Cloudy with a Chance of Love: The unmissable laugh-out-loud read. Fiona Collins

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СКАЧАТЬ and I got married. At work I was still pretty brilliant, but at home I became everything I’d scoffed at. It was strange how it happened, really. Once we were married we suddenly weren’t equal partners any more. He was husband; I was housewife. He gradually stopped helping me with chores; my job became less of a career and more of an inconvenience, to him. I began doing everything for Jeff. Far too much. I was also too adoring, too grateful – grateful little wifey. I’d thankfully take Jeff’s odd, token attempts at romance – flowers, a bottle of perfume on my birthday, a new bra from Debenhams, which he thought the height of class even though he always bought the wrong size – as a sign of a happy bigger picture which turned out to be totally false. He wasn’t happy at all. He wasn’t happy until he’d dealt me the cruellest blow by going off with my best friend.

      Cough. ‘Can you sign this card for Elaine and pass it on?’ Bob was standing in front of my desk. He handed me a pink floral card, tucked inside a red envelope. It was Elaine who did everything for everyone else’s birthdays; when it was her turn for happy returns, Bob always took charge and organised a card and a collection for a present, which was nice.

      ‘Of course. Just leave it with me.’

      ‘Thanks, darling.’

      As Bob wandered off, pulling a hanky from his pocket, I noticed his shoes were especially shiny today. They instantly made me think of my former best friend and husband-stealer, Gabby. Great. I was plonked back in the past again…

      Gabby. It kills me to even think of her name. I don’t think I’ve said her name out loud, since it happened. If I’m referring to her, I call her whatsherface or that cow or, simply, her. She knew all about Bob and his shiny shoes; we’d once spent a whole Saturday afternoon hooting our heads off with laughter in her conservatory, with him as our specialist subject. We’d sat there for hours. I remember she’d kept refilling my glass of rosé, in between shooing children away. It had been so funny. The more Bob stories I’d relayed, the more we’d laughed. We’d laughed until we’d cried, until we’d got into that hysterical state where no sounds come out of your mouth, where you are collapsed and helpless on the floor, with tears running down your cheeks.

      I missed that bitch.

      Oh lord, I was at work, I shouldn’t start thinking along Gabby. I’d just get depressed and angry. Or compose that same email I’d composed to her over and over again, but had never sent. The one where I tell her she’s ruined my life, she’s betrayed me in the worst possible way, that I hate her guts… and how I wish I could turn back the clock to when we sat on her bedroom windowsill, on summer evenings, and screeched along to George Michael’s ‘Faith’, then drove around Wimbledon Village in her dad’s convertible, trying to pick up randoms. How I wished I’d never met her, but at the same time I just wanted to go back and meet her all over again…

      Enough! Stop it! Focus on the weather. A thick band of clouds will move in across the region overnight and heavy rain will continue until the early hours…

      Gabby Louise Trench. She was a laugh. Such a good laugh. I’d known her since school. She was in the year above. Gabby was quite glamorous at school. When I was still in Clarks buckle-up shoes and A-line skirts, she was rocking a mini kilt and pointy, tasselled loafers. Grey ones. I admired them long before I became friends with her, and that only happened because she once attempted to bully me. It was a failed attempt. I’d been loitering by the lockers, minding my own business, when she bustled up with Fat Felicia, a known corridor terrorist and possessor of the only lost virginity in the Fourth Year – apparently – and asked me to ‘Move along’ as I was ‘making the place look untidy.’ I remember looking at them both in astonishment. It was so uncalled for, so out-of-nowhere. I was not someone who drew attention. I was so far under the radar I was like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, commando-ing along the floor in a museum full of diamonds.

      Before I’d had time to even think about it, I’d retorted with, ‘The only thing that’s making this place look untidy is Felicia’s hair. There must be at least a couple of blackbirds nesting in there, making babies.’

      I waited for anger to flash across faces, a possible fist to come flying my way – Fat Felicia was a notorious puncher – but, to my surprise, Gabby had burst out laughing.

      ‘Funny,’ she’d said. And she’d pushed a surprised-looking Fat Felicia along the corridor and they’d both disappeared in the direction of the Crush Hall.

      A week later, they’d tried again. I was coming down the ramp of one of the Portakabins, after RE, when a grey tasselled foot shot out in a clear attempt to trip me up. I wasn’t having it. I stopped dead in my tracks.

      ‘You are joking?’ I said. Gabby and Fat Felicia were in shadow, the beige plastic side of the Portakabin casting weird stripes on their faces. ‘If you’re trying to make me fall over I suggest stretching skipping-elastic across the playground. I’ve seen more stealth on a nuclear weapon.’ It was the era of the Cold War, Reagan and Gorbachev, ‘Two Tribes’ and the threat of nuclear war hanging over everyone. Kids enjoyed frightening themselves silly over it.

      Fat Felicia looked confused. Gabby burst out laughing. Again. And again, Gabby trundled Felicia off – they headed towards the Fourth Form common room. I saw Gabby glance back in my direction a couple of times. She was still grinning.

      That night, as I was waiting in the hall for my bus, she strode up to me. ‘All right?’ she said.

      ‘Yeah,’ I replied.

      ‘I like your style,’ she said.

      ‘Thanks,’ I replied. And she went off to her bus queue.

      The following Friday there was a school disco. Gabby was there. She spent the whole night sharing her contraband Hock with me and regaling me with tales of her five current boyfriends. We became inseparable.

      We were the best of best friends. She was always up for high jinks and I was her accomplice. Her jinks included: smoking where she shouldn’t have been smoking; bunking off to go to the chippie; pulling the wrong sort of boy. I was the more sensible one, the one who was able to pull her back from the brink of complete rebellion and law breaking. She was the boss but I could be a persuasive employee. ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t?’ I used to offer, on a regular basis. ‘Perhaps we should go back in now? It’s assembly in a minute.’ ‘Perhaps you should pay for those.’ Or I would make a joke and she would laugh and stop whatever near-criminal thing she was doing:

      ‘I really don’t want to have to visit you in Wormwood Scrubs, Gabby. I don’t think they let you wear make-up.’

      ‘That’s a men’s prison – I’d be in Holloway – but, okay, Daryl. I won’t do it then.’

      I had to talk her out of serious trouble so many times. She would listen to me. It seemed I was only one she would listen to. She was blisteringly funny. We shared the same sense of humour and saw the funny side in everything. We laughed like drains at everything. We even had catchphrases. Lines from films like Ferris Beuller and Back to the Future and Thelma and Louise.

      ‘Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.’

      ‘You’ve always been crazy, this is just the first chance you’ve had to express yourself.’

      ‘Party on, dudes.’

      I bloody well missed her.

       Early morning the clouds will dissipate СКАЧАТЬ