This play was first performed at Hampstead Theatre in London on 20 January 2000.
Best friends, Bee and Em, are holidaying in rural France. However, their time together is shattered by CHRIS who turns up unexpectedly (or so Bee thinks). All three women are now in their thirties and school memories are hazy and ill-remembered, leading to a fractious evening with a number of vicious revelations. In this scene, CHRIS arrives at the house with a story to tell about her journey. Typically, she isn’t able to stop talking, filling the uncomfortable shock of her presence with a stream of (oblivious) words.
Oh thank god it’s you darling/
…
Thought I’d got the wrong house, taxi’s gone disaster. Although frankly, quite frankly, I’d rather play murder in the dark with a machete than get back in the car with that horrid little Frenchman. I’ve just had the most ghastly journey with this man. You know what I’m like, always choose the duffers – trust me – I sail straight past a queue of gorgeous pouting frogs and get into the cab of a toad. God I’m exhausted. All the way from Avignon he leered at me and then he seemed to think – when he asked me what I did and I said ‘research’ – he seemed to think I’d be up for a shag in the back of his car! God knows what I said, obviously means complete fucking tart in French. So he stopped in the middle of nowhere – for a slash, he said, ‘pour faire aggrandir l’herbe’, you know, and he disappeared for bloody ages, obviously expecting me to follow him, if you please, so I sat there thinking, ‘nobody knows I’m here, oh my god, I’m going to die and become a statistic’ and then eventually he emerges from the shrub ostentatiously wiping his hands, like this, wiping the spunk off his hands, you know, disgusting, dirty great smirk on his face, and then he gets in the car and he doesn’t stop talking.
…
All the way here, gabbing like radio Luxembourg and every time he stops at a light he puts his hand on my knee – made me sit in the front, I don’t know, maybe that’s what taxi drivers do in France, I thought, bloody pervert, let me out of here. I feel completely and utterly invaded I can tell you.
…
…happens to me all the time. (She strides about the verandah.) Well this is alright, isn’t it? I like the red. Very distressed-chic. It’s a sort of barn, isn’t it really?