You Had Me At Hello, How We Met: 2 Bestselling Romantic Comedies in 1. Katy Regan

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       25

      ‘Oi!’ Caroline shouted, over the aircraft-like noise of my travel hairdryer. I clicked it off. ‘Ben for you!’

      I galloped down the stairs of our student house to the hallway. We rarely made outgoing calls – our landlord had installed a payphone at his own rate that gobbled up coins like a sweating diabetic with Giant Smarties.

      ‘Ron! Culinary SOS!’ Ben said. ‘I’m making dinner for Georgina and it has TURNED TO SHIT.’

      ‘You’re cooking?’ I said, laughing and simultaneously envying Georgina for being the kind of woman men sweat over a flambée to impress. ‘Why not go out?’

      ‘She got the wrong end of the stick and I didn’t know how to set her straight. She was all …’ Ben affected the breathy, 1950s starlet voice she used with men rather well ‘… I can’t wait to try your cooking, Ben.’

      ‘Haha, this is going to be great! You best call on the little hombre from Homepride.’

      ‘She’s not the kind of girl who’s going to find it funny to be served a Findus Crispy Pancake sandwich, is she?’

      Ben lived with boys who re-used dirty plates by putting clingfilm over them instead of washing up. Georgina was going to need a robust constitution and all her vaccinations, I thought.

      ‘I can’t vouch for her sense of humour but I’ve never seen her crack a smile. Even in those laugh-a-minute linguistics lectures.’

      ‘Help! What do I do?’

      I gave an exaggerated sigh.

      ‘How long have you got until she comes round?’

      ‘Three hours … no, wait, two hours forty-five minutes!’

      ‘And what’s my budget if I go to the supermarket on the way to yours?’

      ‘Whatever it takes! You’re my angel.’

      ‘Yeah yeah.’

      I turned up at Ben’s house in my knitted woolly hat carrying misshapen supermarket bags with steadily lengthening handles in each hand.

      ‘Lemme in, these are going to break,’ I said, barging through the porch and plopping them unceremoniously on the hallway floor.

      ‘Ah Ron, bless you.’ Ben rescued a tub of crème fraîche as it rolled towards the coat-stand.

      ‘I’ve bought you flowers too,’ I said, producing a cellophane cornet of white hothouse roses from one of the bags. ‘I feel as if I’m seducing someone by proxy, like Cyrano de Bergerac.’

      ‘Superb!’

      I knew I must’ve been fond of Ben, ’cos I sure as hell didn’t want to be seducing Georgina Race with anything more than a bouquet of stinging nettles, severed rat tails and tampon strings. And yet, apparently, I was.

      With the help of supermarket recipe idea cards, we assembled something fairly respectable: asparagus starters, stuffed chicken breasts, potato gratin, white chocolate mousse with raspberries. I delegated tasks to Ben and he put music on while we worked. He actually proved quite an able deputy. The fridge gradually filled up with foil-wrapped dishes.

      ‘I didn’t know you could cook,’ he said.

      ‘I can’t, really. I’m making it up as I go along.’

      ‘Now she tells me.’

      ‘Here are the timings.’ I jotted down oven temperatures on a scrap of paper and tucked them behind the kettle. ‘Follow them in that order and give her the bubbly as soon as she arrives. You can get away with much imperfection when people are pissed. What are you wearing?’

      ‘A shirt?’ said Ben, uncertain. He was in a red ’66 World Cup top. It directly contravened Article 7.1 of Rhys’s Wanker Law that stated you didn’t advertise any event you hadn’t attended, any place you’d never been, or any band you didn’t really listen to.

      ‘Think smart. No sports-related casual wear.’

      ‘Got it.’

      ‘I’ll leave you to get ready.’

      I pulled my coat on, picked my hat up. ‘Good luck,’ I said.

      ‘You are my angel and your reward is in heaven,’ Ben said.

      ‘It’s certainly not on earth,’ I grumbled.

      As I walked back to my house, something niggled, and it wasn’t the fact I’d cooked a meal I wasn’t going to eat.

      Knocking round with Ben platonically – catching the odd envious look from girls who misconstrued the situation – obscured something that could be decreed by any efficient eugenics programme: boys like him dated and procreated with girls like Georgina Race. I didn’t want to date, much less procreate with, either of them, but there was something diminishing in having it confirmed.

      I was back at those fireworks, remembering that there were females for fun sexy secret times, and then there was good old doughty Ronnie. A minx for spotting a discount deal on Sainsbury’s pain de campagne.

      The next day, we met up at our ten o’clock lecture, Ben sliding into the seat beside me, wearing a sly grin.

      ‘Soooo … how did it go?’ I said, grinning back, chewing on my pen lid.

      ‘Good,’ Ben said. ‘She loved dinner. Absolutely loved it. Thanks.’

      ‘You’re seeing each other?’ I asked.

      ‘Doubt it.’ Ben shook his head.

      ‘Oh.’ I didn’t know if I should ask any more questions, or if Ben wanted me to. I thought he was turning away from me to bring an end to the topic, then realised he was making sure we weren’t being overheard.

      ‘She was boring! Christ, she was boring. At first I thought it was nerves, but she’s so dull. And self-absorbed. The weird thing is, I don’t even think she’s that fit any more. The shine’s rubbed off. Nice girl and all that. But … not for me.’

      I ignored the lightning-flash of joy that zapped across my insides.

      ‘Never mind. At least I shopped for dinner. You only wasted a trip to Lloyd’s Pharmacy …’

      ‘Oh, we still did it,’ Ben replied. ‘Not going to all that effort for a conversation СКАЧАТЬ