The Love Shack Read Online Free PDF Page B

daughters after her husband ran off with a nineteen year old. Her take on this is: ‘She must’ve found his farting and smelly feet just irresistible.’ She’s great fun – and pretty, if not my type – with vivid green eyes and lips she paints in a colour that looks like it’s come out of a highlighter pen.
    Jade is known for two things. First, she’s been on a diet for the entire five years I’ve known her. Secondly, Pete – my colleague, good friend and long-time drinking accessory – is madly in love with her, a fact of which she is blissfully oblivious, despite him having the subtlety of a five-foot air horn.
    ‘How was the house – any good?’ she asks.
    ‘So good Gemma wants to buy it.’
    ‘Oh, that’s great news!’
    ‘But we can’t afford it.’
    She frowns. ‘That’s not great news.’
    ‘Except she’s found a way.’
    ‘Oh brilliant!’
    ‘But it’s a terrible idea.’
    She frowns. ‘Oh. Then . . . bad . So what’s the idea?’
    I wonder if there’s a way of saying this without losing every shred of professional credibility I possess. ‘We’re moving in with my mum.’
    ‘HAHAHA!’ Pete is on the stairs, doubled up with laughter. ‘Your mum ?’
    I look beadily at him. ‘What’s wrong with . . . I won’t finish that question.’
    Pete, who works on our Dual Diagnosis team, is three years older than me, five inches shorter, and has been single for six months after finally dumping his longterm girlfriend Sarah (a nightmare) to focus on his so far fruitless quest to seduce Jade. He’s employed every tactic in the book: enquiring what her perfume is (her reply: ‘Erm, Sure Ultra Dry’); fixing the Secret Santa so she got a book called Why Short Men Are Better Lovers and hanging round her desk with this pathetic doe-eyed expression that makes him look like Droopy Dog after a heavy glue-sniffing session.
    He slaps my back. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your mum, my friend. There’s definitely something wrong with a twenty-nine-year-old man still living at home though. Will she ground you if you don’t finish your homework?’
    ‘Oi! I lived with my mum when I split up with Alan,’ Jade says indignantly.
    ‘That’s totally different,’ Pete decides. ‘You were destitute. You had nowhere to go. You were on your own with two young children and—’
    ‘Actually, I could’ve rented but my mum insisted on doing the girls’ ironing and sorting their tea out every night. I wasn’t going to say no to that.’
    ‘Besides,’ I interrupt, ‘I’m not “still living at home”. This is a temporary arrangement while we save up enough for the house we want.’
    Pete looks at me. ‘So what time’s your curfew?’
    Jade laughs. Then: ‘Ooh, Dan, while I remember: my friend’s over from America in a few weeks. What bars shall I take her to? You know all the trendy places.’
    ‘Hmm . . . I’ll have a think,’ I reply.
    ‘ I know some good places,’ Pete leaps in.
    ‘Oh, okay,’ she shrugs.
    ‘I could come with you, if you like.’
    ‘Oh. You wouldn’t mind?’
    For a moment he looks as though he’s experiencing some sort of transcendental awakening; his eyes are virtually rolling into the back of his head with joy. ‘Of course not. It’d be a pleasure.’
    Then her face drops. ‘Oh bugger. I forgot. I said we’d have a girls’-only night. She’s just been dumped. You’d be bored stiff.’
    ‘I wouldn’t!’
    ‘God, you would – it’d be awful for you,’ she insists. ‘We just want to spend the night slagging off men.’
    ‘ I can slag off men,’ he offers.
    ‘You’d hate it.’
    ‘I’d love it!’
    ‘Let’s do it another time, shall we? I’m sure my mum’ll agree to babysit again. Maybe some point next year.’
    By the time we get upstairs to the office, he’s inconsolable. ‘That’s it. I need tips,’ he says, flopping onto his chair.
    ‘Don’t look at me for some sort of insight,’ I tell him.
    ‘Come off it. When I first met you,