How To Lose Weight And Alienate People. Ollie Quain
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the kitchen, opening then banging cupboards shut, still trying to work out where things are. I have been letting him stay here whilst Adele is trekking across the Himalayas with her latest boyfriend, James. They met in Asia doing voluntary work at a wildlife sanctuary for endangered species. She has already hit a new record with him: they’ve been together since the end of last year and she hasn’t cried once.
‘You’re back early,’ shouts Luke.
‘Yes, I am,’ I shout back. ‘Five hours and thirty-three minutes earlier than I should be, if you need the exact timings for your log book.’
‘Thanks, I’ll jot those figures down.’
I hear him laugh as I walk into the lounge. The usual organised debris that appears whenever Luke is within a ten-metre radius is all present and correct. A half-drunk two-litre bottle of Dr Pepper, headphones, laptop logged onto beatport.com and back copies of dance music magazines are lined up on Adele’s African chest, which doubles up as a coffee table. In a pile on the floor next to it are his hooded grey sweatshirt, gaffer-taped work boots, thick mountain socks and a plastic bag from an electrical wholesaler. It’s full of electrical leads.
‘Luke!’ I yell. ‘Why have you bought more cables?’
‘Because I need them.’
‘Christ, how could you? Your bedroom floor already looks like the snake pit in Indiana Jones. By the way, Adele gets back tomorrow so we need to clean up this mess. It’s a tip in here.’
I sit down on the sofa and notice a Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket on the floor the other side of the arm rest. Luke must have bought a snack from there at teatime on his way home from the building site. I peer inside the container at the gnawed, withered drumsticks and find myself thinking about Angelina Jolie’s leg poking out of her dress at that Oscar ceremony …
‘This isn’t a tip,’ says Luke, walking into the lounge holding a plate of more food. ‘Mine and Wozza’s place is a tip. What you’re looking at is just surface rubbish, which admittedly has shock value, I’ll give you that. But it’s easy to get rid of. Although, I still can’t find the bin in there.’ He nods towards the kitchen.
I smile. To be fair, Adele’s recently installed kitchen is a complex set-up. You feel pressurised cooking in there … it’s like competing in an episode of The Cube. Fortunately, that – preparing and assembling dishes or game shows – is not something I like to get involved in very often.
Luke sits down next to me and puts his dinner on the leather chest. He has made himself a grilled lamb chop with salad and potatoes.
I find Luke’s approach to diet interesting but baffling. On the one hand, he is quite content chomping his way through the types of dishes laid out in front of the obese person on the first episode of The Biggest Loser to serve as a reality check. On the other, he could name most superfoods (probably not the goji berry, though), and more often that not always has his five-a-day. He eats what he wants, when he wants it. His approach to exercise is the same. He doesn’t bother with a gym schedule, but if he fancies some fresh air he goes for a run. Not that he needs to burn anything off; there is no ‘excess’ on him. The combination of doing manual labour and a ridiculously high metabolic rate keeps his body hard and angular. It’s like sleeping next to a bicycle.
‘So why did you sack off the rest of your shift?’ he asks, leaning over to give me a kiss. Then he clocks my blackening eye and leaps back. ‘Jeeeeeeeeeesus, who the fuck did that? I’ll kill them!’
I burst out laughing. Luke is the least confrontational person I have ever met. If he found a spider in the bathroom he would negotiate with it to leave as quietly as possible and put in a polite request that any flamboyant scuttling is kept to a minimum.
‘It was an accident,’ I explain. ‘A couple of the customers had a run-in; I tried to split it up and got whacked by mistake. It looks a lot more painful than it is.’
‘Ouch.’ He peers at the bruise. ‘That’s a shiner. Why didn’t you call me when it happened?’
‘Because I was flat out on the floor.’
‘Afterwards, I mean. I could have come to get you.’ He picks up his fork and motions at me to try some of his meal, but I pull a face and shake my head. This is our standard procedure. ‘You might have got delayed concussion on the way home and passed out on the pavement.’
‘Well, I didn’t, did I? I’m here.’
‘You never phone me in a crisis.’
‘That’s because in the year I have known you there hasn’t been a crisis to report. It’s not as if one has occurred and I have made a point of not informing you. Besides, this wasn’t a crisis it was a drama.’
His face crumples slightly. It always does when I have a verbal jab at him. First his forehead creases, then his cheekbones sink and his mouth turns at the corners.
‘At least, let me get you some ice,’ he says.
‘No way, I want it to look really bad for tomorrow. I may be able to elicit some sympathy at my audition and get a call-back because they feel sorry for me. Desperate times call for desperate measures.’
‘Don’t be stupid, you’ll get a call-back because you’re talented not because you’re injured.’
‘Luke!’ I nudge him on the leg. ‘What have I told you about being overly supportive of my non-existent career?’
‘Sorry, I’m afraid it’s in my genes. Despite inventing the drinking game, Show us your rack, Sheila! …’ He smiles pointedly at me, knowing full well it winds me up when he uses Australian slang. ‘… us Aussies are extremely sensitive. It’s a fact.’
But I smile back at him, because here’s the thing. Despite the obsessive timekeeping, low-level buzz of neediness and his place of birth … Luke is hot. If he was in a boy band, he’d be the tall one at the back who never gets to sing lead vocal but is on hand to do some decent break-dancing moves and point at the fans a lot. He was born in the eighties, at the nineties end … so when he was in a cot, I was in a bunk, not a grown-up bed. He would be even hotter if he cut his hair, used some basic grooming products on his skin to protect it against the elements, and wore some better clothes. I don’t mean expensive, but just something that fitted properly, with possibly a hint of tailoring or edginess. Just because he has an athletic physique, doesn’t mean that sweatshirts should be the only option. I don’t badger him about this sort of thing, though, because I wouldn’t expect him to change himself for me, as it’s not as if I would change myself for him. I think that’s why it’s lasted twelve months. We’re together, but there isn’t any grand plan for us; we’re having a laugh. When we stop having a laugh we’ll go our separate ways.
‘Did you know the person who clobbered you?’ he asks, as he chews.
‘Kind of. It was Maximilian Fry – the actor.’
‘Maximilian Fry?’ He repeats his name out of surprise, not because he is remotely impressed.
‘Uh-huh. He was trying to have a pop at Clint Parks.’
‘Who’s that?’ Luke doesn’t look at any of the tabloids. He buys the Guardian and reads it on the building site at lunchtime.
‘The gossip columnist on News Today. As soon as Maximilian saw him leave the Gents he pelted towards him, I jumped in the middle and pow … he thumped me.’
‘So did the cops pitch up and bundle him into the back of a police van?’
‘God, no. His PR rep arrived within minutes and ushered him through the fire exit into the back seat of an air-conditioned people carrier.’ I had missed all of this, though, because I had to go and look after Tabitha who was upset about seeing me get hurt. ‘Have you fed Monday?’
The second I say that, my cat’s big orange face appears in the doorway.