Free Getting Over It by Anna Maxted Page B

a great gallumphing fool of myself in front of people I barely know.
    “You mean pee your pants in front of ravishing men,” says Tina.
    “Will you stop going on about that!” I shout. Having played the urination scenario over and over in my head a million mortifying, miserable times, I don’t need reminding of it. “Anyway,” I add sulkily, “you’re wrong.”
    Tina doesn’t buy it. “Then what’s your problem?” she says rudely.
    I shrug. “It’s just… well, saying those things, you know, when I was tipsy.”
    Tina snorts. “Tipsy!” she crows. “That’s a new one! You were ninety percent proof! Although,” she concedes, “you did come out with some grim and embarrassing stuff. What was it, oh, yeah, ‘Men! They’re all the same! They all piss off and leave me! I’m going to be a spinster with cats!’ You arse! What a bunch of rubbish! No one made you buy a cat!”
    I am about to argue when I realize The Self-Sufficient One has unwittingly won my case for me. “Exactly!” I cry. “Grim and embarrassing! Which is why, A, I am never going to drink tequila ever again ever, and B, I do not wish to see or speak to this man ever again ever, or at least, for a very long while!”
    Oddly, this seems to pacify her. “Oh,” she says, in an irritating I-know-something-you-don’t tone, “All right, darling, if that’s how you want to play it.” I wait for the catch. But all she says is, “Ring us if you want to go out this week. Laters!” and puts the phone down.
    A picosecond later, the phone rings again. I snatch it up and bark, “Now what!” There is a short pause, then a voice says uncertainly, “Helen?” It isn’t Tina.
    “Yes,” I reply shortly. “Who is this?” In fact, I know damn well who it is and I am nursing a grudge of watermelon size. “It’s Michelle, honey!” Oh, I say in my head. Would that be the same Michelle who professes to be a close friend yet doesn’t turn up to my father’s funeral, explain her absence, or bother to send her condolences? Sadly, I am the Terminator in theory and Stan Laurel in practice, as pathetic at confronting friends as I am at confronting spiders. So all I say is an unenthusiastic, “Hi.”
    Michelle is oblivious. She rushes on, “Gotta make it quick. The reason I rang is—and I guess you forgot, but never mind—it’s my birthday tomorrow, and we’re going for drinks and a boogie at the U-Bar in Soho.”
    Jesus, she’s got a nerve. I say frostily, “Unfortunately, my father died two weeks ago, as you may recall, so I’m not really doing much socializing.”
    Michelle does a hammy gasp down the phone. “I know that! That’s why I haven’t called—I figured you didn’t want to be disturbed. I thought you’d want to be left alone! That’s why I didn’t mention it! I didn’t want to remind you!”
    A likely story. “I’m hardly likely to forget, am I?” I say sharply.
    “I realize that,” she says, equally sharply, “but apart from anything else, it’s a tradition in my family. Women don’t go to funerals.”
    Really, I think. That will cause a dilemma when one of them snuffs it. I break a tradition of my own and am pointedly silent. Michelle, the mind game queen, bulldozes my attempt to shame her by adding, “Helen, I’m thinking of you, here. It would do you good to get out instead of moping around your apartment. Life goes on. And”—here, a slight whine—“I’m going through a rocky patch with Sammy. I need your support. Please come.”
    Hilarious. She needs my support because her worthless wimp of a man who won’t drink a spritzer or a chocolate liqueur without permission from his mummy is in a sissy little huff. Michelle must have asked him to change a lightbulb or boil the kettle. She has been going out with Sammy for five years and two months and he has been a milksop namby-pamby bore for about 1,886 days. Michelle’s favorite hobby is griping about him to any friend too gutless to cut short a strident