Straight Talking Read Online Free PDF Page A

I’ve almost got into fights with drivers on the road who are pootling along like goddamned pensioners.
    Well, of course I suffer from road rage, did you really expect anything less? Wankers, cunts, fuckwits, the words stream from my frothing lips when I’m in a hurry. Every now and then, when I’ve calmed down, I worry about it, but I always keep the doors locked, ever since someone tried to wrench it open to swing at me. Fuckwit.
    Mel’s first to arrive. Shit, I adore Mel. I met her just before I met Simon, through another friend I don’t see anymore, and I have to say I wasn’t crazy about her. Mel’s not like the rest of us. She drives around in a car affectionately known as the shitmobile—a filthy beaten up Renault 5 that smells like an ashtray on wheels.
    Mel doesn’t care about clothes, about money, about appearances, and although I respect that, I can’t help but think that if she cared a little more she’d look a hell of a lot better.
    She’s not unattractive, Mel, or at least she wasn’t, when we first met, but she’s put on masses of weight, and her dark curly hair usually looks like it needs a bloody good brush, with about a gallon of John Frieda’s Frizz Ease serum dumped on it. I thought she wasn’t good enough, I was caught up in the superficiality that comes with being successful at an age when you’re too young to know any better.
    I looked with disdain at Mel’s Marks & Spencer clothes, her haphazard life, and I decided she wasn’t good enough to be my friend. How stupid could I have been? When I hit rock bottom, when Simon left, Mel spent hours with me, day and night. I used to phone her at three A . M ., when I couldn’t sleep, when I’d wake up with tear-stained pillows, and she’d come over, she’d leave her boyfriend sleeping and she’d tiptoe out and talk me through.
    She’s a therapist, Mel, the best person in the world to pour your troubles out to, but naturally Mel’s more screwed up than anyone I know. She’s brilliant, just brilliant at sorting out other people’s lives, but hasn’t got a clue when it comes to her own.
    As soon as she walks in I can see something’s wrong, and my heart sinks. I try to be as giving and understanding as she is with me, but a side of me loses patience. A side of me can’t understand why, if she’s so unhappy, she doesn’t just get out.
    “Daniel,” I say with a sigh, and a hint of impatience I can’t keep out of my voice. “What’s he done now?”
    “He doesn’t want to come with me next weekend,” she says, dumping her ethnic tote sack on the floor and collapsing into the chair opposite me. “He’s decided that there’s a party he’d rather go to on Saturday night, in London, and he can’t be bothered to schlep to a wedding in the country.”
    Daniel? You want to know about Daniel? All I can tell you is this is typical of Daniel. A smooth-talking lawyer who’s pleasant looking, charming company, and a total shit to Mel. They’ve been together for five years, but he won’t marry her until she’s changed. He wants her to lose weight, to wear better clothes. In short, to be more like us.
    And shit, does he flirt. I’ve started to dread seeing him, because when Mel’s back is turned he’ll sidle up and whisper that he’s always fancied me, that maybe, when I’m feeling lonely, I should give him a call.
    And it’s not just me. He’s done it to Emma as well. He probably wants to do it to Andy, but I think she scares him. But what can you do? What can you say when your friend’s boyfriend is flirting, and since none of us have taken him up on his crappy offer, how do you know whether he’s all mouth and no trousers? Think about it, what would you do?
    Maybe it doesn’t matter, maybe it’s the fact that he’s saying it at all, but Mel’s such a good person, so genuine, and the three of us have agreed not to tell her, we just want her to finish it, to get out, to get on with her life.
    Because a woman will always