole process took about five minutes. ‘You see, Anthony and I are off to the US tomorrow.’
    ‘You are?’ A Malteser melted in my mouth into a gooey mess. Anthony hadn’t even called to say he was going, to say goodbye. I felt tears prick my eyes and shouted at myself
fiercely:
Don’t cry, Lucy, don’t cry, not in front of her
. But I couldn’t help it. The tears came flowing out; I hiccuped a sob.
    ‘Oh my God.’ Kerry panicked for a bit, as though I was having an asthma attack, and finally, after flapping about, passed me a tissue box. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry, I know this
is so hard for you, what with Anthony dumping you, and now Brian.’
    ‘No, it’s not that – it’s my sister,’ I cut in, determined to put on a tough show. ‘My sister’s having family problems.’ I blew my nose.
    ‘Well, that’s not so bad. I was so worried you might not be taking me and Anthony well. I mean, I know he only recently broke it—’
    ‘Excuse me, but I broke it off with him,’ I said stoutly. She didn’t look too surprised. ‘Really, it’s fine. How’s it going between you two anyway?’
    ‘Good.’ Kerry began on another Malteser.
    Silence.
    ‘D’you think we really go together?’ she suddenly blurted out.
    I looked at her and saw the anxiety in her eyes. She had changed tack: we were no longer rivals, batting back and forth balls of conversation. I felt a flash of sympathy for her.
    ‘Well, I don’t really know you well enough,’ I admitted. ‘But Anthony does seem happy. But then, I haven’t spoken to him since the dinner.’
    ‘Really? I’ve been telling him to get in touch, I’ve been telling him I’m happy for you to be friends, but he keeps saying he can’t, he’s afraid he’ll
hurt me.’
    I felt another wave of misery, tempered this time by wisdom. For the first time a small voice of resignation said:
You’re going to have to let him go, Lucy.