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When we’ve eaten the main course, I stand to clear up.
‘I’ll help you with that,’ Gerry volunteers. So far, my friend’s husband has been suspiciously quiet. He’s usually loud after a few drinks, telling inappropriate bad-taste jokes, but not tonight. Not yet.
I take the plates and he brings the decimated platter of lamb, following me through the living room and into the kitchen. ‘Just there would be great,’ I say, indicating the one clear spot on the work surface.
Gerry brushes close to me as he puts the platter down and then lingers at my shoulder, saying, ‘Anything else you want me to do?’
His voice is loaded with innuendo.
‘No, no. That’s fine.’ I conjure up a smile.
‘You only have to say the word, Janie.’ More sleazy smirking.
Twat. The chocolate bread and butter pudding is just finishing off in the oven, filling the kitchen with the usually delicious scent of chocolate, but the cloying smell of it is overpowering and is making me feel sick. ‘I’ll be through in a few minutes with dessert.’
Instead of taking the hint and disappearing, Gerry decides to stand and loiter. He leaves my side and wrings the dregs from the champagne bottle into a glass, drinking it while he eyes me up and down from the other side of the kitchen.
‘You’re a good-looking woman, you know,’ he says after a few moments’ contemplation on the matter.
What am supposed to say to that? I mumble, ‘Thanks.’
‘You could do a lot better than him?’
I spin around. ‘Than Dominic?’
Gerry has a lecherous grin on his face. Clearly, he’s one over the eight as he’s not entirely steady on his feet. He drains his glass, searches around for something else to fill it with, but is unsuccessful and puts it down, knocking it over as he does.
‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.’
‘It’s true,’ he continues with a slur. ‘What you need is a real man.’
‘You think so?’ All my heckles are up now. I can’t stay here and listen to this nonsense. I need to get away from this idiot now. ‘I’m going to see how the others are getting on.’
‘I could show you a good time, Janie,’ he says.
‘I don’t think so.’
As I go to pass Gerry, he grabs hold of my wrist. He strokes the inside of it with his thumb.
‘Pretty girl like you needs a proper English bloke.’ He licks his lips lasciviously.
‘Like you?’
A slow and, presumably, seductive nod. Gerry might be good-looking on the outside – though not quite as good-looking as he thinks he is – but he’s as ugly as you can get on the inside.
‘A proper English bloke like you who propositions his wife’s best friend?’
He reaches out his other hand and rubs it over my breast. I recoil back from his touch, but Gerry merely laughs. Before I can think better of it, I slap his face. A resounding slap. His face darkens and then the mark where my hand connected reddens.
A moment later, Mike pops his head around the door, frowning. ‘Everything OK in here?’
‘Fine,’ I say, though I’m breathing heavily.
He glances from me to Gerry and takes in the stand-off between us. ‘Sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can I take anything through?’
‘There’s some cream in the fridge. White jug. The dessert’s ready now.’ If it isn’t, we’ll just have to eat it as it is, I’m not staying in the kitchen a second longer with this idiot.
Mike, as instructed, gets the cream and lingers in the doorway. He knows enough about Gerry by now to make a good stab at guessing what’s going on.
‘I’m following you,’ I assure him.
Reluctantly, he leaves. When he does, I turn back to Gerry. ‘If you ever do that again, if you ever even think it, I will tell her,’ I threaten him. ‘I will tell her.’
‘Look at him,’ Gerry sneers. ‘Look at him properly. He’s barely domesticated.’
‘You know nothing,’ I retort. ‘Dominic is a better man than you’ll ever be.’
He laughs at that.
What does my friend see in this oily plonker? How dare she question my choice of man when she stays married to him?
‘Now I want you to drink up,’ I say as calmly as I can manage. ‘I’m going to call you a taxi and the minute you’ve eaten this dessert –’ which I currently have an overwhelming desire to push into his smug, fat face ‘– you’re going to make your excuses and leave and you’ll never come back to this house again. Understand me?’
‘Loud and clear,’ Gerry says and with that, he leaves me in the kitchen shaking with anger.
