The Third Person

It’s always like that, of course, but in this case there’s something special going on: everything is happening because of just one thing. If you take every event I tell you about apart, you’ll find genetic code leading all the way back to this single common ancestor. Chop out that ancestor, and you’re talking blank pages. Empty from top to the bottom, from first to last.

And – like I said – what happened had nothing to do with me. Weird the way things turn out, isn’t it? What happened is a story.

Amy knew it off by heart, and sometimes – when I asked her nicely enough – she’d tell me. Why did I ask? Because once upon a time, as the stories say, I thought that each time she told the story she might unlearn it a little. It wasn’t something you really needed to remember, and I thought it might help her to forget. But that’s not what ended up happening.

Don’t bother sitting comfortably, because I never did.

A girl was at a student party, Amy would tell me. This girl had gone there with her best friend, and it had been a spur-of-the-moment, last minute decision to go: she was still debating it on the way there, in fact, as they leap-frogged from their shared house to the off-licence to the party. Her friend really wanted to go and so she’d persuaded the girl that it would be good for her to go, too. The girl figured she wasn’t going to know many people there, and as it turned out she was right, but she was chatty and pretty, and things usually worked out okay. It was a student party, after all: you just need to smile and drink, and then after a while a friend is anybody who’s in the same room as you.

This girl lost her friend at one point, but she thought fuck it. She’d kind of expected it, anyway – her friend had only wanted to come because of some boy, and so in a way her disappearance was excellent, fanfare, mission accomplished. The girl figured she’d get monumentally drunk to celebrate, and so set about demolishing wine at an astonishing rate. She talked shit to people; they talked shit back. And at one point, she met this boy.

His name was Jack, and she fancied him from the moment she set eyes on him. It was reasonably obvious that the feeling was mutual and they got talking, but – although he was flirting with her quite openly – she sensed that he was also holding back a little. The reason became obvious when she met the people he’d come with: four male friends.. . and his girlfriend. Foiled again, she thought, and so drank more wine. But she sat with them for a while anyway, and seemed to get on with them all. The male friends seemed all right, although it was clear that they knew what was going on. The girlfriend seemed oblivious and dull. Perhaps she was used to Jack, or simply not very bright.

They chatted for a while, and then Jack told her that they were all going back to a shared flat in their halls of residence, and would she like to come? They were going to drink and hang out: maybe play some guitar, listen to some CDs, and it would be fun, so how about it? The girl was drunk by then, and so she said yes. Like a good little girl, she even managed to find her friend, break her off her conquest’s face and tell her where she was going.

It was a quarter of an hour walk through the cold to get there. Jack walked with her, deliberately holding back way behind his girlfriend so that they were out of sight as they walked. He reached around and put his hand on her ass as they walked, giving it a squeeze. She looked at him and smiled. She wasn’t sure why, but she was drunk and she wanted him, so she gave him that smile and swigged from the wine bottle she was carrying. They arrived at half-past ten.

Oh shit, said Jack as the group settled down in the lounge, we forgot to get booze. Who’s out?

His girlfriend said, I need some, and – after sharing a glance with Jack – one of the other guys said he needed some too.

It’s only just around the corner, this other guy continued. Why don’t we both go?

So Jack’s girlfriend and this guy left the flat on a last-minute booze run. A few other people wanted stuff as well, but had been keeping quiet, and so the pair of them went away with quite a list. As the front door closed, someone flicked on a Pulp CD and everybody collapsed into armchairs and sofas. Except for Jack and the girl.

Come on, he said, I want to show you something.

Her heart was beating quickly with the excitement. Jack led her down the hall to his bedroom, and they fucked quickly and gracelessly on his bed. Here. She just pulled her knickers to one side as he unzipped himself and climbed on top of her. It was dictionary-definition bad sex, but she’d never wanted it so much in her life; he came in under a minute, with her nowhere near, but it didn’t even matter. Thanks, she told him afterwards, as he wiped his wet, reddened cock on tissue paper and grinned at her. I needed that.

They returned to the living room to knowing smirks, a few minutes ahead of the returning booze party. And then it all started to go wrong.