Love is the Drug. Ashley Croft

bedside table. ‘It can’t get any worse for you.’

      Niall met Sarah’s eyes. His Adam’s apple bobbed. ‘Oh, it can, believe me.’

      Sarah stepped out of her trance. ‘Get out,’ she said, quietly.

      ‘Don’t you think I’d better get dressed first?’ Vanessa stepped into the leg of her thong, a smirk on her face.

      ‘No, actually, I don’t. Get out of my house.’

      A great wave of rage hung over her head, on the brink of breaking. She took a step towards the other side of the bed, shaking with anger and shock.

      Vanessa’s cocky expression changed to dismay. She held up her hands. ‘All right, love. I can see you and Ni need some time to talk. I’ll just get me uniform first.’

      Sarah flashed her teeth at Vanessa. ‘Why don’t you let me help you get dressed?’

      Vanessa shook her head and struggled to pull up her thong. ‘No, it’s OK …’

      Sarah grabbed the nearest thing to hand: a purple glass tea light holder.

      ‘Christ, no, Sarah!’ Niall screamed a fraction before the tea light sailed through the air. Vanessa shrieked as the tea light hit the wall, bounced off and knocked the bedside lamp onto the floorboards. The lamp flickered and went off.

      ‘Jesus, Sarah!’

      Ignoring his shout, Sarah dashed around the bottom of the bed. Vanessa leapt onto the duvet.

      ‘Arghhh!’ Niall screamed as she kneeled on his genitals in her haste to get away from Sarah. She scrambled off the bed with the nipple clamps tinkling madly.

      ‘Go on, get out of my house!’ Sarah shouted as Vanessa fled out of the door.

      ‘You’re mad!’ she screeched, scuttling onto the landing like a giant hairless spider.

      Sarah followed her onto the landing, picking up the uniform shirt and trousers. She threw them down the stairs on top of Vanessa.

      Vanessa clutched her clothes to her body. ‘I can’t go out like this. I need me boots!’

      ‘Oh, I am soooo sorry, how rude of me. Here you are.’ One after the other, Sarah hurled the boots down the stairs. They thumped against the wall and Vanessa swore as one whizzed past her head and knocked a picture of Niall on his Triumph clean off the wall. Clouds of plaster dust flew into the air.

      ‘Your girlfriend is fucking mental!’ Vanessa attempted to step into the boots but toppled against the wall.

      ‘Yeah, I am. Hasn’t Niall told you? I must be to have trusted him!’ Sarah stood at the top of the stairs, not trusting herself to run down them in her condition.

      Vanessa’s hair and face were coated in dust. ‘Keep away from me!’ she screeched, hobbling through the front door.

      As Vanessa fled, Sarah made her way downstairs, still trembling with shock.

      Wearing one boot, with her clothes clutched to her boobs, Vanessa tinkled off down the icy path.

      Sarah’s shout echoed into the night after her. ‘And don’t come back!’

      Wailing like a banshee, Vanessa scuttled up the pavement, still trying to put her clothes on. A light flicked on in the bedroom of their elderly neighbour who occupied the cottage next door. Sarah didn’t care who heard the row. She slammed the door shut behind her and leaned against it, tears running down her face. She sank down with her back to the door when a bellow cut through her sobs.

      ‘Sarah! Sarah? What’s happened? Will someone untie me and take this feckin’ tiara off?’

       CHAPTER SIX

       Department of Behavioural Ecology

       Fenland University

       January 2nd

       (Scientifically proven to be the most depressing day of the year)

       Research Proposal

       Objectives To determine why, when a human male asks you to dance at a party, calls you a “sexy nurse” and snogs you in full view of your colleagues, he then proceeds to drop you like you had Ebola.

       To discover why male subject #2 allowed (half-witch/half-she-devil) female subject #1 to tie him to a bed and dress him up like a fairy. To discover whether there is a specific reason for this behaviour or whether man in question is just a shit, like 99% of the rest of his sex.

       Design Longitudinal cohort study.

       Setting Male #1 Research institute.

       Male #2 County ambulance service.

       Subjects Male #1. Fit and healthy, technically Scottish, demonstrably a genius and a fuckwit. Observed almost daily over six months and two weeks.

       Male #2. Not quite so fit. Physically sound but clearly suffering from (temporary) insanity. Demonstrably a total shit with pervy tendencies. Observed daily over two years, five months.

       Main outcome measures Determine male subject #1’s behaviour and reasons thereof. Create method to alter male subject’s pattern of behaviour to achieve desired outcome of date/sex/commitment, ideally all three.

       Determine male subject #2’s behaviour and reasons thereof. Create method to spontaneously make his tiny dick shrivel up and his balls drop off and/or realise what he has done and crawl back on his belly to lovely, amazing sister who will then walk all over him in her stilettos and tell him to fuck fuckity fuck off.

       Results To be advised but not hopeful.

       Conclusions To be determined.

      Molly stopped typing and stared out of the window of the lab. The sky was the colour of an old dishcloth and big wet snowflakes were settling on the statue of Isaac Newton outside her window. It was a grey, soggy January the second and even Isaac looked pissed off. It also seemed wholly appropriate considering what had happened over the past thirty-six hours.

      She’d been woken at nine a.m. by Sarah sobbing down the phone. Apparently, she’d got home to find Niall having kinky sex with a naked woman who drove his ambulance. Sarah had been almost hysterical – not that Molly blamed her – and Molly had spent the rest of the day dispensing tissues, chocolate and vodka – for herself – at Sarah’s cottage.

      Molly had listened to the whole sorry story, almost in tears herself. Niall had apparently begged Sarah to forgive him for three hours, until Sarah had finally untied him from the bed and kicked him out. He’d fled to his mother’s, blaming Sarah for causing Vanessa “mild hypothermia” and himself severe emotional distress. Sarah had then had to go around to her neighbour, Mrs Sugden, and apologise and explain that Vanessa wasn’t a prostitute, but a friend of Niall’s who’d been to a nearby fancy-dress party, got very drunk and sought refuge in the cottage before becoming violently deranged. Sarah couldn’t bear to tell her neighbour the truth yet.

      Molly had to admit that next to Sarah’s woes, being publicly rejected by Ewan paled into insignificance. However, it was still humiliating and hurtful, especially as she had to work with him.

      She returned to her paper, trying to concentrate until her desk phone rang. When she saw the extension number, she swore and braced herself.

      ‘Good morning, Professor Baxter.’

      ‘Um. Molly. Would you mind popping