-Will-
It would be Felicity, wouldn’t it? Flick. Ellie’s only ever rival. In that department. Not that Ellie ever acknowledged it. Even when I was about to de-friend Flick, when Ellie and I had started going out, Ellie stopped me. ‘No,’ she’d said, as we lay in bed with my laptop. ‘I’m not the jealous type. Besides, she’s got nothing on me.’ And then, as I recall, I got the best blowjob of my existence. Ellie always knew how to get one over on the competition.
But now that old flickering flame has the key to my knowledge. I always thought I was too young for an old flame. Maybe it’s a coming of age. Because there’s nothing else I can think of calling her. Flick, the old flame who I dated for three months. Flick, the old flame who I abandoned for Ellie. Flick, the old flame who continued to flirt with me, right up until she moved to Devon. Where she became a consultant. At Paignton hospital. As she repeatedly told me in those drunken ‘screw you’ voice messages. Which means she must work in the same NHS Trust area as the Torbay hospital.
Right. So. Am I really going here?
I look at the scattered papers around the room.
I feel the piano under my hands.
I think of the childhood I lost. And the woman who is to blame.
Yes, I really am going here.
The question is, how? What tactic should I take? If Flick now is still the same Flick I knew then, she is all ego. Not arrogant. Just needy. Liked to be romanced, valued, made to feel worthwhile. A whole load of emotional foreplay before you could go anywhere near the bedroom.
I look at her photos on Facebook. Yes, these are the same old Flick. Beautiful, of course. Tiny and slim as ever. If you hit her with one of those piano hammers, she would snap in two like a string. The same abundant dark-brown, almost black, long hair. And of course, that same camera pout, looking all ‘sexy’, but with the look of a scared, frightened child in her eyes. A slightly wild child. But definitely a frightened one. The same old Flick.
So it’s no good just messaging her with a simple factual query. She probably wouldn’t respond. Or if she did, it wouldn’t be quite on point. No, I need a more sophisticated message. An emotional one. One that will make her think I want to rekindle what was so firmly burnt out. One that makes me hope Ellie never ever hacks my account.
Should I sleep on it?
Again, the papers, the piano, the loss. The Sophie.
No.
Act now.
So I ask Facebook to let me message her. And in the window that comes up, I write:
‘Find myself thinking of you. Of the old times.’
Then I send it. The 2am Facebook booty call.
And before I can lock up my office, there is a response.
‘Are you sending that from your bed, lying next to your wife?’
So. She is awake. And lonely. And drunk?
‘I’m working late tonight.’
‘Oh right. “Working late.” Why do I suspect you make a habit of that?’
This is all very well, but I don’t need insinuations of infidelity, I need a date. Sort of.
‘Fancy helping me out of my workaholic tendencies? If I buy you a drink, maybe you’ll do me a favour.’
And send. There’s a pause. A long pause. Damn. I’ve blown it. Too forthright. She probably thinks I mean a sexual favour. For the purposes of that message, I probably did.
And it looks like she did too. Because finally I get another message.
‘Cheeky. As in, the cheek of it. Are you in a time-warp? Did 12 years not just go by?’
Hmm. Not going so well. I have one more chance, I reckon, to try to make this meeting. Maybe some flattering line?
‘Not from the looks of your photo.’
Send.
Now we’ll see if it’s still the same Flick.
‘Oh, charmer… OK, one drink. And one favour ;)’
And yes, it is. Same old Flick. Needy, vulnerable, gullible Flick. I pause. I shouldn’t be doing this. Not because of Ellie – I have no intention of doing anything to dishonour her. A little flirty drink, but nothing more than that. She’s pregnant with my son, for God’s sake! But to Flick. Using her. It’s not what she needs.
But then, abandoning the venture now will do more harm. I can imagine the spiral she’ll go into, the glasses of wine she’ll drink, to try to understand how she managed to turn me off when I was about to ask for a date. So I just type:
‘Thursday? 7pm? Café Royal hotel bar?’
And before I’ve thought about what the hotel bit means, I’ve pressed send. I just picked it because me and Ellie went there once, and it’s the most ‘I’m treating a girl’ place I could think of. Then and now.
Which is probably why I get the response from Flick that she is very much looking forward to it (wink).
Flick, I really hope you have the answers. And that you’ll tell them to me down in that bar. Otherwise, I may for once be very glad that my father isn’t alive. So that he can’t judge me.