One Hundred Names (Special Edition)

slagging matches.
    She dipped her serviette in her water and ignored him for five minutes while she dabbed at her top, making it worse. ‘So what are you going to do now? It’s great timing to be an unemployed wannabe sports journalist.’
    ‘A-ha. That’s where you’re wrong. I’m not unemployed. I’m working on the allotments.’
    ‘No way.’
    ‘Yes way.’
    ‘Your dad’s allotments?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘But you hate the allotments.’
    ‘Hat
ed
.’
    ‘And you hate your dad.’
    ‘Hat
ed
. Again, there’s a distinct difference. Besides, now that he’s paying me a wage he’s not so bad. He’s needed help around the place since he put his back out, so I’m the go-to man. Looking for a rotavator? I’m your man. Looking for fertiliser? A tool shed? A polytunnel? Just give me a call. Instead of being cooped up all day in a sweat box, I get to be outdoors.’
    ‘You hate daylight. It does something to your vampire
skin.’
    ‘Kitty,’ he warned, lifting another prawn.
    ‘Okay, okay, I’m just shocked. You’ve made some very big changes for a guy who I remember changed his underwear on a weekly basis, and this is a lot to take in.’
    Another shrimp missile was fired but this time Kitty dodged it. ‘What made you want to suddenly work with your dad? Last time you mentioned him, you said that was it, you had cut all ties with him.’
    ‘It’s been going on for a while. We’ve been slowly getting in contact with each other.’ Steve distracted himself with more bread, avoiding her eyes; he was never comfortable talking about anything personal. He mumbled the next part quite well. ‘Then Katja and Dad met and they surprisingly get along, and …’
    He rattled on about the change in his life, none of which Kitty heard as she was still stuck on the word ‘Katja’.
    ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
    She realised he’d stopped talking.
    ‘Oh. Well. I thought I heard you say the name “Katja” and I got confused.’
    ‘I did.’
    ‘
Katja
,’ she repeated loudly as though he were deaf.
    ‘Yes,’ he smiled, amused at her.
    ‘The girl you went out for dinner with a few months ago?’
    ‘Yes, and who I’m still going out with,’ he confirmed, his cheeks turning pink and giving it all away.
    Their main course arrived – two beef fillets – but suddenly Kitty didn’t feel hungry. ‘Katja,’ she repeated. ‘You never men-tioned you two were going out.’
    ‘Well, we are.’
    ‘Like boyfriend and girlfriend?’
    He rolled his eyes. ‘You never mentioned you’d broken up with Glen.’
    ‘Because you found out before I did.’
    ‘I did?’
    ‘The coffee machine.’
    Realisation passed over his face. ‘He just left?’
    ‘Something like that.’
    ‘He was a prick anyway.’
    ‘I thought you liked him.’
    Steve shook his head, mouth full.
    She sighed. ‘Did anyone like him?’
    He swallowed. ‘You did.’
    ‘I was hoping for more people than that.’
    ‘Crusty liked him.’
    They laughed. Crusty was Steve’s fourteen-year-old dog who he’d taken in from a shelter four years ago. No one had known his name but he had looked crusty then and even after a wash, his appearance never altered very much. It was the perfect name. Despite getting on in years, Crusty always managed to find the energy to hump Glen’s leg, which had always disgusted Glen and probably caused him silently to question his sexuality along with everything else in life he over-analysed, such as what kind of a woman he had found himself living with after the Colin Maguire case.
    ‘So how long have you been together? Two months?’
    ‘Five.’
    ‘Five? Jesus, Steve, you might as well get married. I should buy a hat.’
    ‘Don’t. They give away your Spock ears.’
    She laughed. ‘This is the Romanian girl?’
    ‘Croatian.’
    ‘Right. She’s a painter?’
    ‘Photographer.’
    ‘Right.’ She studied him.
    ‘What?’ he laughed self-consciously as though he was a twelve-year-old boy who’d just been caught with his first girlfriend.
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘Come on.’
    ‘I don’t know, Steve,’ she cut into her meat, ‘you’ve changed. You no longer write about Victoria Beckham and you have a girlfriend. I think …’
    ‘You think what?’
    ‘I don’t know, I might be jumping the gun here, but I
think
there’s a possibility you might not be gay after all.’
    A chip was hurled at her head.
    Kitty spent the remainder of the meal eating as though she had a chip stuck in the back of