Free Be Careful What You Wish For by Alexandra Potter Page A

to it I turn back to Brian.
    ‘You have the whole weekend off and you waltz in here with a grin the size of a ventriloquist’s dummy.’ He puts down his half-eaten croissant and presses his hand to his chest. ‘Put your hand on your heart and tell me you haven’t met a bloke.’
    Honestly, Brian can be so dramatic sometimes.
    ‘OK, so I met a man . . .’ I confess. ‘But before you get the wrong idea it’s not like that. He’s my new flatmate.’
    Brian is crestfallen. ‘You mean there’s no gossip?’
    ‘Nope. I’m single, remember.’
    ‘I used to watch Sex and the City .’ He raises his eyebrows knowledgeably.
    ‘Oh, Brian, that was a TV show.’ I laugh. ‘I spend most of my evenings eating TV dinners, doing my handwashing and getting into bed with a good book.’
    ‘You and me both.’ He shrugs gloomily. ‘You’re looking at a man who hasn’t had a whiff of action since the last millennium. No, I’m serious,’ he protests, before I’ve had a chance to disagree.
    Not that I’m going to. Ever since I’ve known Brian he’s only ever had three topics of conversation. Sex (lack of). West End musicals/Michael Crawford (a genius). And the fact he hasn’t been in a relationship for seven years. Three things I can’t help feeling are directly related.
    ‘The last time I got lucky Abba were at number one with “Waterloo”.’ He picks up his croissant again.
    ‘Brian, do you ever think of anything other than sex?’ I tut good-naturedly, swatting his feet off the desk and plonking the mail in front of him.
    ‘What else is there to think about?’ Pastry flakes fall off the croissant and stick to his freshly shaven chin like Velcro. He dabs it with his paper napkin.
    ‘Politics? Religion?’ sniffs Maureen, appearing from the kitchen with a mop and bucket. Maureen’s our cleaner. A thin, wiry woman with hair dyed the colour of pickled beetroot, she dealt with the loss of her husband last year by enrolling on a philosophy course at the local community centre.
    ‘Oooh, thrilling,’ says Brian, sarcastically.
    ‘Actually, it can be extremely invigorating,’ replies Maureen, stiffly. She throws me one of her toothy smiles, which contrasts sharply with the glower she’s just bestowed on Brian. ‘Morning, Heather. How was your weekend?’
    ‘Haven’t you heard? She’s been shagging.’ Brian winks, partly because he hates being left out of the conversation, and partly because he loves winding up Maureen.
    ‘Brian, will you stop it? I have not been . . .’ I grope for a polite verb ‘. . . doing anything.’ I give in to my hunger pangs by leaning across to take a bite out of his croissant, then remember my heavy thighs and lean back again.
    ‘So, why are you looking so happy?’
    ‘Haven’t you read The Road Less Travelled ?’ asks Maureen, grabbing a can of Pledge furniture polish and squirting it at Brian as if it’s insect repellent and he’s the mosquito. ‘Happiness comes from within.’
    ‘Don’t give me all that Dalai Lama claptrap.’
    ‘It’s Deepak Chopra, actually.’
    ‘Actually, it’s neither,’ I interrupt their bickering. ‘If you really want to know why I’m so happy it’s because this morning I got a seat on the tube.’
    It does the trick. Both Brian and Maureen fall silent.
    ‘A seat on the tube?’ echoes Maureen.
    ‘That’s it?’ groans Brian, visibly disappointed. As the only gay man in the whole of London whose sex life went into retirement when people were still wearing leg-warmers, Brian tends to exist on whatever scraps other people throw as him from theirs. ‘No hanky-panky? No kissing? Not even a little hand-holding?’
    For the first time ever it seems that Brian and Maureen agree on something.
    ‘Sorry.’ I shrug, flicking on my computer. ‘That’s it.’
    There’s no point in explaining. I know Brian and Maureen are never going to understand the huge relevance of what happened to me this morning after I’d gone down the