Free Some Girls Do by Clodagh Murphy Page A

nodded.
    ‘Yeah.’ He could see the questions in her eyes, and could tell she was struggling with herself not to ask them. He was glad. He didn’t really want to talk about it. Then it occurred to him that maybe she didn’t need to ask because she already knew the whole story. He hated the thought that she might know all about him. ‘Who told you I was from Romania?’
    ‘That guy Philip mentioned it.’
    ‘I bet he did.’
    ‘So what will you do about your electricity?’ she asked.
    ‘I’ll figure something out.’
    ‘Wouldn’t your parents help?’
    ‘I wouldn’t ask them to.’
    ‘Oh. Well, why don’t you get a job?’
    ‘Doing what?’
    ‘I don’t know. Anything. Just to pay the bills.’
    ‘I’m an artist. It’s not a very transferable skill.’
    ‘Well, I’m sure there are plenty of other things you could do. I mean, if you can’t make a living as an artist …’
    Oh Christ, not this again. He’d had enough of being harangued over the years – by his parents; by random girls, who decided they would like to be with him if only he were different; by well-meaning friends who wanted to make him their pet project and sort out his life. This was why he didn’t want a girlfriend. They were always trying to change you, to mould you into the person they wanted you to be.
    ‘I mean, I write but—’
    ‘You do?’
    ‘Yes, but that doesn’t mean I can just say, “I’m a writer,” and give up work to sit around writing all day.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because I have bills to pay. I have my mother depending on me.’
    ‘Well, I don’t have anyone depending on me. If I’m broke, it doesn’t affect anyone but me. Besides, I don’t “sit around all day”. I work hard. Do you work at your writing?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said, bristling. ‘But it doesn’t pay the bills, and I don’t think it makes me too special to have an ordinary meaningless job.’
    ‘Neither do I!’ he protested. She obviously thought he was really up himself. ‘I don’t think working’s beneath me, or any crap like that – though I’ve been told I’m unemployable on numerous occasions, and at this stage I’m inclined to believe it.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I do bits and pieces when I can – casual work that won’t interfere with my painting.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘I do some framing occasionally for a friend who owns a gallery. And there are a couple of Polish girls in my building who work as cleaners. They pass on jobs to me sometimes when they have an overload.’
    ‘Cleaning?’ She raised a sceptical eyebrow, no doubt remembering his flat.
    ‘Yeah, I’m not very good at it,’ he said, with a soft chuckle. ‘The only things I’m really good at are painting and shagging, and I haven’t figured out how to make money from either yet.’
    When Claire got up the next morning, Luca had gone. On the kitchen table, he had left an A4 sheet of paper, with a pencil sketch of a bunch of flowers and a message: ‘Thanks for last night – and the night before. Sorry they’re not real. Luca.’ Claire smiled at the drawing, touched by the sweetness of the gesture. Then she stuck it to the fridge with a magnet, as if to mark the end of her acquaintance with Luca. At least it had finished on a good note.

Chapter Seven
    Let’s Get This Party Going
    Regular readers of the blog will know I’m not into threesomes. I might consider it with the right person, in the right circumstances, so it’s not quite what the BDSM crowd would call a hard limit – but almost. So it might surprise you to know that I attended my first orgy last weekend.
    If I don’t like the idea of sex with just one extra person, how could I think about doing it with a whole group of people, most of them strangers? But here’s the thing: people can do all sorts of things in a group that they wouldn’t contemplate doing on their own. Psychologists have studied this. A sort of group mentality takes over. It’s partly the safety-in-numbers thing –