Meltdown by Ben Elton Read Free Book Online Page B

round, Lizzie, in answer to our ad about a spare room. Ding-dong. Hello! Bin-go! We couldn’t believe it.’
    ‘Yes, you did all look rather gob-smacked,’ Lizzie said.
    ‘What’s this?’ Monica asked. ‘I thought you lot all moved in together.’
    ‘Not quite,’ Jimmy said. ‘Us five boys had all been in hall in the first year and when we got a house together in the second year it had a sixth room. We wanted the extra rent so we stuck up an ad. That’s when we met Lizzie.’
    ‘God, do you remember?’ Henry chipped in. ‘First of all we gave the room to that first-year bloke, the guy who didn’t want to share the fridge.’
    ‘That’s right !’ Jimmy said. ‘Fuck me, I’d forgotten him. We had to chuck him straight out again, didn’t we?’
    ‘We certainly did after Lizzie turned up.’ David laughed.
    ‘I’d just split up with my boyfriend, you see,’ Lizzie explained to the other girls. ‘I mean I wasn’t looking to move in with five blokes. I was just desperate.’
    ‘ We were bloody desperate!’ Robbo exclaimed.
    ‘That first-year chap had to go anyway,’ Rupert said firmly. ‘What was his name? Graeme?’
    ‘That’s right,’ Jimmy said. ‘Spelt e-m-e at the end, not h-a-m. I can still remember him spelling it out.’
    ‘You see,’ Rupert went on, ‘that’s suspect in itself. Silly bastard kept banging on about Gay Pride too. Like we cared. I told him, I said, listen, mate, gay sex is all very well but I don’t want it shoved down my throat!’
    ‘Boom boom !’ Robbo shouted.
    ‘So you were the same tolerant, caring, inclusive liberal then as you are today, eh, Rupert?’ Monica enquired.
    ‘Well, I thought it was funny anyway,’ Rupert said.
    ‘I just remember the bloke was tonto about the fridge,’ Jimmy said. ‘Bloody idiot wanted to get a ruler and divide it into six separate sections.’
    ‘He did have to go,’ David said. ‘Lizzie was a bonus.’
    ‘But what a bonus,’ Robbo said, raising his glass. ‘I was absolutely knocked for six. But as I have already said, I did not pursue her.’
    ‘No, you didn’t,’ Lizzie chided. ‘I had to go after him.’
    ‘Well, what kind of a twat would I have looked trying to get off with a uber-babe like you?’ Robson protested. ‘Utterly gorgeous, pursued by every rugger bugger on campus. And every bugger in the house. Come on, ’fess up! Rupert, Jimmy, David, Henry, you all had a punt at some point and got nowhere . . .’
    ‘ I never knew that,’ said Laura, a law graduate who was in the middle of her pupillage and who had been going out with David for about six months.
    ‘Ah, there are more things in heaven, earth and the Radish Club than are dreamt of in your philosophy, darling,’ David assured her.
    ‘I didn’t get nowhere,’ Rupert insisted, grinding out his cigar on an empty raita dish. ‘I got a snog.’
    ‘You got a New Year kiss,’ Lizzie corrected him, ‘and I was very drunk.’
    ‘Well anyway, like I say,’ Robbo went on, ‘it never would have occurred to me that I stood a chance in hell with Lizzie and I certainly wasn’t going to arse around making a fool of myself and getting my heart broken trying to pull totty whose shoes I was clearly not fit to lick. Quite frankly, I’d rather be in the pub getting pissed.’
    ‘And that’s where I pulled him ,’ Lizzie laughed.
    ‘And I don’t know about Lizzie,’ Robbo shouted, raising his glass, ‘but I personally have lived happily ever after! Garçon! More beer!’
    ‘You can get the man out of the pub,’ said Jimmy, clinking his glass against Robson’s, ‘but you will never get the pub out of the man.’
    ‘And confusion on anybody who tries!’ Robson shouted, accepting his pint, quaffing half of it and accidentally putting it down on a spoon so that it fell over and the rest of its contents spilt across the table.
    ‘Come on, you, that’s your lot,’ Lizzie said, as she had said a hundred times before. ‘Home time.’
    ‘A