Colour Me Yours

Chapter 1

ONE

‘What a phenomenal waste of time!’

Elsy slams a box of ibuprofen under Charles’ nose, tearing him away from nebulous thoughts he instantly forgets. He knocks over his empty pint glass and narrowly catches it before it falls on the other side of the bar counter.

‘Damn it, Els. You know I hate it when you startle me.’

‘You were wandering very deep in Charland, weren’t you?’

Charles sighs and picks up the pen he let go of when he jumped.

He clicks its nib in and out six times, following the erratic beats of his heart, shaken by this abrupt trip back down to Earth.

He should be used to his best friend’s passion for making explosive entrances.

But for a minute, or more, he had forgotten she was meant to join him.

‘This pub is so creepy.’ Elsy perches on the next rickety stool and frees her wavy auburn hair from a ponytail. ‘I’m not sure the old drunk sitting near the door is still alive.’

‘So what’s going on with you? Why was it a waste of time? What did they say?’

‘I spent an hour there just to be told to take period medicine!’

An hour in A&E seems like a reasonable wait for someone who’s neither unconscious nor bleeding out, which means Elsy must have thrown a few ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ at the staff.

No one at the Royal Free Hospital knows who Elsy is, but she can effortlessly pass herself off as a friend of the Middletons.

Glad that he didn’t witness the scene, Charles brushes her white medical wristband, jarring between her golden bracelets. ‘Nothing serious, then?’

‘Hang on. Excuse me! Would it be possible to get a drink?’

Elsy punctuates her question with a tight-lipped smile, affronted that the barman didn’t scoot over to serve her.

‘I guess. What can I get you?’

‘Do you do cocktails?’ she asks, staring at the ‘We don’t do cocktails’ sign on the wall.

‘I can overcharge you for a shot diluted in juice.’

The guy comes from a French-speaking country.

But he’s not shortening all vowels or incapable of stressing syllables, like most Francophones.

His accent is a subtle echo that lingers when he’s finished speaking.

Charles has been craving cheese, crêpes and Breton cider for the past forty-five minutes.

‘Please do. Surprise me. On his tab.’ Elsy glances at Charles. ‘You’ve opened a tab?’

‘Yes.’ He presses his knee against her thigh. ‘Now, tell me. Are you alright?’

Soon after lunch, Elsy called him to explain she was experiencing sharp chest pain that she compared to a gnome trampolining on her thorax.

Charles would have attributed such pain to a new kind of panic-induced episode, but Elsy doesn’t do panic.

She ruled out potential causes found on Google, and she concluded – still without panicking – that she was perhaps having a heart attack and should leave university early to seek medical advice.

For reasons that Charles didn’t question, she shunned her usual private practice and instructed him to wait for her in this seedy pub after work.

‘It’s a boring inflammation of the cartilage. It’ll go away with rest and cheap pills.’

‘You should go rest, then.’

‘They meant we can’t play tennis this week. I’m fine.’ She squeezes his fingers, her silver-flaked polish reflecting the neon lighting above the bar. ‘Don’t fret about it, Chips.’

Charles cracks a smile and squeezes her hand in turn, half a dozen times.

He’s realising how worried he was now that he’s not anymore. It’s messed up. Worry usually stifles him for the less concerning grounds for alarm, yet he blanked out through Elsy’s medical emergency.

‘Can I see some ID?’

Elsy gasps and looks daggers at the barman. ‘Some ID? Did you check his ID?’

‘No.’

‘So this is facial discrimination! I’m older than him. Probably older than you too. And why didn’t you ask before making this?’

‘I’m gonna add tequila in a second. This is just OJ and grenadine.’

Grenadine. The barman didn’t even attempt to sound British there.

His bilingual brain made the switch. Up until the OJ, Charles was in a small boozer in North West London, but the grenadine catapulted him onto a Parisian pavement.

He’s surrounded by chain-smokers, an édith Piaf song plays in the background and—

‘Happy?’ Elsy presents her driving licence with a roll of her eyes. ‘That makes me twenty-two, in case you can’t do maths. Please leave the tequila bottle. I’m sure you’ll find a way to overprice that.’

‘On your tab too?’

Charles nods, but his throat tightens a little. A steep afternoon pub bill will show up on his bank statement. His father has access to his bank statements.

He clicks his pen again, six times.

Elsy pours tequila into her glass until it overflows and pulls Charles’ notebook closer. ‘Let’s see what you came up with!’

‘Weirdest thing you’ve ever asked me to do.’

‘Potential desperate times call for pathetic measures.’

On the off chance that she suffered from a fatal disorder, Elsy deemed it necessary to draft a goodbye letter to a man she used to spend steamy nights with – until he got engaged to a woman she had never heard of.

‘You’re a witty writer, I trust you,’ Elsy’s text said.

Charles is neither witty nor a writer, but as ghoulish as it was, it distracted him. He suspects Elsy knew it would.

She tries her drink, moistens her lips and starts reading out loud.

‘“Hampstead, London, 13th November, 2018. Dear Wanker, as my chaotic journey comes to an end, I’m rejoicing at the deadly-dull one you’re embarking on.

Rest assured that I no longer hope you choke on your wedding cake.

I want you to live the miserable cockroach life you deserve, unable to get a hard-on without picturing my mouth.

Offer your soon-to-be-frustrated wife my least sincere condolences and remember, you fucktard, that I loved you—” Oi! ’

‘Too harsh?’

‘I never loved the prick!’

‘You thought you were dying and he’s the one you wanted to leave a note to.’

‘Because I’m a petty queen. Let’s fix this. And sharpen it.’

‘You’re not dying.’

‘But I had a crappy afternoon and you know it’ll be fun.’

Elsy takes a pen out of his case, and Charles stops mistreating the one he’s holding. Yes, it will be fun.

He cranes forwards to catch the attention of the barman, who’s busy serving an army of drunks.

‘Could I get a glass? And could you put the bottle of grenadine on my tab?’ Charles winces at how stale the word sounds in his accent. ‘Please.’

The barman pushes the syrup towards him and arches an eyebrow. ‘That’s gonna cost you way more than the tequila.’

‘As it should! Merci!’

Tequila and grenadine turn out to be a great combination with the optimal dosage. Charles needs four glasses to get it right and, at this stage, he can’t tell if it’s great because he got it right or because he feels amazing.

The pub is more crowded, and Charles and Elsy are insufferable, acting like they own the place and disrupting the quietude sought by regulars.

They shout and snort tequila out. They hammer the counter whenever they find a new obscene way to belittle Elsy’s ex-lover.

They crush the letter drafts into balls to throw at each other, indifferent to the carpet forming around their stools.

They’re loud, ill-mannered, haughty about it, and it doesn’t matter.

Charles can sense the prevailing disapproval.

He cares enough to notice, but he doesn’t actually care, because no one knows him here.

It’s the perfect amount of caring, a golden mean between the two extreme states he usually flounders in.

It’s exhilarating, and grenadine tastes like a place he would love to write about.

When Elsy sucks out the last drops of tequila from the bottle’s speed pourer, Charles asks for the bill.

He enters his pin without checking the amount and puts a tenner onto the counter. The barman thanks him and wipes their mess now that Charles has shoved his belongings into his leather messenger bag.

‘Els! Let’s go!’

Charles yanks her away from the two customers she’s recapping the failure of her former affair to. She stumbles against the stool, falls into his arms and sniffs the collar of his shirt.

‘You smell like debauchery. Let’s run to my place to get very naked, very fast.’

‘Your chest hurts.’

‘Nonsense.’

He smiles but shakes his head. The thought of causing her pain would inevitably prevent him from getting it up.

She grumbles and turns to the barman. ‘D’you want to get laid?’

‘I’m gonna respectfully pass.’

‘There’s no respectful way to do that!’

Charles loops an arm around Elsy’s waist to keep her at a safe distance from the many men who would disregard her brassy attitude if she offered her body. She grumbles again and kicks a paper ball straight between the legs of the drunk sleeping in an armchair by the door.

The night sky is as clear as it can get in Greater London. Charles wouldn’t mind staying on the patio of the pub, to sit cross-legged on one of the wooden tables and look up. He’s never gazed at the stars from here. But this pastime is only soothing when he’s on his own.

They cross the street to walk back home, which a sober Elsy in heels would flat out refuse. Luckily, she’s busy listing the reasons why she doesn’t care about the man she’s obsessing over and she lets Charles usher her through narrow residential streets.

Born, raised and expected to uphold an impeccable reputation in Hampstead, Charles has perfected a safe pedestrian map of the neighbourhood.

One that limits the risk of bumping into a gossipy acquaintance of his family.

Even as a child, dragged around by his nannies, he kept a record of the spots where his demeanour was observed by a stranger yet criticised at home later that week.

Charles loves the village vibe of Hampstead, four miles away from the city centre. He only wishes it were a village he had chosen and escaped to, not the one he often feels trapped in.

‘Are you coming over anyway?’ Elsy asks as he leads her away from the street he lives on.

‘Of course.’

He doesn’t recall his parents requesting his presence at dinner tonight, which is a solid proof that they didn’t. His selective memory tends to focus on unpleasant prospects.

‘Great! Let’s order sushi! And— Hang on, Chips! Why are we on foot?’