It's Not Me, It's You by Mhairi McFarlane

Author:Mhairi McFarlane [Mhairi McFarlane]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-09-26T16:00:00+00:00

‘I’m going to get going then, which way to the Tube?’ Delia said, thinking Adam would want her gone as much as she did.

‘Come and sit down for a bit and recover,’ Adam said, standing down from the work surface.

‘Ah. No …’ Delia resisted.

‘You spent the night here, another fifteen minutes isn’t going to make a difference. You look like the bad taxidermy version of yourself.’

‘Sod you,’ Delia mumbled, but she had to admit she was exhausted by the business of being upright.

‘C’mon. Dougie’s no company for the next twelve hours at least. Take pity on me in return.’

Delia couldn’t really refuse, and carried her coffee to the front room.

It was a true boys’ rented house, this. Every soft furnishing was navy blue or army grey. There were big saggy worn blue sofas with removable covers, a pine coffee table covered in sticky rings and a huge flat-screen television, coated in a light patina of greasy dust.

The room was cast into a greenish gloom by the thick overgrown ivy that clung like a wig to the window, although it was a nice alternative to blinds.

Delia sank gratefully onto the nearest settee and wondered just how huge a price in ridicule Adam was going to be extracting for this. Right now she couldn’t think about that. Physically surviving this hangover was task enough.

‘Can I make a suggestion?’ Adam said, on the sofa opposite. ‘When I have been beaten by the beer, I like to lie like this,’ he swung himself round so he was lying on his back, ‘my legs like so,’ he rested them on the arms of the sofa. ‘I think you’ll find the angle very relaxing, and the light from the window is precisely the amount your vampire eyes can cope with.’

He folded his hands on his stomach. ‘Try it. I promise you, this position held for five hours straight sorted Dougie after he’d done the Top Gun drinking challenge.’

Homoerotic Top Gun, eh? ‘What does that involve?’

‘Oh, I dunno. Judging by Dougie’s condition you must drink every time there’s a moment of patriotic machismo.’

Delia sighed, and moved herself into an approximation of Adam’s position. Her muscles relaxed against the sofa cushions, her heels dangling.

‘See!’ Adam said. ‘You look … at peace.’

Delia did a weak shaky gurgle-giggling. ‘That’s what you say about people in the Chapel of Rest.’

‘Haha! “Remember her the way she would’ve wanted, not like this.”’

Adam laughed and Delia thought how intensely he was enjoying himself.

‘So … this Paul of yours, then,’ Adam said, and Delia was given the scariest rollercoaster drop-lurch of realising she had said things of which she had no memory. None. Like general anaesthetic. She had put herself under.

‘God, what?!’ she said.‘What did I say?’

‘Oh, nothing much,’ Adam said, soothingly. ‘You told me he’s been fooling around and it’s why you came to London.’

Delia’s alcohol-poisoned, clammy skin grew clammier against the gritty fabric of the sofa. It was awful and exposing, not knowing what she’d said.

‘When?’

‘I got you to drink a glass of water when we got back, and we chatted.

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