Where Have All the Boys Gone?
Jenny Colgan
Chapter One
There is a very small envelope of seduction time available between the stages “just pissed enough” and “disastrously over-pissed,” and suddenly, Katie wasn’t sure she was going to make it.
This man sitting in front of her wore little heels on his shoes, she remembered, swaying slightly. She’d noticed under the chippy, awkwardly tiny bar table in this stupid new bar called Square Root. OK, he was her first date in four months, and she had her best bra on, but still, she really ought to have paid more attention to the shoes . . . it was just, it had been a difficult week.
IT HAD STARTED on Sunday. Louise was still on her international bang-athon, leaving her and Olivia, who came around on Sundays to avoid getting inky fingerprints on her pristine white sofa, studiously reading the papers, watching EastEnders and ignoring the obvious sounds of sexual intercourse coming from the spare bedroom.
“How come Kat Slater is really fat and covered in slap and millions of men are in love with her?” Katie had asked.
There was a particularly vigorous grunting noise.
“Umm.” Olivia squeezed her eyes shut. “For the same reason everyone’s in love with Phil even though he looks like a barnyard animal. Drugs.”
“OK,” said Katie loudly, “I UNDERSTAND.”
There was an endless tense moment next door as everything went quiet. The two girls looked at one another. There was a pause. Then the ritual banging started again.
“Jesus,” said Olivia. She looked at Katie. “Couldn’t you have bought a bigger flat?”
“In North London?” Katie nodded. “Sure! I should have gone for the rooftop swimming pool. And the maid’s quarters. I’m a complete idiot.”
“I’m just saying.” Olivia believed in karma and therefore probably did think having a tiny flat and a huge mortgage in Kentish Town was Katie’s fault.
Katie loudly turned the page.
“Bloody hell!” she exploded.
“What? New revolutionary soundproofing spray just invented?”
“No.”
“New laws make it easier to expel noisy tenants?”
“No.”
“Sex makes you put on more weight than Atkins’ diet?”
“Look,” said Katie, pointing at the paper.
Olivia squinted at it upside down.
“‘Women Going Men Crazy,’” she read out loud. “You really have to stop buying these women-hating papers.”
They both read the article rolling their eyes. It asserted that their generation of women was a clutch of uncontrollable pissed-up hose-monsters on the loose, terrorising the five nice remaining men in the world. The problem was, from the sounds next door, it was tricky to disagree.
“It says here that there’re no men left and we’re all going barking. Well, that would explain a lot,” said Olivia.
“If that’s true, why is it him in there who’s doing the barking?”
Suddenly there was a high-pitched wailing sound.
The two girls looked at each other.
“I’d start a round of applause,” said Olivia, “if I’d heard even the tiniest little peep out of Lou.”
“Also, we want to pretend absolutely nothing just happened,” said Katie, turning back to her paper. “It says we’re all drunken slut-buckets.”
“Slut-buckets? Really?” said Olivia.
“Honestly, I haven’t yet thought up a better way to cope with the modern London man,” said Katie sadly.
The door opened down the corridor, and the paper-thin walls shook slightly. The room they were in, Katie’s living room, had a band of old kitchen on the far side. The estate agent had assured her this would make it wonderful for entertaining. In fact, it merely made sure that Katie never ever cooked fish.
Louise tiptoed in, ostentatiously yawning. She had great legs, which she ignored, and a big nose, which she fixated on.
“Ooh, just been asleep . . . thought I’d have a bit of a lie-in . . . tea . . . I think . . .”
The other two girls looked at her and waited.
“Sleepy sleepy sleepy . . .” continued Louise, trying to turn on the kettle in an overtly surreptitious manner.
“I heard about this girl once,” said Olivia. “She told terrible lies and then one day she got run over by a car because she was such a terrible liar. Karma.”
“Yes. Her name was Chlamydia,” said Katie sternly. “Chlamydia Liar.”
Louise rolled her eyes.
“OK. OK. I met someone.”
“Someone? Or something?”
She shot the two girls a look.
“I just had sex with a man. Which is more than you two have done for months.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen a man for months,” said Olivia. “What are they like?”
Louise shrugged.
“Umm . . . they have less hair than us in some bits. And more in other bits.”
“Like monkeys,” added Katie helpfully.
“What else?” Olivia was handling the kettle now, so it was filthy organic green tea in the offing.
“Umm, they have these kind of lever thingies,” said Louise.
“What do they do?” asked Katie.