Page 70 of The Day After Christmas
‘The Lion King?’ said Bex.
‘Nope…’
‘Er, no, okay, hold on, he probably said something shooty likeThe Bourne IdentityorDeadpool.’
‘Deadpool, that’s right.’
‘But it’s only because it’s got that Ryan Gosling in it. He’s delicious.’ Several of the girls murmured their agreement.
‘Reynolds,’ said Felicity, under her breath.
‘What?’ said Bex, her eyes unfocused as she turned to look at Felicity.
‘Reynolds. Not Gosling.’
‘Right,’ said Sophie hastily. ‘Next one. We asked Adam what you would most like to eat on a Friday night.’
A couple of the girls giggled and nudged each other.
‘Not like that,’ said Sophie, rolling her eyes.
‘Indian takeaway,’ said Bex.
‘Ooh, can you be more specific?’ said Sophie.
Bex was looking rather pale. Even more so than usual, if that was possible. Her plastic tiara had slipped down the back of her head and she was now swaying quite violently on her chair.
‘I like the one with the prawns,’ she said, with a slight hiccough.
‘Prawn bhuna. Close enough.’
‘Bex, do you feel okay?’ said Felicity, sliding a bit closer to her on the bench seating. ‘You look a bit…’
And this, it turned out, was her fatal mistake.
Bex turned to answer her, opened her mouth and projectile vomited into Felicity’s face, all down her front and all over the leather seating.
Everything happened in slow motion after that.
People around the restaurant started screaming. Bex stood up for some unknown reason and then vomited three more times onto the table in between dry heaving, giggling hysterically and saying, ‘Oh my, oh Lord, oh my goodness,’ over and over again.
Waiters and waitresses appeared out of nowhere, as if to help, but then were so mortified they just stood and stared at the scene of abject horror before them. Felicity, face and hair dripping with vomit, was so stunned she couldn’t even move. She sat in horrified silence for a moment and then burst out laughing. What else was there to do? Bex looked at her and laughed too and then they were all laughing and it was a strangely warm and friendly moment until suddenly Felicitywasn’t laughing any more. Sickness rose in her own throat and she pushed her chair back. Felicity stood and turned towards the toilets, then slipped in a pile of sick on the floor and fell down flat on her face. There was a gasp from behind her and then more laughing, this time from strangers; oh, the mortification. She lay for a moment right there on the restaurant floor, head aching from where it had met the cold tiles quite hard. The smell of vomit by this point was overwhelming.
Felicity clambered to a sitting position, using the table to pull herself up, groaning the whole time and putting her hands into even more of the piles of warm vomit around her. She staggered to the toilets, where she was sick into the toilet bowl, sat back, smelt the Bex sick in her own hair and then threw up twice more.
Sophie banged on the toilet door, asking her over and over again if she was okay but Felicity couldn’t answer because more vomit. Eventually she managed to crawl to the door to open it, whimpering.
‘Good Lord,’ said Sophie. ‘Let’s get you home.’
It was all a blur after that.
No taxis would take her, and who could blame them? In the end Sophie called James. His mouth dropped open when he caught sight of Felicity but to his credit he managed to keep a straight face. Without a word, he took her arm, guiding her into the back of the car where she sat leaning her face against the half-open window, letting the cool air wash over her and praying to be magicked into her bed. It was the longest fifteen minutes of her life. When they finally got home, she waved feebly goodbye to Sophie with a grateful smile, then James steered her straight upstairs and into the bathroom, clothes still dripping with sick.She managed two showers in quick succession before climbing into bed, still whimpering. It was only later she even wondered how Sophie had got home.
The only one who wasn’t horrified and appalled at her appearance was Gennie the cat, who climbed on top of her as she always did and purred on Felicity’s stomach all night while she slept the sleep of the nearly dead. When she woke up the next day, even though she was now clean and smelt of petals, all she could think of was how Bex’s vomit had smelt in her hair. She turned over and closed her eyes, blocking out the memory.
A few hours later she woke again to the smell and sound of fresh coffee being brewed on James’s fancy machine downstairs. Her stomach groaned with hunger and she realised they hadn’t even had time to have dinner at the restaurant before VomitGate saw the whole lot of them being turned out on their drunken ears. She was starving.
Felicity crawled out of bed, wrapping James’s oversized and super-soft tartan dressing gown around her, and stumbled down the stairs just as James, wearing only a pair of soft grey tracksuit trousers, was putting a pile of home-made egg-and-hash-brown muffins on the table. Her absolute favourite breakfast. Her stomach groaned again. On any other day the sight of that muscled chest would have made her instantly hot and bothered. But not today. Today, she felt so rough she just wanted to find a corner to curl up in so she could die a slow and peaceful death. Still, she could vaguely remember that he’d been her knight in shining armour the previous evening. Best show some gratitude.
