Free I Think I Love You by Allison Pearson Page A

together.”
    “And in Amsterdam,” Bill said, firing back, “he wore this stupid red stuff along the edges of his suit.” He thought it was a good idea to borrow some of Pete’s outrage, even though he couldn’t feel it himself. What Pete took as an insult—to England, to his manhood, to his certain knowledge of women—Bill treated as mildly intriguing. But he couldn’t admit as much, so he pretended to be picking up the thread. “He had on this white catsuit”—Pete reacted to the word with a vigorous air show of mock masturbation, the other hand gripping hisglass—“and it was trimmed in scarlet. And I promise you, we had more letters about that—what’s it called? Frogging?”
    Finally, they both had something to laugh at. Bill was warming to his theme, surprising himself in the process, and he went on.
    “And these letters told us what the red meant. One girl had taken the photo we had and traced it, on greaseproof paper, and she sent us the tracing to prove that he was actually trying to spell out her signature in red braid.”
    “Christ.” Pete was bent low, for some reason, as if grieving at all this female folly. His nose was almost touching the beer mats.
    “And another thought that the frogging, the stuff on Cassidy’s suit, was a dragon.”
    “What?”
    “She thought the pattern looked like a dragon’s head.”
    “What?”
    “And that was meant to signify the Welsh dragon.”
    “What?”
    “And she was from Pontypool, so she thought Cassidy’s catsuit design was aimed at her.” Bill waited for Pete to reply, like someone hitting back a tennis ball, but even Pete was flattened into silence. Swiftly he finished his drink, slipped from the bar stool and made for the door. Bill shrugged and followed him. They stood outside the pub, on a slender one-way street, where the air was no more breathable than within. Traffic fumes spilled from the road and met the yeasty waft of beer. Bill could barely move.
    “ ’Lo, mates.”
    A bent figure was suddenly by their side, grinning up at them. It was Chas, the ageless office boy, scampering and talking through his teeth. He looked like an old English elf from the cover of a prog-rock album.
    “Bin in the pisser?”
    That was the office nickname for the pub, derived from rhyming slang. Bill had been stumped for a while, and Pete had had to spell it out for him, wearily, as if explaining a sum to a child. “Cat & Fiddle, piddle, pisser. Jesus, I thought you were s’posed to be the clever clogs.”
    Chas was angling now, in the brewing dusk. “Drowned ’em?”
    “Yeah, we’re done,” said Pete. He was even less keen on buying adrink for Chas than he had been for Bill. He would not have bought him a drink after a month in the desert.
    “Hello, Chas,” said Bill, looking down at him.
    “Heard the big news?”
    “No, what?” Bill had a weakness for the catastrophic event. “Plane crash? Queen been shot? Peter Purves gets off with Val?”
    “Hnyah, no such luck,” said Chas, giving a short snort. “Just in. Schedule for the tour. Seems like our Mr. Cassidy will be performing his miracles all over the shop. White City. Twenty-sixth of May.”
    “So?” This was Pete, with all the sourness he could muster.
    “So we have to tempt the little misses even more, that’s what.”
    “Whatcha mean, even more? They don’t need tempting, they need a bloody fire hose to keep them off,” said Pete. “Me and Bill here were just talking about it. You could ask them for anything, I mean anything, and they would lie down and let you have it, just for one more look at their lovely …”—he stopped, wound himself up, until his whole body was a sneer—“Daaaaayvid.”
    “But this isn’t just a look,” said Chas. “This is London.”
    “White City?” echoed Pete. “What’s he doing in that dump?”
    “How many can you get into White City?” asked Bill. “Twenty thousand?”
    “God no, thirty, easily,” said Chas.
    “Thirty-five,