My Legendary Girlfriend Read Online Free PDF Page B

between a call from a PR called Madeline inviting Aunt Susan to the launch of a new range of Boots nail varnishes, and one from my mother checking to see if I was eating properly. When my aunt heard Aggi’s message she said, and I remember this quite clearly: ‘That sounds like Ms Right to me.’ When I got back to Nottingham, I asked Aggi about the message but she refused to discuss it. That was just her way.
    I played the messages back:
    Venus calling Mars. Come in, Mars! Why are men so bloody competitive? Discuss. Hi, Will, Alice here. If you have an answer to this eternal conundrum, or indeed just fancy a chat with your best friend in the whole wide world – call me now!
    Er, hi. This is Kate Freemans here. [Voice falters] I used to live in your flat. [Starts crying] I was just wondering if there was any mail for me. [Attempts to stop crying, instead snuffles loudly] The temp agency I was working for posted my cheque to the wrong address. I’ll try and ring later. [Begins crying again] Thanks.
    Listen, I’ve got something really important to tell you. Call me as soon as you can. It’s urgent. Really urgent . . . oh, it’s Simon by the way.
    Will, it’s Martina. I don’t know why I’m leaving this message, I think your machine is broken, this is the third one I’ve left this week. Assuming that you’ve got it fixed, hello for the first time since Saturday night! Er, ring me, please. We need to talk. Bye.
    Hello. This is Kate Freemans again. I’m just ringing to say sorry about my message. Just ignore it, okay? I’m really sorry.
    My first thoughts were about the girl who used to live in my flat. It felt weird hearing a stranger’s message on my answering machine, let alone one in which she was crying. As she hadn’t left a number there was little I could do bar sit and wonder why my answering machine had reduced her to tears. Next up, I thought about Martina, even though I didn’t want to. There was no way on earth I was going to return her call because she, as far as I was concerned, was a first rate nutter of the Fatal Attraction variety and I had no intention of playing Michael Douglas to her Glenn Close in her sordid little fantasy. I checked my watch. It was too late to catch Simon now, as I knew for a fact that his band would be on stage at the Royal Oak. Anyway, the message was so typically Simon – overblown and melodramatic – that it completely failed to pique even an iota of interest. And so by process of elimination, Alice’s was the only message left worth returning, qualifying on the grounds that it was the only one that made me feel better.
    8.47 P.M.
    I’d first met Alice on my sixteenth birthday. I’d been standing in the Royal Oak, discussing the finer points of the British soap opera compared to its weaker, less attractive Australian cousin, with two attractive fourteen-year-old girls who had taken it upon themselves to follow Simon’s first band, Reverb. The girls had got it into their heads that Simon was good-looking and interesting, and I was busily trying to persuade them that I was a far better option, when I felt myself slipping away from the conversation. While my body gibbered away on terra firma, the important bit that made all the decisions focused its attention on a girl who looked like the French foreign exchange student of my dreams – dark-red hennaed hair, a beguiling smile and beautifully tanned skin – standing alone at the end of the bar observing Reverb’s exceptionally abysmal cover of The Buzzcocks’ Ever Fallen In Love. My brain alerted my body to its new discovery and both made their excuses to their captive teenage audience.
    Chatting up girls had never been one of my strong points. Some people had that certain something needed not to look like a pillock while doing it. Simon, for instance, had it in abundance. I, however, didn’t. On most occasions I would’ve resigned myself to this fact, content to gaze longingly at her rather than take up my