Free Dinner for Two by Mike Gayle Page A

Fran’s phone rings and she races across to answer it. After a moment in which she says little but laughs a lot she puts down the receiver.
    ‘That was your wife,’ she says. ‘She’s just made me promise to look after you at lunch-time in case you’re lonely.’

    bloke
    Fran and I talk haphazardly, lurching from one topic of conversation to another all the way from the office to the magazine’s local watering-hole, a wine bar called Hampton’s. She’d invited some of the other girls to join us but they all declined. Stylissimo was having a beauty sale – selling off the various products that cosmetics companies had sent in to be reviewed. Apparently a huge pile of cheap beauty products is more alluring than three-quarters of an hour being nice to the new boy in the class. So it’s just her and me. Me and her. I feel very uncomfortable.
    ‘I’m sorry about my wife,’ I say, as we settle down to bottled beer and prawn cocktail crisps for two. ‘She’s very protective of me.’
    ‘It’s no problem,’ says Fran. ‘I didn’t realise you were married to Izzy Harding. I’m a big fan of her stuff. She used to write that column in Femme a few years back, didn’t she, “Girl About Town”?’
    ‘Yeah,’ I reply, and I know exactly what her next question’s going to be.
    ‘Does that mean you’re “The Bloke” she always used to mention.’
    ‘I should hope so.’
    Fran drums on the table with delight. ‘I feel like I know you already!’ she says, clearly delighted. ‘Izzy’s one of the reasons I went into journalism in the first place. I remember one column she wrote about the sub-duvet shenanigans of an old boyfriend and it had me in hysterics for ages. All her observations about men and stuff were so spot-on.’
    ‘She’ll be impressed when I tell her that. Izzy loves people who say nice stuff about her work. There’s only one thing, though . . .’
    ‘What?’
    ‘That column you were talking about. That ex-boyfriend’s bedroom habits were mine.’
    ‘You’re kidding!’ says Fran, stifling a fit of giggles. ‘Doesn’t it bother you that she puts all these intimate details of your life in her column and features?’
    ‘Not really. She makes half of it up and what she doesn’t make up she exaggerates for “comic effect”. No one could live as glamorous a life as she used to make out in her column, and no boyfriend or husband could be as annoying as she makes out I am. Anyway, I’m very thick-skinned about that kind of thing.’
    ‘You’re a very blokey kind of bloke, aren’t you?’ observes Fran. ‘That’s the sort of response I’d expect from a blokey bloke.’
    ‘Well, there you go.’
    ‘I bet you don’t talk about relationships either, do you?’
    ‘I don’t mind. Just as long as you don’t start crying.’
    Fran laughs. ‘One man in an office full of girls. It’s going to be a lot of fun having you around. Relationships are all we ever talk about.’ She pauses. ‘Well, relationships – and the state of our hair.’
    For the rest of our lunch-break, in a concerted effort to show how girly she can be, Fran talks mostly about her boyfriend, Linden. They’ve been an item for two years but don’t live together. He’s slightly older than her and works in a clothing shop in Camden. I like the way she talks about him, with a mixture of pride and adoration, even if he sounds like a bit of an idiot. He has a cool group of friends who do cool things in cool places. I begin to wonder whether she’s with Linden to make a fashion statement rather than because she’s in love with him. However, she seems content to talk and I’m content to listen. It’s the perfect match.

    love
    Over the lunch-times that follow my first day at Teen Scene I eat a sandwich at my desk and work on my next column for Femme . Izzy says no to both the toilet seat and why men can only do one thing at a time. I suggest a column about my lack of DIY skills and she laughs – she knows what