Just Friends by Robyn Sisman Page A

her ex-lover, at the behest of her ex-lover’s mother, who thought she was the cleaning lady? An idiot, that’s who. How dared Michael complain about her to his mother! What did he mean, experienced ?
    “I forgot to say,” she called out. “All the trousers need shortening.”
    “Okeydokey.” Joe picked up his pen again.
    He copied down her instructions obediently and handed her the tickets. She stuffed them into her pocket. Michael had a brain, didn’t he? He’d track down his suits eventually. It was a pity she couldn’t be present when he put one on. She pulled open the rickety door to the street.
    “Hey, just a minute! These trousers: did you say six inches ?”
    Freya paused, hand on the doorknob. Then she turned and fixed Joe with a dazzling smile.
    “Haven’t you heard? Short is the new long.”

 
     
    CHAPTER 8
     
    Jack opened the door of his bedroom. He was wearing a sleep-creased T-shirt and faded undershorts with a lipstick kiss imprinted on the right buttock. After steadying himself on the jamb, he launched himself on a trajectory that should, with luck, lead him across the north side of the living room and around the corner to the bathroom. Walking on autopilot, eyes squinched with sleep, he successfully negotiated the corner and biffed the bathroom door with the heel of his hand, as he always did. Normally it flew open with a satisfying pop! Today it nearly broke his wrist. It was locked! He recoiled sharply and cradled his arm, panting with the pain.
    “Out in a sec,” chirruped a voice, a female voice: Freya. He kept forgetting she was here.
    Next there came the hiss of water, which meant that she was only just beginning her shower. Women always took forever. Muttering to himself, Jack stomped through the kitchen and unlocked the door to the backyard, a wasteland of weeds and rotting cardboard boxes. He took a couple of paces across the cracked concrete and peed vigorously onto a patch of dandelions. As his senses juddered into focus, he became aware of an annoying whistling noise. Eventually Jack made out a little brown thing on the back wall. Hop hop. Tweet tweet. Dumb bird. He hated cheerfulness in the morning.
    Something was fluttering at the edge of his vision. Jack turned his head and gaped. A makeshift clothesline had been strung out across one corner of the yard. From it dangled various pieces of unmistakably female apparel, including flimsy wisps of underwear. This was awful. What would the neighbors think?—especially Henpecked Harry from upstairs, who was practically Velcroed to his wife and depended on Jack to live a life of brutal, undomesticated masculinity. Jack winced his way across the prickly terrain, snatched the clothes off the line, and took them inside.
    His plan had been to position himself in an armchair bang in the middle of Freya’s path back to her room so that he could rustle a newspaper impatiently when she finally emerged. But to his surprise he found the bathroom already vacated and exuding warm, scented steam. Jack wrinkled his nose. What if that stuff got into the water system? He didn’t want to wind up smelling like a girl.
    He shut himself in the bathroom, only realizing once he was inside that he still had Freya’s clothes. He dumped them in a pile on the toilet seat, then ran water into the basin and lathered his face with shaving cream. He dipped his razor into the warm water and cut a long swath through the foam. Ouch! Whimpering softly, Jack bathed his stinging cheek in cold water, then peered in the mirror to examine the damage. One side of his face was covered with tiny red pinpricks beginning to bleed. What had happened to his razor? But he already knew the answer. He flung open the bathroom door.
    “Freya!” he bellowed.
    “Morning, Jack,” said a voice about three feet away from him. “I was about to make some coffee. Want some?” She was standing at the entrance to the kitchen, immaculate and aloof, already dressed in her zippy