The Trouble with Henry and Zoe by Andy Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

bucket.’
    ‘You’re funny,’ Alex said, smiling. ‘Almost as funny as a bloke.’
    ‘Yes, I’m a laugh a minute, me. Zoe Bubbles, they call me.’
    ‘Is that a joke?’
    ‘Nope. And I don’t know why I’m telling you. My flatmates at uni came up with it; called me Zoe Bubbles, Zoe Bubbs, Bubbs, ZeeBee. God, I’m wittering.’
    ‘I like your wittering. ZeeBee.’
    Zoe unpicked Alex’s fingers from around her wrist. They both looked at the glass. Zoe shook her head in resignation, took a sip, winced. ‘Never call me that again. You know what
“Bubbly” is a byword for, don’t you?’
    ‘Fat.’
    ‘First things first, I was not “fat”, I was . . . bonnie. But I was young and we drank pints and ate a lot of chips.’
    ‘Nothing wrong with bonnie. Although I prefer “cuddly”.’
    ‘Cute doesn’t suit you. And second things second, my nickname had nothing to do with the
former
size of my bum.’
    A look from Alex:
Really?
    ‘Like I said, it’s because I’m a laugh a fucking minute.’
    ‘I like you,’ Alex said then. A flash of the cool confidence she had seen at the summer party, and it was impossible not to fall for it. She smiled thinly as her anger (at least
one-quarter contrived, after all) cooled.
    ‘Right, here’s the plan. You go to the bar and get me a decent glass of red. Then we can get to the bottom of this “not my girlfriend” business and decide where we go
from there.’
    Alex nodded, stood and reached for Zoe’s glass. ‘I’ll keep it,’ she said. ‘I still might need it.’
    Alex came back from the bar with a bottle and two glasses; the glibness had gone, replaced with an expression of nervous sincerity. He filled their glasses, then backtracked to Phuket.
    The ‘thing’ he had allegedly stolen from the Thai club owner turned out to be a German girl called Ines. Ines was also taking a year out after graduating and before embarking on a
career in London; in her case, out of Heidelberg University, and into a large American bank. Alex and Ines ‘got together’, which would have been fine, but for the fact the club owner
had formed the idea that Ines was already taken – by him. Zoe had many questions, but Ines (no doubt privileged and beautiful) was the competition, and it didn’t do to appear too
interested in the ‘other woman’. ‘Coke,’ was pretty much all Alex offered by way of explaining this pivotal misunderstanding, and Zoe allowed it to remain it that. For now,
at least.
    Alex had no money and Ines had no agenda, but she did have friends in London and a house off the King’s Road, paid for (confirming half of Zoe’s assumptions) by her father. They flew
back to London and shacked up in the pastel blue two-bedroom mews house in the heart of Chelsea. Their neighbour on one side was an investment banker; on the other a gruff gentleman who had played
bass in at least two bands Alex had heard of from the sixties. After two weeks of eating in restaurants with heavy cutlery, and drinking expensive coffee from small cups, Alex took the train north
to visit his mother and brother in a now defunct mining town. He made the return trip carrying two suitcases full of clothes, books and photographs, and by Sunday evening he and Ines were living
together.
    Sipping her wine a little too quickly, Zoe did not particularly want to know which members-only clubs Alex and Ines frequented, or how much Ines spent on clothes, or which socialites they
befriended. But this was how Alex chose to tell his story, building up to the point in his own sweet way. And, okay, she was maybe a little interested.
    ‘Have you ever felt trapped by a bad decision?’ Alex had asked.
    Zoe thought about the patches of eczema on her shins. She thought about pulling her hair in the bath, and the Sunday night blues that had seeped backwards so far she had come to dread the entire
weekend, leaving work on a Friday depressed because she would be walking back through the revolving doors