Nursed

Midday, Saturday. Erica asks me if I'm down the pub. No, but I can be.

She gives me a beautifully designed wedding invite. I avoid weddings at all costs. I've managed to be away for both my brothers', and haven't been to one this century. Making a senseless promise of fidelity is a strange thing to celebrate. "Everybody! Let's have a party. Because the end of our sex life begins here!"

But this will at least be a party of Ericean proportions. We'll first be serious, then drunk, then dancing and off our heads in good company. And I did feel honoured when she gave me the invite for the whole day. I said those words to Erica, but it doesn't sound serious enough, and she's not interested in receiving my gratitude. It goes unsaid.

---

New Business Partner and his girlf are there. White cotton short sleeved top tied at the neck then opening in an oval towards her tits. Lovely blonde bob, broad red-lipsticked lips ready to receive my cock as I scrape my nails down the side of her head. I sit down with them and I enjoy the involuntary sexual attraction I have towards her. He was talking about driving and mowing cyclists down. "It's reassuring, NBC, to know that you are still as much of a cunt before you went to Manchester as you are now," I said. I glanced at her, we all laughed, and I thought, and she knew I was thinking it, ...if things were different.

After a couple of hours or so Erica leaves. Me and her friend go to another pub's garden and tilt our heads to the sun. Some people I vaguely know, and we have a joint. Inconsequential but enjoyable kissing.

---

My carriage in the train from Wigan to Liverpool, to meet the nurse, stank. I was concerned the smell would occlude my laundered, Coco Chanel-misted mask. I arrive in the pub a little early. I got myself a drink then went meandering round trying to find a couple of seats. All of a sudden, someone appeared at my side saying "Hello!"

No, that can't be her. The mysterious pessimism about appearance and attraction.

"Hello," I replied, my face broadening into a smile involuntarily paused. Fucking hell, you're pretty. Blonde hair cut into the nape of her neck, a thigh length thin scooped neck dress over narrow jeans, in a complicated abstract pattern of pale blues, greys and white; underneath, a tight blue vest; an attractive necklace in two or three rings of probably plastic small aquamarine stones that she kept toying with. A stave of thin blue-green bangles on her wrists.

We talked about our raving days, about how nostalgia retrospectively frames those nights, how e can give you a tensing awareness of an unhappy relationship, about living in London, about her rock chick days. Got to the "twat" and "fucker" level of swearing. She told me about turning down another man on the site when he started getting a bit accusatorily narky about whether she'd have enough time to meet him, given that she's looking after a six-year-old by herself. "Whereas you," she said "just understood it."

We didn't kiss at the end but I haven't the least doubt that she knew I liked her. "I had a great time," I texted her, and meant it simply. A couple of texts on the train, promising to arrange a return leg. I texted Kim. "The nurse is a fitbit. Bit of an ex druggie. You might be off the hook soon :) x"

On the train from Liverpool, sweary and laughy chat with three people who'd been to Chester races, telling them about my afternoon, and a running joke emerging after we went through a station called Bryn and wondering if we'd ended up in fucking Wales.

Changing trains at Preston for the Lancaster one, all the demotic Scouse sociability disappeared, and our journeys and our selves became privatised. Single young people spread themselves defensively across two seats, solipsistic in music and texting. A couple came and sat opposite me. I ground out a couple of minutes of conversation with them.

"Going anywhere nice?"

"Broughton. Yes, Broughton."

I nod, encouraging an elaboration, returned with silence.

She looked a lot younger than him. "Is this your daughter?"

"No."

Come on, make an effort. It's the last train on a Friday night. We're all pissed.

When I found out he was a counsellor, it all made sense. An occupational group which sucks out a living from other people's lives whilst giving out nothing in return. I sat silently amongst the tss-tss of iPods for the rest of the journey.