AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Four Years Before I Do
About a month after Paul’s birthday at the pub, Audrey met Josh again. Audrey, Clara and Paul were hosting a Hallowe’en party at the Tooting house. Audrey was dressed as a cat, drunk on eye-ball stew (punch full of maraschino cherries) and was kissing one of her skinny, musician types. On this occasion, the man was called Sage, and they were in the downstairs corridor, while they waited in line for the bathroom.
Removing his tongue from her mouth, Sage grinned and pointed at the garden.
‘You stay here, pussy cat, I can’t deal with this line. I’m gonna have a slash in the flowerbed.’
As he walked away, Audrey felt her head spin. She’d drunk too much, eaten too little, and feared the cat make-up on her face had been smeared from kissing. It had been a strange day. On her way home from the gallery, she’d walked past a bookshop and seen a title in the window that drew her eye, TheInsomniac’s Almanac. She’d run into the shop, dropping her bags of Hallowe’en decorations, picked up the book and gone straight to the dedication.
‘To Cathy – who always slept soundly beside me.’
The crush of disappointment was so intense she hadn’t been able to move for several minutes. Some optimistic instinct had told her that this was going to be the way she found Fred again, in a bookshop window, and it would start the next chapter of their story. But, glancing at the cover, she saw the book was not written by him, and so of course the dedication was not for her. As she took another swig of her eye-ball stew to quieten the day’s disappointments, a voice behind her in the line called her name.
‘Hey, Audrey.’
Turning around, she recognised one of Paul’s friends, but his name escaped her. The only information she had logged was ‘bad jeans’ and ‘boring job’.
‘Hey...’ she said tentatively. ‘James?’
‘Close. It’s Josh,’ he said, correcting her.
‘I knew that,’ she said, raising a wobbly hand to his shoulder, finding it surprisingly firm as she staggered into him. ‘What have you come dressed as, Josh?’ she said, enunciating his name. ‘Boring City guy?’ He was wearing a suit, with a token effort pumpkin mask pushed back on his head. He looked suitably embarrassed and she laughed, ‘I’m joking!’
‘I had to come straight from work.’
‘You did well. You’re in the most terrifying outfit here.’ Audrey made a scared face. ‘The horror of the sixty-hour week.’
He seemed to relax, and she remembered his nice smile. He was attractive, in a traditional, rugby boy, wholesome sort of way, with his thick brown hair and his honey-coloured eyes. But Audrey was drunk, and her thoughts were on Basil or Thyme or whatever his name was, the man who’d gone to urinate in the flowerbed. He was a bass guitarist who wore a leather jacket that smelled of motorbike oil, late nights and bad decisions.
‘Is that your boyfriend?’ Josh asked.
‘Who, that guy?’ Audrey pointed a thumb in the direction of the garden. Josh nodded.
‘No.’ She shook her head.
‘Good, then you won’t mind me saying I think he’s a bit of a dick.’
Audrey leaned back against the wall, tilting her head towards him, surprised that mild-mannered Bad Jeans Josh was showing any kind of strong opinion about someone.
‘Why’s that then?’ she asked, amused.
‘Because I saw him’ – Josh paused, looking for the right word – ‘relieve himself in one of the wine bottles earlier, then put it back on the table.’
‘Oh, gross!’ Audrey grimaced. They shared a smile, and in her punch-addled mind she noticed how much better he looked in a well-made suit than he had in bad jeans.
‘How about you? Got your sights on anyone?’ She swung around to look down the corridor at the heaving living room beyond. ‘What about Hot Witch over there?’
Josh brushed a hand through his hair and shook his head. ‘I’m not good at chatting people up at parties. People tend to assume I’m the boring City guy.’
‘Well, it might help dispel that assumption if you didn’t wear a suit to parties.’
Josh gave a wry nod of acknowledgement.
‘So, humour me, if you were any good at chatting people up, what would you go for? Blonde, brunette? I bet you’re a boobs guy – rugby guys are always boob guys.’
He stifled a smile, amused and embarrassed by her question. ‘I haven’t played rugby since Cambridge and I don’t have a type, not based on looks anyway.’
‘Let me guess, girls with a “good personality”?’ She started making air quotes, but then wobbled on her feet and had to reach for the wall instead.
