Thank You, Next: A perfect, uplifting and funny romantic comedy

by Sophie Ranald

  ‘You look gorgeous. You couldn’t look any other way if you tried.’

  Reassured by his words and his hand gripping mine, I fixed a friendly smile on my face as Jude tapped on the door of Flat 805. But I felt it waver as soon as Indigo answered the door. It wasn’t so much that she was attractive – although she was properly, knock-out beautiful – it was the particular type she was.

  She was tall, slender almost to the point of gauntness, with pearl-pale skin and long, poker-straight black hair that matched her all-black, trailing clothes. She had enormous bluey-green eyes fringed with lashes so thick and dark they looked false, although I was ninety-nine per cent sure they weren’t. See also her full, perfectly curved lips that I was willing to bet had never been near an aesthetician’s needle. She looked exactly the way fourteen-years-ago emo me had dreamed of waking up looking, through some random overnight miracle that would transform a short, curvy ginger girl into a tall, slender dark one. It had never happened, of course (barring the one time, best forgotten, when I’d attempted to dye my hair black using a kit in a box from Boots) and I’d long since grown to accept and even like the way I looked. But still, Indigo awakened teenage insecurities I’d thought were long gone.

  ‘Hello!’ She reached out and hugged Jude, then hugged me too. She smelled of fags and musky perfume. ‘Come in! Welcome to my humble abode! You’re my first visitors.’

  ‘We brought a bottle of cava,’ I said, humbly offering it.

  ‘Lovely.’ Indigo led the way into the flat. Although the day was bright and sunny, in here it was almost dark. Only thin slivers of light managed to slip through the edges of the windows, which were hung with heavy drapes in various mismatched pieces of fabric. There was no furniture apart from a single upright wooden chair, a pile of cushions on the floor and an easel holding a portrait of a woman with a green face, who bore a passing resemblance to Indigo herself.

  ‘Make yourselves comfortable,’ she said. ‘I’ll just get some glasses.’

  Jude and I sat down on the floor, our backs against the wall, and he put his hand on my knee and squeezed it reassuringly. After a couple of moments Indigo reappeared with the open bottle and three empty jam jars.

  ‘I’ve used these for paint water,’ she said. ‘But they should be reasonably clean. I’ve cold running water but no hot, so I have to borrow friends’ showers.’

  I almost said politely that she was welcome to add me to the roster, then thought better of it. The last thing I wanted was this woman floating alluringly round my flat in nothing but a towel.

  ‘So how did you two meet?’ She lowered herself gracefully down onto a cushion without using her hands, splashed wine into the jars and passed one to each of us.

  ‘At the climate-change demo a few weeks back,’ Jude said. ‘It was love at first sight, wasn’t it, Zoë?’

  I laughed. ‘Lust, maybe. But then I’d just fallen over and taken all the skin off my knees and I wasn’t myself. Jude rescued me.’

  ‘And Zoë insisted on knowing my star sign before she’d get on the train with me,’ Jude said.

  ‘And we’ve been together ever since,’ I said, omitting to mention the four-week hiatus when I’d neither seen nor heard from Jude.

  It was the first time we’d talked about this to anyone apart from each other, and I could imagine the story becoming a familiar one, which we’d embellish and improve over time – part of the mythology of us. The thought was an odd mixture of thrilling and comforting, and I guess Jude must have felt it too, because we met each other’s eyes with a smile that was as intimate as a caress.

  ‘Cute,’ Indigo said, not very enthusiastically. ‘So you believe then? In the science of the stars?’

  ‘Well… kind of. I mean, I’ve got an app on my phone and I was doing online dating and I thought it would be kind of interesting to see what happened if I went out with guys with different star signs.’

  She raised an eyebrow, a skill I’d never mastered and always envied. ‘An app on your phone. That’s not very scientific, is it?’

  ‘It uses data provided by NASA,’ I said defensively. ‘And it’s actually been surprisingly accurate. In fact, on the day I met Jude, it said…’ I tailed off, because I couldn’t actually remember what Stargazer had said on that particular day, only that, with hindsight, it appeared to have foretold exactly what had happened.

  ‘Indigo’s all over that stuff,’ Jude said. ‘She reads tarot cards and does palmistry and everything. She used to do readings at parties to earn extra cash at uni.’

  ‘Until I realised that I shouldn’t cheapen my gifts in that way. Now I just practise occasionally, as a favour to friends. I could do your charts, if you like? See how compatible you are on a deeper level?’

  ‘I… thanks for offering,’ I said.

  I wasn’t sure why, but suddenly the dark room, Indigo’s shadowy face and the stifling air was making me feel slightly sick and definitely unsettled. I sipped my fizzy wine and tried to fix the bright smile on my face again.

  ‘That would be amazing,’ Jude said. ‘Come on, Zoë, you’re up for it, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’ It was nothing, I assured myself – just a bit of fun. What did that matter? Jude and I were together. He’d told me he loved me and I’d told him back.

  Indigo did the same trick she’d done when she sat down, only in reverse. It was like there was a string running from the top of her head to the ceiling, allowing her to raise and lower herself without any apparent effort. That, or she did shedloads of yoga or Pilates or something that made her both enviably strong and enviably bendy. She drifted over to a teetering pile of books in a corner and ran her finger down the spines, before pulling one out. The rest of the pile wavered and fell, but she ignored that, returning to her place on the cushions.

  ‘Now, Zoë, the date, time and place of your birth,’ she said.

  I told her, although I wasn’t sure exactly what time I’d been born and had to make it up.

  ‘And you’re the twenty-ninth of May, ten minutes past one, in Bristol,’ she said, with a smile at Jude.

  Bloody hell, how did she know that? Presumably she’d done his horoscope before. They’d known each other for years, after all, and it was clearly a bit of a party trick of hers. But how had she remembered? Was there more between them than friendship? But I wasn’t going to be jealous – I wasn’t going to allow myself to be the insecure girlfriend who quizzed her man about his past relationships and his current friendships and made myself miserable over comparisons that were only in my own head.

  Even if she did look like Christina Ricci.

  ‘Okay?’ Jude whispered, giving my thigh a reassuring squeeze.

  I nodded and squeezed his in return. Indigo was flicking through the pages of her book, her head bent so her black hair touched the page, cigarette smoke curling up around her head. She paused and ran a not-very-clean fingernail down a page. Don’t judge, I told myself, your fingernails probably wouldn’t be all that clean either if you were living in a place with no hot water. She’s Jude’s friend – you’re meant to like her, not feel all defensive and resentful.

  ‘Well, this is interesting,’ she said. ‘Of course, as you know, Gemini and Aquarius are normally an excellent match. Your shared curiosity about the world, your passion for causes you care about, your quirkiness and willingness to turn your backs on convention make you well suited. But there are some strange things in this particular chart.’

  Jude laughed. ‘Go on then, Ind, hit us with it. Stop being all mysterious. We’re not a hen party you’re trying to impress.’

  ‘I won’t go into detail. But, Zoë, your chart has some anomalies. It’s Saturn in your rising sign. It suggests that, in fact, you have a yearning for stability and a leaning towards convention that’s unusual in an Aquarian. Unusual in any air sign, in fact.’

  I remembered the words on my app. It’s okay to admit that you’re a bird who’d be happier in a cage. Most of the messages it sent me I’d forgott
en almost as soon as I read them, but that had stuck with me for some reason – possibly because whenever I thought about it, it reminded me of poor battery chickens, and made me feel guilty about every single fried egg I’d ever eaten. And then thinking about fried eggs made me really crave one, which made me feel guiltier still.

  Indigo might have said she didn’t intend to go into detail, but detail was exactly what she went into. Smoke curling up around her face between her curtains of dark hair, her finger tracing the lines on the page, she proceeded to tell Jude and me what the stars had in store for us.

  ‘Your need for security can lead you to stifle those you love, Zoë,’ she said, her voice low and solemn. ‘Do you ever find yourself driving people away because you consider your own needs above their own? I thought so. You see, Jude, like most Geminis, needs an escape from the mundane. And for him, with that Libra ascendant, it’s even more important to strike a balance. A relationship such as yours, which has burned so hot and intensely at first, can easily be smothered to nothing, if you don’t keep on fanning the flames.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound too bad, does it?’ Jude said. ‘Zoë can be my stability, and I can fan her flames. Win–win.’

  Indigo did the eyebrow thing again. ‘Then there’s nothing to worry about, is there? Unless you’d like a tarot reading, just to be sure?’

  ‘Maybe next time,’ I said. ‘But I’d love to hear more about your art. That painting is amazing – you’re seriously talented.’

  And that was the end of the mysticism talk, thank heavens. Indigo chatted away, a lot more normally, about how she sold her paintings online and at car boot sales, and even asked me a bit about my work, and Jude listened and occasionally made a flattering comment about one or the other of us. We finished the cava, Indigo opened a bottle of red wine and Jude suggested ordering a takeaway, but it turned out Indigo was on one of her fast days, so we didn’t.

  And at about nine o’clock we finally said goodbye and left.

  ‘Do you think she was right, about us not really being compatible? In terms of astrology, I mean?’ I asked Jude, as we started the long descent of the stairs.

  He laughed. ‘Oh God, don’t give it a second thought. Ind loves a bit of drama. Besides, it’s…’

  ‘All bollocks really?’

  ‘Exactly! Although I’d never say that to her, because she’s a mate and stuff. But the main thing is, you and me, we’re good, right?’

  ‘Well, I will be, once I’ve had something to eat.’

  So we stopped off at a Turkish restaurant on the way home and had loads of falafel and chips and salad, and then we went back to my flat and were both too knackered to do anything other than fall into bed and hold each other close.

  But once Jude was asleep, I found myself wondering what Indigo had really meant. Maybe she genuinely believed what she’d said was true. But I doubted that, somehow. I’d noticed her looking at Jude with something like hunger, which might of course have been down to the fast day. (I mean, really. The longest I’d ever gone without food had been twenty-four hours, when I’d had a killer stomach bug, and by the end of that I’d practically been climbing the walls.) I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was as suspicious of me as I was of her, and for the same reason.

  That only strengthened my resolve. Jude and I were together. I was going to make this work. I was going to keep the flame of passion burning in our relationship, whatever it took. I had a boyfriend, and I wasn’t going to let some eyebrow-raising, tarot-reading, high-cheekboned rival come between us.

  Nineteen

  Peace and happiness may be found today in nature, but don’t forget that the tides have power and tigers have teeth.

  It was ten o’clock and I was still in bed – my first morning off in ages and, crucially, what felt like the first free time in ages that I didn’t have to spend combing the internet for potential dates. It had been three weeks since Jude had… not moved in, exactly. But moved in. And I still hadn’t quite got my head around the fact that I was no longer single.

  It seemed Jude had moved in with me permanently. His laptop was on my coffee table, his guitar was propped up against the wall, his clothes were… well, pretty much everywhere. Task one for my morning off was going to have to be putting on a load of washing – or more like three, judging by the amount of stuff there was draped over the sofa, half under the bed and covering most of the floor.

  When I’d suggested to Jude that we do a bit of cleaning together, he’d said that he had work to do and wasn’t housework a ridiculously bourgeois construct, anyway? And to be fair to him, he was working brutally long hours, often leaving the flat before seven and not returning until nine or ten at night. And it was all for virtually no pay – as an intern, his transport costs were covered and he got an allowance for lunch, but that was it.

  His commitment to the cause impressed me, but I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to have a live-in boyfriend who I actually saw sometimes, as opposed to just seeing his stuff.

  At the window behind me, open to the warm, breezy morning, I heard Frazzle give his familiar chirrup of longing. The blackbirds that had been nesting in the beer garden had kept him fascinated for days: he perched on the windowsill, his fluffy orange tail twitching with frustration, his whiskers bristling, as he watched the parents fly back and forth to their nest. As I watched, he stretched his jaw open in an enormous yawn, then started the little clicking cries again.

  ‘You’re on a hiding to nothing, Frazz,’ I told him. ‘Those birds can fly, and you can’t. You’ve got claws; they’ve got wings. Deal with it.’

  Frazzle turned and gave me a hard stare. Clearly he expected his human servant to go out and bring him a bird to play with. Telling him to stop being so ridiculous, I heaved myself out of bed and pulled on a pair of frayed denim shorts and an old T-shirt. My shower could wait – by the time I’d finished cleaning the flat, I certainly wouldn’t be clean myself.

  How, I wondered, could Jude have accumulated so much stuff in just a few weeks? There were newspapers everywhere – the Guardian, the New Statesman, the Morning Star, the Daily Mirror – most of them unread because Jude, like everyone else, got the news from Twitter. There was a teetering stack of vinyl LPs that he’d picked up from the side of the road where someone had left them after a clear-out. The same person had been getting rid of a load of old cookery books – Delia Smith, Marguerite Patten and The Microwave Gourmet – and Jude had brought them home because they’d have ended up in landfill otherwise and he thought I might want them. I hadn’t had the heart to tell him I really, really didn’t.

  ‘We’ve got a hoarder on our hands,’ I told Frazzle. ‘You won’t be able to get to your catnip mice at this rate.’

  But I suspected that if I did what I so longed to do and took the whole lot out to the recycling, Jude would be hurt and annoyed. So I put a load of washing on and started the arduous task of sorting everything into more or less orderly piles.

  From his spot on the windowsill, Frazzle gave another frantic chatter. I turned to see what was going on, and froze. There, on the ledge less than four inches from his nose, was a small, newly fledged blackbird. Frazz had gone quiet, frozen, clearly unable to believe his good fortune. Helpless, immobile prey didn’t just land under cats’ noses, I could imagine him thinking, Surely this must be some kind of trick?

  But he didn’t freeze for long. Before I could cross the room, he’d pounced. The bird gave a frantic flap of its wings and managed, just in time, to take off – only instead of flying to safety, it flew into the flat, closely pursued by my cat.

  ‘Shit! Frazzle, come here. Leave the bird alone!’

  But Frazzle wasn’t listening. He wanted to investigate this gift from the cat gods further. The bird had landed on the carpet and Frazzle was watching it, transfixed, as if he knew that just one more pounce would do the trick. I tried to grab him but, for the first time ever, he growled at me and darted underneath the bed.

  It was fair en
ough, I suppose. In that moment, I wasn’t his loving human, provider of food, fuss, warmth and exciting games involving a sparkly fishing-rod toy. I was a deadly rival, intent on stealing his prey. And that was exactly what I was going to do. But I was too slow. The fledgling ran a few uncertain steps, then found the use of its wings and flapped frantically, managing a brief flight that took it to the top of the bathroom door, where it perched, hunched over in terror.

  ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck. Frazzle, you are such a naughty cat. What the hell do I do now?’

  I was no ornithologist, but I knew that cats’ teeth and claws could be lethal to this tiny creature. Just because it had managed a short maiden flight didn’t mean it would be able to find its way back out through the window. And besides, Frazzle had emerged from under the bed and was crouched on the floor, waiting for the bird to leave its precarious perch.

  I’m here for the long game, he seemed to be saying. One of us is going to give up first and it isn’t going to be me.

  I needed to shut the cat away, but I couldn’t, because the only door inside my small flat was the one the bird was using as a temporary refuge. I needed to rescue the bird, but I wasn’t tall enough to reach it.

  I needed help.

  Scooping Frazzle up in my arms, ignoring his wriggling protests, I hurried out of the flat and down the stairs to the pub. Someone would be there who could rescue the bird – someone taller than me, which meant practically anyone.

  But Robbie would be alone in the kitchen, with hot pans on the stovetop that couldn’t be left. Alice was sitting at a table with Maurice and the rest of the pub’s committee, deep in conversation. Fat Don was at his usual place at the bar, no doubt already on his third pint of the day, and would be absolutely no help to me.

  I hesitated for a second. Even though Alice wasn’t much taller than me, she was sensible, and so were all the others – Maurice and various worthy people drawn from the local community. One of them would know what to do.