Normally, mornings after the nights Chas was working, Nics would go off to work without seeing him as anything other a shapeless mass huddled under the duvet. This morning however, when the alarm went off he opened his bleary eyes and actually sat up.
Nics looked at him in surprise.
"My God, are you alright?"
It had obviously been a rough night last night, his face was slightly puffy on the left side, and he was holding his right hand with the other as if to cradle it. A random feather that had escaped from the pillows clung to his hair.
"Match turned into a riot after all. And some bastard tried to bottle me," he said, his voice rough from second hand cigarette smoke and tiredness.
"What's wrong with your hand?"
"Dunno, might have just pulled a muscle or something. I'm going to get some ice for it, and go back to sleep."
"Good plan. You stay put, I'll get the ice for you."
He gratefully slipped back into the cavernous warmth of the duvet, closing his eyes.
Nics skipped down the stairs, eyes narrowing in annoyance at the renewed mess in the kitchen. Seizing the black marker that hung from a string attached to the whiteboard that they used for messages she wrote "SPUD!!!" in very large letters.
She wrapped the bag of frozen peas in a clean towel and brought it up to Chas.
At the touch of the cold pack on his outstretched good hand he jumped.
"Whaddafuck!"
His head appeared over the edge of the duvet and he relaxed.
"Oh, it's you... Thanks, babes."
He sighed with relief as he placed the peas against his sore hand.
"At the risk of not seeming very macho," he said to her, "it doesn't half bloody hurt."
"Try to get some more sleep. I'll pick up some painkillers on my way home from work. If you need any before then, kick Spud."
Nics kissed him goodbye for the day, but he was already drifting back to sleep.
The bang of the front door closing jerked Spud from his sleep. He looked around guiltily, wiping the corner of his mouth free from egg and chutney.
"Oh bollocks! She's going to kill me!"
He'd just noticed the egg and chutney on the carpet.
Four cups of coffee later, just as Spud was feeling strong enough to go after the carpet stain with extra strength bleach, Chas came down the stairs and into the kitchen, still with frozen peas wrapped around his hand.
"Morning," said Spud. "You're up early."
Chas's reply was muffled, due to the fact that he had his head stuck in the freezer. With a triumphant grunt he pulled out a bag of frozen mixed veg, threw the peas back in and wrapped the towel around his hand and the freshly frozen bag.
Only then he looked at Spud.
"You look like shit, mate."
Spud shrugged, only slightly green around the edges.
"You should see the other blokes. What happened to your hand?"
"Dunno, think I sprained it or something. It'll be fine. Soon as the swelling goes down."
"Better be careful with it, it could turn out to be fatal..." Spud's voice, always slurred and slow, now took on a very doleful tone.
Chas laughed. "Yeah right."
"I'm serious, man," said Spud, fingers automatically rolling himself a cigarette. "Stranger things have happened."
"Bullshit."
"What, you never heard the story of the woman who died from an in-grown toe nail?"
"No, but I'm sure you're going to tell me it now."
Spud patted himself down, looking for a lighter. No joy, so he stuck the rollie behind one ear.
"Make us another coffee then. And have you seen my lighter?" he said, settling himself back in the chair.
Chas shook his head, no, and filled up the kettle. He tried not to feel guilty, sure he'd swiped Spud's bottle of lighter fluid, but not the lighter itself.
"There was this woman, right, and she was a major hypochondriac. You know the type, the sort of person who if they develop a cold, it's the next flu epidemic that's going to wipe out half the population of the world. The sort of person who if she gets a scratch is completely convinced that it's going to get gangrene and mean her entire body will have to be amputated. The sort of person who favourite reading material is 'The Family Health Encyclopaedia', with a side order of 'New Diseases Monthly'."
"Yeah, I know the type," said Chas good-naturedly. "Get on with it."
"God only knows how her poor husband put up with it. Her kids were long gone, so they were well out of it. I think her bloke coped by having his regular pint of an evening down the pub, far away from her obsessive worrying about this mole, or that sniffle. Can't say I blame him at all.
"She was more than just a hypochondriac though, she was a competitive hypochondriac. If someone dared say to her they had a cold, then she had pneumonia, if someone else had a slipped disk, then she was paralysed from the waist down. I'd hate to think what she'd have to say about herself if she heard that someone was dying of AIDS or something, probably would claim that she had a whole new fatal disease that her's was the first case of, and the doctors were baffled and gave her exactly five minutes less time to live than the poor sod who was genuinely dying. She was that sort of person. A right self obsessed cow."
Chas stuck a fresh mug of coffee in front of him. Spud took a mouthful and pulled the rollie out from behind his ear.
"Thanks. Now if I could only remember where I put my lighter...
"Anyway, her GP, as you can imagine, was well and truly sick of the sight of her. And she'd only been going to see him for all of six months, after the other ten GPs she'd been to see had dared suggest that she might just be loopy instead of sick. This GP was a young lad, pretty much straight out of med school, and the truth be told, a bit crap. And she figured she could bully him unmercifully, and of course, she did. I swear, she had enough antibiotics in her bathroom cabinet to eliminate measles in the developing world. All of them with the courses half finished, 'cause no sooner would she start a different antibiotic, then out would come the side effects. Every single one, no matter how they contradicted each other. She was the only woman in the world who could have a lowered core temperature and a fever at the same time.
"She gave up going to the doctors completely after he last GP decided to stop prescribing her proper pills and instead sent her home with sugar pills or something. Of course, as soon as she gets home, out comes the reference books, and she looks up her new pills. She goes completely ballistic when she discovers they're fake, and swears never again to go to the doctors.
"She was as good as her word as well."
He paused for another mouthful of coffee, looking mournfully at the cigarette in his hand.
"You haven't seen my lighter, have you?"
Chas shook his head, frozen veg help firmly against his hurt hand.
"No, not since the first time you asked."
"Anyway, in the fullness of time, she did actually develop something wrong with her. It was an ingrown toenail, but of course, she managed to convince herself that it was really an advance symptom of a particularly debilitating form of bone cancer or something.
"She limped around on it for days, milking it for all she was worth, all the while refusing to go to the doctors. Have you ever had an in-grown toenail?"
"Nope."
"Hurts like a bastard, it does. And her not being good at coping with this pain thing, she takes to her bed, refusing to get up to do anything important like eat or drink.
"Her husband, the first night he came home to discover her in bed and no dinner on the table, well, he simply put his cap and coat back on and went down the pub where he had pie and chips along with his evening pint."
"That reminds me," interrupted Chas. "Fancy some breakfast? I could do some fried eggs?"
Spud swallowed convulsively, turning that little bit paler.
"Um, no, not for me thanks. Not just at the moment."
Chas grinned. "You won't mind if I make myself some then?"
He opened the fridge.
"Hey! Who ate all the eggs?"
"Where was I," Spud asked himself hurriedly. "Oh yeah. By now, see, she had convinced herself that she was too weak to do anything, even breathe, so she was hyperventilating. Which, along with her not having eaten or drunk very much for a few days, made her feel all dizzy and light-headed. There's no one in the house, so what does she do?"
"You ate all the eggs, didn't you Spud?"
"Out goes the oath about the doctors, she weakly grabs the phone and calls for an ambulance. And the fire brigade, because the paramedics are going to need help getting her down the stairs."
"And the bacon as well..."
"Picture the scene now. Her poor husband, coming back from the pub to be greeted by an ambulance parked on top of his prized rosebushes and a pack of fire fighters having just smashed his front door in. He loses his temper in a big way, runs inside to where the paramedics and fire-fighters are just preparing to rush up the stairs to grab his missus. He takes a deep breath and yells at them:
"'For Christ's sake, the woman only has an in-grown toe nail!'"
Chas burst out laughing, blatting his head on the inside of the fridge as he tried to stand up without moving his head first.
"Ow, fuck!" he said, still laughing. "Bastard, that hurts. And you've ate all the breakfast."
"Have some toast," said Spud. "and I'll buy you lunch, promise."
"Ow, oh, alright. Bastard."
"Anyway, his wife, lying on her deathbed upstairs, hears this, and gets so furious with her husband that up she jumps, yelling and screaming like you wouldn't believe. All about how she's dying and how her husband is an uncaring bastard, leaving on her own in so much pain. She fairly runs out of the bedroom, shouting abuse, and stubs the toe with the ingrown nail on one of her big thick medical books that she's left at the top of the stairs. She screams like she's being murdered, and trips, falling down the stairs and landing on top of the poor firemen who were on their way up to get her.
"One fireman with a sprained ankle, and a paramedic with a nasty knock to the head later, she's had the toe examined and has been told in no uncertain terms not to go wasting ambulance time like that again, and thank you very much, that will be three hundred quid for the emergency services call-out.
"She sulks, and goes back up to her bed, refusing to speak to her husband at all. He just shrugs and goes and sleeps in the spare room, which is a lot comfier, and less full of medical books."
"That it?" said Chas. "She just gets told off? I thought you said she died from that toe nail of hers."
"Give me a chance to finish," said Spud. "You'll see.
"In the middle of the night, this woman wakes up. And she's half asleep, so she forgets that she's supposed to be really weak and ill. She's also starving, so she goes down to the kitchen to find herself something to eat.
"She scoffs down half a loaf of bread, some fish paste and three chocolate bars before starting on a bag of peanuts. But the silly woman is so intent on shovelling food into herself that she takes too big a mouthful of peanuts, breathes on in, and ends up choking to death on one. She falls down dead on the floor with a very loud thunk, and that's the end of her.
"Didn't half give her poor husband a shock the next morning when he came down for his Weetabix..."
Spud trailed off with a wide grin on his face. Chas burst out laughing.
"You are so bullshitting me," said Chas in between guffaws.
"No, I'm not," Spud protested. "Woman that happened to was my second cousin, twice removed by the police."
They were interrupted by a knocking on the door. Chas went to open it, it was a pizza delivery guy.
"Medium pepperoni pizza with extra garlic and banana?"
"Not me, mate, hang on. Spud?"
"Yo!" came the rather eighties reply from the kitchen.
"Pizza?"
"God no! Er...yes! It's mine!"
And Spud staggered out from the kitchen looking very ill indeed.
"How much do you need?"
"Been paid for."
"Hunh?"
"Last night," said the pizza delivery guy.
Chas was pissing himself laughing, trying desperately to not show it.
"Oh," said Spud, clearly incredibly confused. He reached out and took the pizza. Suddenly a thought occurred to him.
"Say," he asked the pizza delivery guy, "have you seen my lighter?"
"No," came the reply, and the delivery guy left.
"Damn" said Spud, "I'm dying."
"Come on, you sad bastard, you owe me breakfast."
"Fancy some pizza?"
"Garlic and banana? Fuck off."
They went back into the kitchen without noticing the little basket of fruit that had been slipped inside the front door.
From across the street, a duck was watching.
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