Free The Sex Was Great But... by Tyne O’Connell Page B

you’d asked me I would have said the term was like blasphemy—reserved for those religious fanatics who stand on street corners. Anyway, so Holly started banging on about her precious table and chairs. About them being “art.” See, what I hadn’t realized is that they weren’t chairs in the true sense of the word. They looked like chairs, and felt like chairs when you sat on them, but they were designed by Gunter Gurt, which makes a big difference, apparently.
    If, like me, you’ve never heard of this Gunter bloke, he’s a German guy who’s about to be the next big thing in furniture design. Actually, he is really a sculptor more than a furniture-maker, and the “chairs” (use the word loosely) are actually works of creative genius. Are you impressed? Nor was I.
    Faced with a barrage of lectures about German design, I figured the best defense was no defense at all. It was a tactic I used to great effect on Mum and Auntie Lucy as a kid, and later on with any girl who confused me with emotions and feelings. I kept eating my cereal, thinking she’d eventually chill and we could go back to how we were in the car.
    But then she did this pursed thing with her mouth that my mum used to do when people tried to get her to knock a few quid off something at her stall—right before she said, “Now you’re trying to fleece me!” When my mum gave that look, it was best for them to just put down whatever it was they were handling and move away from the market table as quickly as they could. I spooned the last of the cereal into my mouth, put the bowl down and stood up as if to leave.
    Her tone was edgy. “I thought you’d eat it in the kitchen.” I was still chewing a wodge of cereal that was far more than my mouth could manage, so I nodded to show that I was taking her expectations on board. “Only it’s a lot easier,” she persisted.
    â€œEasier than what?” Like a lot of the shit that pours out of my mouth, I regretted the remark instantly. Not least of all because I was still chewing, and as I spoke small bits of potassium-enriched cardboard and dried fruit flew out of my mouth and landed all over Gunter’s great work of genius.
    That was when her eyes started popping out of their sockets, and she started taking in huge gulps of air and holding her hands against her chest like corpses do when they’re in their coffins at wakes. I almost wet myself I was so scared. What if she died?
    Images of me trying to explain to the cops how a bum like me was in the home of an up-till-then healthy celebrity when she keeled over and died flashed through my brain. This was bad news. No passport, no money and a dead celebrity on my hands—and my smashed-up face wouldn’t look too great in the police mug shots either. These thoughts all took less than a nanosecond, of course, and I immediately took action.
    The deep breaths might just mean she was hyperventilating, with the stress of everything, so I grabbed the nearest thing to a paper bag I could find, which as it happens was the inside of the cereal box. Technically it wasn’t a paper bag, more a wax-paper sleeve, but now wasn’t the time for technicalities. Her eyes were still bulging and her breathing was still sounding bad and the similarity to corpses in coffins was increasing every moment.
    Apart from one time at a club in London, when this fat guy passed out in the toilets on E, I’ve never had to resuscitate anyone before. As it was, my attempt was unsuccessful—and that was with help from the club’s in-house medics. So, with one thing and another, I had a lot to prove here.
    Grabbing the carton of cereal and emptying the contents onto the floor, I wrenched the wax sleeve from the carton, shoved it over Holly’s mouth, held her head firmly and told her to breathe into the bag very deeply.
    What I wasn’t expecting was a struggle.
    The next thing I knew I