Page 104 of Don't You Forget About Me

‘You absolutely said no way to getting back with Robin McNee then?’ Kitty says, sucking on a thin straw in a bottle of Diet Coke.

‘Hell to the yeah,’ I say, while I wipe out a drawer underneath the bar, with a vigorous scouring motion. I haven’t heard from him since yesterday’s message so I’m feeling quite satisfied that my scheming has worked. Also, I don’t know if Lucas is round the corner but I can guess which way this line of questioning from Kitty will go, and am planning on answering as if he can hear, for safety. It’s coming up to 9 p.m. and the bar is quiet for once.

‘Yer not seeing anyone then?’ she says.

‘Nope.’

‘Don’t you want to meet someone? Get married, have kids and that?’

‘Those are three different questions,’ I smile up at her. ‘I’d like to meet someone but I’m not in any rush. I don’t know if I want the other two until I’m with someone.’

‘You should get on Tinder.’

I straighten up, rinse the cloth, wring it out, check the time. A slow shift and not much of it left.

‘I’m more looking for love than bunk-ups, to be honest. Proper romance. I’m re-readingWuthering Heightsat the moment. It has the best line: “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”’

Kitty looks dumbstruck and I briefly flatter myself I might get the queen of social media into classic literature.

‘Whatever ARSEHOLES are made of they have the same arsehole??!’ she shrieks, and Lucas sticks his head round the corner and says: ‘Shhhh!’

‘Our souls! Souls!’ I say, shaking with laughter.

A woman with a severe ponytail approaches the bar and something in the set of her face, and the speed of her movement, strikes me as off, somehow.

‘Yes?’ I say, composing myself, which isn’t the usual greeting, but somehow I know something’s up.

‘Are you Georgina?’ she says.

‘Yeee-es?’

‘This is from Bob.’

I open my mouth to say I don’t know a Bob when she raises a Tupperware container she’s been holding with one hand, behind her back, and throws the contents directly into my face. It’s cold and acrid and stings my eyes, making me cry out, temporarily blinding me.

I hear voices shouting, men and women, and feel myself bundled along the bar and into the kitchen.

There’s the sound of the door slamming shut behind me and I hear Lucas’s voice say: ‘This is going to be cold,’ before my face is pushed under a tap and water flows over my face. It goes up my nose and I start squeaking in shock and struggling, as if I’m being waterboarded.

‘Georgina, you have to do this, stop pushing!’

I go limp, trying to catch a breath through the running water and hear Lucas sayingfuck fuck fuckrapidly and I wonder why he sounds so scared and why I am being held down in a sink instead of towelled off, and why I can feel him pulling at my clothes, sleeves being yanked over my hands, then I’m pulled upright and my t-shirt goes all the way over my head.

Before I can blink the water away or catch my breath, my head goes back under the tap. This time I can feel it flowing over my neck and spattering my chest, the shiver of bare flesh in direct contact with the air. What on earth, why make me even wetter? It runs down me in rivers and into the top of my jeans and I scream: ‘Stop, it’s cold!’ like a child.

I’m jerked out of the sink and upright again like a rag doll and I feel warm hands on either side of my head and Lucas’s voice saying: ‘Can you open your eyes?’

I tentatively unstick the lids. The kitchen comes blurrily into view, through a lot of H2O, tinted grey by displaced mascara. I blink. Water trickles warmly out of my nose.

‘Blurgh, what happened?’

‘Can you …’ Lucas trails off. ‘Can you see me?’

I focus on him and say: ‘Yeah, course?’

He pushes gently at my temples, face an inch from mine, as he moves my head left and then right. He holds me at a slight distance, looking down, running the fingertips of one hand along my collarbone, watching me to see my reaction. I gulp and mentally save the sensation to remember later, and look down too.

Like an anxiety dream made real, I’m only wearing my bra on my upper half. The Fair Isle cardigan I was wearing is lying discarded nearby on the kitchen tiles with my t-shirt dropped soppily on top. Thank God this bra is an opaque black balcony, if there were actual nipples in the room I’d have to kill myself. I didn’t dress this morning expecting Lucas McCarthy and I to be jointly inspecting my cleavage today.

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