‘Hello,’ Ash says frostily, trying to pull at the lapels of a cardigan she isn’t actually wearing – she’s in a three-quarter-length-sleeve Breton striped T-shirt, and long navy shorts. Her words come out slurred, and CJ is amazed at her own confusion that a pretty posh girl could be drunk. Aren’t posh girls uptight prisses who don’t let a drop touch their lips? Or they get ‘squiffy’, not annihilated. CJ has to say, though: it doesn’t suit her, Ash, to be flushed in the face and glassy-eyed. CJ wonders if it’s actually her first time being drunk. It kinda seems that way. She’s not hiding it well.
‘Hi,’ replies CJ.
Ash sits beside her on the bench.
‘Well, at least I know I’m in the right place,’ Ash says. ‘I was going to get a taxi, but then I thought no, Ashley Jane, you’re doing so great! You can get a bus like a local person! You’ll figure it out!’ She hiccups again, eyes going wide like it’s a jolt to find she can’t control it. ‘Obviously I’m absolutely rat-arsed,’ she adds, for the avoidance of doubt. ‘Which is another good thing, actually, so don’t be all … you know … urm …’ She waves a hand.
‘Judgemental?’ CJ supplies, half amused and half horrified on behalf of this mess of a woman. It’s not the first time CJ has dealt with guests from CoLab who can’t handle their booze, and it certainly won’t be the last. But Ash? CJ had assumed a woman like her would be above it.
‘Whatever,’ says Ash, squinting in the distance for theirride. ‘Oh!’ she says, pointing. ‘15E. There we go!’ She frowns, thinks for a second. ‘Was I saying something? Hmmm. Never mind. Can’t remember!’
She sticks out a hand to wave the bus down, and CJ doesn’t know what to do next. Does she let Ash go ahead and sit down, then look like a rude bitch when she chooses to sit anywhere but beside her? Or does she leave Ash to it, get on the bus first and risk Ash hemming her in if she takes a window seat? She’s promised Luis she’ll be nicer, so … she’ll try. If she has to.
‘I can use Apple Pay, right?’ Ash asks, as the bus opens its doors with a whoosh.
‘You can,’ CJ says, and the decision about who will get on first is made for her, because Ash barges her way ahead confidently.
I’ll bet she went to private school, CJ thinks.Or better yet, an all-girls boarding school. Oh yes. She totally boarded with her pony somewhere in the country, she decides.
As it turns out, the bus is full, and so neither woman can sit. Ash stands by the middle door of the bus, holding on to a pole, and CJ has to squeeze in a little behind her, using a strap above her head for balance. The bus pulls away from the kerb with a jerk, and Ash stumbles, letting out a shriek.
‘Gah!’ she says. ‘Shit!’
Oh god, CJ can’t bear this. She edges towards Ash and points at the second railing.
‘Hold on with both hands,’ she instructs, and Ash nods as the bus flies down the main road, whizzing past the stops where nobody is waiting.
It’s not a smooth ride – the driver seems to be taking glee in having his passengers thrown against the windows or walls, with an older woman shouting out for him to slow down, for crying out loud. The bus driver either doesn’t hear her, or chooses not to – whatever his reason, CJ only has to glance at Ash to see that she’s not dealing with it well. She’s gone pale, sort of translucent, and there are beads of sweat on her brow the size of golf balls. Ash is unblinking, focused on the floor beneath her, breathing the sort of laboured breaths that come with counselling oneself through the act. Before CJ can ask if she’s all right, Ash hisses, ‘Am going to be … sick.’
CJ leaps into action. ‘She’s going to throw up!’ she cries, and that gets the driver’s attention. He indicates, shouts that if that stupid foreigner pukes on his bus, she’ll be the one cleaning it up, and then the doors open. Ash stumbles off, CJ follows, and the bastard pulls away with a screech. CJ doesn’t have time to be outraged, because Ash is doing it. She’s vomming everywhere, the hard kind of retch that comes from the pit of the stomach, her hair getting in her face as she falls to her knees on the pavement, moaning with displeasure, writhing in unhappy pain.
‘Jesus,’ mutters CJ, reaching for Ash’s hair and smoothing it back off her forehead. She waits whilst Ash empties herself, not sure where to look.
After the initial few jettisons of food, Ash segues into dry heaves, eventually muttering, ‘There’s a hair tie in my bag.’
CJ rummages in Ash’s handbag, the same straw thing with a silk tie she had the other day. There’s a notebook withcoloured sticky-tabs marking select pages, a slim paperback, a small see-through bag with lip balm and tampons and – aha! A hair tie! CJ takes it, and then turns back to Ash. ‘Shall I …?’ she starts, awkwardly. ‘Or …?’
‘I can do it,’ Ash says bleakly, taking it. She slumps back to the dirty ground cross-legged, about as far removed from the haughty posh-o that sauntered into CoLab as it’s possible for a person to be.
CJ fishes for a tissue in her own backpack and hands it to her. Ash takes it without looking.
‘Your T-shirt,’ CJ says. ‘It’s …’ She gestures to Ash’s vomit-speckled Breton.
Ash looks down, sighs, and then looks at the puddle of sick she’s left beside her.
‘Take my sweater,’ CJ says, pulling off her jumper. ‘Don’t put it over your T-shirt – take the T-shirt off. Look, go to that corner there. Nobody is around. Be quick. I’ll get rid of this.’
Ash still doesn’t speak, but she does as instructed. CJ uses the water bottle from her sports bag to hose down what she can of the vomit, saving a little for Ash to drink, and then turns into the small jitty Ash is changing in, just in time to see Ash in her bra. It’s lace. A very delicate, pale pink lace. No underwire, more like a sports bra or training bra, a cami, but with thin criss-cross straps at the back. Ash is slim, sure, but she’s all muscle, her shoulders and biceps tense with the effort of dressing and undressing in such circumstances – drunk, on the street, witnessed by CJ, i.e. not the friendliest of women, she can admit. CJ notices Ash’s taut waist, thebelly button peeking above her waistband, the fine line running down the centre, and as Ash turns, looks at her, CJ can’t help but glance down to the sheer part of Ash’s bra, the startling fact of two rosebud-like nipples peeking through the fabric, inquisitive and bold.
And then it is all covered, CJ’s sweater on Ash’s body, swamping her, so that she has to push the sleeves up to her elbows. CJ has never seen somebody else in her clothes before. It’s an odd sensation. Ash looks good in the jumper. Annoyingly.
‘Here,’ CJ says. ‘Water.’
‘Thank you.’ Ash is slightly more cognisant now, less bleary-eyed. ‘You can leave me. It’s OK. I can figure it out from here. I’ll wash this,’ she says, pulling at the sweater. ‘And give you it back tomorrow. Sorry for the …’ Ash struggles to settle on a word. ‘Drama,’ she decides, self-consciously.
‘I’m not leaving you,’ CJ says. ‘Don’t be stupid.’ Ash narrows her eyes at the wordstupid. ‘I mean,’ clarifies CJ, with Luis’s admonishment for ugly behaviour at the forefront of her mind, ‘I have a no-man-left-behind policy. Just, take a minute, and then if you’re up for it, we can walk up here.’ CJ gestures to the hill ahead of them. ‘If we go slow, it should only be about twenty minutes. The walk will do you good. I assume you’re going back to CoLab?’
‘Yeah,’ Ash replies. ‘Obviously.’
