Pip. Freya North

meanwhile, has her lips a centimetre from Matt’s and she plants the first of many birthday kisses. Pip averts her gaze and busies herself tracing the rim of the wineglass. It feels as though her work is done. She feels like a spare part. She feels she is no longer needed. She wonders if she could just slip away.

      ‘Look, I know this sounds corny – and I swear it really isn’t my style – but maybe I could buy you a drink?’

       Stalker Bloke!

      She hadn’t seen him approach. She hadn’t expected him to. She’s unprepared. It’s not a state she is familiar with or one that she likes.

       Shit.

      For God’s sake, why not just say ‘yes’, Pip, with a ‘please’. Flicker your eyelashes and have a flirt. He’s only offering to buy you a drink and you don’t currently have one, Cat having just swiped it. Nor do you have anyone to talk to. This might pass the time. This might be amusing.

      ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Pip all but cautions, ‘I’m here with my sisters.’

      ‘Well, I’ll get them drinks, too, if they’d like?’ he suggests. ‘Or is it more that you need their seal of approval?’ He’s ingenuous but momentarily, Pip wonders whether he’s mocking. Then, however, she observes that his face is open and his eyes are soft and he’s tilting his head in an acquiescent way. He shrugs: ‘I don’t have sisters,’ he explains, ‘I wouldn’t know.’ He redeems himself with that.

       He still doesn’t recognize me. I don’t know whether to be offended or entertained.

      He’s tired, Pip. A little pissed, too. And the bar is atmospherically lit or downright dim. And you look pretty different out of slap and motley.

      ‘Look,’ says Zac, ‘can I buy you a drink, or shall I just dig a hole right here and dive headfirst into it?’ He’s never before resorted to chatting women up in bars but he’s elicited a laugh from the girl and he rather feels he’s done quite well. Friendly without being smarmy, witty not corny, self-deprecating not self-satisfied.

      ‘Sure,’ says Pip, ‘why not.’ Her sisters are occupied. Their glasses are full. They won’t need her for the time being.

      ‘What’ll you have?’

      Pip licks her lips and appears to think about it, her index finger raised for emphasis. ‘May I have,’ she ponders and pauses and then regards him with direct eye contact and a lascivious twitch of her mouth, ‘may I have orangey-lemony-blackcurranty squash?’ Zac stares at her because, what with the pervasive chatter, the ambient music playing a little too loudly and the good few beers in his system already, combined with the trippy dingle-dangle lighting, he thinks Pip has asked for a cocktail he hasn’t heard of but that he probably should know. ‘Orangey-lemony-blackcurranty squash.’ she repeats.

      ‘Right,’ he says, trying to remember the precise order.

      Pip repeats her request, once more, in Dr Pippity’s voice. And she raises her eyebrow and gives him a sly grin. And it is then that the penny drops.

      ‘Bloody Jesus bloody Christ,’ he murmurs. Pip can’t hear him but she can certainly lip-read. ‘Clowngirl?’ Zac exclaims. ‘Dr Whatsit or Merry Thingy?’

      ‘Pip McCabe,’ Pip says cordially, extending her hand most demurely, slightly concerned that he looks just a little alarmed.

      ‘Crikey,’ he says, and is immediately concerned that his vocabulary and the fact that he’s ruffling his hair excessively is all a bit too Hugh Grant.

       I won’t say ‘I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on’, then.

      ‘What’s a nice clown like you doing in a circus like this?’ Zac asks instead.

      There’s a pause but fortunately Pip breaks it with a laugh.

      ‘We have to slip out of our slap and motley sometimes,’ she explains.

      ‘Is that what it’s called?’ Zac asks, vaguely interested, eyeing the queue at the bar.

      ‘Sometimes, it’s more slop and mutley,’ Pip says.

      ‘Now, tell me slowly what it is you drink,’ he says, quite wanting a trip to the bar to restore his composure.

      Pip laughs: ‘They wouldn’t mix it correctly here, I fear,’ she says, ‘so make mine a glass of red.’

      ‘Coming up,’ he says, relieved. ‘My name’s Zac Holmes, by the way.’

      ‘Good to put a name to the face,’ says Pip drily, ‘after all this time.’

      Zac sets off for the bar but returns almost immediately. ‘I’d just like you to know,’ he shouts above the music, ‘that I’m not some crazy bloody stalker.’

      ‘I know,’ Pip says to him, ‘you’re Zac Bloody Holmes.’ He nods, relieved, and heads for the bar. Pip watches him.

       He has a pretty winning smile – for a stalker. But he also looks a little like my friend Susie’s ex. And God, did that guy screw her up by screwing her over and screwing her sister.

      Don’t tar him with the same brush. Don’t tar him, full stop. You hardly know him.

       But I ought to remember that he’s been insolent to me before. And he started chatting me up – In A Bar. And didn’t realize it was me. He’s probably on the pull. This is probably his style. If so, it clashes with mine.

      And of course you mustn’t forget that you have your big date with Caleb tomorrow night.

       Exactly.

      ‘Wait till I tell Tom,’ Zac says, returning with drinks. ‘You know – my little boy?’ His face lights up. ‘Of course you do.’

      ‘How is he?’ Pip asks, and is told he’s doing OK. Zac starts talking about him, the usual anecdotes laced with paternal pride, which of course run on and on. After a while, with her drink almost empty, Pip wishes the subject would change.

       And I also wish I didn’t find him attractive. I mustn’t. It must be the alcohol. After all, this is the bloke who has stalked me in hospitals, been rude to me at children’s parties, behaved oddly in public parks and has been making passes at me in a bar. And he has a kid and an ex and he’s odd. So what if he’s good-looking? Distortion by drink!

      ‘We’re not talking baggage as in a small backpack,’ Pip says into her wineglass a little later when Zac has gone to the bar to replenish their drinks, ‘we’re talking excess baggage – on such a scale that he’d be fined heavily if he tried to check it in at the airport.’

      Zac returns and confirms Pip’s misgivings when he starts regaling her with Tom’s Harry Potter obsession. He’s just about to ask her what sort of a name Pip is and what sort of a career clowning is, when two girls approach. They flank her like bodyguards and eye him with some suspicion.

      ‘Zac,’ Pip interrupts, glad for a chance to move on from Tom and J.K. Rowling but bemused that it is the arrival of her sisters expediting it, ‘these are my sisters, Cat and Fen.’ Privately, Zac is almost irritated by their eccentric names, but he greets them politely and hopes they’ll go away.

      The sisters don’t go away. Cat and Fen hang around because they are unused to seeing their sister in male company, a stranger’s company. So they loiter.

      Oddly, Pip wishes they’d go away. Of course, she blames the wine.

       Why else would I quite like this Zac Holmes odd sod to myself for a little longer?

      Fen whispers to Pip that Cat is pretty pissed and should they all go? Pip can see that Cat really should leave now but should not return home unescorted. Fen, with sudden nerves over Matt, wants them all to leave together. Go back to hers and make popcorn, she suggests. Have a chat, she proposes. For