Looking for Andrew McCarthy. Jenny Colgan

am I here then?’

      ‘You’re helping push the trolley,’ said Julia. ‘And if you’re very lucky, we’ll let you choose all the food that you don’t know what it is.’

      ‘I can’t believe you required a taste arbiter like me to come to Ikea,’ said Arthur darkly, buried under The Times. ‘You’re at Ikea; you’ve already given up and admitted you have none.’

      When the gang finally limped in through the underpass towards the familiar blue and yellow factory chimneys, the car park was already overflowing with family-sized monster Range Rovers with special cyclist-killing bull bars on the front.

      Ellie pouted as they queued up to get through the open doors. To the left, one hundred and seventy children were trying to stick colourful rubber balls down one another’s oesophagi.

      ‘Why are they there?’ she said, peering through the glass. ‘Contraception?’

      The scene opened out slightly to reveal four billion identical couples in casual Gap wear. The girls all had expensively tinted blonde hair cut in Anthea Turner styles, and the men had schoolboy haircuts and emergent paunches.

      Arthur and Ellie immediately clutched at their throats and started staggering around with fake choking. ‘Argh! Argh!’

      ‘Behave, you two,’ said Julia, pushing back her blonde hair.

      ‘She’s one of them!’ said Arthur pointing. ‘Croydon Wife! Croydon Wife!’

      ‘I’ll open the book,’ said Ellie. ‘Up to five quid. Which couple are going to be the first to have a fight.’

      ‘I’ll take the couple in the matching Gap separates,’ said Arthur.

      ‘Too non-specific.’

      A tall, balding man was sighing heavily as a woman castigated him for daring to sit on a sofa.

      ‘Ooh, coming up on the left,’ said Ellie.

      Arthur, however, was already pointing out a slightly overweight woman with a sensible haircut who was trying to push her way back through the shop, managing to convey how furious she was at the standard lamp in her hand, and deliberately kicking out at trolleys.

      ‘Couples shouldn’t really talk about “going to Ikea”,’ said Arthur. ‘They shouldn’t even say, “Hey – let’s go to Ikea!” They should just say, “Hey – let’s have a fight!”’

      ‘Well, I think it’s rather sweet,’ said Siobhan. ‘I used to love it when Patrick and I came here.’

      Everyone stood and stared at her. She shrugged. ‘You are all just immature.’

      Two hours later in the lighting section, all jollity had gone. One man Ellie could see from her vantage point, hidden behind a desk unit, was actually crying.

      Siobhan was marching Arthur round the bathroom cabinets for the fifteenth time.

      ‘For the fifteenth time,’ said Arthur, ‘it’s horrible. It’s all horrible, and this is it put up properly. You and Patrick make tons of money between you. Why don’t you just use some of the stuff you import?’

      ‘Because it’s made out of gold.’

      ‘Anyway, it’s only bathrooms,’ said Julia.

      ‘Yes, only somewhere where you spend the most intimate times of your life. With this rubbish.’

      ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ said Siobhan, getting red and hot and agitated. ‘Stop being such a poseur. It’s only some fucking bathroom shelves.’

      ‘Shit!’ said Julia. ‘I forgot Loxy’s shelving!’

      She tried to turn the trolley around. They were completely trapped. Ellie groaned loudly as they backed up four hundred people around the shop; people who showed their horror at this transgression by muttering very loudly and immediately falling out with the person they were with.

      ‘Sorry!’ Julia was saying. It was suddenly about 200 degrees in the store.

      ‘Why don’t we just cut our losses?’ said Arthur. ‘Dump the trolley and run like hell.’

      ‘God, this place drives me crazy,’ yelled Ellie suddenly. ‘I think it’s some sinister rat/maze type experiment. Giant creatures are peering in through the corrugated roof, making notes on us.’

      She looked at the crowds, backing up like panic-buyers at a petrol pump.

      ‘There’s no way back,’ she said suddenly, in horror, staring around her and breathing hard. ‘There is no way back. Don’t you see? Guys, don’t you SEE?’

      They all looked at her.

      ‘We’re on a one way trek through Ikea. This is it. This is our lives. There’s no way back.’

      ‘Ehm … are you freaking out?’ said Arthur, as Julia manoeuvred herself out of position. Ellie was still fixed to the spot and staring straight ahead.

      She thought about it. ‘Yes. YES I AM.’ And she stormed off against the flow of traffic, leaving a chorus of disgruntled middle class tutting in her wake.

      Ellie sat in the car park, thinking furiously. That was it. She was getting off this track right now. The poster in her bedroom came back to her. All those dreams. All those teenage nights. For what? Andrew had disappeared. Emilio; Judd; Anthony. All gone. ‘I’m disappearing too,’ she thought to herself, sadly. ‘I’m getting older, and giving up and fading into the background. And if I don’t run away now, then I’ll run away to Plockton in twenty years and that really will be a disaster.’

      By the time her friends finally emerged ninety minutes later, red-faced and cursing, she had it all figured out.

      ‘Okay, everyone pay attention to me,’ announced Ellie loudly.

      ‘Well, that will be a new experience for us all,’ said Siobhan.

      It was the following Monday night. Ellie had summoned everyone to a council of war round at her flat, much to Big Bastard’s disgust. She had been putting out bowls of crisps when he’d grunted, ‘I’m going to the pub. All your friends are morons.’

      ‘Okay, no, hang on, why are my friends morons when your friends moon out of the back of coaches every week and think it’s always hilarious?’

      ‘Because they know how to have fun,’ he sniffed, trying to smooth down his unruly hair with his enormous hairy paws. ‘Your friends just sit around and talk.’

      ‘Sitting around and talking are what people do,’ said Ellie. ‘Showing off their arses to each other is what monkeys do.’ She held up a Pringle and a cashew nut. ‘See?’ She waved the Pringle. ‘People sized brain’, then the cashew, ‘monkey sized brain. People brain – monkey brain. Ellie brain – Big Bastard brain.’

      She ate the cashew nut.

      ‘Big Bastard brain all gone.’

      ‘And they’re all poofs.’

      ‘How could they all be poofs? Some of them go out with some of the other ones of the opposite sex.’

      ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not a poof.’

      ‘Um, yes it does. Oh, Big Bastard, I’m sorry I ate your brain.’

      ‘Well, I’m going to have some of my mates round.’

      ‘What, so that you and all your non-poof friends can spend the day showing each other your butts?’

      ‘I might have them round tonight after the pub.’

      ‘You will not!’

      ‘My flat darlin’.’

      ‘Yeah, your flat which will get completely done in when your pissed