There are some beautiful instances when you wake up in the morning and that thing you did last night, that at the time mortified you to your very core, doesn’t seem all that bad. More normally you’ll live with that burning embarrassment for a few days before you eventually realize that, although bad at the time, everyone else has probably forgotten about it. Sometimes it’ll take a couple of weeks, maybe a month at a stretch if you’ve accidentally run over your friend’s cat, or wolf whistled your 17 year old cousin.
It’s now been just over two months since I got home after a Christmas Eve dinner at our neighbours’ house, and I’ve never been more sure that the man who uttered the immortal words, “time heals all wounds” was not only an optimist, but a twat.
After drinks the majority of guests left to go home, leaving only the elite of the Friar’s Lane massive who were invited to stay for dinner afterwards. Along with the hosts I was there with my family, and we were joined by a couple of big faces from the local book group and some huge names from the weekly bridge club.
The saving grace of the evening, for me anyway, came in the form of a drop dead gorgeous brunette girl who turned up with a particularly crusty old couple from the top of the lane. Such beauty had never really before manifested itself in our humble village and looked almost out of place, in fact I think a few of the old timers experienced their own personal Christmas miracles that night in rediscovering the sensation of an erection.
Anyway my share in the miracle came about when her godfather announced that he wasn’t drinking because he needed to give her a lift to the station at the end of the night so she could get a train home. Now, luckily I can drive; I think if I was still in possession of both my “V” and “L” plates I really might as well buy some baggy pants, plug Dominoes into speed dial and settle into the sofa for the next thirty years.
Seeing my opportunity I approached old man river before we all sat down for dinner and offered to take his god daughter to the station instead, on the basis that I was collecting a friend who was arriving on the late train so was going there anyway
Dinner passed without incident, Lauren approached me beforehand to thank me for offering to give her a lift, and I waved her gratitude away with what was meant to come across as the casual air of a boy completely accustomed to ferrying hot young women about the country but which probably made me look more like a homosexual batting away a compliment about a new shirt.
Luckily she was sat at the other end of the table so I was able to plan out potential conversation scenarios for later in my head, while every now and then exchanging token comments about the Ashes with the gentleman to right. The elderly lady to my left looked like she had completely forgotten where she was and when I tried to offer her the gravy at the beginning of the meal she looked at me as though she expected to be violated at any minute so I thought it best to leave her alone entirely.
At about eleven thirty I felt a squeeze on my shoulder and looked up to see Lauren standing over me and asking if I wanted to “get going”. It was probably the most profoundly sexual moment of my life to date. Needless to say I didn’t hesitate to cut my neighbour off in the middle of his rant about batting averages and after saying goodbye to everyone we slipped out the door. Well she slipped, I’ve got a horrible feeling I sort of bounced.
The station was a five minute drive away so if I was going to make an impression I’d have to make it fast. The casual demeanour I was going for evaporated almost immediately as I jogged ahead of her to open the passenger door and stood beaming beside it waiting for her to get in, but miraculously she thought it was a joke and giggled as she got in. I wondered, as I slammed the door a little too aggressively behind her, if I could get away with acting like an awkward twat for the whole journey and somehow play it off as a big ironic joke.
I knew I had a Kings of Leon CD in the player from the day before so I turned it on and pressed play. What I didn’t know was that my father had used the car that morning and so was slightly taken aback/nearly sick when instead of Caleb Followill’s dulcet tones we were serenaded by Simon Prebble’s enthusiastic rendition of Charles Dickens’ “Pickwick Papers”. I did my best to explain the situation but my flustered attempts to remove the offending item from the CD player almost certainly convinced her it was mine.
I have a fairly low panic threshold when it comes to talking to extremely hot girls in my passenger seat and Simon Prebble took me way beyond it. A conversation about the evening’s vegetables ensued from which I presumed I would find it hard to recover.
We arrived at the station to discover Lauren’s train had been cancelled, and as it was the last train of the night in that direction there was nothing else for it but to take her back to her Godparents house which I duly offered to do.
“But isn’t your friend arriving on the next train?”
Just when you think British Rail couldn’t fuck you over any more you’re wrong, they can screw with you when you’re not even planning on using one of their trains.
I didn’t know what to say. Obviously her godfather had heard me say I was picking up a friend from the station anyway, obviously he had told Lauren, obviously I’m enough of a desperate twat to invent a friend who needed picking up at that particular time and obviously I was now utterly fucked.
I was faced with two options; come clean or dig deeper. Could I really wait for the next train and stand open mouthed as my friend failed to appear and then fake a phone call with him where I sympathise that he was suddenly and dramatically taken ill?
Of course I could. The latter would depend on minimal acting skills whereas the former required an articulate and charming explanation in the presence of a female.
The train arrived, my friend didn’t. Curtain up. And dash it all, it turned out he’d been taken violently ill while walking to the station and had been so preoccupied by his ailment that it had simply slipped his mind to call me. I made all the right sympathetic noises, never once complaining of my wasted journey and all in all sounding like the perfect friend to Lauren, who was sitting on a bench a few yards away.
I started to get cocky...
“The 14th?... No sorry mate I’ve got Camilla’s 21st that evening.”
“Yep, yep, I’ll see you at Lucy’s on the Saturday though yeah?”
“Top table...really? Guess I better make an effort then..”
But just as I was about to bring Lauren to climax with my social calendar, disaster struck. A quick pointer: if you’re going to have a fake phone conversation then call voicemail or the talking clock, or at least put your phone on silent, because when you yelp loudly as your ringtone batters your eardrum from half a centimetre away it becomes rapidly clear to everyone around you that you are nothing short of a twat.
I rejected Nick’s call (and haven’t spoken to him since) before looking up at Lauren, who had found something worthy of her undivided attention on one of her fingernails. I came clean. I had to. I was in one of those lucid states where the situation was just so unfathomably awful that I felt untouchable, it really couldn’t get any worse so what did I stand to lose.
It actually felt quite liberating, I stood there and told the absolute truth beginning to end; that I fancied her, had lied to her god father just so I could drive her to the station, had faked a conversation on the phone, I even told her that I probably wasn’t going to be on top table at Lucy’s party. Seriously, if it’s true what they say about girls loving honesty then I was surely only seconds away from getting laid right there on the platform.
She smiled.
“You know I think that’s the most effort any guy’s every gone to for me... Oh come here.”
I couldn’t believe it. This was it. This was fucking it! I’d broken her defences with my pathetic bumbling charm, she’d been so touched by my honesty and desperation that she’d felt a sudden urge to kiss me. We moved towards each other, she opened her arms to embrace me, our eyes met, and our lips gently glided togeth...
“What! Stop... No! What are you doing!?”
Yep it was a friend hug, a ‘come here you poor, vulnerable little boy’ hug, an ‘oh my god aren’t you just the cutest, I feel like you’re older sister, let’s go home and braid my hair’ hug.
The train was still sitting at the platform. I could get on, go to the end of the line, find a job, work until I had enough money to fly to America, use my British accent to find a nice girl, settle down and forget this moment ever happened. I didn’t.
The drive home wasn’t much fun. It felt like being driven home in silence by your mum or dad after doing something really naughty at school only I had to fucking drive. I was broken, I put the only disc I could find back in the CD player, just to break the silence, and drove.
I dropped Lauren off at her godparents’ house (she didn’t risk kissing me on the cheek), trawled down the rest of the lane to my house, and went to bed, utterly deflated, with Simon fucking Prebble still ringing in my ears.
