I don’t know why but I haven’t said anything to Jack about the photo in his house. Maybe it’s because I need something soft to shroud myself in; everything else in my life is so spiky and harsh.
Work is awful; Hershey is worrying me greatly by being nice all the time and smiling. My relationship with Claire is nonexistent. How many times have I tried to contact her and failed? I’ve lost count. I’ve no other friends locally. My work colleagues are all twats and I live eighty-plus miles from where I work, which isn’t exactly conducive to the male bonding that results from regular nights out on the piss. I did that once, when first at the Bank, and it was a fucking disaster (and no, I’m not going to tell you the story because it’s too embarrassing). In comparison Jack has a gradual degrading effect like a steady, ongoing dose of radiation. He wears you down into liking him and he’s as mentally challenging as a cuddly toy.
Each morning on the train I search for the platinum blonde. She’s invading my days as well as my dreams. She’s become my wank fantasy in the shower (look, there’s no shagging going on in my tenuous relationship so I have to find some way of sorting myself out as Claire isn’t willing). She even disrupts my random walk to work each morning. A nice arse and tits aren’t a sufficient qualifier any more — they have to be her arse and her tits.
Jack and I are talking over a beer in the pub.
“We can easily find her,” he says, ever the optimist.
“How, for fuck’s sake?” I respond, ever the pessimist.
He tells me...
Pub crawl to the local hotspots.
She’s a cute girl, not likely to have kids so she’ll be out on the razz on a weekend like everyone else. At some point, after enough drinking, we’ll find her, he assures me.
He says, “And if not we’ll be getting drunk in the process. Everyone’s a winner!”
I’m not convinced but it beats staying in on my Jack Jones like a sad bastard. Again.
“Okay, fuck it. Why not,” I say.
So a couple of days later we’re in Ramsgate, walking along the harbour, a pleasant stretch of bars overlooking an array of yachts and working boats that mask the more shitty interior of the town. We start at the far end (at a bar run by Eastern Europeans and selling Belgian beers — figure that) and work our way through the pubs, cafes, wine bars and finally to a rowdy watering hole-cum-nightclub that has the balls to get away with charging for entry. By the end of the evening I’m fifty quid down with a spinning head and damaged auditory sensors but no blonde.
“Well that was fucking useless,” I complain to Jack in the cab.
“No it wasn’t, we had a great time!”
“You might have done, I didn’t.”
“Where you go?” the taxi driver asks.
“Yours first?” Jack offers.
“Don’t be stupid,” I reply. “Yours is on the way to mine.”
“True,” Jack replies, but doesn’t look happy about it. I’m too pissed to care.
We drive in silence the rest of the way until we near Jack’s place. “Drop me off here,” he says to the taxi driver. “No point going into the estate.”
He gets out of the car then leans in through the door. “Same again next week?”
“Sure,” I shrug.
Jack slams the door and the taxi pulls away. I look back through the rear window. He’s just standing there, watching me disappear into the distance.