Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend by Jenny Colgan

late.
     
     
     
    Twenty minutes later, Eck emerged from the loo, looking rather pale and shaken.
     
    ‘Um, are you all right?’ I said tentatively. I didn’t want to rush to admit liability. Plus, I’d made tea. This time I’d left the bags in far too long. The cups were dark brown and it tasted like pure muck.
     
    ‘Well, I saved it,’ he said, looking frightened.
     
    ‘Well, that’s great news!’ I tried to be cheery. ‘Perhaps . . . I made a little mistake with the cleaner . . . but I’m going to fix that right away.’
     
    ‘You probably should,’ said Eck. ‘The toilet’s smoking.’
     
    I waited for him to mention something about a party, but he didn’t. He didn’t drink the tea I’d made him either. Or sit down.
     
    ‘Do you want to sit down?’ I said.
     
    ‘Not yet,’ he said gingerly.
     
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
     
    ‘You really are from a different planet, aren’t you?’ he said, shaking his head.
     
    ‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ I said. ‘I’m just like anybody else.’
     
    I really was desperate to know if he was going to ask me out or not. My ego really needed this.
     
    ‘I mean, I love dancing and things, just like normal people.’
     
    ‘I don’t think I’m ever going to dance again,’ said Eck, looking pained. So, I was going to have to take this as a no, then.
     
    ‘Like George Michael,’ I said wisely. ‘Until he got his sexuality sorted out, and now he dances all the time.’
     
    I sighed to myself. Maybe they were having a party here but I wasn’t even invited to it. Maybe I’d have to sit in my room all night holding the coats. The idea of an upcoming social event, something to look forward to with a nice-looking boy - either of them, really - had really cheered me up and I’d felt almost happy. Right up to the point where I burned off Eck’s penis.
     
    Eck looked up, a slight sagginess visible under his chocolate brown eyes.
     
    ‘Sophie . . .’ he said. ‘Do you think we should have a flat party?’
     
     
     
    Ooh! I thought, as I swilled forty-seven litres of water down the cistern. After I’d done that the thing was pristine; it wasn’t actually that bad a way to clean a toilet, as long as you didn’t then use it for a couple of days. A party! Dancing! Booze! The only sticky moment had come when Eck had asked me, with quite a hopeful look in his eye, if I’d like to invite some of my friends. It was hard to explain that, a) I was a bit disappointed as I’d hoped the whole idea of having a party was to sneakily get a chance to ask me out, b) all my friends had inexplicably appeared to side with the woman who stole my boyfriend and didn’t like me any more, c) even if that hadn’t been the case, they wouldn’t come here, and d) if they did, they’d probably be really sneery and unpleasant about everything, as would I have been a few months before.
     
    I moved on to the bath, more carefully this time. Good God, though, who’d been the last person to use it, Fungus the Bogeyman? Should I stick my fingers down the plughole like Esperanza had suggested . . . my eyes crept to the deadly oven poison. No, Sophie. No.
     

Chapter Nine
     
    Cleaning the flat was obviously brilliant fun and everything - if by brilliant fun you mean horrible boring dirtiness that didn’t pay me any money - but it still didn’t solve my original problem. I needed my job back, and pretty damn fast. I hoped Julius would understand the principle of compassionate leave, but I wasn’t holding out much hope. There were roughly 165,000 girls in London who’d like to work for practically nothing for a famous avant-garde photographer who gave amazingly druggy parties in his super-hip loft and only slept with twins.
     
    I dialled my old work number. ‘Hello?’ said a smooth, sleepy-sounding voice. Weirdly, I think it sounded a bit like me.
     
    ‘Hi there, it’s Sophie Chesterton!’
     
    There was a long pause. A loooonnngg pause. Not by any