Not in a Million Years by Sophie Ranald
Then
2007
We’d been in the pub for over an hour when the boys finally arrived, and to be honest by that point we didn’t particularly care whether they showed up at all. There’d been no official arrangement after all – just a group of five of us, who’d dutifully turned up on a blustery autumn night to watch our other halves play football, and realised before half-time that standing on the sidelines in the rain watching them take an absolute pasting was about as much fun as a root canal.
Decamping to the nearest pub was my suggestion, but the others had agreed without hesitation, and in just a few minutes, we found ourselves in the warm, sitting round a small wooden table getting acquainted (and increasingly sloshed on cheap red wine). At the time, they were just four random women of about my own age: Abbie, Naomi, Rowan and Zara. The most I’d hoped for was that, if my boyfriend Ryan ever persuaded me to come along to a game with him again, these girls would be there and the experience would be made a bit less tedious. Although in the back of my mind, I was aware that Ryan and I were on borrowed time, which was sad in a way, of course, but likely meant no more Wednesday evenings pretending to be interested in five-a-side football – proof, if it were needed, that every cloud has a silver lining.
I didn’t know – I couldn’t have known – the significance that night would have in my life. I’d realised pretty quickly that these women – Abbie, with her laser-sharp sense of humour; Rowan, whose beautiful smile made you feel like you were the only person in the world; Naomi, radiating kindness as warm as her brilliant red hair; and Zara, who had a way of delivering cuttingly bitchy observations in a way you couldn’t help dissolving in laughter at – would all become my friends.
But I hadn’t guessed that, fifteen years later, they’d have become my best friends in all the world. Not Zara, of course. Which was no great loss, really, Zara being the absolute piece of work that she was.
Anyway, there we were, two bottles of Shiraz down and a substantial dent made in the third, our table littered with empty crisp packets, mobile phones, Zara’s fags and lighter, and some make-up samples Rowan had picked up at a product launch earlier that day, which she’d kindly shared out with the group, when our menfolk arrived at the pub.
‘Well, fancy finding you lot here!’ Ryan laughed.
‘How did the game go?’ I asked, not particularly interested but wanting to show willing.
‘Not great.’ He pulled over a chair and sat down, wincing performatively. ‘I got subbed off in the second half. I think I’ve pulled something in my groin…’
Which would mean even less bedroom action for me than there’d been in the past few weeks, I thought uncharitably. Ryan and I had only been dating for a few months and, nice as he was, I was becoming more certain every time I saw him that this relationship was nearing its sell-by date. It was just a question of which of us was going to call time on it, and I suspected it was going to have to be me – a prospect I didn’t particularly relish, given that he was a lovely guy. Just not the lovely guy for me.
‘Can I get you a drink?’ I asked him, my guilty thoughts spurring me to be kind, which would probably be unhelpful in the long term.
He brightened. ‘Thanks, Kate. Pint of Stella, if you don’t mind.’
‘Sure.’ I collected orders from the other guys – pints all round for Matt, who was Ryan’s brother and Abbie’s boyfriend; Paul, Rowan’s other half; Naomi’s bloke, whose name I didn’t catch and never learned, as they split up soon after; and impossibly ripped Patch, who apparently belonged to Zara.
I went to the bar, placed our order and waited while the pints were poured, another bottle of wine opened and packets of crisps piled on the counter in front of me.
‘Need a hand with those?’ a voice at my elbow asked. I turned and saw a man – possibly the most handsome man I’d ever seen in my life. His hair was shining blonde in the lights over the bar. His eyes were clear denim-blue. He wasn’t wearing a hastily pulled-on tracksuit over football kit like the other guys but a long plum overcoat that looked like cashmere. His smile was movie-star magnetic.
And I knew straight away that, while gazing at him would afford hours of pleasure, gazing was all I’d ever do, because he couldn’t have been more obviously gay if he’d been wrapped in a rainbow Pride flag instead of that expensive coat.
‘Thanks.’ I smiled. ‘What can I get for you, since I’m ordering?’
‘Double vodka and tonic, please, nurse. Grey Goose if they have it, which they won’t.’
I scanned the row of bottles, knowing he was right. We’d picked the pub on the basis of its proximity to the football pitch, not the quality of its food and beverage offerings.
‘You’d be lucky,’ I said. ‘Looks like it’s Smirnoff or nothing.’
‘I’ll take the Smirnoff then, obviously. But better make it a triple – if I can’t have quality, I’ll go for quantity.’ He flipped a credit card onto the bar. ‘And I’ll get this. You don’t want to get in the habit of subbing that bunch of freeloaders.’
I laughed. ‘It was just one round, but thanks. I’m Kate.’
‘Andy. And which of these reprobates are you here with?’
‘Ryan.’ Already, my mind was adding, But not for long.
It was like Andy had read my thoughts. ‘Seriously? Fond as I am of Little Ryan – I’ve known him for donkey’s years; Tall Matt and I were at school together – I wouldn’t have thought he was your type.’
‘Really? What is my type then?’
He looked at me, his bright eyes narrowed. ‘I can see you with a banker. One of those flash fuckers who drives a Porsche and wears Gucci slippers of an evening. He’d take you out to Michelin-starred restaurants and support you in the style to which you want to become accustomed.’
‘Actually, I’m kind of hoping to support myself in the style to which I want to become accustomed.’
‘Oooh,’ he said. ‘Ambitious. Driven. Although not in the passenger seat of a banker’s Porsche.’
‘I mean, it’s not like I’d say no. I’m not too sure about the Gucci slippers though. They sound kind of naff. And who wears slippers, anyway, if they’re under sixty?’
Andy looked wounded. ‘I do, as it happens. Nothing I like better, after a hard day selling bad art to people who don’t realise it’s bad, than getting home, slipping into something comfortable and mixing myself a perfect dry Martini.’
‘You don’t play footie with this lot then?’ I asked, although I already knew the answer – it was as impossible to imagine Andy wearing shin pads and covered in mud as it was to imagine Ryan drinking a cocktail in designer loungewear.
‘Heaven forbid! I’m just here for the craic, although it seems to be in short supply. You’re the most interesting person here by far.’
I smiled, flattered but immediately feeling the pressure to do – or say – something that was actually interesting. I could quote Shakespeare, except I didn’t know any. I could buy a round of flaming sambucas, except I’d probably singe my own eyebrows off. I could rip my kit off and dance on the bar, except in a place this dodgy they’d probably think I was paid entertainment provided by the management.
I settled on, ‘So. Tea or coffee?’
Andy shouted with laughter. ‘Oh, so we’re playing that game. Coffee, of course. You?’
‘Coffee.’
‘Cats or dogs?’ he asked.
‘Cats, I guess. I don’t really have time or space for either right now – certainly not a dog. But we had a cat when I was growing up. It was cute.’
‘What was its name?’
‘Wanda. She was all-over black.’
‘No fucking way! I had a cat called Wanda growing up, too. After the John Cleese film?’
I nodded, feeling a massive smile spreading over my face.
Andy said, ‘And you wear an analogue watch, I see, not digital. That’s good. I could never be true friends with a tea-drinking, digital-wearing dog-lover.’
I racked my brains for my next question. ‘White bread or brown?’
Andy frowned. ‘I oughtn’t to eat bread at all, really. It’s so bloating. But oh my God, the joy of a plastic white sandwich on a hangover, with—’
‘Fish fingers?’
‘Yes! Or sausages. The really cheap lips-and-arseholes ones that are so, so wrong but also so right.’
‘Red sauce or brown?’ It was a trick question – I hoped it wouldn’t trip him up.
And it didn’t.
‘Red or brown sauce? What kind of heathen do you take me for? Mustard. The very hot English kind, to—’
‘Disguise the taste of the lips and arseholes?’
‘Precisely. Ideally eaten in bed, alone, so no one you want to impress sees you dripping butter on the sheets. Correct?’
‘It’s like you’ve got CCTV installed in my flat or something. So, next question. Do you—’
‘Oi!’ Ryan’s voice penetrated the increasing volume of the busy pub. ‘Why don’t you two bring over our drinks, instead of standing there yakking away? We’re all dying of thirst here.’
‘Sorreeeee.’ Andy gave me a theatrical roll of his eyes and I giggled conspiratorially.
Together, we ferried over the drinks and snacks.
The dynamic of the group had changed now that the men had turned up.
Ryan was expounding about the severity of his groin injury, debating whether heat or cold would be more effective on the strained muscle – or tendon, or ligament, whatever he thought it was – and Matt and (mostly) Abbie were cooing sympathetically over him.
Rowan and Paul were sitting close together, their knees pressed against each other’s, leaning in and talking as softly as the background noise allowed, occasionally throwing back their heads in laughter or leaning them in for a kiss.
And Zara was focused entirely on Patch, flicking her curtain of almost-black hair back over first one shoulder then the other, holding his attention with her violet eyes, her French-manicured fingers moving in front of their faces like those of a magician weaving a spell as she talked.
Naomi was watching them, transfixed, all the happy animation wiped off her face. In the seat next to her, the boyfriend whose name I’d forgotten was watching the proper, professional football on the big screen, seemingly oblivious to her presence or the strangely rapt way she was gazing at the couple next to her.
I would have gone to speak to her, to attempt to find out what it was that was troubling her and cheer her up, but the only two remaining seats were at the opposite end of the table and Andy led me straight to them.
‘So, now that you’re single, Kate…’ he began, taking a deep swallow of his lethally strong drink.
‘I’m not single,’ I protested. ‘I’m dating Ryan, remember?’
‘Pfft. I give that five days. Or, more likely, five minutes.’
(As it happened, he was wrong. It took all of five hours before, later that night, Ryan accused me of being callous, cold-hearted, overly focused on my career and not enough on his pulled tensor fasciae latae, and dumped me. My only real regret about our break-up – apart from worrying that it would cause awkwardness between Abbie and me, which it didn’t – was that he waited to deliver the killer blow until the last Tube had departed, and I had to get the dreaded night bus home.)
‘Okay, so assuming I was single, which I’m not,’ I replied, ‘you were going to say?’
‘I was going to say, you’d be the perfect match for my friend Daniel. Only thing is, I can never introduce you.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I want to keep you all to myself.’
And I basked in the warm glow of his admiration, which felt both entirely undeserved and entirely unthreatening. I was delighted with myself, with these new friends, with the way an unpromising night had turned into one of the most fun ones I’d had that month.
Back then, twenty-two-year-old me gave hardly a thought to the unknown Daniel, or the complex web of relationships I’d found myself a part of, or indeed anything much, apart from how many more rounds we could squeeze in before last orders.