Jenny Colgan - Where Have All the Boys Gone?

Katie and Miko both shrugged.

‘Why he want tell me – before drink before dinner even that he is not ready for long-term relationship?’

‘Would we be better off with Italian boys?’ asked Katie sympathetically.

‘No! Only if you be their mother always.’

Lucca made a wild emphatic gesture that indicated a general wrath towards the male species altogether and headed off to dish out more abuse to the coffee machine.

‘Lucca’s much more beautiful than me,’ mused Katie sadly.

‘Yes, she is,’ said Miko.

‘But still gets dickheads.’

‘Who do you get then?’ asked Miko.

Terence, clearly. He’d seemed all right when they’d met at that barbecue. OK, there’d been lots of other people there, and quite a lot of beer, but now…As if doing the opposite of reading her mind, Terence confidently placed a podgy hand on her knee. Inside, Katie recoiled.

‘I just want you to know,’ he said, boozily breathing in her face. ‘I’m just in this for a bit of fun, yeah? Nothing too serious.’

Katie hadn’t liked the way the conversation with Miko was going.

Really, what was wrong with her? True, Katie Watson would never win any international modelling competitions. She liked to watch documentaries where hatchet-faced women run up to lanky adolescent girls in the street, whisking them off to new modelling worlds of fun and rock stars in Milan and Tokyo, but she never kidded herself that was her destiny. Olivia said once this had happened to her, but although she certainly was lanky, Katie thought she might have been a) telling a fib (not out of character for Olivia), or b) been a victim of a misunderstanding concerning teenage prostitution.

Katie was, well, cute, she supposed. ‘You’re a cutie,’ her ex-boyfriends had said. None of them had ever said, ‘Katherine Watson, you are the most staggeringly beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life. I would kill for you. I would lie down and die for you. Your muddy-coloured eyes sparkle like moonbeams; your soft lips, though not in the Angelina Jolie class, are like peaches. Your wide hips are life in my hands and your slightly short stature I consider nothing but a delight.’

Still, it made her look younger than she was, that was something about having a pixie face and a pointed chin. Although she was definitely growing out of the age where she could wear pigtails to accentuate trying to be cute, which she supposed had benefits in no longer having men ask her how long her stockings were.

OK, on a level of perfectly scientific analysis, she was better looking than about sixty-five per cent of the people she had been to school with and, according to Friends Reunited, every single one of them now had kids. All of them. Even Magda with the Sellotape on her glasses and you couldn’t tell if she was looking at you or not. Even Mary Tracey Frances McGoolie, who gave off BO like a blowtorch. And, up until now, Katie hadn’t had a date for four months.

Four months, entirely chap-free. And if she was being strictly honest…she doodled about while her computer warmed up, still staring into the lobby…if she was going to be utterly honest, Clive hadn’t really been the stuff of her dreams. In fact, if she was honest she’d only dated him to break her previous three-month date-free desert. That was why she hadn’t minded so much that he had a skin condition behind his ears and scratched it all over his caesar salad.

Katie quickly sniffed under her armpits. OK, so it wasn’t that.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Miko.

‘Nothing!’ said Katie. ‘Checking my email.’

Miko looked under her own armpit.

‘Have you got something new from IT they haven’t told the rest of us about?’

‘No.’ Katie sighed. ‘What’s wrong with me Miko?’

Miko gave her a narrow look. ‘Nothing,’ she said.

‘That sounded like hmm hmm BUT,’ said Katie. ‘You know, as in nothing…BUT; or I’m single…BUT.’

‘But look at the facts,’ said Miko.

‘Ahh,’ said Katie.

‘We’re in the middle of a crisis.’

‘I wish people would stop saying that. What crisis?’

‘The no-men crisis, you idiot.’

‘Is that a real crisis?’

For the first time Katie noticed that Miko wore false eyelashes to go with her false nails. Was anything about her real? Was that Katie’s problem – too real?

Miko stared at her.

‘What?’ asked Katie.

‘You mean you really don’t know there’s a crisis?’

Miko patiently indicated the big glass lobby wall again. ‘Girl. Girl. Baldie. Girl. Girl. Don’t you get it?’

‘There are no men?’

‘Durr.’

‘But that’s just something people say. We say it every day.’

‘Because it’s true,’ said Miko. ‘Why do you think I bought these tits?’

‘Maybe I should buy some tits,’ said Katie absentmindedly in the Square Root, hiccuping for good measure.

Terence’s little toad eyes lit up. ‘I think you look gorgeous,’ he said hopefully. Katie couldn’t believe she’d just said that out loud and, taking it as her own final warning, stood up. If his job was as brilliant as he’d been claiming for the last three hours, perhaps he wouldn’t mind getting the drinks. She stumbled to the ladies.

On Tuesday night the girls had met up in the wine bar. All around them were lots of other girls having girls’ nights out. A lot of white wine was being slugged. Shoes and voices were high. The only man in sight was the waiter. ‘Oh God,’ said Louise. ‘Keep me out of sight of the waiter.’

‘That waiter is the biggest slag in NW11,’ said Olivia loudly. ‘Oh. Sorry Louise.’

Louise was pink. ‘I’d had too much white wine. They serve it in those enormous glasses.’

‘And then a dog ate your homework,’ said Katie. Really, she wanted to talk about work but it was really difficult with Olivia there. Recently, she’d felt as if, on some level, there was a tiny teeny-weeny possibility that doing PR for new food and drink products was…perhaps just the slightest bit…pointless? Not that there was necessarily anything wrong with anchovy pretzels and pink cola, it’s just, that sometimes – like every morning on the Tube – she wished maybe she were doing something a little more useful.

‘What was he like?’ said Olivia to Louise, eyeing the dark-haired waiter preening himself in the bar mirror and deftly jamming two glasses down in the glass washer as if it were an incredibly cool thing to be doing.

‘Perfunctory,’ said Louise uncomfortably. ‘He gave me the impression that, working here, it’s part of his job description.’

‘Ladies.’

He had materialised at their elbow. Louise was suddenly peering for something so deeply in her fake Birkin she looked like a horse with a feedbag.

‘What’s that thing we’re meant to get because we’re too cool for chardonnay now?’ asked Olivia.

‘Pinot Grigio,’ said Katie. ‘Tastes the same, more expensive.’

‘Ah, the plastic Prada bag school of ordering,’ said Olivia. ‘One of those please.’

‘Of course,’ said the waiter. ‘You all look very nice tonight.’

‘Thank you,’ said Louise from the nose up. ‘Again.’

The waiter gave her a quizzical look which showed absolutely no signs of recognition whatsoever, and scooted off.

‘Maybe you should rethink that whole “having unbelievably casual sex” thing,’ said Olivia.

Louise grimaced. ‘I’m getting over Max, OK, and having a great time. Really, really great. Plus, as I keep telling you, it’s the law of averages. If there’s only one perfect person out there for you, you’ve just got to get cracking. And never look back.’

‘What if the one perfect person out there for you is a pig?’ said Olivia dreamily. ‘Or married to Jennifer Aniston?’