Truth Or Date Read online

  The reason I’m hanging around outside, admiring the Aire & Calder navigational canal (which I know to be its name now, because I just heard a tour guide telling a flock of tourists that’s what it’s called) is because Millsy has a girl in there with him. We’re supposed to be catching the train home to Outwood to visit our parents, but he needs to ‘finish up’ with last night’s bird before we can go – whatever that means.

  Bored, I decide to amuse myself. I take a gold wedding band from my handbag and stand it on its side on the fence in front of me. I use a finger to gently twirl it around in circles before channelling every sad thought I’ve ever had: the fact I’ve lost a charm off the Juicy Couture bracelet my parents bought me for my birthday, the end of that film where the dog dies, the fact I’m probably going to die single and alone – shit, that one was a bit real. Anyway, it only takes a few seconds before my sorrowful frown catches the attention of two twenty-somethings walking past.

  ‘Are you OK?’ the first girl asks. She’s got her long, bright purple hair up in a bun on top of her head, the structure supported by a hair doughnut so big it looks like a burden. Her naturally red-headed friend, who appears equally concerned, looks like she could’ve been an extra in Pretty In Pink, her hairstyle and outfit positively 80s, even though she was probably only alive for a year or two of the decade.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I tell them. ‘It’s just…I’ve just found out my husband has been cheating on me.’

  ‘Oh my God, that’s proper rough,’ the first girl says.

  ‘Totally,’ the second echoes. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to figure out. We’ve only been married a few months – together for ten years though. I don’t think I can live without him.’

  The girls stare at me for a moment, fascinated by the seeming collapse of a stranger’s life.

  ‘You can’t take him back,’ the purple-haired girl tells me. ‘You just can’t. He’ll do it again and again if you do.’

  ‘You’ve just got to be strong and start again,’ Molly Ringwald wannabe adds.

  I think for a second, my expression dominated by a look of faux anguish.

  ‘You know what,’ I start, my confidence slowly coming back to me. ‘You’re right.’

  I pick up the ring from in front of me and examine it for a second before meaningfully throwing it into the river. I watch as the ripples disappear before exhaling deeply.

  ‘You go, girl,’ the first girl says as they wonder off, the show over. I turn around and watch them head up the steps, noticing that Millsy is standing behind me. He gives me a slow clap as he approaches me.

  ‘Bravo,’ he praises me. ‘It’s nice to see you’ve still got it in you.’

  ‘I act for fun, not work,’ I remind him. ‘Anyway, that was too easy.’

  ‘Great improv. with that ring though,’ he says, leaning on the fence next to me. ‘I would’ve gone all Andy Serkis, giving it “my precious” and all that.’

  ‘Oh I’m sure that would’ve had those two girls eating out of your hand – speaking of girls and eating out, where’s your bird?’

  Millsy wiggles his eyebrows.

  ‘I got rid when I came out, during your matinee. I reckon I could handle seeing this one maybe one more time, don’t want her meeting you, do I?’

  I furrow my brow.

  ‘Don’t give me that resting bitch face, Miss Wood,’ he laughs. ‘You know you’re a cock-block. Birds see that I’m close with you and run a mile – God knows why. But most blokes seem to find you fit, so we’ve got to keep you out of the way, you know the score.’

  The fact Millsy doesn’t want to sleep with me is actually the highest compliment he can pay me, because Millsy only sleeps with girls he doesn’t plan on keeping in his life for very long.

  ‘They have no need to be jealous,’ I tell him. ‘I know where you’ve been, I won’t even share drinks with you – herpes is for life.’

  ‘Fuck you! So I had a cold sore last year. One, once. It’s not the same as herpes.’

  I laugh as he passionately defends his cold sore, like he always does when I tease him about it. It’s just too easy.

  ‘OK, sorry.’

  ‘Right, we going for this train?’ he asks as he zhooshes his messy brown hair.

  ‘Sure, right after you jump in and get my ring back for me,’ I inform him, staring at him expectantly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘My ring. I saw where it landed. That was a real gold one, I threw it by mistake.’

  Millsy looks worried sick, the reflex to help his best friend without question doing battle with his aversion to jumping in dirty water and getting his hair wet.

  I watch as he appears to reach for his T-shirt, as though he were going to take it off, before I put him out of his misery.

  ‘Don’t worry, Tom Daley, I’m just kidding. It was a cheap one, from a Primark set. Plenty more at home.’

  ‘You bitch,’ he laughs. ‘You’re lucky I don’t care enough about you, or I would’ve just jumped in.’

  I grab him and hug him.

  ‘I love you too,’ I laugh. ‘Even though you’re dumb enough to think you can retrieve a tiny ring from a huge river.’

  ‘They’ll be retrieving you from a river when I strangle you and dump you in the Aire,’ he warns me.

  ‘And there’s me thinking you weren’t going to give me the same treatment you give all your Matcher birds.’

  ‘Come on, trouble. Train,’ he insists with a chuckle.

  Considering it is October – and we’re up north – it’s not that cold today, perfect for a stroll through my favourite part of Leeds. The Calls area is a mixture of offices, flats and bars/restaurants. Along with Call Lane and Lower Briggate, it makes up the heart of the gay scene in Leeds, so it’s great for peaceful walks during the day, before it comes alive at night.

  This is the part of Leeds where I wish I lived, instead of my flat-share hell above a bar on New Briggate, further up the hill. I mean, it’s not awful where I live. It’s in the city centre, and it’s right next to Merion Street which boasts some pretty cool bars, but I want to be down by the river where it’s pretty. Situated midway between where I live and where Millsy lives is the Trinity Centre, full of all my favourite shops as well as a whole host of bars and restaurants, so naturally when we hang out, that’s where we go. Yes, it’s awesome, but it doesn’t hurt that we can both easily crawl home after, it just sucks more for me because I’m headed up the hill, whereas Millsy heads down. When I put this argument to Millsy once to try and blag a rare night on his sofa, he countered it with: ‘at least you’re not at risk of rapists like I am’ – he quickly added that he meant because he walks along the edge of the river in the dark, and not because I’m so grossly undesirable that not even the rapists want me. Neither place is anywhere like where we lived for most of our lives.

  4 Finch Avenue, that’s the street Millsy and I grew up on. In cute red-brick detached houses, down a quiet little cul-de-sac in Outwood, a town near Wakefield that no one has heard of.

  Millsy didn’t just grow up on the same street as me, he lived in the house next door. Our mothers have been best friends since before we were born and, as a side effect, our dads are best friends too. Except, now that I think about it, I don’t think our dads have ever liked each other all that much. One thing I remember about growing up here was how they were always competing with one another. It was all about who had the neatest lawn or the most impressive tool – I know, that sounds like an extension of something, but in the suburbs having a large strimmer is exactly that. I guess our dads are quite different people, too – opposites, in fact. Millsy’s dad is a big, tall, broad, bald-headed rugby-loving dude whereas my short, skinny, curly-haired dad would much rather watch the football – or “girl’s rugby” as Daddy Mills would put it.

  Our mums are both your typical suburban housewives who quit their jobs the second they fell pregnant. They both moved on to the street at the same tim
e, both had two kids – and they even managed to give birth in the same years. Our mothers were already pregnant with their first two kids when they met, but whenever it is mentioned that Millsy and I were conceived around the same time, Millsy’s dad assures us that it wasn’t a keys-in-a-bowl-on-the-table kind of thing – something that had never crossed my mind until he brought it up.

  Millsy’s older sister and my brother Paul, or Woody as he’s more commonly known, are both thirty years old and both model children. They’re both married to sensible partners, they both have kids and they’re both doing all the shit you’re supposed to in the name of making your parents proud. Sadly – although at least we’re keeping things symmetrical – Millsy and I have really let the side down. We’ll often synchronise our visits home together, catching the train before going our separate ways at the bottom of our drives, before clocking a little family time and then heading back into Leeds to hit up our favourite bar together – where we’ll swap accounts of the ridiculous things our parents just said to us, because we’re both such let-downs, apparently. So we’re both headed for thirty, both single and both working jobs that aren’t that impressive for our parents to tell their friends – but so what? We’re both happy, that’s all that matters, right?

  Despite the trains being every thirty minutes, we always seem to successfully just miss one, giving us near half an hour to wait for the next – not that long, but just long enough to annoy me. I hate just missing trains, it makes that thirty-minute gap seem like a lifetime. That’s why we popped to Starbucks to grab a coffee, except now we’re about to miss the next. Carefully running along the platform with our hot drinks in our hands, we dive through the train doors with only thirty seconds to spare. We made it, but the train is rammed.

  As we walk along the train it isn’t until we reach the final carriage that we notice two free seats. It’s an arrangement of four, with one person on each seat. This means either Millsy or I are going to have to take the seat next to a little old lady, which faces in the wrong direction, which we both hate. I’m expecting an argument on my hands, or at least a thumb war or something to settle who gets to sit in the good seat, but as we approach it, Millsy dashes to sit down next to the old lady. This is confusing to me, because if it were a hot, young thing he’d secured himself a seat next to, I’d know exactly what Millsy was playing at, he’d be angling for a date or admission to the train equivalent of the mile high club – wait, scrap that, he’s already a member, I remember him telling me a story about the time he had sex on a train. In fact, he reminds me every time he sees a train CCTV camera, reminding me that they’ve ruined his fun now – not because they prevent him from doing it, just because he feels the pressure of the audience.

  Hmm, maybe Millsy really has banged (his preference of terminology) his way through every young bird in the West Yorkshire area and his resolve – rather than just staying on this train to Doncaster – is to start on the older ladies.

  As I follow his lead and take the only remaining seat on this busy train, I realise what his game is: Nick is in the next seat. Crap, he must be on his way to Wakefield where he works.

  ‘Hello, doctor, fancy seeing you here,’ I say, taking a seat next to him reluctantly, but trying not to make it awkward. I often see him on the train, but I can’t really ignore him when I’m sitting next to him, so I may as well be pleasant.

  ‘Ooh, are you a doctor?’ the little old lady asks.

  Nick looks embarrassed.

  ‘He is,’ I reply, for some reason feeling the need to help him out.

  ‘Well, your mum must be so proud of you,’ she says sincerely, a huge smile plastered across her face. ‘So, when they put out messages on public transport saying “is there a doctor on the train?” you can run forwards and save the day?’

  Nick opens his mouth to speak but Millsy gets in there first.

  ‘Yeah, well, only if the person who needs help has, like, a pulled vagina or something.’

  ‘He’s a gynaecologist,’ I add, not only to explain to this lovely old lady why Millsy just said that to her but, again, in Nick’s defence.

  Millsy absolutely hates Nick. He didn’t really take to him the first time they met, but as Nick started imposing more and more rules in the flat, and being less and less nice to me, Millsy’s hatred for him grew and grew.

  The last time Millsy and Nick spoke, they had an explosive argument over Millsy smoking in the flat. Well, not even in the flat, Nick was being a grump about Millsy climbing out of the skylight to smoke on the roof. In the heat of the moment Millsy swore he’d never be in the same room as Nick ever again, and he hasn’t – this doesn’t count, obviously. It’s only a nine-minute journey and Millsy can’t very well jump off a moving train, can he?

  ‘Well, I think that’s great,’ the old lady starts. ‘There’s no shame in that. When I had my prolapse –’

  ‘OK!’ Millsy says awkwardly. ‘Tell you what, if you wait for us to get off the train at the next stop, the two of you can talk properly, in detail. Doctor/patient confidentiality and all that.’

  Nick shoots me a glance, as though to say ‘control you child’ but Millsy is a grown man and I can’t make him behave.

  ‘So my date went well last night,’ I tell Millsy in an attempt to diffuse the situation. Of course, this is a lie, and I’ll set my friend straight once we’re alone.

  ‘Did it?’ Millsy asks. ‘I’m surprised to hear that.’

  ‘I’m surprised to hear that too,’ Nick interrupts, raising his eyebrows. ‘Considering you came home alone and put your face in a cake. That’s not really a good sign, is it?’

  The old lady, clearly sensing some tension, starts rummaging around in her handbag.

  ‘Would anyone like a sweetie?’ she asks, offering the bag around. Nick and I decline, but Millsy takes two.

  The lady pops one in her mouth, smiling widely at Nick as she does so. It’s only a matter of seconds before her smile turns to a look of panic, then she starts coughing.

  ‘Is she OK?’ I ask Nick.

  ‘No,’ he tells me, jumping to his feet. He very calmly and quickly examines her.

  ‘Are you choking?’ he asks her.

  ‘Mate, of course she is,’ Millsy interrupts.

  ‘Thank you, Dr Mills. I’m asking to determine if she can speak or not.’

  The old lady nods as best she can.

  ‘Her airway is obstructed, can you two give me a bit of room please?’ he asks Millsy and me.

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ I reply, moving out of the way.

  ‘I’m going to help you, don’t worry,’ Nick tells her, still completely calm.

  Supporting her chest with one hand, Nick leans the lady forwards and begins hitting her back with the other but it’s not working.

  Everyone is crowded around Nick, watching the scene play out. It’s horrible, watching this poor, sweet lady suffer like this. I so hope he can help her.

  ‘OK, I’m going to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre, ready?’ he asks her, not expecting an answer, obviously just using his soothing tones to keep her as calm as possible.

  He helps her to her feet before standing behind her, placing his arms around her, locking his hands just above her stomach before thrusting them towards himself. It only takes two thrusts before the lady coughs, the guilty sweet flying out of her mouth, landing on the floor in front of me. She coughs and gasps for breath as Nick helps her sit down.

  ‘Can you speak?’ he asks her.

  ‘Yes,’ she says weakly. ‘Thank you, thank you so much.’

  ‘No thanks needed,’ Nick assures her. ‘We’ll get you off the train at the next stop, make sure you’re OK.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she says again, sitting back in her seat as she continues to find her breath.

  ‘You saved her life,’ I say to him quietly as he uses his phone to call for an ambulance.

  ‘Just doing my job,’ he tells me.

  Chapter 7

  We hop off the train at Outwood Station
. I watch as Nick escorts the old lady to the ambulance to get checked over.

  ‘Just doing my job,’ Millsy says, mimicking Nick’s voice. Growing up in Ilkley, Nick is very well spoken and his Yorkshire accent is weak, unlike Millsy who is a consonant-dropping Wakey lad that no amount of elocution lessons could help.

  ‘Millsy, he saved her life. She would’ve died right in front of us if he hadn’t been there.’

  ‘Yeah, OK, that was impressive for a doctor who usually spends his days swabbing for chlamydia, but why are you defending him all of a sudden?’

  ‘I’m not, I…’ my voice trails off. ‘How do you know that swabbing is how they check for chlamydia?’

  ‘Don’t change the subject,’ he replies quickly. ‘Now you have to tell me what’s up.’

  ‘You have to promise not to laugh,’ I insist. My friend nods.

  ‘I’ve been having sex dreams about Nick.’

  Millsy, unsurprisingly, bursts into laughter.

  ‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ he cackles as we walk the short journey to the street where our parents live. Then he looks at me, and I don’t know what he sees in my eyes, but it cuts short his laughter.

  ‘You’re not enjoying them, are you?’

  ‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘Of course not. I just don’t understand why they’re happening.’

  ‘Something must have triggered them,’ he reasons, reluctant to believe such a thing could happen without some kind of traumatic inciting incident.

  ‘Oh shit, actually, last week I walked in on him in the bathroom,’ I recall. ‘It was so awkward.’

  ‘What, like on the toilet? You filthy bitch.’

  I roll my eyes.

  ‘No, not on the toilet, you moron. He was shaving, standing in front of the mirror wearing nothing but a towel, water running down his face, dripping down onto his body before rolling down his abs…’

  Millsy pours a little water from the bottle he’s been drinking from into his hand and splashes some in my face.