Chasing Men by Edwina Currie Read Free Book Online

bathroom mirror, dressing-gown askew, one more item was added to a growing list: find a hairdresser and smarten up. Preferably before seeing Rosa next week. Maybe Christian could recommend one? It was the sort of thing a gay man might know. Would he take umbrage if asked? What was patronising and what wasn’t? She would call on them tonight – Sunday might be a free day for theatricals.
    There was a noise outside the door. It sounded as if somebody had dropped a heavy bag. Hetty cocked her head and listened. Another noise: as if the bag was being rolled about.Then a long drawn-out wail, low and heartfelt. And a dull bang, something being thrown against the wall.
    This could not be ignored. Hetty rose, tied her dressing-gown decorously, tiptoed down her narrow hallway and peered through the peephole. She could see nothing. Cautiously she opened the door a few inches, only to have it crash inwards with the weight of the heavy thing leaning against it.
    ‘Oh!’ Hetty jumped backwards, as the thing opened its mouth and sent forth a jet of yellow vomit on to the mat, just missing Hetty’s slippers. A dribble slid over a black T-shirt and jeans stretched over plump thighs.
    ‘Yurk!’ said the thing, and retched. On the far side of the lobby an empty vodka bottle rolled tipsily where it had been thrown. ‘Yurk! Oh, God. I want to die …’
    Hetty ran to fetch an old towel and tried first to clean up the thing – a fat girl, flushed and gabbling – then the floor. The job was hopeless: no sooner had one slimy mess been wiped away than another stream surged forth. Hetty squatted on her haunches, a hand on the girl’s shoulder. Last time something like this had occurred had been at Sally’s twenty-first when some of her pals had hit the Amaretto.
    ‘Hello, I’m Hetty,’ she said, uncertainly. ‘Who are you? What’s the matter? Can you stand up?’
    ‘I’m Annabel. Live there .’ She gestured drunkenly at the opposite flat. ‘And I’m too fat. He said so. I wanna die …’
    ‘No, you don’t. Come on, Annabel, can you get up? Then at least I can get you into the bathroom and you can be sick in the –’
    ‘No-o-o!’ the girl howled, as she struggled to her feet. ‘He doesn’t love me. He said so. He loves Flo!’
    A small brown bottle fell from her inert fingers. Hetty picked it up then glanced sharply at the girl. ‘Aspirin? You haven’t taken the whole lot, have you? And the vodka? God in heaven. Wait! I’ll call an ambulance.’
    Ten minutes later an anxious Hetty, her dressing-gown stained and smelly, saw off the paramedics with their red-blanketed charge, but declined the offer to travel with her to hospital. An unshaven man from the flat opposite had volunteered instead. His sheepish manner suggested that he knew the cause of Annabel’s anguish; the girl clung to his hand pathetically.
    There was so much gunge to clean up. It was everywhere – in the hall, the bathroom, the lobby. To paraphrase Lady Macbeth, who would have thought the young woman had so much sick in her? One thing every mother knew, Hetty reflected gloomily, was what bodily fluids looked like. On the other hand, it had probably saved the girl’s life.
    She threw her dressing-gown, nightie, the towels and bathmat into the washing-machine with a double measure of bleach and set it to wash at the highest temperature. While the machine whirred, she treated herself to a shower and realised she was shaking.
    A cry for help. But to what avail? No man is worth that . Especially if his evaluation of the girl stretched to her girth and nothing else. As if only her appearance mattered, and not her soul or her – brain.
    Annabel. One of the girls living in flat four. Odd neighbours, indeed.
    Whatever next?

Chapter Five
First Steps
    Hetty pushed a stray lock of hair from her eyes and handed over the Harrods, Nicole Farhi and Harvey Nichols bags with relief. Her fingers were raw from carrying them.
    ‘I am exhausted . Heavens, Clarissa, how