No-One Ever Has Sex On A Tuesday: A Very Funny Romantic Novel (2 page)

On the night in question they arrived at her riverside flat, just outside the centre of Leeds, in a cloud of designer perfume, a cacophony of high-pitched, excruciatingly girly laughter and a noisy clatter of six-inch high stilettos. Katy winced as they all trouped in knowing full well she should have called with an excuse – like the neighbour’s cat was dead.

Within moments there were suspenders, stockings, make up, fake hair, fake eyelashes, straighteners, curlers, push up bras, plunge bras, create cleavage visible from space bras, you name it, all strewn all over Katy’s flat. She looked at her beautiful vintage 1920s coffee table, bought during a weekend away in Brighton with a guy who might have been called Jonny, and wondered whether it would ever recover from one of the girls sitting astride it and giving it six of the best with her headmistress’s cane.

After the obligatory group photo, which Katy insisted on taking to ensure there was no record of her participation in this very grim pantomime, they set off with Katy skulking at the back praying none of her neighbours would choose that moment to go out.

The gym bunnies of course went crazy for the attention they got in every bar they visited, not seeming to notice that the quality of the attention was of a particularly poor standard. Unless of course acne-ridden, overly cocky teenage boys or middle-aged men pretending they were still overly cocky teenage boys was your thing.

By 11 o’clock they were in the club and in the middle of a heaving mass of bodies on the dance floor. It was dawning on her that maybe she was getting too old for this when Christy, the most pert and bouncy of the gym bunnies, proclaimed as soon as
Going Underground
by The Jam came on, that it was utter shit and who the bloody hell were The Jam anyway? How could she be out with someone who had never heard of The Jam? Katy stopped, swayed slightly, then turned around and stormed off to the bar, aghast that she had got herself into this situation. Old enough to know better, dressed as a stupid schoolgirl with so-called friends who were virtually half her age and, to top it all, had said bad things about the God that is Paul Weller.

As she made her way through the crowd cursing to herself, she didn’t see the bloke backing away from the bar with three pints in plastic glasses balanced precariously in his hands until she was virtually on top of him. She grabbed his arm to steady herself which caused him to lose his grip on the wobbly glasses, two of which dropped like stones to the floor whilst the third did a quick somersault, soaking Katy’s white shirt. She stood there for a moment wondering if her life could get any worse as the cold liquid seeped through her shirt, then her bra to her skin. She dared not look down at the carnage, knowing full well that her shirt was probably now completely transparent, displaying her wares for all to see.

“Why the hell don’t you look where you are going?” Katy screamed at him.

“Easy Tiger. It could be worse, it could have been bitter,” said the guy.

A wisecrack was the last thing she needed. What she needed was to let rip. And so let rip she did.

“You have just topped off nicely the most depressing night of my life. Not only am I way too old to be dressed as a bloody schoolgirl, I am here with a crowd of Barbie bloody bimbos with not a brain cell to share between them, who don’t even know who The Jam are, and think that this song – yes
Going Underground –
is shit.”

“My night is worse,” he said calmly.

“Look this isn’t a game. My night is utter crap and no-one is going to take that away from me.”

“Oh but I so can,” he challenged her.

“Bollocks you can,” she retorted. “Did I mention that a sweat monster from hell asked me how I liked my eggs in the morning?”

“Clearly desperate,” he nodded.

“Wow, thanks, I’m not that old,” she said in dismay.

“I didn’t mean you,” he said quickly. “I meant desperate if he had to use a line like that.”

“Really,” she said sarcastically.

“No honestly,” he said. “Anyway I like older women. They’re good for conversation.”

“I wouldn’t call this a conversation,” she said angrily. “This is you chucking beer all over me and then insulting me about my age.” She turned to go.

“No, please don’t go,” he said, catching her arm. “You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s all coming out wrong. You see I really am having a bad night. I’m a teacher, so a school disco is my idea of hell. My mates who dragged me here think it’s all dead sexy and I am like no, no, no, this is bad. I can’t look at a woman in school uniform and think it’s sexy.”

Katy turned back to face him, surprised to find herself wondering what he thought of her dressed the way she was. “Besides I don’t get it,” he continued. “Tell me who wants to be reminded of their school disco days anyway? Crap music, crap dancing, sober and no way on earth you were ever going to snog who you wanted because they were way more popular than you.”

“Well I guess you have a point,” she said eventually. “But at least you’re here with mates, not lipsticks on legs.”

“There is that I suppose. But all that still isn’t the main reason why my night is worse than yours.”

“Go on then, put me out of my misery,” she said, noticing the look of mischief in his eyes and trying very hard not to like it.

“OK then,” he paused and drew breath. “I went to the men’s and the bloke next to me stared at my you know what and said, “Shame about the ginger pubes.””

Katy couldn’t help but giggle. Just like a schoolgirl.

“But surely you knew you had ginger pubes before you came out?” she said feeling a blush starting to emerge to her horror.

“Of course, but to have a total stranger point them out to you during what should be sacred time is wrong on so many levels.”

He looked genuinely upset which caused Katy to burst out laughing. He started laughing too, obviously pleased he had at last won her over.

“I’m Ben by the way,” he said, offering her his hand still sticky from spilt lager. “So now we are united in misery I can either offer to buy you a drink or we can make a run for it, and go really up-market and grab a kebab?”

Before she knew it she was sitting on a cold stone step outside Gonads’ Kebab House spilling chilli sauce on her black stilettos, knowing this was probably the highlight of her evening.

Talking had been surprisingly easy. She was relieved that he hadn’t offered any embarrassing chat-up lines or false flattery. There was no sob story of a wife who didn’t understand him or a tricky divorce, which seemed to be par for the course with the older men she had been attracting lately. He didn’t even ask her what she did for a living. He just talked utter nonsense about anything and everything which made a refreshing change to the “I’m more successful than you” conversations she was used to with the image-obsessed men she met through work. In fact she realised for the first time in a long time she was with a man and not worrying about what she said or how she looked.

Before long he finished his kebab, licked his fingers one by one then, screwing up the greasy paper, announced he had better be off.

“Football tomorrow,” he said. “You OK to get yourself a taxi?”

“Yeah fine.”

He turned to go and then at the last minute he looked back.

“Fancy a drink one night?” he asked.

She hesitated. She had enjoyed his banter but she didn’t want to give the poor lad false hope.

“OK, but just a drink, that’s all.”

“We’d better go out on a Tuesday then,” he said seriously.

“Why?” asked Katy.

“Because no-one ever has sex on a Tuesday.”

They had met for a drink on a Tuesday, then the following Thursday, then the Monday after that, then finally they had had sex on the Saturday.

“You see Tuesday is such a nothing day. Sunday you have end of the weekend sex. Monday you have - bloody hell I need something to cheer myself up because it is still the start of the week sex. Wednesday you have maybe post scoring nine goals at football or boring night on the telly sex. Thursday is the new Friday so you go down the pub and then have - oh dear, aren’t I wild and crazy I’ve had too much to drink on a school night sex. Friday you have - thank Christ another week survived at work sex. And Saturday. Well Saturday is - it’s bloody Saturday I should have sex, sex.

“But Tuesday you see is tricky. What reason on earth is there to have sex on a Tuesday? You ask everyone. I bet you no-one can remember the last time they had sex on a Tuesday.”

Now as she slogged her way down endless hospital corridors following barely legible handwritten signs, she struggled to think of a good reason to have sex on any day of the week. In fact her entire opinion on sex had changed since that fateful morning six months ago when she had woken feeling queasy for the fifth day running. Initially she had put it down to a very bad and much extended reaction to a lively client dinner. However she was finally forced to admit that this was not her usual hangover sickness. She froze and racked her brains. When had she last had her period? She could vaguely remember the office Christmas party and having to cram tampons in the lovely little glitter bag she had bought specially to go with her hideously expensive little black dress. She rushed to the kitchen to check the calendar, her heart thumping so loudly she thought it might wake Ben who had stayed over. She flicked back to December and held her breath as she counted the weeks up until now. The first attempt got her to seven. No, that can’t be right. She checked again and again but the answer was seven every time. Shit, shit, shit. This could not be happening. She was on the pill. You don’t get pregnant on the pill. That is the whole point of the pill surely. She couldn’t have a baby. She was going out with Ben. He wasn’t ready to be a father. He was eight years younger than her. He was born in the eighties for God’s sake – practically still a child himself.

She sank to the floor; her beautiful Moroccan tile floor in her beautiful designer flat and buried her head in her hands. The implications flooded uncontrollably through her mind. What about her career? What about her life? What would everyone say? What would her mum say? She knew she would be horrified since she’d spent Katy’s entire adult life telling her not to get trapped like she did. She was convinced that had it not been for marriage and kids she would have been a star in Vegas despite the fact she was a terrible singer. Now she was making up for lost time in their villa in Spain spending most nights down the karaoke bars with her cronies.

“Who the hell’s is it?” would be her mother’s first question. They had long ago stopped discussing Katy’s relationships as they changed so frequently and her mum had lost interest. Well at least she knew it could only be Ben’s given that they had been “hanging out” as they both liked to call it, for a good few months now. In fact she had been amazed at how well it was going. They never promised to call, they just did. They introduced each other to their friends but hotly denied any romance and there was no way they were ever going to ask to meet each other’s parents. He took the mickey out of her pretentious world of advertising and she scoffed at his million weeks of school holiday a year and ability to be home in time to watch Neighbours.

“Undemanding, uncomplicated and under-age,” was how she had laughingly described it to a bemused Daniel.

“I have no idea why I didn’t think of going for a younger man before,” she added. “He’s too young to take life seriously so we have a laugh and he’s not old enough to want to settle down, so I’m not constantly planning how to extract myself. It’s perfect.”

It was also with much relief that she had given up her nights out with the gym bunnies. They had called and begged but she had made her excuses. So there had been no drunken nights without Ben in a while, no dodgy end of night snogs or even dodgier one night stands.

“Fuck,” shrieked Katy suddenly as she sat bolt upright, dropping the calendar on the floor. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” she chanted as she grabbed at the calendar. “Please no, if there is a God, please don’t do this to me.” She flicked back to December again and there in scribbled blue biro, two weeks after the office Christmas party were the last words on earth she had wanted to read.
Dove Valley School Re-union -8pm
.

Katy shuddered as she recalled the events surrounding the discovery of her pregnancy and did her best to stop her mind going into overdrive yet again as they finally reached the door of the room where the antenatal class was being held. Ben reached for her hand.

“Good luck partner,” he said, giving her a wink.

She smiled at him gratefully. Maybe everything was going to be alright. She took a deep breath and stepped into the room.

As Ben and Katy entered, seven expectant faces turned to stare at the last members to arrive.

“Bloody hell, I don’t believe it. No wonder he hasn’t been turning up for football practice,” exclaimed Ben staring at a young lad slouched in a chair.

But Katy hadn’t heard him as the sight of someone else in the room had made her gasp for breath and lose the ability to make her legs move. How could he be here? He didn’t even live in Leeds. What the hell was going on? She grabbed the back of a chair to steady herself. She felt like she was suddenly in some weird Sunday night TV drama where no-one is content until everyone’s lives have been completely destroyed.

“So the local under nineteen’s team performance goes down the toilet all because my best striker has got some girl pregnant,” Ben continued, oblivious to Katy’s distress. “What an idiot. Look at him: he should be out practicing his penalties not stuck in here with a load of old pregnant women.”

Katy was too bewildered to take anything in. She could just about sense now that they were walking towards the group, the point of no return. All she wanted was to turn and run as fast as possible, but there was nothing she could do to prevent what was going to happen. At that moment the last man on earth she wanted to see looked up and saw her. A smile sprang instantly to Matthew’s mouth as he recognised her but it disappeared the moment he saw that she was pregnant.

Chapter 3