Brand New Friend Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue: (Principally concerning Eskimos)

  Part One: (Principally concerning a big move)

  Rob waits for his girlfriend

  Four years earlier: How Rob met Ashley Mclntosh

  Ashley arrives in London

  Nine years earlier: When Rob met Phil

  Meanwhile in Manchester

  Phone call

  Part Two: (Principally concerning Rob’s first six months in Manchester)

  Hit the north

  Rob’s first Monday morning in Manchester

  Hanging on the telephone

  Coming home

  One day in Rob’s life

  A night out with Neil

  Party fears

  Bathroom buddy

  Down and out in Didsbury

  Walking and talking

  Desperado

  A slight interlude

  Desperado (part two)

  Birthday

  Part Three: (Principally concerning obstacles)

  City life

  Pint-and-crossword man drinketh

  Live theatre

  Four key scenes in the life of Jo Richards from the six weeks before she burst into tears in front of Rob

  Rob talks

  The comfort of strange girls

  Last orders

  Post-pub problems

  Part Four: (Principally concerning being ‘just good friends’)

  Morning has broken

  About last night

  Advice

  Mirror mirror

  Small town boy

  Something to talk about

  The call

  Platonic dating

  Mates

  Plans

  Girlfriend meets girl friend

  Girlfriend versus girl friend

  Part Five: (Principally concerning a certain amount of confusion)

  Talking and thinking it over

  Two people

  Two men on a date

  Talking the talk

  Round two

  Men: a user’s guide

  Opinions matter

  Philios

  Hello, Nigel

  Seven of Nine and one of the other

  Pillow talk

  Girlfriend versus girl friend – the return match

  Part Six: (Principally concerning two people not falling in love)

  Popcorn and explosions (part one): Mr Cuong’s ceiling

  Rob and Jo and the month of September

  Popcorn and explosions (part two): exit strategy

  The living room

  A good night

  Part Seven: (Principally concerning repercussions)

  The morning after: Jo’s version

  The morning after: Rob’s version

  Time out

  Talk to her

  The engagement party

  Friends of friends

  Toast

  What’s going on?

  All this and more

  Rob at home

  Late lunch

  A short talk about being friends

  What good friends do

  Arrangements

  Christmas in Chorlton

  At the end of the day

  Brand new year

  Work is a four-letter word

  Kitchen-sink drama

  Part Eight: (Principally about a brand new friend)

  A brand new friend

  Conversion step one: getting over Jo

  Conversion step two: A slight digression in a bar on Deansgate

  Conversion step three: Two men and some red stripe

  Conversion step four: Repeat step three

  Back to BlueBar

  Man to man

  Part Nine: (Principally about a letter)

  Epilogue: (Principally concerning Jo, two years later)

  Also by Mike Gayle

  BRAND NEW FRIEND

  Mike Gayle

  www.hodder.co.uk

  Copyright © 2005 Mike Gayle

  First published in Great Britain in 2005 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK Company

  The right of Mike Gayle to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

  Epub ISBN 978 1 84894 160 1

  Book ISBN 978 0 34082 540 2

  Hodder and Stoughton

  An Hachette UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NWl 3BH

  www.hodder.co.uk

  For monkey two

  Acknowledgements

  A huge debt of thanks is owed to the following: Phil Pride, Sara Kinsella and everyone at Hodder, Euan Thorneycroft and everyone at Curtis Brown, Jane Bradish-Ellames, the Monday-night footballers, the Sunday-night pub people, Jackie and Mark for the northern-based fact-checking, Emma and Darren for introducing me to Chorlton, Asif (because I missed you out last time), Danny Wallace (for being Danny Wallace), everyone at the Board, everyone who has dropped me a line in the last year (you’ve helped considerably), all my old friends and all my new ones too, my wife, Claire, and the rest of my family, and anyone whose sofa I have crashed on in the past (especially you, Dave).

  PROLOGUE

  (Principally concerning Eskimos)

  A man, a woman and a discussion about Eskimos

  ‘Do you want to hear an interesting fact?’ said Jo. ‘Eskimos apparently have over fifty different words for snow. Snow’s really important to those guys – I suppose it’s because sometimes the difference between one type and another can mean the difference between life or death.’ She paused and laughed self-consciously. ‘You know they’ve got words for dry snow and wet snow, fluffy snow and compact snow. They’ve got words for snow that comes down fast and for snow that comes down slow – they’ve thought of everything.’

  ‘That’s a lot of snow,’ commented Rob as his eyes flicked to a scruffy-looking mongrel crossing the road in front of them, oblivious to the night bus hurtling towards it. It only narrowly missed being hit, but continued coolly on its journey to the bin outside the off-licence, which it sniffed studiously, then cocked a leg against.

  ‘So, what’s your point?’ asked Rob.

  ‘Well, it’s like this,’ replied Jo. ‘If Eskimos can come up with fifty words for snow because it’s a matter of life or death, why is it that we’ve only got one word for “love”?’

  PART ONE

  (Principally concerning a big move)

  Rob waits for his girlfriend

  The events that led up to Rob Brooks discussing love, Eskimos and snow with someone who wasn’t his girlfriend Ashley Mclntosh while sitting on a damp kerb outside an off-licence in South Manchester had orginated in a solitary event that had taken place roughly a year and a half earlier in a house in Tooting, south London.

  It was Friday in July, just after nine o’clock, and Rob, a thirty-two-year-old graphic designer was sitting on his sofa in the house he shared, staring at the clock on the wall. He was waiting for his girlfriend to arrive from Manchester so that he could complete his transformation from part-time single bloke to dutiful full-time boyfriend. Rob had been w
orking towards it – with him going to Manchester or her coming to London – every other weekend for the last three years. It was like living two lives, one in which he was a bachelor and another in which he was a fully paid-up member of the Couple Club. And although it had been fine in the early days, the older he got the harder it was to sustain the effort involved maintaining this type of relationship.

  To Rob’s mind, the Long Distance Relationship was for young people or, to be more exact, people in their twenties who had the kind of wired energy required for a cross-country love affair, which he hadn’t for a long time. He was well past the age when a long-distance relationship was anything other than a big fat pain in the arse, and now he questioned the validity of any journey that wasn’t a commute to work or a taxi ride to the airport for a weekend shopping trip to New York to buy (amongst other things) the kinds of trainers, T-shirts and clothing that would impress the more fashion conscious of his friends.

  Rob was convinced that it wasn’t just him who thought like this but people like him too. People who would rather spend an evening on the Internet trying to work out how to order food in than leave the comfort and safety of their homes for a real life all-singing all-dancing store. It might seem ridiculous to order groceries on a computer, but, in these cash-rich, time-poor days, it made so much sense to a busy man like Rob. So he couldn’t help but wonder that if life was too short to spend time in the supermarket it was also too short surely to spend every other weekend on the motorway while the rest of the world relaxed. But he accepted the tedium of weekend travelling as one of many things you do for love.

  The cordless phone rang on the table in front of him and he answered it immediately. Maybe it was Ashley, to say she was at the front door. He knew there was little chance of that – normally she didn’t leave Manchester until after six – but he allowed himself to imagine letting her into the house, chatting to her about her day, making her a quick something to eat, then taking her to the Queen’s Head in time for last orders.

  ‘Hi, sweetheart,’ said Rob, into the receiver, while he ordered himself an imaginary pint. ‘Still got far to come?’

  ‘I’m on the M6,’ replied Ashley.

  ‘Which bit of it?’ he asked, trying to mask his disappointment.

  There was a long pause. ‘I’ve only just gone past Stoke. There’s a huge tailback – roadworks somewhere.’

  Rob did a swift calculation and worked out that his dream of last orders was dead. It would be at least midnight before she got to London, which meant that not only would they miss the pub but she would also be in a bad mood.

  ‘Why were you late leaving?’ asked Rob.

  ‘Why are you making a big deal about it?’ snapped Ashley.

  ‘Because I told you last night that there were roadworks on the M6 outside Birmingham and that if you were late leaving you’d get stuck in loads of traffic.’

  ‘Well, you were right.’

  ‘I don’t want to be right,’ he said, no longer bothering to hide his exasperation. ‘I just wanted you to take my advice and leave a bit earlier. If you had you’d be here, not sitting in miles of traffic.’

  There was a click and the line went dead. She’d put the phone down on him. Rob watched the clock in silence. He hadn’t meant to get annoyed so quickly. And the last thing he needed was for the weekend to get off to a bad start yet again. I’ll have to call her back, he thought, but before he could, the phone rang again. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry. Okay? Let’s forget what just happened and start again.’

  ‘Sorry for what?’ said a gruff northern voice that Rob recognised immediately. It was Phil, his friend, house-mate and co-director of their two-year-old web-design consultancy, clUNKEE mUNKEE.

  ‘In trouble with the missus, are we?’ asked Phil, laughing.

  ‘Sort of,’ conceded Rob, taking in the background noise at the other end of the line. He could hear talking, laughing and music – classic Friday-night-in-the-pub ambience. He felt strangely sad.

  ‘What’ve you done wrong this time?’ asked Phil.

  ‘It’s a long story. And it’ll get even longer if she rings back and finds the phone engaged and that it’s not me trying to call her back.’

  ‘All right, Bobman,’ said Phil. ‘I was just calling to see what time you’d be down here.’

  ‘How many times did I tell you today that I wasn’t coming out tonight?’

  ‘Ten or twenty,’ replied Phil, between sniggers.

  ‘So why are you tormenting me like this? Normally it’d be fine, you know that. But with things the way they are between me and Ash the last thing I can afford to do is fail to greet her after her long journey because I’m in the Queen’s drinking too much and falling over, like the weekend before last.’

  ‘You are so under the thumb,’ said Phil, chuckling. The phone went muffled, and then there was a roar of laughter. Rob was imagining what he was missing – a pint, conversation, the feeling that the weekend had really arrived – when a male voice yelled down the line, ‘Rob, you big girly tosser,’ which brought him to his senses. It was his friend Woodsy, a.k.a. Peter Woodman, a.k.a. Rob and Phil’s unofficial semipermanent house guest.

  ‘Are you all right, mate?’ enquired Woodsy.

  ‘I’m fine,’ replied Rob.

  ‘Phil says you’re coming to the pub,’ said Woodsy.

  ‘No, mate, I can’t. Ashley’s on her way.’

  ‘Oh, you have to come.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘She won’t mind.’

  Rob laughed. ‘Oh, yes, she will.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Woodsy.

  There was another long pause, filled with the sounds of the Queen’s Head.

  ‘Mate?’ said Phil.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘About the pub.’

  ‘What about the pub?’

  ‘Are you coming, then?’

  ‘I’ve told you I can’t,’ replied Rob. ‘I don’t understand why you’re torturing me like—’

  Another burst of laughter at the other end of the line prevented him finishing his sentence.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ said Phil, a few moments later.

  Suddenly Rob felt even sadder about his lost Friday night. ‘Is it good?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’ said Phil.

  ‘Is the pub good?’

  ‘It’s the pub,’ said Phil laughing. ‘How good can it be?’

  ‘But I’m not missing out on anything good, am I? I mean, who’s out tonight?’

  ‘Everybody,’ said Phil.

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Okay . . . Ian One’s here . . . and Ian Two . . . and Kevin called to say he’d be down before last orders – oh, and Darren’s at the bar.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Rob.

  ‘Yeah, really,’ said Phil.

  ‘And what have you all been doing?’

  ‘What kind of question is that? We’ve been drinking mainly – and talking.’

  ‘Talking about what?’

  ‘Do you really want to know?’ asked Phil.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Rob. ‘I do.’

  He could hear Phil repeating the question to their friends.

  ‘Okay,’ said Phil, back on the line. ‘The boys have helped me do a quick recap. We’ve been talking about dangerous things we did when we were kids, will a socialist Utopia ever be possible, some new girl in Ian Two’s office who’s supposed to look like a young Sophia Loren, bands whose second albums were better than their débuts, work in general, Ian One’s broken computer and finally, “In which video does Kylie Minogue wear those gold hotpants?”’

  ‘“Spinning Around”,’ said Rob automatically.

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Phil. ‘Because I reckon it’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head.”’

  ‘You are so wrong,’ insisted Rob. ‘You’re a whole album out, mate.’

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ said Phil. Rob heard him ask the others. ‘O
kay,’ he said, after a few moments. ‘I stand corrected. You’re right – this time.’

  ‘Of course I am,’ Rob replied, desperately wishing he was there to be smug in person.

  ‘So, are you coming down?’ asked Phil.

  ‘I can’t,’ said Rob. ‘The first ten minutes of being together in a long-distance relationship are crucial. You haven’t seen each other all week, you’ve both been under a lot of stress, you’re tired, and maybe a bit grumpy. You’re a ticking time-bomb waiting to go off. If World War Three isn’t going to kick off, you both need to have your wits about you and I don’t think I will have if I come down the pub.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Phil. ‘But don’t wait up for me and Woodsy. We’re thinking about going to a club in town, then back to Ian One’s because his missus is away and he’s just bought the uncut version of Enter the Dragon on DVD.’

  ‘Enter the Dragon,’ echoed Rob, longingly. He sighed and glanced at his watch. ‘Look, I’d better go. Catch you later, mate.’

  If it had been up to Rob he would have spent the rest of the evening lamenting what he was missing but the second he ended the call the phone rang again. A small-voiced Ashley piped up, ‘I’m sorry,’ and started to cry.

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ Rob replied, then added, ‘But, sweetheart, you can’t cry when you’re driving. You might have a crash. You’ve got to concentrate.’

  ‘Is that all you care about?’ sniffed Ashley. ‘The car?’

  Her response flustered him. Was he wrong to worry about her crashing? Should he encourage her to let it all out while she was in control of a vehicle travelling at seventy miles an hour in the middle lane of the M6? In the end he decided to ignore her comment because, most likely, even she knew that it didn’t make sense. He had to say something to appease her, though. And he had to say it soon. ‘I love you, babe,’ he whispered. ‘You’ll be here soon and everything will be all right.’

  ‘I love you too,’ said Ashley. ‘I’ll speak to you when I’m closer to London.’

  Four years earlier: How Rob met Ashley McIntosh

  Rob and Ashley had first met at a leaving do for Ian One. In the time that Rob had known Ian One (whose real name was Ian Quinn) he had graduated from marketing junior to marketing manager with a team of ten people under him. At the pace he was climbing the career ladder, it was only a matter of time before he went to a bigger firm. Ian One’s leaving do was the stuff of legend. His company coughed up for a free bar all night and he invited not just work colleagues and major clients but his friends too.