Then the taxi is here, and I’m out.
While I’m in the Uber, I get a flurry of apologetic texts from Ryan. I’m sorry I was being weird, just sat and watched the footage properly, hope you’re okay, please don’t tell on me, etc., etc. I respond with some emojis. Pizza, shrug, smiley, facepalm, sunshine. Interpret these glyphs how you will, Ryan.
It doesn’t take long to get back to mine. Flo is still here. She’s wearing my pyjamas and hoovering. She beams when I get in, her teeth stained with coffee, her choppy bob in disarray.
‘I didn’t expect you back so soon!’ she says. ‘What’s with your face? Oh my God, have you been crying?’ I grunt, and kick off my shoes, landing on my sofa with a thud. I bury my face in my hands. The bubble-mint gum has gone sour. I recount the story to Flo, who gasps and OMGs as required, like a panto audience.
‘You could literally sue,’ she says. I left out the bit with the boy, the photographs. I say I can’t be arsed. ‘You know, if you get attacked at work, you’re meant to get six weeks off. Paid, and everything,’ Flo says.
‘No shit?’ I say. ‘Well, that’s a silver lining. Get my pyjamas and a makeup wipe.’ Flo does.
‘I’ve cleaned the kitchen,’ she calls from upstairs. ‘And I’ve scraped all the coke off your coffee table. I managed to salvage at least a bump, so I put it in a baggy for you.’
She delivers my only pair of tracksuit bottoms and an old jumper – reserved for the most desperate of hangovers. I change in front of her, dropping my clothes on the floor of my otherwise immaculate living room.
‘Cool,’ I say. I can almost guarantee she’ll be beating herself up about this on her ‘private’ blog later. Private, because it’s just for her and two hundred of her closest internet friends. It took me about five minutes to find it.
‘It was just minging in here, and I thought I might as well tidy while you’re at work.’
I groan as I wipe off my makeup, my skin stinging as I scrub.
‘That’s better,’ says Flo. She plucks the dirty wipe from my hand, and holds it up, examining the impression of my face wrought in foundation, mascara and brow-cake. ‘Ah, look at that. Like the Turin Shroud, that is.’ Her phone is ringing; the right pocket of my pyjama bottoms is lit up. She picks it up and cancels it. ‘It’s just Michael. I’ve told him I’m at yours. He’s probably just wanting to know about dinner. He’s so fussy sometimes! Like, chill out Michael!’ Then she turns her phone off, which is really a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of thing. ‘Do you want some ice for your cheek?’
I do. I get her to bring my hangover kit, and two glasses of water. The kit is a Tupperware box full of over-the-counter painkillers. Flo brings it to me, then the water. Boots own-brand effervescent paracetamol and codeine （with caffeine） in the first glass of water, Dioralyte in the second. I drink the Dioralyte while the painkillers dissolve. I wash down two antihistamines （they’re an anti-emetic, and a life-changing addition to the hangover remedy）， two 342mg ibuprofen lysine （the good stuff, the period stuff） and an Imodium. By the time I’ve swallowed the paracetamol and codeine, I feel almost human again. Flo presents me with a handful of ice wrapped in a tea towel, which I press to my cheek.
‘Do you want me to nip to Tesco? I could get us some hangover wine? And better food? I went into your fridge. All you have is a big bag of ice and some salad.’
‘Yeah, okay,’ I say. She toddles off to the shop, still in my pyjamas.
The remaining bile in my stomach curdles at the thought of putting more wine into it. I take a second Imodium.
I sit with my laptop and scroll through the pictures from Dean’s shoot. Daniel’s shoot. Whatever his name was. He was very cute and very excited that I approached him on the bus in front of his friends, very excited to get my card and very excited when he emailed me twenty minutes later asking when he could come to my studio.
He came in his underwear during the shoot and thought I didn’t notice. Honestly, I did have an inkling he wasn’t twenty, but he consented, you know? He signed his forms, and he gave me a very convincing passport.
The photos are cool. Kind of grungy. Black-and-white, but he still looks flushed. The freckles on his nose and his shoulders pop. I already sent some preview shots to a few private buyers – the few big spenders who like large-scale prints and originals. No one has responded, so far, but I figured he was going to be a hard sell. He’s not the best-looking lad, bless him – a big nose, and a lot of pitting on his cheeks. I think he has character, but I’m a broad church.
I’ll hold off on deleting them, for a bit. I probably should, but what’s his mam going to do now she’s clocked me on CCTV?
Flo is back, announcing her return in a sing-song voice, accompanied by the telltale rustle of bags-for-life. The ice in the tea towel has melted, and I fling it into the kitchen. My hand is numb with the cold, and I wedge it between my warm thighs.
‘I got you some carbohydrates and tins and stuff while I was there.’ She walks past me （shoes on my carpet）， picks up the wet tea towel as she goes, and starts putting the shopping away. Carbs. I curl my lip.
‘Gluten is the literal devil,’ I tell her. She never listens to me about food and she’d still be skinny if she did. She posts on her blog about my disordered eating. How it bothers her, how she’s always trying to feed me bread. ‘And take your shoes off.’
She apologises. She tells me about a new boy at the Tesco. The same handful of staff have worked there the entire time I’ve lived here, so he stuck out to her. She tells me he’s really cute, but she has such bland taste in men. She likes the men she thinks she’s supposed to like. Her boyfriend has a big beard and an undercut, because when they got together that was the in thing. The boyfriend she had when we first met was this NME-cut-out, landfill-indie looking cunt with a porkpie hat and a huge fringe. She liked Harry Styles a few years ago, and now she likes that white-bread, absolute fucking baguette of a lad from Call Me by Your Name.
‘I swear to God, he’s adorable,’ she says. ‘He looks like the main guy from Mr. Robot, the one you fancy.’
‘Rami Malek.’ I roll my eyes. Flo thinks every short, ambiguously-brown man looks like Rami Malek.
‘I promise he’s cute. You’ll know him as soon as you see him. Trust me.’ She brings me a glass of wine and sets down bread and hummus that she must know only she will eat. She picks up my ankles, sits down next to me, and places my feet in her lap. ‘Do you want to watch a film?’ she asks. I nod. I hand her my laptop, and she compliments my photographs before going to my downloads folder. If she notices anything amiss, if she thinks the model looks young, she doesn’t say anything. She flicks through the films I have on my laptop and googles a few.
‘Oh!’ she says, pointing at the screen. She turns to me with her bottom lip jutting out. ‘Fritz the Cat! Oh my God!’
She’s pointing at the file for the film Fritz the Cat, but she means our Fritz.
When Flo and I lived together during uni, Flo fed a stray cat. A big, ugly, ginger tom, with the biggest pair of balls I’ve ever seen on a cat. I named him Fritz. Flo bought him a collar with this annoying fucking bell on it and everything. I lost him when I was living by myself during my MA. Flo saddled me with him and fucked off to an internship in Leeds.