Chapter 34
When they got to the restaurant, five hours later, half an hour late for the booking and merry as their merry band could be on warm white wine, Sophie produced a shoebox full of cue cards from somewhere about her person and announced they were going to play the His and Hers game.
‘I can’t play any games right now,’ said Bex, barely able to focus on the table in front of her.
‘Me neither,’ said Libby and Karen in total unison.
‘I miss Jack,’ said the one called Helen, another add-on with very severe eyebrows who Felicity was a bit scared of, truth be told.
‘Ooh yes,’ said Karen. ‘We definitely should have made him come with us. Let’s go back and find him.’
‘I do love games though,’ muttered Bex, apparently not to anyone in particular.
‘I know you do, my love,’ said Sophie, putting an encouraging arm round her shoulders.
‘But I don’t know the rules to this one…’
‘It’s okay, it’s very easy,’ said Sophie. ‘We asked Adam some stuff about you and we’re gonna see if his answer matches your answer. Does that make sense?’
‘Go for it,’ shouted Bex, her voice shrill. ‘He’s known me long enough, after all.’
Felicity shifted a bit in her seat. The previous week she and Sophie had sent Adam a tentative email with a list of questions about his (latest) beloved, half expecting him to refuse to play.
She had been oddly jealous when he replied, and although he was very reluctant at first, his answers were warm and funny and even, occasionally, correct.
‘Right. So. Listen up, everyone. The first question we asked Adam was, what is Bex’s favourite clothing brand?’
‘Reiss,’ said Bex, swaying back and forth in her seat. Felicity had to stop watching her as it was making her feel a bit seasick and she felt sick enough already. She stared at the table, strangely invested in Bex’s responses to the game all of a sudden.
‘Yes, that’s right. Well done, Adam.’
‘I would have killed him if he got that wrong,’ slurred Bex. ‘Did he offer to buy me anything?’ They all tittered politely. This was so unlike Bex, to be this drunk. Felicity was feeling a bit bad. Maybe we should take her home.
‘What did Adam think was your favourite movie?’
‘The Lion King?’ said Bex.
‘Nope…’
‘Er, no, okay, hold on, he probably said something shooty like The Bourne Identity or Deadpool.’
‘Deadpool, that’s right.’
‘But it’s only because it’s got that Ryan Gosling in it. He’s delicious.’ Several of the girls murmured their agreement.
‘Reynolds,’ said Felicity, under her breath.
‘What?’ said Bex, her eyes unfocused as she turned to look at Felicity.
‘Reynolds. Not Gosling.’
‘Right,’ said Sophie hastily. ‘Next one. We asked Adam what you would most like to eat on a Friday night.’
A couple of the girls giggled and nudged each other.
‘Not like that,’ said Sophie, rolling her eyes.
‘Indian takeaway,’ said Bex.
‘Ooh, can you be more specific?’ said Sophie.
Bex was looking rather pale. Even more so than usual, if that was possible. Her plastic tiara had slipped down the back of her head and she was now swaying quite violently on her chair.
‘I like the one with the prawns,’ she said, with a slight hiccough.
‘Prawn bhuna. Close enough.’
‘Bex, do you feel okay?’ said Felicity, sliding a bit closer to her on the bench seating. ‘You look a bit…’
And this, it turned out, was her fatal mistake.
Bex turned to answer her, opened her mouth and projectile vomited into Felicity’s face, all down her front and all over the leather seating.
Everything happened in slow motion after that.
People around the restaurant started screaming. Bex stood up for some unknown reason and then vomited three more times onto the table in between dry heaving, giggling hysterically and saying, ‘Oh my, oh Lord, oh my goodness,’ over and over again.
Waiters and waitresses appeared out of nowhere, as if to help, but then were so mortified they just stood and stared at the scene of abject horror before them.
Felicity, face and hair dripping with vomit, was so stunned she couldn’t even move.
She sat in horrified silence for a moment and then burst out laughing.
What else was there to do? Bex looked at her and laughed too and then they were all laughing and it was a strangely warm and friendly moment until suddenly Felicity wasn’t laughing any more.
Sickness rose in her own throat and she pushed her chair back.
Felicity stood and turned towards the toilets, then slipped in a pile of sick on the floor and fell down flat on her face.
There was a gasp from behind her and then more laughing, this time from strangers; oh, the mortification.
She lay for a moment right there on the restaurant floor, head aching from where it had met the cold tiles quite hard.
The smell of vomit by this point was overwhelming.
Felicity clambered to a sitting position, using the table to pull herself up, groaning the whole time and putting her hands into even more of the piles of warm vomit around her.
She staggered to the toilets, where she was sick into the toilet bowl, sat back, smelt the Bex sick in her own hair and then threw up twice more.
Sophie banged on the toilet door, asking her over and over again if she was okay but Felicity couldn’t answer because more vomit. Eventually she managed to crawl to the door to open it, whimpering.
‘Good Lord,’ said Sophie. ‘Let’s get you home.’
It was all a blur after that.
No taxis would take her, and who could blame them?
In the end Sophie called James. His mouth dropped open when he caught sight of Felicity but to his credit he managed to keep a straight face.
Without a word, he took her arm, guiding her into the back of the car where she sat leaning her face against the half-open window, letting the cool air wash over her and praying to be magicked into her bed.
It was the longest fifteen minutes of her life.
When they finally got home, she waved feebly goodbye to Sophie with a grateful smile, then James steered her straight upstairs and into the bathroom, clothes still dripping with sick.
She managed two showers in quick succession before climbing into bed, still whimpering.
It was only later she even wondered how Sophie had got home.
The only one who wasn’t horrified and appalled at her appearance was Gennie the cat, who climbed on top of her as she always did and purred on Felicity’s stomach all night while she slept the sleep of the nearly dead.
When she woke up the next day, even though she was now clean and smelt of petals, all she could think of was how Bex’s vomit had smelt in her hair.
She turned over and closed her eyes, blocking out the memory.
A few hours later she woke again to the smell and sound of fresh coffee being brewed on James’s fancy machine downstairs.
Her stomach groaned with hunger and she realised they hadn’t even had time to have dinner at the restaurant before VomitGate saw the whole lot of them being turned out on their drunken ears. She was starving.
Felicity crawled out of bed, wrapping James’s oversized and super-soft tartan dressing gown around her, and stumbled down the stairs just as James, wearing only a pair of soft grey tracksuit trousers, was putting a pile of home-made egg-and-hash-brown muffins on the table.
Her absolute favourite breakfast. Her stomach groaned again.
On any other day the sight of that muscled chest would have made her instantly hot and bothered.
But not today. Today, she felt so rough she just wanted to find a corner to curl up in so she could die a slow and peaceful death.
Still, she could vaguely remember that he’d been her knight in shining armour the previous evening. Best show some gratitude.
‘Have I told you lately that I love you?’ murmured Felicity, grabbing James around the waist and burying her face in his lovely broad back.
He reached one arm around to pull her against him.
‘Not this morning,’ he said and she could hear the smile in his voice.
‘Also, how come you didn’t run away screaming when you saw the state of me last night?’ she said into his bare skin.
‘I was tempted, I won’t lie,’ he said.
‘Er, rude. Your poor car. I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, waving a hand. ‘That’s what car shampoo is for.’
‘Was it that bad?’
‘It was pretty bad.’ A pause. ‘What the hell happened?’
‘I need to eat first,’ she said. ‘And I need coffee. So much coffee.’
James deposited her gently into a chair and passed a mug of steaming hot black coffee into her grateful hands. She clutched it like it was a life jacket. Which, in a way, it was.