Free My Fake Wedding (Red Dress Ink (Numbered Paperback)) by Mina Ford

homosexual.’
    ‘Another one?’
    I nod miserably. ‘Stop fucking laughing.’
    ‘Oh,Katie.’ He cracks up. ‘When will you ever learn?’
    ‘Oh, take off your teacher’s cap,’ I strop, sitting down at the table and accepting the hot cup of tea he’s offering me. ‘You’re not so cool, you know. Look at the pathetic excuses for humankind you go out with. Sorry, did I say go out? I meant hump and dump.’
    ‘I don’t mean to hump and dump them.’ Sam looks momentarily depressed. ‘They just always end up being really boring, that’s all.’
    ‘Funny how you only notice that after you’ve slipped them a length, isn’t it?’ I tease him. ‘After you’ve got them to give your pork sword a good battering?’
    ‘That’s not fair.’
    ‘Yes it is. You’re such a roll on, roll off, roll over and piss off merchant. Anyway, if they’re all so boring, perhaps you should try a different type. Like one who is slightly more intelligent than your average jellyfish. There’s always Janice. Want me to give her a call?’
    Sam looks terrified.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ I say. ‘Janice was serious about changing her policy. She’s after a capital injection not a hot-beef one right now so you should be safe for a bit.’
    ‘You need to find yourself a proper boyfriend,’ Sam tells me later. ‘A straight one. Someone who’ll take care of you. Then you can forget all this one-night stand nonsense and perhaps you’ll actually be happy.’
    ‘Men are pants,’ I remind him.
    ‘No they’re not.’ He flips over to the football.
    ‘Channel flicking,’ I say pointedly.
    ‘You shouldn’t be so harsh.’ He laughs, flicking back to East-Enders for me. ‘We’re not all like Jake, you know. Some of us are actually quite nice.’
    ‘Yes, and most of you are like periods,’ I quip. ‘Hang around like a bad smell when you’re not wanted then when it actually comes to a matter of life or birth, you’re off like a stripper’s knickers. No thanks. I can do without you. All of you.’
    WhenSam finds out I’ve lost my job, he tries to make me tell Mum. After all, he says. I need all the support I can get. ‘Or at least Dad then.’
    ‘You’re not telling Jeff,’ I say firmly. ‘No bloody way. He already thinks I’m crap. And he’ll probably tell my mum. She’ll be devastated if she knows I’ve been fired. Things like that don’t happen in our family.’
    Actually, that’s the problem with my mother all round. She’s so bloody nice. I can’t tell you how much I’ve longed over the years for a mother like Janice’s. One who wears Asda ski pants and can’t even remember who the father of her children is. I’d even settle for one who went on at me all the time. You know the sort of thing. Nagging at me to lose weight, get a better job, more qualifications. Life would be so much easier. Just my luck to have it really hard. When I fuck up—through spending too much time in the Union bar and not enough in the library, for instance— I get a pat on the head and ‘I’m sure you did your best’ in reassuring tones. She has so much faith in me it hurts. I’m in a constant state of guilt.
    Sam assures me that he won’t tell Mum or his dad, as long as I agree to have a long, hard think about what I want to do for a living. Perhaps even go to a temping agency to get some other skills.
    ‘So it’s a toss-up between looking like a complete prat in a businessy type suit and women’s tights and disappointing my mother, is it?’
    ‘If you put it like that.’
    I opt for the first. I promise to think about it.
    And thinking about it is bloody well all I intend to do for the time being. After all I’ve been through, I think a good few weeks of lounging are thoroughly in order.
    ‘So what do you think?’ Sam looks at me expectantly.
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘What do you think you’d like to do?’ he asks me.
    ‘Youmean I have to think about it now?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘But I want to watch Buffy .’
    ‘Well, you