Free Life and Soul of the Party by Mike Gayle Page B

Cooper’s barbecue last summer.’
    ‘I think I know the one you’re on about,’ said Polly amiably. ‘The one who told the Elephant Man story?’
    ‘Yeah,’ replied Tony. ‘That’s the one. Well, this is Vicky, my mate Chris’s wife. And this,’ continued Tony gesturing to the girl, ‘is Polly Matthews, my girlfriend, best mate and,’ cheesily, ‘the light of my life.’
    Chris
    Tony and I were friends from back in our early twenties when we’d lived in a houseshare in Rusholme during my final year at university. One Saturday afternoon Tony had got it into his head to get his nose pierced. Rather than getting it done properly however, he opted to get it done on the cheap by a goth girl he fancied two doors down from us who owned her own home-piercing kit. Within hours of putting the stud in his nose the whole side of his face swelled up to the size of a football, thereby earning him the nickname ‘Elephant Man Tony’.
    Tony was one of those people to whom this type of thing was always happening and I delighted in telling the stories of his misfortunes to pretty much anyone who would listen, even more so when the person in question was female. So when Tony introduced me to his new girlfriend, Polly, at Cooper and Laura’s barbecue last summer it was almost inevitable that the ‘Elephant Man’ story would get an airing.
    ‘I can’t believe you went through all that pain just for a girl,’ said Polly, laughing as I finished the story.
    ‘That’s not the half of it,’ replied Tony. ‘I didn’t even get a look in with the goth girl. She ended up going out with Chris’s mate Paul about a fortnight after that. Turns out she was into guys with normal-shaped heads.’
    For a moment or two I felt bad for making Tony look so hopeless in front of his new lady friend and so to balance things out at bit I shared a few stories with Polly that showed him in a slightly better light. Eventually even Tony grew tired of being the centre of attention so he moved on to an altogether different conversation with Cooper, leaving me to entertain Polly (who didn’t know anyone else at the party) on my own.
    We talked for nearly an hour about pretty much anything at all that came to mind. I kept telling her that she shouldn’t feel trapped and even advised her to find someone more exciting to talk to. She replied she had no intention of going anywhere now that she was in with a man who was cooking the burgers.
    The conversation only came to a close when I realised that I’d cooked all of the food that was in my charge and people started to call me over to join them and eat.
    ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’d better go. It was really nice talking to you.’
    ‘You too,’ she replied. ‘Maybe I’ll see you later.’
    ‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘That would be nice.’
    I didn’t really think anything more about the encounter. Yes, I’ll admit that I was aware of how attractive she was (it was hard not to given that she had more than a touch of the Natalie Imbruglias about her – the dark hair, the tanned skin, the big Bambi-like eyes) but at that point in time that was it. To me she was just a mate’s girlfriend, and that was all. I had no intention of anything else happening, not even on a subconscious level. I was a married man. I had a wife and a kid. And as far as I was concerned that was the end of the story.
    Around one in the morning, as people were beginning to go home, I’d disappeared inside the house to use the toilet: my bladder was bursting after having over-indulged on the crates of Stella that Cooper and I had brought back from a recent duty-free trip to Calais. As I came out of the loo into the darkness of the upstairs hallway I was surprised to see Polly standing to one side as though she had been waiting for me.
    ‘I just wanted to thank you for making my evening so entertaining,’ she said. ‘I would’ve been lost without you.’
    ‘No problem. It’s always nice to wheel out Tony’s Elephant Man