Under His Influence

“You think this geezer’s dodgy?”

“Yes, Liam. Yes. I think this geezer’s dodgy. Off the level. Bent as a nine bob note. Bad news.”

“Why?”

“He’s… Oh God, hundreds of reasons. Just say you’ll be in, Liam. Please? How can I convince you?”

Liam licked his lips, his gaze directed as ever to Mimi’s glorious cleavage. She rolled her eyes.

“If you want me to throw you a bone, you have to be a good dog. Can you be a good dog?”

Liam let his tongue hang out of his mouth, panting.

“Such a simple creature, aren’t you?” Mimi said, ruffling his hair. “Please, Liam? As a friend? With benefits?”

“Hey.” Liam was hurt. “I’m not some kind of brute. I’m not saying I expect your favours in return for being a friend. I’m in.” All the same, he could not help thinking that whatever harebrained scheme Mimi was trying to embroil him in might offer copious opportunities for nuzzling. And fondling. Maybe a bit of… Stop. He glanced shamefacedly down at his crotch, which was rising inexorably into an unmistakable pyramid structure. Not ideal in the workplace.

“You’re in,” echoed Mimi seductively in his ear, doing nothing to dampen the flame of inconvenient ardour. “Await further instructions, action man.” She dropped the lightest little dab of her lips onto his earlobe, leaving her hot breath to linger before hightailing it back to Editorial. Liam, deliberately avoiding her swaying rear view, shut his eyes and thought of advertising revenue before heroically donning his earpiece and setting the working day in motion.

“Why?”

Mimi’s first word to Anna as she ran up to greet her for their wedding dress shopping spree wiped the sunshine from her friend’s face.

“What do you mean, why?” She half laughed, looking around the piazza of Covent Garden as if to canvas opinions on her companion’s meanness from passersby. “Why what?”

“Why marriage? Why not courtship? Then cohabitation? You know, sanity, as we like to call it.”

“John said you’d be like this.”

“Oh, he did, did he? Well, isn’t John the expert on human relations.”

“Yes.”

The look in Anna’s eyes suggested to Mimi that she was thinking about sex. She should never have used that phrase “human relations,” she reflected with frustration. Now she was going to have to picture John and Anna having slow, sensual sex in the shower for the rest of the day. Ugh.

Anna smiled at Mimi and reached for her arm. “He is. Come on. I’m dying to get to the shops. Please be happy for me, even if you disapprove. Can we have an afternoon off from lectures and sensibleness?”

Mimi swallowed a sharp retort. “You read my e-mail,” she said instead.

“Yes, I did. And I understand all that. It’s too fast, he’s too old, I’m too vulnerable. But I’m not a child. I can make my own decisions. And I know in my heart that this isn’t wrong. It just can’t be.”

Anna did look radiantly happy, after all. It seemed cruel not to allow her a couple of hours of blissful bridal nonsense, especially if all the rapture was going to turn to woe once the vows were exchanged.

“An afternoon,” she said long-sufferingly. “So what are you looking for? Not virginal white, surely.”

Anna blushed, her birdlike feet dancing around the cobbles. “It’s a Register Office do. It doesn’t have to be big and frothy. But I would like something stunning. Price no object. You know about fashion, Mimi. Where should we go?”

“Oh, I know just the place, Miss Rice. Forward to Bond Street.”

Bond Street loved Anna, or rather, it loved John’s money, and she was aglow with achievement and excitement by the time she rolled, giggling and happily loaded with bags, into Café Rouge for soup and a glass of wine.

“So why the rush?” Mimi asked without preamble once the fishbowl-sized glass of Sauvignon was in front of her. “You can’t be pregnant after five days, presumably. Well, you could be, but you wouldn’t know, I suppose.”

“Pregnant! Don’t be insane. I’m on the pill anyway. No, it’s just, y’know, that crazy little thing called love.”

“So you’re making the biggest decision of your life on the basis of a Freddie Mercury lyric?”

“Mimi! Stop disapproving. You’re like some fierce old aunt or something.”