Shari Low - My Best Friend’s Life

WARNING: Residence in this area can induce feelings of intense lethargy, boredom and, in extreme cases, a sudden and irrevocable fusion of the buttocks to the nearest couch .

Ginny grinned and a giggle escaped her as she allowed herself a moment of self-congratulation. She felt bold! She felt fearless!

The woman opposite, however, just felt mildly disturbed that Ginny was laughing for no evident reason and hatched a plan to pretend to disembark at the next station then jump back on into another carriage. But Ginny was oblivious, too busy revelling in the astonishment that she had finally plucked up the motivation for a long-overdue break from monotony. She was on a mission to walk on the wild side–although she might want to shop for comfortable footwear first. Never in her life had she behaved in such an irresponsible manner, and she was determined that nothing or no one was going to stop her. Ginny Wallis was finally going to start living!

‘S’cuse me, dear, is this your phone under there?’

The woman across from her was bent over, peering under Ginny’s seat, her support tights fraying under the strain.

Her congratulatory contemplation interrupted, Ginny got down on her knees and fished under her seat for the stray ringing device. She checked the phone, then the screen–Darren. So much for her new, independent life. She hadn’t gone three miles from home and she’d already lost her phone, and only a timely intervention by the dual forces of a disapproving stranger and her boyfriend of twelve years had delivered it back to her. Maybe Roxy was right–maybe years of suburban institutionalisation had rendered her unsafe to leave home without a responsible adult.

She took the call.

‘Hi babes, it’s me. I’m just on my way over–I was going to bring a DVD–are you in the mood for Scarface or Armageddon ?’

Ginny pondered the question. Brutal violence in the gutter of humanity or a global cremation? Somewhere deep inside her, her new happy-go-lucky gene was clutching its heart and screaming for a paramedic.

Suddenly Ginny realised that she couldn’t breathe, and not just because Roxy’s shocking pink Wonderbra was so tight and uncomfortably bosom-levitating that she could rest her chin on her cleavage. Who was she kidding with the whole ‘walk on the wild side’ nonsense? Ginny wasn’t wild, she was sensible. Conservative. Cautious. She was the woman who wouldn’t go out after dark without a mobile phone, a first-aid kit and pepper spray. This whole thing was ridiculous. She wasn’t some flighty eighteen-year-old, she was a grown woman who should know better. Suddenly, she could think of nothing she wanted more than to get off the train and head back home for a familiar night of companionship, affection and violent DVDs. She could just put this whole thing down to friendship-induced diminished responsibility. People would understand–Roxy had been driving everyone nuts for years. But…

But what about excitement? What about adventure? She put her hand up her back and surreptitiously unhooked her bra, allowing her breasts to deflate and her lungs to regain their normal capacity.

She inhaled deeply: breathe, breathe, breathe. Okay, here goes.

‘Actually, Darren, something’s come up. Can we give tonight a miss?’

There was a deafening silence as his brain tried to compute this information. In Ginny’s life, nothing ever just cropped up. It was like saying the world was flat or Nicole Ritchie had a high-grade Bakewell tart habit.

He was stuttering now.

‘Sure, babes, so tomorrow night?’

‘Can’t.’

‘Tuesday?’

Ginny squeezed her eyes shut. She was going to have to tell him. She was a grown bloody woman. She could do this. She could.

‘I’m, erm, working. You know. At work. My work. Work. Working. Shit!’

Okay, maybe she couldn’t.

‘What?’

‘Okay! But don’t be pissed off. It’s just that I’m doing a favour for Roxy…’

‘Are you on a train?’ he blurted.

‘And she’s on a penis embargo…’

Exit one fellow traveller, bustling off at speed with suitcase in tow and a backwards, disapproving glare.

‘…so I’m filling in for her at work for a month. Just a month. No biggie. And it’s not as if I’m miles away–only a couple of hours. We can still catch up on my days off. And…’

There was a deafening noise as the 10.30 p.m. express to Bristol sped past them in the other direction. She wasn’t sure if he’d hung up or the signal had dipped out. A sudden creeping feeling of nausea rose from her stomach. And she hadn’t even been to the buffet car.

Was she being crazy? Why was she risking upsetting the one thing in her life that was truly outstanding?

Darren. Darren and Ginny. Ginny and Darren.

It sounded so right, like the perfect couple. Or the kind of act that wears coordinating costumes and gets nil points at the Eurovision Song Contest.

They’d met at school. Two pubescent, hormonal souls intrinsically linked by inherent geekdom and the love of biology, physics and orderly conduct.

Twelve years later they were still together and happy. If you overlooked the whole ‘bored rigid, fleeing to London’ thing.

She’d miss him. She really would. He was one of the good guys–he’d never cheated, betrayed her, let her down or told her that her arse was massive. Actually, since he’d developed his love of science into a degree in anatomy and a career as a personal trainer to Farnham Hills’s rich and bored housewives, he could probably nip the fat-arse thing in the bud anyway.

But the firm bottom line was that he was a nice guy. And the six-pack stomach wasn’t exactly a hindrance to his desirability either. But lately…Well, sometimes nice just wasn’t enough. He worked such long hours maintaining the inner thighs of the village that they’d settled into a mind-numbing routine. He’d work all day, then pop over to her house every second night around nine. They’d watch TV, fall asleep on the sofa, and then he’d let himself out when he woke up. At weekends, they’d really live it up and order in a takeaway or nip down to the local pub for a few drinks. Just a few. After all, it would border on criminal to deprive the wedding fund of its weekly income.

The wedding. Or, to give it its official title, ‘Her Mother’s Reason for Living’. They’d been planning it for so long that at least a dozen of the original guests would only be attending with the help of Derek Acorah.

Every single iota of her being wanted to marry Darren Jenkins–except the ones that watched Sex and the City , realised that there was a big world out there and recoiled at the very thought of only having sex with one bloke for the rest of her life.

What was she, a Fifties throwback? How many women would go through the whole of their lives and only have intimate relations with one male organ?

It was obscene. Prehistoric. Pathetic. Her gravestone would read, ‘ Here lies Ginny Wallis–woman of morals, traditional values, and the most unadventurous vagina in the free world .’

The passing of the 10.45 p.m. to Bath caused a thunderous noise that snapped her from her discontented musings.

She blew her hair off her face and gave herself a swift reality check. She loved Darren. She was going to marry him. This little adventure was not, repeat NOT, some veiled excuse for infidelity and wanton sexual exploits. It was just a bit of fun. A little injection of high-grade joie de vivre to snap her out of the mind-numbingly predictable torpor that she’d slipped into over recent years. One month of new routines, new faces, new sights and new experiences.

As the train pulled into Paddington Station, the bubbles of adrenaline started thumping through her veins again. She pulled up the handle on the leopardskin trolley case, swung her scarf around her neck and applied some lip-gloss. Roxy’s lip-gloss. She’d found it in the pocket of Roxy’s Zara swing coat, which she’d adopted a few hours before.