Anne Billson - Stiff Lips

'I didn't mean it like that.'

I asked frostily if he wanted a drink and clumped down to the kitchen to fix one. The ice I'd taken from Marsha's fridge had long since melted. I poured the watery Margarita mixture down the plughole and began to measure out a fresh batch. This one would be warm, but I was past caring.

Graham appeared in the doorway and watched me jiggling the cocktail-shaker for several seconds before asking, 'What's that?'

'Maracas.'

'I get it. You're mixing cocktails.'

'Whatever gave you that idea?'

'No need to go to all that trouble,' Graham said, picking up the bottle of tequila. 'I'll drink straight from this.'

'You do that,' I said.

I'd known Graham for years, but only now did I realize how little I knew about him. I knew he was more of a feminist than I was — when he wasn't attempting to play forcible hunt-the-salami with Sophie, that is. I'd always assumed he was a vegetarian as well, so I'd lined up a mushroom risotto and — my pudding de resistance — blackcurrant lubitsch with sweet 'n' sour crème fraîche .

Graham shovelled it all down and duly complimented me on my cooking, but I might as well have dished up a bucket of vindaloo. If it hadn't already been obvious that he was smashed, the fact that he chain-smoked all the way through the meal, fork in one hand, fag in the other, might have tipped me off. It might have been worse, had I not managed to prise the bottle of tequila from his grip before he had made appreciable inroads and replace it with a glass of wine. He gave no indication, other than a brief baffled pursing of his lips after the first sip, that his brain had registered the switch.

After dinner, we nestled down amongst the floor cushions to drink and talk and listen to tapes, and I began to feel grateful to the old chum who had got Graham half-cut before his arrival. It was ages since I'd seen him so relaxed.

'Haven't heard this one in aeons,' he said. 'Not since I was a hippy. This is really mellow, till they ruin it with the stupid screaming.'

'You were a hippy?' I asked. 'I didn't think you were old enough.'

If I was ever going to take action, I decided it might as well be now. Under the pretence of topping up Graham's glass, I changed position so I was sitting right next to him. Then I reached into my handbag and pulled out my trump card. Graham's eyes lit up like Christmas tree lights. 'Is that what I think it is?' He sniffed the contents of the bag. You're sure it's not Earl Grey?'

I told him of course it wasn't Earl Grey. I'd had to go to enormous trouble to get my hands on it, since I was no longer seeing Dirk and Lemmy, who had previously supplied me with everything I'd ever needed. On the way back from the shops the day before, turning into Hampshire Place, I'd spotted two stunted figures in red anoraks kicking their heels on the louvred installation at the end of the street.

I did some quick mental arithmetic. I had just enough cash left. I shuffled level with the Ashoo Boys, lugging my shopping like a bag lady. They were engrossed in a Gameboy, the smaller one stabbing buttons like a 100 wpm typist.

'Hi, there,' I said.

They looked up. Two pairs of eyes widened.

I turned on my sunniest smile. 'Remember me?'

They continued to stare at me big-eyed while the untended Gameboy bleeped itself silly.

'You're shittin me,' said the older one.

'No listen…' I said.

But before I could say another word, they were off, like a couple of miniature Linford Christies on their way to Olympic Gold. In seconds, they were halfway down the road. Only once did one of them pause long enough to glance back, but whatever he saw made him turn and run even faster.

I forced a smile, in case anyone was watching — those crazy kids — and hauled my bags the remaining two hundred yards to number nine. But I was baffled, and slightly hurt. Did I look like a plain-clothes policewoman? I was brooding on it when I ran into Marsha in the hallway and told her what had happened.

'You want grass? No problem,' she said. 'I can get you some.'

And she did, and that was that, except I refused to dwell on the detail that had really been bugging me. The way those Ashoo Boys had run, you would have thought they'd mistaken me for a member of the narcotics squad. But what I didn't want to admit was that they hadn't been looking at me at all.

They'd been looking at something over my shoulder.

'Got any skins?'

For a minute, I thought Graham was talking about prophylactics. I had those all right; I'd stowed a packet of three beneath my pillow, just in case.

'Cigarette papers,' he prompted.

'I forgot,' I confessed. 'But the garage up the road should still be open.'

'We can do without,' said Graham. He placed one of my glossy magazines on his lap as a worktop, extracted a single Marlboro Light from his packet and, with the end of a match, extracted the tobacco and blended it with a pinch of grass before poking it back into the hollow tube and sealing it with a twist, like a tiny white sausage.

'Pink Floyd, floor cushions, Mary Jane,' he said, lighting the joint and sucking the smoke into his lungs. 'I feel like I'm caught in a time-warp.'

We sucked at one sausage after another. My ears started to pick out things in the music they'd never heard before. I waited for Graham to make a move, but he seemed happy to waffle on about his days as a neo-hippy, when he'd worn granny vests and flares and listened to A Saucerful of Secrets while everyone else in the class was into speed and safety pins and shredded T-shirts. Graham always had mistimed his enthusiasms. Even the feminism had surfaced many years after fashionable men had moved on to a more laddish outlook.

But it was time to move into Phase Two of my master-plan. I was terrified of rejection — so the trick would be for me to persuade Graham to come up with the idea to sleep with me all by himself. I'd made a compilation tape of all the pop music I could find which I thought might get the message across — Let's Spend the Night Together, Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You, Ring My Bell, Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me and Nobody in Town Can Bake a Sweet Jelly Roll Like Mine . But all Graham did was tap out an irrelevant rhythm on his knee, occasionally join in with a chorus and, every so often, exclaim, 'Bugger me, haven't heard this one for years.'

I began to feel the black dog of depression nipping at my heels. Why would any man — even Graham — want to bother with me, with my spectacles and mousy hair and stubborn saddle-bags of cellulite? Especially if my Hackney roots were showing, as I was sure they were. Perhaps I was just a pathetic social climber with ideas above my station.

Then I realized I was being paranoid. It wasn't me, it was the drug. Wherever Marsha got her dope from, it was a lot stronger than the stuff I was used to smoking with Dirk and Lemmy. I instructed myself to calm down, announced to Graham I was going to the bathroom, and got unsteadily to my feet.

The walk across the room seemed endless. Wisps of smoke hung unmoving in the air like broken cobwebs. Damn those spiders , I thought. I hadn't even reached the bathroom, but already I could feel the tickle of tiny legs scampering across my hypersensitive flesh.

Once inside, I locked the door, emptied my bladder and tried desperately to remember what Plan B had been. Or was it Plan C? Surely it couldn't have been something as simple as spritzing myself thoroughly with Chanel № 5 and imposing my will on Graham by sheer force of personal fragrance? I couldn't see him falling for that, somehow, but I spritzed myself anyway, even if it did make me smell of baby powder. Maybe I could appeal to his paternal instincts.

Then, in the absence of anything more constructive to do, I took off my spectacles and polished the lenses, squinted into the cracked mirror to examine my face, plucked a few eyebrows, and carefully retouched my lipstick.