Free Comfort and Joy by India Knight Page B

human race didn’t die out
     years ago.’
    ‘Heh-heh,’ says Jake, fiddling with the roach. ‘A bit of girl-on-girl. Nothing to beat it.’
    ‘I mean it,’ I say.
    God, do I mean it.
Do I mean it
. Well, not so much about lesbians, but about the unbelievableness. About the absolute fucking miracle of the eternal human
     capacity for hope. We think everyone’s going to be different, that things change, that people evolve. Pfft. There’s more than
     thirty years between Jake and Tim, and they’re exactly the same. ‘Oh look, my wife’s gone mad. Put on a bit of weight, knackered
     all the time, not what you’d call gagging to fuck my brains out. What a nutter. Where’s the exit?’ The thing I need to remember
     is that at least Sam …
    ‘It’s not unbelievable, Clara,’ Sam says. ‘It’s just true.’
    I’m actually winded, so I can’t say anything for twenty seconds. When I get my breath back, I say, ‘Which bit? Which bit is
     true?’
    ‘All of it,’ says Sam. ‘Tim, Jake, all of it. Not put in the best way, but true.’
    ‘I can’t believe …’
    ‘I’m not expecting you to like it,’ he says with a sad smile. ‘I’m just saying, it’s true. It’s what most men think.’
    ‘It’s nice to keep yourself nice,’ says Pat. ‘Sure it is.’
    ‘Oh my God,’ says Tamsin.
    ‘You know,’ says Sam. ‘Why shouldn’t he have a drink? Why shouldn’t Tim here have a drink? He’s right: he works hard and it’s
     two days before Christmas.’
    ‘Thank you,’ says Tim. ‘Exactamundo, Samundo.’
    ‘Nobody’s saying he shouldn’t have a drink,’ says Tamsin.
    ‘Well, you lot are,’ says Sam, drawing on Jake’s new joint. ‘You’re sitting there like a row of fucking harpies …’
    ‘What?’ I say.
    ‘You heard. Like a row of fucking harpies, sitting in judgement on some poor bloke whose only crime …’
    ‘Whose
only
crime,’ Tim echoes.
    ‘… is to get pissed at a dinner party and maybe flirt a little. With a woman who flirts for a living. You know? What’s with
     the disapproval? You were pissed when I first met you, Clara. And you had two young kids. And you flirted with me. I didn’t
     judge you. I thought it was funny. You were charming.’
    ‘I wasn’t roaming the streets of London pissed, Sam. My children were safely in the care of somebody else. And I …’ I want
     to say ‘I’m still charming,’ but – oh God – I suddenly feel like I might cry if I say it out loud. It’s so pathetic. Nobody
     should have to point that kind of thing out about themselves to the man who’s supposed to be in love with them.
    ‘Of course they were,’ Sam says. ‘I wasn’t suggesting you’d left them to fend for themselves.’ I am ridiculously, pitifully
     grateful that he has said this, and then – a fraction of a second later – irate,
incensed
by my own gratitude.
    ‘The fact remains,’ Sam continues, ‘that there is nothing wrong with a man going out of an evening and getting a bit pissed
     and eyeing up some flirty woman. Even if that man is married. Even if that man has a family.’
    ‘Oh Sam,’ says Tamsin. ‘Nobody was saying there was. The point is …’
    ‘I get the point,’ says Sam.
    ‘What is it, then, in your view?’ I say, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘Apart from me and my friends being fucking harpies.’
    ‘My point,’ says Sam, speaking weirdly slowly, ‘is that you – women – have kids and then go into this mode, this pretendy
     grown-up, adult mode, and you start hating us. You …’
    ‘I have three children, Sam. One of them is yours. And I’m forty. It’s not pretendy.’
    But he isn’t hearing me. ‘You start hating everything you used to like. And you hate it with that sort of convert’s zeal,
     like an ex-smoker hates cigarettes …’
    ‘Similes now,’ I say nastily.
    ‘You’re not the only one with a brain, Clara. I was saying, you hate everything you used to love. The things you found funny
     aren’t