Page 25 of Big Nick Energy
‘OK, so you had to leave?’
‘No, I probably would have got thrown out for snogging the ice sculpture and not using the shot glasses like a sensible human being. But it was a very high-end, snooty party. Lots of bellends. I felt out of place.’
‘Look at you keeping the insults seasonal,’ she says.
I curtsey at the compliment.
‘Where was it?’
‘Natural History Museum.’
‘Fancy. And Nick?’
I pause for a moment and look out into the night sky, watching the flashing lights of a plane overhead and a crescent of silver moon hanging there. ‘He kind of abandoned me. It was a work social and he disappeared for an hour. I don’t think he meant to, but it was a bit… tedious, and for a work party you would have thought there’d be…’
‘A conga line at least,’ Lucy jokes. I think of Meribelle and her Gucci doing the conga, the Macarena, getting on down to the cha-cha slide. ‘Sounds like a duff party. I’m sorry. Told you so though,’ she says, sticking her tongue out at me.
‘Told me what?’ I enquire.
‘Don’t go back for seconds. I know I only met him once or twice, but I never could see you with a serious finance sort,’ she says.
‘Lucy, we went out for a year,’ I remind her.
‘Yeah, but that’s a university relationship. It exists in a bubble of cheap rent and even cheaper alcohol. Do you want to know what I remember about him?’ she says. I shake my head.‘We had food and he ordered you some breaded brie shit. He didn’t even ask what you might want. He just ordered for you.’
‘He did?’ I say, trying to rewind back to the memory.
‘Red flag for me but I don’t really like men telling me what to do. If someone ordered a burger for me and I didn’t want a burger then I’d throw it back at him.’
‘Which I feel would make for a very successful date,’ I say.
‘Well, this all confirms what I thought, finance people usually live in the echelons of their own self-importance.’
Thinking back to how he lied about my real job, this is perhaps true, but there is also no denying that we bumped into each other for a reason. And if you think about all the people you could bump into on any day, in any city, it feels as though there was a reason to drift back into each other’s lives, a sort of magic and coincidence you can’t quite explain. I keep going back to our year of dating too and all the good parts of being together. We went on a city break to Dublin, he supported me through the time when my aunt passed away, and we had a lot of fun together. A fun that we’ve relived in recent days, a spark we’ve re-ignited. I think back to his body angled over mine, a synergy, realising how well we still fit together. Sexually, he’s delicious and he’s giving off this strongSuitsenergy that’s suave, mature, alluring. I realise I’m thinking all of this but still swaying.
‘You should be single with me, get an ugly cat and we can go out every weekend. Order what we want, when we want,’ Lucy says.
‘Why does the cat have to be ugly?’ I ask.
‘Because they’re always the most unloved ones. All the love you have in that beautiful heart of yours, channel it elsewhere.’
I smile and blow her a kiss, extracting the compliment from her words. I do another strange swaying but spinning dance move and turn towards the fences by the field, my head tilting slightly as something gets my attention. ‘What’s that?’
Bizarrely, they look like a set of aluminium speakers, wrapped in white material, but I can’t see any wiring. They sit on red-framed stands rested against the fence.
‘They’re the netting machines,’ Lucy says. ‘For the trees – so people can take them home all slim and compact. You thought me and the trees may be the star attraction here but really people stand there for ages and watch the netting machines.’
I suddenly realise what she’s talking about. ‘Ohhh! The net thingies for the trees. I love those!’ Lucy looks at me, laughing, as if she’s not sure if I’m drunk or genuinely excited about this apparatus. It would be the latter. I get excited about these in the same way I do about the machine in the supermarket that slices your bread for you. They are both genius feats of engineering. ‘Can we put something through it so I can see it in action? My clutch?’ I hold up my bag.
‘Nah, that’s too small.’ She looks over at the trees and then over her shoulder. ‘They’ve got the big trees out. You’d have to help me,’ she says, pushing one of the funnel-shaped machines away from the fence. And that is the beauty of a friend like Lucy. She’s only had a few shots of alcohol but there is something about her that will always exude fun and can-do. This is how she will make her friend happy this evening. She goes over to the fence and picks a massive tree. ‘It needs to go in trunk end first,’ she says, dragging it through. ‘You go fluffy branch end and push the bastard in.’
This must look odd to any outsider but I am very excited, falling over myself as I try to get hold of the treetop. ‘You ready?’ she says. ‘I grab the wood, you yank.’
‘Oi, oi…’ I say, and we both explode into fits of giggles.
‘Three, two, one and…’ I don’t know what happens next. But Lucy yanks incredibly hard and, because I’m still laughing, I seem to hold on to a branch of the tree a little too firmly becauseI lose my footing and slip. Into the funnel. My face lands in a sea of pine needles and I scream as she continues to yank.
‘LUCY!’ I say, half-shrieking, half-giggling. I can’t see her as I seem to be halfway through this funnel, my arm still attached to this tree and I can hear Lucy’s jingly shoes and the sound of her in absolute hysterics.
