Free The Case of the Missing Boyfriend by Nick Alexander

think.
We’re all the same age here.
    ‘I think all of us remember the eighties in some form or another,’ I say.
    ‘I don’t,’ Carl laughs. ‘I blew all my brain cells out with E.’ ‘Carl!’ Cynthia admonishes. He winks at me and shrugs. ‘Well, I did. All I remember from the eighties is the strobe lights.’
    ‘Anyway,’ Pete says. ‘According to this guy at work, it could be even worse this time around.’
    ‘Well, we all survived,’ I say. ‘No one actually died because of the recession . . . I mean, it was awful for some people, but let’s be honest, not really for people like us. That’s what was so unfair about the Thatcher years. But my dad made a mint during the eighties.’
    ‘Well, they may have been
unfair
,’ Peter says. ‘But where would we be now without old Thatch? Lord, we’d be like France, walking around in wellies and growing our own cheese.’
    Cynthia leans over my shoulder and hands me a plate. As she moves on around the table, I say, ‘Ooh! What’s this? Looks lovely.’
    ‘Red-pepper crostini,’ she says. ‘It’s Jamie Oliver.’
    ‘Well I still think it could happen,’ Martin says. ‘And if house prices crash, we’ll all be stuck in negative equity. And that’s a nightmare. You wait and see.’
    ‘Well, I’m not worried,’ I say. ‘Honestly, I refuse to worry about the value of my house . . . As long as I can live in it, I really don’t give a damn.’
    ‘Good for you,’ Carl says.
    ‘Your place is all paid for anyway, isn’t it?’ Pete asks.
    I wrinkle my nose. Apparently, tonight,
everything
about me is public domain. ‘Nearly,’ I say. ‘I paid most of it off when my grandmother died.’
    ‘Well that’s one thing you got right, at least,’ Martin says. ‘Because people don’t realise it, but debt will cripple us all in the end.’
    ‘Says the man who just bought a new car on credit,’ Cheryl, his wife, says, holding her pregnant belly and laughing.
    ‘What about yours, Pete?’ Carl asks, winking at me again. ‘How much do
you
owe on that bloody mansion of yours?’
    ‘I don’t think I want to tell you,’ Pete answers.
    ‘No,’ Carl says with a grin. ‘No, I thought not.’
    I sit and eat my crostini, which turns out to be a delicious type of cheese on toast, and let the conversation drift around me, and wonder what the ‘one thing you got right,’ was supposed to mean. I suppose it’s something to do with the fact that I’m single, and that being a sign of ultimate failure on my part. But you would have to have one hell of an imagination to decide that my separation from Brian, for example, was my fault, was an error of
my
judgement . . .
    And then I slip into my own little bubble, and imagine how different my life would be if I had met a different guy instead, different
guys
. . . And I wonder why Brown Eyes hasn’t phoned, and then what it would be like if he were here tonight. Would I suddenly feel at ease with these people? Or would they suddenly feel more at ease with me? Perhaps a single girl is a threat . . . perhaps that’s why I always sense so much latent aggression in these get-togethers. I look around the table at Cynthia, mother of two, and her witty fashion-obsessed husband Carl. I look at smug banker Pete and his dull Surrey-wife Betina, who looks somehow not from my generation at all, but from my mother’s instead. I bet she even listens to Radio Two. Of course, we all listen to Radio Two these days. They play Oasis and Blur. I wonder what station people of my mother’s generation
do
listen to.
    I look at lecherous, drunken Martin with his pretty air-head wife Cheryl, and wonder if Brown Eyes would fit in with these people, and if he did, would I like him
at all
? For, in the end, though they are supposedly my friends, I wouldn’t want to be any of the women present, and other than Carl, I doubt I could tolerate any of their husbands for a weekend, let alone a life.
    And all of this leaves me wondering if this