The Last Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

business to
be sitting at night in a man's room, talking and drinking. What if I'd been someone
quite different, and something had happened? You would have said then that
she'd had it coming.
    You know
what? The old kid just needs to get to know me better. She'd soon see there's
nothing funny about Larry. She could be Sophia Loren, and he still wouldn't be
interested. Doreen saw to that.
    If it carries
on though, I'm going to have to tell her. We can't have her getting the wrong
idea of Larry, and what's worse, letting it come between us. It's the sort of
thing that can ruin a friendship before it's even started. A short history of
Larry, then, and his experiences with the female species might be entirely in
order. What's more, she might be just the sort of person you'd want to tell.
Remember that noise on the landing? What we might be talking about here is a
thing that goes against the grain of all creation. A woman with a sympathetic
ear.
    Am I jumping
the gun? Am I expecting too much? I don't think so. When you've seen as much as
Larry, you get so that you can judge. That girl is different.
    So there you
have it. I say there's every reason for giving Amanda the benefit of the doubt.
Forget this afternoon. As someone wisely said: tomorrow is another day.
     

Chapter Three
     
     
    Do you know those days when you can tell from the moment
you wake up that everything's going to turn out right? Today was one of those
days. I lay down and slept like a baby - and woke up like a lion, ready for
anything. Not that you could ever call me the gloomy sort. But the way I felt
first thing today made me hum while got dressed, whistle when I picked up the
milk, and actually sing as I got everything going for breakfast. What's more I
found myself throwing in an extra rasher on top of the rest and never even gave
it a second thought.
    In a
nutshell, I'd woken up in a good mood, and that's not like me. Being a stable
sort of chap I'd always have said I wasn't one for moods of any kind, good or
bad. I'm just the same, all the year round. Only not today.
    Mind you, I
wasn't quite such a happy boy when it's nine o'clock already and there's me, in
urgent need of my constitutional, yet no sign of movement down below. You'd
have thought anyone with a normal job would have been up and out long before
now, but not, it seemed, with our Mandy. It was only now that she was getting
up. The long and the short of it, it was causing me no end of distress having
to wait for her to do what she had to do and go. In all the years I've lived
here, I've never once gone to the loo for that reason while there's been anyone at home downstairs. Not in the week anyway. My
insides seem to know when it's a weekend and hang fire till the Monday. But in
the week, when there's not supposed to be anyone down there, that's asking too
much. They have a mind of their own, and that mind is as regular as clockwork.
But what could I do? The
bedroom is right next door to the lav .
    In the end,
just when I thought maybe she was taking the day off, I heard her feet on the
stairs to the hall, and the slam of the front door. And just as well. If she'd
left it any longer, I reckon I would have needed hospitalizing.
    Blessed
relief then you would have thought would be the order of the day. And indeed,
no-one could have got down those stairs faster than me, thundering along the
passageway deaf to everything else. I'd almost made it too, when what should
happen but Mandy's kitchen door opens. Not Mandy though, but Ethel. And the
girl not gone more than two minutes.
    There was
nothing for it then. Since wild horses would not have persuaded me to carry on
into the smallest room and get on with matters while she was outside, all I
could do was stop and say, as casually as was possible in the circumstances,
'Good morning, Mrs D.'
    And that's
when I saw the look on her face.
    Catching
Ethel in one of her moods is like getting too close to the bonfire on Guy
Fawkes night, with a wind blowing