Page 70 of Don't You Forget About Me

‘Who are you?’ Robin says. ‘On what authority?’

‘I’m the owner.’

‘For what reason?’

‘Disturbing other drinkers.’

‘They seemed to enjoy it.’

‘It’s not a democracy, it’s my benign dictatorship. Go.’

‘A word to the wise,’ Robin says to Lucas. ‘See the bigger picture. This here is a love story for the ages and you can choose your role in it. Don’t be “heartless landlord”.’

‘I think you’ve got our pub confused with eHarmony. Here we are,’ he escorts Robin towards his coat, lying over a chair. As Al stands up, Lucas says, picking up his phone before he can: ‘Can you delete that film you took, please?’

‘I’m allowed to film if I want!’

‘Not on these premises without permission first, unless you want a big fine. What’s it to be, big fine or deleting it?’

Al huffs and puffs and swears and holds his hand out for the phone, swiping, prodding a button and when Lucas, squinting at the screen, is satisfied, he ushers them both doorwards.

‘Excuse me, excuse me.’

They’re stopped in their tracks by Gareth fromThe Star.

‘Robin McNee, isn’t it? Perhaps you’d like to be involved with this? You could help judge!’

Gareth is waving a Share Your Shame bill under his nose and Robin takes it.

Oh, no.

‘Or maybe you’d like to contribute to this next week? You missed the first one but I don’t think it’d matter … Very informal, few drinks, open mike kind of thing. I’m sure you’d be a huge hit.’

God, Gareth is practically simpering.

‘It’s here? Is there a fee? You know who this is?’ Al the agent says, with a lip curl.

‘Excuse me,’ Lucas says, ‘I just asked these gentlemen to leave,’ and Robin and Al are unceremoniously ejected into the night.

‘He’s been tipped to win the Perrier award, you know!’ Gareth says to Lucas, after the door’s closed. ‘He’s going places.’

‘He can go any place he likes, as long as it isn’t this pub,’ Lucas says, and Gareth shakes his head.

I am torn between gratitude at care for me, in Lucas’s intervention, and a sense that I’m polluting the pub’s reputation, and Lucas had felt nothing for me but a mixture of disdain and pity.

My friends and family, whose vantage point means they’ve not caught what went on in the doorway, but have definitely caught what went on with Robin’s speech, have decided to make a tactful exit to spare my blushes.

‘We’d have shouted at him and pushed him off that chair,’ Clem says. ‘But Jo says you didn’t want us to make a fuss?’

I nod, miserably.

Esther and Mark are trying to work out how to arrange their faces. I could scream, cry, pummel Robin into a bloody pulp.

Tonight had been about me trying to do something bold and constructive for a change, and thanks to Robin humiliating me in my workplace, it’s all but obliterated.

When everyone has left, and I’m mopping up, I see the topic for the next episode of Share Your Shame has been posted up on the pub noticeboard.

Your Worst Date.

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