Page 21 of Always the Bridesmaid

Momentarily, I feel sorry for his predicament.

My sympathy lasts only so long as it takes him to start belting out ‘Jailhouse Rock’.

‘Do you ever give the play-acting a rest?’

He completely ignores my question, which I take to mean no.

The analogue clock in the car confirms that my rumbling tummy is not unreasonable. The short arm has ticked past twelve and I have been running on one pastry for three hours now. Pastries to me are like fresh flowers in a vase – attractive and temporarily mood lifting but lacking any real substance. What I need now is a tree – some long-lasting carbs and protein. I am ravenous.

But it seems that lunch is still far away…

‘I live near Clapham Junction,’ Charlie says, which means absolutely nothing to me, since I don’t know London at all. ‘We’ll drop off the car at my place, then take the Tube into Soho.’

My heart sinks. ‘The Tube? That’s like a subway, right?’

He glances at me and must register my dismay. ‘It’s fairly quick. Are you hungry?’

‘A little.’

‘Me too. I know a great Vietnamese. A family-run place.’ He leans far over the steering wheel, too far, and squints in that way he does, as he indicates and takes a right at a junction.

Ooh, Vietnamese. I could definitely do Vietnamese.

‘I thought we were meeting the Elvis suit guy in Camden, though – or are Soho and Camden one and the same place?’

‘You are meeting the Elvis guy – Joe, I think he’s called – in Camden. After lunch, I need to go to the club where my gig is tonight.’

‘Do you sound check for comedy gigs?’ I ask, both surprised and curious. Whenever I’ve been to an open mic night for these things, it has seemed very casual and off-the-cuff.

‘Nah, it’s just me. I like to make sure everything is ready and get a feel for the stage and whatnot.’

‘I hadn’t figured you to be a prepared kind of guy.’

He scoffs but doesn’t speak, for a change. And because of that, I have no idea what he’s thinking. In honesty, neither do I care.

We turn into a residential street of the ilk I have seen in London-based movies. Victorian terraces – not those fancy white ones where billionaires reside but the yellow brick ones that normal people live in – four floors high, with bay windows on the ground floor and, oddly, even on the basement floor too.

Charlie parks on the street and I follow him up some steps to a blue door that has a gold 38 sign on the front. Inside, he picks up a small pile of what looks like spam post and opens one of four post-boxes on the wall of the plain painted hallway.

I can distinctly smell fried onions and curry powder, which serve as a reminder to my stomach that it contains nothing but acid right now.

Interior stairs lead up from the hallway, and to their left is one white door, which Charlie opens with a key.

I follow him inside to find a blue futon on laminate flooring in an open plan lounge-cum-diner-cum-kitchen space. There is a glass television stand in the corner of the room which has a charger plugged in that I recognize as being for a Mac, but there is no laptop or television in sight.

Brown boxes are stacked on top of each other in the lounge and on top of a small glass-top table in the area that appears to serve as the diner. I can see down a short corridor that has two open doors – a toilet and a bedroom – where more boxes are stacked.

‘Are you coming or going?’ I ask.

‘Coming,’ Charlie says, now opening the refrigerator in the kitchen and taking out two cartons of what looks like children’s fruit smoothies. ‘Want one?’

‘Please.’ I’m not in a position to be picky.

‘I’ve recently moved in, hence the boxes. It’s the first place I’ve actually rented on my own – I’ve always been in shares – so it might not look much but I’m pretty proud of it.’

I smile. ‘A lick of paint and some pictures and it will look great.’

He nods as he slurps his smoothie through the straw. ‘I’ve only recently started earning the kind of money from my gigs that means I can afford a place like this to myself.’

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