My Legendary Girlfriend by Mike Gayle Read Free Book Online Page B

sorry for phoning so late but the cheque’s quite important. I need it to pay this month’s rent.’
    I finally woke up. ‘Oh, sorry. No, there’s no mail for you. There’s a big pile of stuff downstairs that no one’s touched all week. People who used to live here ages ago, I think. But I’ve been through it and I didn’t see any addressed to this flat.’
    ‘Really?’ she said disappointedly.
    ‘Really. Tell me, what’s your name?’ I asked, quickly adding: ‘So I can check again, if you like,’ so that it didn’t sound like a chat-up line.
    ‘Katie,’ she said. ‘Or Kate rather.’ She laughed. ‘No, that’s Kate Freemans, not Kate Rather!’
    ‘As in the catalogue,’ I quipped and then desperately wished I hadn’t.
    She laughed.
    ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’ll just be a second while I nip downstairs and check them again.’
    ‘Oh, thanks,’ she said gratefully. ‘It’s nice of you to go to all this trouble.’
    I put the phone on the bed and raced down the stairs in my boxer shorts, socks and shirt ensemble. Picking up the discarded post, I shot back upstairs, slamming the door behind me.
    ‘There’s loads for Mr G. Peckham,’ I said, breathlessly shuffling through the letters. ‘He’s got a lot of stuff from the AA.’ This was small talk of the tiniest variety, but I didn’t have any other choice if I wanted to keep talking to her. ‘There are two letters for a K. D. Sharpe, all with New Zealand stamps, and the rest is boring junk mail stuff. Sorry, nothing for a Kate Freemans.’
    ‘Well, thanks for looking,’ she said stoically.
    ‘Maybe it’ll turn up tomorrow,’ I replied in a cheery tone which was very un-me. ‘The post’s pretty crap around here. It’s my birthday on Sunday and I haven’t received a single card yet. If they don’t arrive tomorrow I won’t have any on the day.’
    ‘I’m sure you will,’ she said, her disappointment at being cashless seemingly evaporated. ‘How old will you be?’
    ‘Do you really want to know?’ I knew it was a stupid question the moment it slipped off my tongue and into the conversation. She wasn’t going to say no, but it wouldn’t be a truthful yes, either. She wasn’t honestly going to give a toss about how old I was.
    ‘Yes,’ she said, so clearly, so confidently, so joyfully, that I was totally convinced she’d told the truth. ‘But don’t tell me. I’ll guess. Are you thirty-one?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Older or younger?’
    ‘Younger.’
    ‘Twenty-nine?’
    ‘Lower.’
    ‘Twenty-six?’
    ‘Got it in one! Well, three actually. But well done anyhow. How did you guess? Do I sound twenty-six?’
    This, of course, was stupid question number two. Where all this inanity was coming from I couldn’t begin to guess, perhaps, I mused, I’d become a portal between Earth and Planet Stupid.
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘How does a twenty-six-year-old sound?’
    ‘Although technically speaking,’ I explained, ‘I’m not actually twenty-six until Sunday, they do happen to sound a lot like me. The male variety, of which I consider myself to be a prime specimen, tend to whinge a lot about receding hair lines, loss of physique, life, work, love-life (or lack of love in their life) while constantly harking back to some golden age, usually their university days. It’s quite a monotonous sound but comforting all the same.’
    Kate laughed. With my hand on my heart, and a finger hovering over the self-destruct button marked, ‘Cheesy Similes’, I swear that her laughter perfectly captured summertime – the sun on my neck, birds singing in trees and cloudless skies – all at once.
    ‘And what about you?’ I asked. ‘How old are you?’
    She didn’t speak.
    ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You’re twenty-one or twenty-two?’
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘Higher or lower?’
    ‘What do you think?’
    ‘Lower.’
    ‘You’re right.’
    ‘Twenty?’
    ‘Er, nope.’
    ‘Nineteen?’
    ‘Yup,’ she said. ‘But I’ll be twenty in