Kiss My Name Read online

  “Well done you. Are you bothered?”

  “To be honest, Flo, I’ve been quite upset about it. I nearly didn’t come into work today.”

  “Mr.Brazier would have loved that! How long were you and Danny together?”

  “Three and a half weeks.”

  I could see Flo was about to start laughing at me. She did that a lot. So did everyone else, to be honest.

  “And you were going to take a day off sick, Zara, because you’d split up. After three and a half weeks! Mr.Brazier would have gone potty.”

  “It was an intense three and a half weeks though, Flo. Was there not a film called ‘Three and a half weeks’?”

  “No, that was nine and half weeks.”

  “No, not that one.”

  “Three men and a baby?”

  “That’s it! I loved Danny, Flo. I know it was less than a month, but he was quite nice to me sometimes. Anyway, I wouldn’t have told Mr.Brazier I was staying off because of a trauma in my personal life. I’d have said it was because of severe period pains. Men can’t argue with that.”

  “They can if they have a memory, Zara. You were off three days last week with severe period pains.”

  “So? I’d just say they’re irregular. Do men even know how often we bleed?”

  “They say ‘time of the month’ often enough, so I guess they do.”

  “Mr.Brazier might not.”

  “I think he would.”

  “Men are bastards though, aren’t they, Flo? Not one has ever been really nice to me. Not once they get to know me, anyway. I don’t know why we put up with them.”

  “I know why you do!”

  “Why?”

  “Because you like a good six inches!”

  “You cheeky cow!”

  “Deny it then.”

  I looked at Flo and cracked up, as did she, as I say she knew me better than anyone.

  “OK, that might be true, but I wanted them to be nice to me all day, not just when they want to get their end away.”

  “Stop going for the players then.”

  “Flo, that’s not my fault, they go for me!”

  “Well, don’t encourage them then.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, first of all get to know them before you sleep with them and if they are full of BS, then run like hell. Also...now I don’t know whether I should say this...”

  “Go on, you might as well now.”

  “No, maybe not...”

  I gave her one of my stares. They are supposed to look tough, but they tend to just look daft when I do them.

  “Tell me!”

  “Well, you could stop looking like you do.”

  This was Flo’s tactful way of telling me not to dress like a tart. Problem is, I like how I dress. I love nothing more than looking in the mirror just before I go out on a Friday or Saturday night and instead of seeing my scraggy hair or blotchy complexion, I see something stunning. I don’t hate myself when I look in the mirror on a Friday or Saturday evening. I know I am going to catch the eye. I know men are going to turn their heads when I enter a room. I like people liking me. I like men thinking I am hot.

  Before my implants, I had always had breasts that looked like they belonged to an eleven year old girl in a training bra. So, when I had my double Ds done, at twenty two, I wanted to show them off. People think I am being ridiculous when I say that after the op was the first time I really felt like a woman. To me, the breasts came as part of a package along with the blonde hair, the extensions, the nails, the make up, the short skirts (or short shorts) and the barely buttoned tops. I loved Flo but she was a bit of a minger and part of me thought she was only saying this because she was jealous about the way I looked and the way I was guaranteed to pull every week and she was guaranteed to get a bus home alone. I would dress down when I was older, not now, not at twenty four.

  All of a sudden, I got the shock of my life!

  “Shit, Flo, where’s my car?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I left it here this morning and it’s not here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course, I’m sure it’s not here. Can you see it?”

  “I meant, are you sure you left it here?”

  “I leave it here every day, Flo, you know I do. Right here, next to the parking meter and it’s gone.”

  I was absolutely devastated. I loved that car. It was a red Corsa, but not just any old red Corsa, it had been Zara-tised. It had a totally pink interior, fluffy pink seats, two pink fluffy dice and a couple of Playboy bumper stickers, including my favourite one which said, ‘Blondes Prefer Gentlemen’. I called her Charlotte or Charlie for short. Someone had kidnapped my Charlotte.

  The more I thought about it, the more I could not get my head around the fact that it had been nicked. The type of person who would want a car with a pink interior is not the type of person who would pinch it. If you look like me, you do not want to risk spending time in prison or even risk breaking a nail, breaking into a car. I began to panic.

  “Oh my God, Flo! What am I going to do? That car meant everything to me.”

  I need a tough cookie like Flo as a mate, to get me through times like this.

  “Right Zara, calm down. First thing you need to do is ring the police to report it stolen.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can, Zara, be brave.”

  “No, I can’t. I left my mobile on the passenger seat.”

  “OK, don’t worry, you can use mine,” Flo said, reaching into her bag, then passing me her mobile, “you need to ring your insurance company too. Let them know it’s been stolen. They might give you a courtesy car until you get it back.”

  “Flo, I just can’t believe someone’s nicked, Charlie. I spent a fortune on her, kitting her out, getting her just how I wanted. I’ve just joined David Lloyd’s gym too, I was supposed to be having an induction tonight with Martin and some girl in the shop said he was dead fit.”

  “Zara, your induction with Martin at David Lloyds’ is the least of your worries. If that’s adding to your stress, I can drive you up there. Now, ring the police.”

  Flo is an angel. We’re chalk and cheese, I know I’m ditzy and she’s anything but, but our friendship works. I would jump in front of a speeding train to save her and I know she would do the same for me. It was Flo that got me my job at Penny Pinchers. I love her to bits.

  I rang the police, but I was a bit flustered after that ordeal, so Flo rang the insurance company for me. They said they would get me a courtesy car within twenty four hours. Flo said the man was lovely. I should have spoke to him myself. After giving me a lift home, Flo returned a couple of hours later to give me a lift to my induction at the gym. She also said she’d pick me up for work the next day too.

  Turns out Martin at the gym was fit. Fit in every sense of the word. Fit spelt f-u-c-k-i-n-g-g-o-r-g-e-o-u-s. You should have seen his abs! I couldn’t take my eyes off them. Beautiful. He’s taking me to the cinema on Thursday. Hope it’s not to see some arty farty film like Harry Potter that I have to pretend I understand. Might not be though, he seemed more brawns than brains, which is fine. Smart blokes just treat you like you’re a fool. Anyway, we’re going, let’s see where this one leads. All things considered, it’s not been too bad a day after all.

  FLO – May 2011

  My car is a pig sty. It’s a Nissan Micra but it should be called Nissan Snout or Nissan Trough or something like that. If you came to my house, you wouldn’t find a spot of dust anywhere, not even on top of the cupboards, but my laws of cleanliness don’t stretch as far as the car. I’m not sure why this is, perhaps it’s because it is always raining in Chorley or for several months of the year, it is dark by the time I get home and I just can’t be bothered heading out with a vacuum cleaner, a tin of polish and a bin bag to clean it out. Car related OCD is a boy thing. The inside of my car does tell a story though, it tells me how much chocolate I’ve consumed, how many sugary drinks
I’ve glugged and how many packs of cigarettes I’ve smoked my way through. If I’m going through a spell of trying to pack in the fags, there are fewer cigarette packets but a lot of fingernail clippings and a few cups of coffee torn into tiny pieces. About once a month, I’ll take the levels of crap down from shoulder height to knee height and then the process starts all over again.

  Zara would not set foot in my car if she wasn’t in need of a lift. Girlie girls don’t like going into work with smudged chocolate on their arse, it looks too much like crap and no-one is ever going to risk smelling it so they can differentiate. Zara is a bit of an airhead but she likes to look immaculate. This is a girl who sets her alarm for five thirty every morning so that she can shower, wash her hair, blow dry it, do her nails and put her make up on before a day working in one of the tackiest shops in Chorley, Penny Pinchers. I had given her a lift to David Lloyd’s gym the night before and she pulled a few faces as her pink shiny trainers were drowned under four inches of rubbish, so I was not surprised to see Zara walking out to my car the following morning with two beach towels, one to lay over the passenger seat to avoid the aforementioned chocolate arse and the other to lay over the mountain of rubbish so she did not soil her shiny, polished shoes.

  “Good morning, Flo! What a lovely morning it is too!”

  I grunted my response. It was eight thirty. I had only been awake for ten minutes. Bags of shite were more attractive than me at that time of the day. I am a self-confessed irritable bitch until lunch time, but Zara is always a ray of sunshine, twenty four hours a day, unless she has boyfriend or car catastrophes anyway, which both happen far too regularly. There’s always a drama with Zara, what that girl lacks in intelligence, she more than makes up for in personality. If she had been a Scouser, she would have been a chirpy, ditzy one. She’s so chirpy and ditzy she makes Sonia look like Leonard Cohen. Before she sat down, she began smoothing the creases out of her towel on my passenger seat.

  “Stop making such a bloody fuss, Zara! Get in and sit down! I cleaned this car up last week.”

  “I didn’t say a word, Flo. I’m just grateful for the lift.”

  “You’re being ever chirpier than usual this morning, you still on a high because of that bloke from the gym?”

  “Martin. I had a dream about him last night, Flo. He was in my shower, soaping his six pack down. I didn’t want to wake up! There were seven muscles I wanted to see working out before I awoke.”

  “I thought water did funny things to a bloke’s throbbing python of love. I thought it turned it into a wiggly worm.”

  “Not in my dreams it doesn’t. Martin’s love thermometer was reaching temperatures that can make a girl go faint!”

  “Well, you best hope the real Martin is just as hot as your imaginary one.”

  “I have a good feeling this time, Flo. Something tells me that Martin might just be Mr.Right.”

  “And you’ve never said that before.”

  “Doesn’t hurt to be optimistic, Flo, rather than an old misery guts like you.”

  “What am I supposed to be happy about, Zara? I work in Penny Pinchers, I wear clothes that would have been too big for Oprah Winfrey in her ‘Color Purple’ stage and I have as many hairs growing on my chin and chest as Billy Connolly. I turn heads, Zara, but not like you do. Men turn their heads towards you. With me, they turn their heads around to see where the exit is so they can sprint towards it as fast as they can.”

  “Aww, don’t be silly Flo, you’re lovely.”

  “You don’t have to say nice things to me, Zara, I do own a mirror, you know. I know what I look like.”

  “But you’re a lovely person, Flo. You’re loyal, you’re honest, one day someone will appreciate you for who you are rather than how you look.”

  “Maybe, I just don’t get to sample every food in the restaurant like you. I have to have the set meal. Anyway, on a brighter note, when’s your courtesy car coming?”

  “They’re dropping it off at my Mum’s at half past three.”

  Zara didn’t live with her Mum. She had moved out a couple of years earlier and now shared a two bed terraced with a lovely Asian guy called Nadeem. He just did his own thing and thankfully, he turned a blind eye to Zara doing hers. Zara’s road is narrow though and often it’s almost impossible to find a parking place, hence the reason the courtesy car was going to her Mum’s.

  “Well, that’s handy. I’ll drop you off there after work. Hope it’s not as busy as it was yesterday.”

  “Mum’s road?”

  “No, work, you daft cow!”

  “Oh right, me too.”

  We chatted away amiably through to Chorley. Euxton’s only a couple of miles down the road, so it’s not much more than a five minute drive. We should share a lift every morning really, do our bit to save the planet, but the fact that my car is a shithole combined with the fact that I never know which bloke is going to arrive at Penny Pinchers for Zara at the end of a shift, means we tend not to. I was heading to our usual car park, by the Little Theatre and was just about to turn in, when Zara piped up,

  “Ooh, Flo, don’t park there. Save yourself a couple of quid. Mum told me on Sunday that she always parks along here on the left, it’s free and there’re always places.”

  Alarm bells immediately rang in my head. I drove past the car park and along the road,

  “Zara, have you started parking down here?”

  “Only since yesterday.....shit, my car! That’s where I left it!”

  Sure enough, as we drove along, on the left hand side, was Zara’s red Corsa, with the stupid, ‘I’m a slapper’ stickers, on the back window. Nobody had stolen it. She had just parked it in a different place the previous morning and completely forgotten.

  “Oh, I’m a dozy bitch, aren’t I?” Zara commented with a nervous laugh.

  “Zara, I keyed in ‘dozy bitch’ on Google images and there was a picture of you!”

  Zara ignored me. She ran over to the Corsa in her bottom wiggling way and attempted to give it a hug.

  “Oh Charlie, I’ve been so worried that you were with some nasty men. Thank God you’re OK!”

  I watched her play out this scene and smiled. It was only just past half past eight in the morning and I actually smiled, surely that must be a first. I wanted to be furious with the girl, but it was impossible. Without even trying, Zara was the funniest person that I had ever met and I wondered how she was going to trump this one. Not surprisingly, she did though. My life wouldn’t be worth living without that girl, it seriously wouldn’t.

  FLO – May 2011

  I was in the queue in Greggs, a daily lunchtime routine. When you are a little on the large side, it goes without saying that you will have an unfeasibly large belly. This chubby belly is only amiable when it is cared for. When it is not, you prepare yourself for vicious e-mail complaints being sent from belly to brain. A fat belly abhors loneliness. It is the dance floor of your body. It needs to be full.

  One day, I hope to have a body that allows me to see my pubic hair whilst I am standing straight, but I have no real desire for that to be any time soon. For now, I answer the e-mail complaints from my stomach with an apology, followed by two cheese and onion pasties and a steak and onion slice. I am not hefty because I am big boned, like some people are, I am fat because I eat a lot. Notice I say ‘a lot’ rather than ‘too much’, because it is not ‘too much’. Right now, eating stodgy, fatty foods makes me happy.

  Sorry, I was distracted by trying to explain how my stomach works and the demands it puts out to my brain. The point is, I was in the queue at Greggs at ten past one in the afternoon. That day, like many other days, I had rolled out of bed, like a ‘Weebles Wobble’, at twenty past eight and left home by half past. No food passed my lips at breakfast that morning. By ten past one, I was starving. Not really, truly starving, but an over indulged, first world, ‘starving’. I was ready to pig out. I knew the cheese and onion pasties and steak and onion slice were heading my way, but I was deciding bet
ween a vanilla slice and a jam doughnut when my phone rang. It was buried so deep inside my coat pocket that my initial reaction was to wonder which prick in the queue was now going to start shouting down their phone like Dom Joly. Once it registered that the offending ring tone was Take That’s ‘Rule The World’, I encouraged Gary and the boys out of their warm, dark hole and the phone’s display revealed to me that Zara was in need of a conversation.

  “Hello, Zara.”

  “Flo, is that you?”

  She had just phoned my phone, it was pretty obvious it was me.

  “Zara, what do you want? I’m in the queue in the pie shop.”

  “Guess where I am?” Zara bizarrely asked.

  “Penny Pinchers.”

  I had not suddenly become possessed with the powers of Uri Geller, I was on one o’clock lunch, Zara had been on twelve, I had seen her come back in at ten to one, when I was on the counter.

  “Yes, obviously, but where in Penny Pinchers?”

  “On the counter? Surely it’s not empty at ten past one.”

  “No, not on the counter. Guess again!”

  I wasn’t in the mood for guessing games. I was in the mood for food.

  “Zara, just tell me! I’m second in the queue now.”

  “I’m standing outside Mr.Brazier’s office, Flo.”

  “Why? Hang on a minute......can I have two cheese and onion pasties, a steak and onion slice, a jam doughnut and a vanilla slice, please.”

  I couldn’t decide between the desserts so I ordered both, I knew I didn’t have to eat them both, but also knew that I would.

  “Are you still there, Flo?” Zara whispered down the phone. I realised that she had actually been whispering throughout the conversation.

  “Yes, Zara, just getting my lunch...why are you outside Brazier’s office?”

  “I’m about to tell Mr.Brazier to stick his job up his arse!”

  For a few split seconds, I lost my appetite. I was in panic mode. Zara needed that job as much as I needed mine and she liked it more than I did. What was going on?