Page 92 of How We Began

I still can’t quite believe it.

I’m most definitely back under my duvet, which is where I plan to stay for the foreseeable future.

17th February

“I don’t really think he and I can be your best friend at the same time. I am not very good at sharing.” Meredith poked her head under my duvet.

“Go away.”

“Well. Best friend, my arse. You speak out of your bum half the time, Lil.”

“Go away, or pass the vodka.”

“Just saying. You could fart and it would make more sense.”

18th February

Lectures = Yuck

Library = Yuck

Dorm = Yuck

Acting like best friends = Yuck

19th February

I’m thinking about branching out.

Cooking…

I’ve not cooked ‘successfully’—other than toast—since the Christmas turkey fiasco.

I should be self-sufficient. Ben is still cooking for me, despite his new Best Friend status, which is brilliant because it means I’m getting my five a day from something other than an olive in a gin. However, it’s become clear that I’m going to starve for two weeks of Easter. Even if I manage to survive that, I’ll most definitely starve next year.

I’m going to go to Putney and get some stuff from Waitrose. I wonder if Meredith fancies a trip to the supermarket?

(Later)

Or I might just go to the pub instead.

Crisps are made out of potatoes, which as a vegetable are one of my five a day.

We had actually gone to Waitrose (with all good intentions) but I made a huge mistake trying to take a shortcut to the freezer aisle, unfortunately the shortcut took us down the baby aisle.

“Do you think frozen prawns are as good as fresh?” I asked turning to look at Mer. I found her staring at the packs of Pampers lining the shelf in front of us.

Then she turned to me and cried. And I cried, too.

In all the bloody drama of Ben and I, and the whole ‘let’s pretend to be boyfriend/girlfriend’, followed by ‘let’s pretend to be best friends’, I’ve failed in my role of checking in on Mer and how she was doing.

She’s just lost a baby.

Maybe I’d been fooled by her happiness over getting engaged to Tristan-the-Arse, but, well, I suck as a best friend.

We had abandoned the trolley in the middle of the aisle and walked out arm-in-arm. Straight to the pub where we put the world to rights over a couple bottles of pinot.

The best bit of the evening was that even though we were both two sheets to the wind by the end of the night, we managed to find our own way home without calling on Ben or Tristan.