What a Girl Wants

When you lived with someone for five years, you got pretty used to their bathroom habits and no matter how much of a rush Vanessa might be in, she was incapable of taking anything even approximating a quick shower. This was my chance. Scrambling out from under the bed, I tried to forget how badly I needed the toilet, grabbed my suitcase from the bed, and headed for the front door. Mere microseconds from freedom, my sweaty palm was on the door handle when a blurry silhouette appeared behind the pebbled glass and a sharp rap on the wood frightened me out of my skin.

‘Miss Kittler? It’s the police. Can you come to the door?’

The fucking police? Why were the police here? Although my curiosity had been well and truly piqued, I knew all too well what had happened to the curious cat and I didn’t have eight lives to spare.

I scuttled back into my bedroom as fast as my feet could carry me. As far as I could see, I had two choices. Either I went back under the bed with five years’ of filth and the saddest condom in existence, or I could climb out of my bedroom window. Which would be worse, having London’s finest find you hiding underneath your own bed or climbing out of a window and dropping twelve feet onto potentially spine-shattering concrete? Either way, I was very likely to wet myself. As a second knock rattled the door frame and the water stopped running in the bathroom, I made my decision. Spine-shattering concrete it was.

Pushing the window open, I pulled up the handle on my suitcase and dangled it down as far as it would go. When it was just a couple of feet off the floor, I let it drop, biting my lip to stop myself from screaming when it busted open in a silent explosion of M&S cotton pants, followed by a softened, but still sickening crack, as my camera made a mad dash for freedom across the courtyard.

‘Hold on, officers, I’m coming!’ Vanessa called out to the third rap on the door.

‘On the upside,’ I told myself as I hoisted myself up onto the windowsill and perched my bum right on the edge, ‘this isn’t even the second stupidest thing I’ve done this month.’

Peering down at the Rorschach test of underwear beneath me, I inched forwards, questioning more or less every choice I had ever made in my life. Well, at least if I fell and broke both my legs, that would answer the Milan question for me. There weren’t many fashion photographers jetting around the world in full-body casts. Peeping up at me from underneath next-door’s unbearably pretentious potted herb garden, the rubber duck raised a nonexistent eyebrow and waited, expectantly.

‘Oh God, I’m being so stupid.’ I no longer cared about being heard. I cared about not dying. ‘What am I doing? I’m not jumping out of my own bloody window!’

White knuckles wrapped around the window frame, I twisted around, ready to cock my leg over and in. Unfortunately, I seemed to have forgotten that unless a certain Nick Miller was the one positioning my legs over my head, I was one of the least flexible women on the face of the earth. Getting back inside the flat was going to be a damn sight harder than getting out of it. Somehow, I had managed to get my back up against the UPVC frame and my bum half on and half off the ledge when I realized the belt loop of my jeans was stuck somewhere on the lock. And it was while wriggling around in this impossibly ridiculous position, one leg in and one leg out, doing the hokey cokey twelve feet above the floor, that my door flew open and two uniformed policemen and one towel-clad former flatmate burst into the room.

‘Don’t move!’ shouted policeman number one.

‘Come back inside the house!’ yelled policeman number two.

‘Without wanting to be rude …’ My voice was awfully high. ‘Can you pick one? I can probably do the don’t move one but I’m not sure I can get back inside the house.’

‘Stay where you are, Ms Kittler,’ said policeman number one, who seemed far more interested in what Vanessa was barely covering with her towel than whatever crime they imagined I had committed, ‘we’ve got this.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, a whimper escaping her throat as she cowered behind policeman number two. ‘I was so scared. She must have broken in while I was in the shower.’

‘What?’ I squeaked as policeman number one began to move slowly towards me. ‘I didn’t break in. I used my keys – I live here!’

‘We’ll sort all this out down at the station.’ Policeman number two approached with his hands held out towards me. And in one of those hands was a pair of handcuffs. ‘Now just get down off the ledge.’

‘I’m not going down to the station,’ I said, one hand up in a surrender-friendly position, the other still clinging to the window frame for dear life. ‘I didn’t break in.’

I stared at the scene in front of me with utter disbelief. Vanessa, safe behind the boys in blue, gave me a wicked grin while wrapping her towel a little tighter.

‘I want her arrested,’ she said. ‘Please take her away.’

‘I am so going to kill you!’ I let go of the window frame fully to try to unhook my jeans from the arm of the lock. ‘This is ridiculous.’

‘You heard that!’ Vanessa shrieked. ‘She threatened to kill me!’

Everything that happened after that was a blur. I wasn’t sure if it was self-preservation or a rage-induced blackout, but without warning, I felt my mind leave my body and float up into a cobwebby corner of my bedroom, watching as the scene unfolded. The policeman that wasn’t copping a feel of my treacherous flatmate rushed over to me as soon as I let go of the window frame and reached behind my back. As he came towards me, my belt loop decided it didn’t need to be caught on the window lock after all and that’s when I realized the only thing that was keeping me balanced in the first place was said belt loop hooked around said window lock.

The fall from the window didn’t seem too bad. I did manage to land on top of my great big pile of pants, and at best I was a little bit dazed while at worst I was completely concussed. But looking on the bright side, it was probably better not to be entirely conscious when you were being read your rights and then carted off to the police station in handcuffs, wasn’t it?

CHAPTER TWO

‘I’ve told you,’ I said, pressing my palm against the throbbing pain in my shoulder, ‘a thousand times. It’s my flat, my home. Yes, Vanessa owns the flat but I pay rent. My keys are in the bowl by the door. I didn’t break in.’

‘Then remind me why you were climbing out the window with a suitcase full of Miss Kittler’s belongings instead of using the front door?’

Once the officers had established none of my bones had been broken, it was off to the police station for questioning, despite my loud and varied protestations. So far, so The Bill. I had suffered assorted indignities, including being fingerprinted at the same time as a very large skinhead I was sure that I recognized, and then I was left in a small interview room with a female detective who looked about as happy to be there as I did, although she was considerably less bruised and considerably better dressed. Or at least her clothes seemed to a) fit her and b) actually belong to her.

I glanced around the interview room while I tried to work out what to say. It wasn’t as bad as I had thought it might be. More Jobcentre waiting room than terrifying cell – and when you had a friend like Amy, you became very familiar with the inside of the Jobcentre waiting room.

‘We live together, we’ve had a bit of a domestic,’ I explained, wondering how likely a couple of Nurofen and a cup of tea were if I asked very nicely. ‘I didn’t want to talk to her so, you know, I jumped out of a window.’

Made perfect sense to me.

‘So you two are a couple?’ the detective asked, her eyebrow raising for a second and then dropping back into its standard position very quickly. Clearly someone had already had her sensitivity training.

‘We are so not a couple!’ I winced at both the idea of going out with Vanessa and the pain in my shoulder. ‘She’s horrible. She threw a cat at me once. I’d rather go out with you.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘The cat was fine,’ I backtracked quickly. ‘Vanessa is my flatmate. Or I’m her flatmate. Or I was her flatmate. I’m moving out, clearly, but I have paid rent for this month so I wasn’t breaking in.’

‘Just breaking out,’ she said, incapable of keeping her eyebrow in its rightful place. ‘And why did you have Miss Kittler’s camera in your suitcase?’

This was the only part I was going to struggle with. ‘It used to be my camera,’ I said. ‘I gave it to her one month when I couldn’t pay my rent but then I borrowed it back for something. That’s all it was, I wasn’t stealing it.’

‘You were borrowing it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Without asking?’

‘Yes.’

‘Which is commonly known as stealing.’

I had been brought up to be very respectful of the police. Even now, I couldn’t walk past them in the street without feeling improbably guilty or mentally humming the tune to ‘If you want to know the time, ask a policeman’ but this was getting silly.

‘I really haven’t done anything wrong,’ I said, attempting to remain as calm as humanly possible. ‘She’s just trying to cause trouble for me.’

‘It just sounds very unlikely, doesn’t it?’ The detective leaned back in her chair, crossed her legs at the knee and tapped a biro against the pad in front of her. ‘I mean, what would you think if you were me?’

‘I’d think I had better things to do than get involved in a petty squabble between two flatmates. Aren’t there proper criminals out there who need catching?’ I asked before snapping my mouth shut.

I really had to get a handle on my temper. This was just like the time I lost my shit at work and knocked that girl’s mug off her desk. Kind of …

‘Oh, yes, hundreds,’ the detective said, sitting up and brushing her dark blonde bob behind her ears. ‘Although I am really enjoying wasting hours of my time and thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money on your petty squabble.’

Thoroughly chastened, I sank into my uncomfortable plastic chair and looked at the floor.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, working on my most humble expression. ‘Really, I am. Obviously I didn’t wake up this morning and plan on falling out of a window but the whole Vanessa thing really is a ridiculously long story and you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’

‘Why don’t you try me?’ she said. ‘I do like a good story and I’ve already heard most of them.’

‘Fine.’ I folded my arms carefully underneath my boobs. I didn’t like showing midriff to a police officer, especially a dirty midriff that had been sweeping my bedroom floor an hour ago. ‘But you really won’t believe it.’

‘I’m so sorry to have caused you so much trouble.’ Tracy the detective gave me a very gentle hug and carefully slid the strap of my handbag over my undamaged shoulder. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital? I’d be much happier if you’d let them check you out.’

‘I’m OK, really,’ I assured her. ‘All I need is a stiff drink.’

‘And somewhere to live,’ she added. ‘I’ll text you later about that friend of mine – she might still be looking for someone.’

‘Thanks. That would be awesome.’ I pulled the strap of my bag over my head. ‘I really appreciate it.’

It turned out Tracy could believe my story although she hadn’t heard one quite so dramatic in a good while. It also turned out she did not care for women who took advantage of other women or women who effed their friend’s would-be boyfriends behind their back. And while there was very little she could do about the fact that Vanessa had demanded her camera back, she could let me off with a warning and give me a nice cup of tea while I told my story. I even got my Nurofen in the end, but only after I had retold my story to every woman in the police station.

‘I can’t believe there are really women like that out there,’ Tracy said, shaking her head as she walked me out of the interview room, signalling for someone to bring me my battered suitcase. ‘I’m so sorry for the mix-up. I could have someone drive you to the flat and wait while you collect the rest of your stuff if you want?’

‘No, it’s fine,’ I said, really just wanting to leave. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘OK, but you have to promise to let me know what you decide about Milan.’

There it was again. Milan.

I solemnly promised, and with one last round of hugs from every woman who happened to be in the general vicinity of Shoreditch police station, I gave them an awkward wave goodbye and padded outside into the sunshine. It had turned into a beautiful day. I hadn’t really noticed the weather when I was falling out my bedroom window and being bundled into a police car.

‘Of everyone we know, you are the last person I ever expected to be picking up from the cop shop.’

I squinted into the sunshine and my face relaxed into a smile. Leaning against the blue metal railings, phone in one hand, Tesco’s carrier bag in the other, was Charlie Wilder, all six wonderful feet and three beautiful inches of him.

‘Stagnate and die,’ I said, smiling at the sight of him, relieved, safe, awkward, a little bit giddy. ‘I’m mixing things up a bit.’

‘I had noticed,’ he said with a single nod.

We stood an uncomfortable three feet apart, neither of us moving in for our customary hug. I hadn’t seen Charlie since I started my self-imposed exile in Amy’s bedroom three days ago, and before that I hadn’t seen him since we got drunk, got naked, and got it on, so it was understandable that things might be a touch awkward.

‘Do you want to tell me how you managed to get arrested?’

I thought about it for a second. ‘Not really.’

‘Fair enough.’ Charlie held out the Tesco bag and took my suitcase without a word. Such a gent. ‘I got you these. I hear they’re not big on snacks in there. Not that I’d know first-hand, of course, never having actually been arrested myself.’

‘Actually they were very nice,’ I said, taking it and delving inside. Ooh, Galaxy. ‘Once I explained everything.’

‘Sure you don’t want to explain it to me?’ he asked, eyeing my T-shirt as I tore off the wrapper. ‘Are they making you wear that as part of your punishment?’

‘No and no.’ I gave him the side eye and rummaged around the rest of his offerings. Diet Coke, Skittles, a bag of those fresh-baked giant chocolate chip cookies – he’d made an effort, all my favourite unhealthy things.

‘Whatever, I’m glad you called me.’ He took a single step closer and I could smell his aftershave and see the almost black rings around his dark brown irises and his thick, curly copper hair and – oh bloody hell, I was about to fall over.

‘Woah!’ Charlie reached out and grabbed me before I could go down, pulling me in close and holding me upright. There were no two ways about it, being held by Charlie felt really, really good. ‘Let’s get you home. And then you can bloody well tell me what’s going on, whether you like it or not.’

Feeling equal parts faint and confused, with just an edge of lady horn, I let him wrap his arm around my shoulders and bundle me into a waiting Addison Lee taxi, leaving my new friends, Vanessa’s camera and any remaining shred of dignity with Shoreditch‘s finest.

Charlie’s flat was a typical man flat. The walls were white, the curtains were blue, and all of the furniture orbited an obscenely large television in the corner of the living room. Its satellite PlayStations and Xboxes blinked their welcomes as I dropped my handbag on the leather recliner and let Charlie guide me over to the sofa. I’d sat on this settee a million times – God, I’d gone to DFS and helped him choose it – but today I felt strangely uncomfortable, as though I didn’t know where I should look or what I could touch. The framed Goodfellas poster I had given him four Christmases ago stared down at me as I perched on the edge of the settee, pressed my thighs tightly together, and smiled gratefully when Charlie reappeared from the kitchen with a glass of water and the codeine I remembered feeding him when he knackered his knee the year before.

‘How many more years until you’ve actually paid for this?’ I asked, patting the settee as he sat down beside me, at a respectful distance. Which wasn’t that easy when he was six three and I was five ten. Charlie and I had a tendency to make most furniture look Lilliputian.

‘Three, I think.’ He pushed his coppery brown hair off his face, one or two strands refusing to comply and sticking to his forehead. ‘I’m assuming it’ll completely fall apart or something. That’s how I’ll know it’s officially mine.’

‘Right,’ I nodded in agreement and sipped my water. Water was good. A shower would be better, but I still felt a bit weird and I couldn’t see what good would come of him holding me up in there. ‘Yeah.’

I’d known Charlie Wilder for ten years. I knew his height and his date of birth and his blood type. Our hair and our eyes were exactly the same colour. I knew when he had lost his virginity, I knew he lied about having a trial for Newcastle when he was fifteen, but things had never, ever been weird between us until I knew what his penis looked like.

‘Right, yeah,’ Charlie echoed. ‘You all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ I said, attempting to sit more upright, look more composed. While wearing a cropped neon unicorn T-shirt? ‘Apart from falling out of a window and spending all afternoon in a police station, I, sir, am right as rain.’

‘I’m glad you called me,’ he said, taking the empty glass out of my hand and placing it on the floor. Our fingers didn’t touch once. ‘Been waiting to hear from you.’

What I wouldn’t have given to be having this conversation in any other outfit.

‘I know.’ I felt the edge of my thumbnail between my teeth and concentrated my attention on the blinking clock on his Blu-ray player. I was fairly certain it wasn’t six fifteen in the morning and I quite badly wanted to go over and fix it. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry.’ I watched as Charlie pushed his Converses off with his feet, one at a time, then kicked them across the room to their home beside the door. ‘I know I dropped a load of shit on you on Monday. It’s not like I expected you to have an answer right away.’

I smiled and looked down the sofa at my best friend and saw someone I wasn’t even sure I knew. ‘I always have an answer right away though, don’t I?’

‘Well yeah, there is that,’ he replied with a soft laugh. ‘Got to admit, I wasn’t expecting you to take this long to get back to me.’

I had been in love with Charlie from the very first day of university and every day since. He was The One. He was the man I imagined walking down the aisle with, the man I wanted to father my children. I wanted him to change my plugs and catch my spiders and know where we kept the paperwork for the car insurance and everything else that went along with a happy, long life together. Only, for ten long years, all I had been to Charlie was the one who reminded him about Mother’s Day, the one who was always available for lunch or a pint after work. I was the girl who explained that petrol station carnations were never an appropriate apology, the one who went with him to weddings when he didn’t have a girlfriend.

It turned out there were lots of different interpretations of The One.

And then, two weeks ago, under the most romantic of circumstances – drunk on cheap vodka on the bottom bunk of my childhood bed – we had finally done the deed. It had been wonderful and not just because I hadn’t had sex in so long that there were expired condoms underneath my bed; it had been genuinely, toe-curlingly fantastic. Right up until Charlie threw me the ‘I don’t want to ruin our friendship’ curveball the morning after and I found out he’d been secretly shagging Vanessa.

Of course, as soon as I told him to take his tainted peen as far away from me as humanly possible, he decided he wanted to make a go of it. And not only that, but he wanted us to start our own advertising agency together. Because going out with each other after everything that had happened wasn’t potentially messy enough, clearly we needed to throw a professional relationship into the mix as well.

‘There’s been a lot of stuff going on …’ I let out a tiny yawn, the pain in my shoulder ringing as I moved. Well, that was definitely the last time I jumped out of a window. ‘I don’t really know what else to say.’

‘I had noticed you’re not at your most chatty,’ he said. ‘You haven’t really told me anything about Hawaii. You still don’t want to talk about it?’

‘Honestly, I sort of just want to go to sleep,’ I admitted. ‘And maybe have a bath and not be wearing Amy’s clothes any more. Not necessarily in that order.’

What I really meant was, I’d rather go back to the police station than talk to Charlie about what had happened in Hawaii.

‘In that case …’ Charlie stood up and stretched. He was ever so tall. ‘I’m going to pretend to go and have a wee when really I’m going to clean the bath, then I’m going to fuck off and leave you to have a nap for a bit. Thank God that’s not your top. I was about to stage an intervention.’

‘I went to Hawaii,’ I replied, ‘I didn’t go insane.’

‘Understood.’ He saluted, picked up my empty glass, and headed for the kitchen. I was already fully foetal on the settee and snuggled into the cushions I had made him buy in the Heal’s sale when he returned.

‘Drink this,’ he ordered, holding out a fresh glass of water. ‘And I’ll run the bath.’

Lying on the settee, listening to the bath water run and watching dust dance around the living room in the late afternoon sunshine, I could easily imagine things working out with Charlie. It would be so nice to have someone to look after me and he knew me so well. It could be so wonderful. The job I’d always wanted, the man I’d always wanted. It was the life I’d dreamed of.

But I couldn’t stop myself from wondering what would happen if I went to Milan. I couldn’t stop myself from wondering what might happen with Nick … Hooking my foot through the handle of my handbag because I was too lazy to sit up and get it, I dragged it along the settee and dug around for my phone. The screen was so badly shattered I had to tilt it this way and that to get a clear view of my inbox but it was pointless. There was nothing to see. No new emails, no missed calls, no new text messages. Nothing from Nick; nothing at all. Three days of silence, otherwise known as an eternity.

‘Do you want bubble bath?’ Charlie called from the bathroom. ‘I’ve got bubble bath. Why have I got bubble bath?’

‘Because you’re a woman?’ I asked, sliding my phone under my back and refastening my ponytail on top of my head. Long, thick curly hair looked amazing on celebrities. In real life, it was nothing but a pain in the arse. ‘Yes to bubble bath, please.’

‘Right, it’s running,’ Charlie said, emerging with his sleeves rolled up and a slightly flushed face. At least I knew the bath had been properly scrubbed. Charlie was one of those blokes who believed that because you cleaned yourself in the bathroom, somehow that made the room itself self-cleaning. I really hoped I was catching the towels on a good day … ‘You want a T-shirt or something? I don’t think I’ve got any underwear to lend you.’

‘I think that’s probably a good thing!’ I replied. ‘Thank you. For coming to get me and everything.’

‘It’s not as if you haven’t had to look after me before, is it?’ He stood at the side of the settee, staring down as if he’d never seen me before.

‘What?’ I stared back up. ‘What is it?’

‘I have missed you,’ he said.

I held my breath and felt my heartbeat skip a little faster than I might have liked.

‘You daft cow,’ he added.

My heartbeat slowed back down.

For a second, neither of us said anything and neither of us moved. I looked at Charlie, all tall and broad and floppy, brown hair. He looked at me, all tall and badly dressed and flat on my back.

‘I’ve got to go out for a bit,’ he said, breaking the silence and making for the door. ‘You know where everything is. I’ll be back for tea. See you in a bit,’ he said, shutting the front door carefully behind him.