Read Fandango in the Apse! for Free Online Page B

fruit I wasn’t ready to pick), I eventually sorted myself out and
hit the streets looking for a job.  By the end of the third day, I had one
behind the till in the local supermarket.  I was able to subsidise my meagre
wages by buying out of date stock, and when Mrs Bunn started sending weekly
parcels of freshly baked food with Alison, I was actually very well fed.
    By the time the dark evenings drew in the following year, I found myself
with very little company.  Mark had enrolled at Nottingham University and
Alison had moved up there to be with him, so, out of desperation I joined an
evening class.  I had always been good at maths, and decided on a Book Keeping
and Accounts course, which eventually led to a placement as a junior clerk in a
finance brokers, and that is where I met Eddie Roberts, an upwardly mobile
accounts manager, later known as “The Pig”.
    Eddie wasn’t my first boyfriend, Lord no.  In the eighteen months since
my eviction from home, I’d had a few.  You see, the problem with a convent
education is this: there are no boys.  Therefore, as soon as you are unleashed
from the confines, with just enough sex education to whet your appetite (don’t
French kiss boys and never, ever kiss a boy with a cold sore… I kid you not,
that was it, as told by Sister Calasanctious, the home economics teacher), you
tend to go a bit wild – well, I did anyway.  I think it’s a well-known
phenomenon, though. 
     I have to admit I was dissatisfied with most of them.  Pardon me if this
is distasteful to you, but my problem lay with my very first partner and his
hugely endowed nether regions. 
    Is it just me, or can you see the celestial input here too?  How unfair to
come across the biggest, erm…appendage you are ever likely to find, at a time
when you are too inexperienced to appreciate it.
    To be honest, I think it ruined me for other men; they were always going
to come up short from that point on.  With Eddie, I was prepared to overlook
his shortcomings for three reasons.  He had a good job, he was a rugby player
with a great body, and I was in my “I need to be looked after” mode.   
    The first time I clapped eyes on him I was sitting at my desk in what was
laughingly referred to as the administration department.  In reality, it was
little more than a cupboard, crammed with two desks, two filing cabinets and regularly
used as a dumping ground by everyone who didn’t want to do their own typing.  Due
to the confines of our office, Suzy the occupant of the other desk preferred
the door open.  For this I was grateful; with the door closed, the room was
stuffy and claustrophobic.
    Eddie had propped himself on the edge of a desk in the outer office. 
Collette Harper, a girl I’d only spoken to once, but had been hugely impressed
by her false eyelashes and peroxide blonde hair, was laughing delicately at
something he murmured in her ear.
    ‘Who is that?’ I whispered to Suzy.  She had just rammed a chocolate
biscuit into her mouth and now waved an ineffectual hand in front of her face,
as if that would make the biscuit go down quicker.
    ‘Who’s who?’ she replied, while skimming the chocolate from her teeth
with her tongue.
    ‘Look, him,’ I beckoned with my hand, ‘sitting on Collette’s desk.’
                Suzy bent two-thirds of the way across her desk in order to
look through the door (yep, it was that close). ‘Eddie Roberts…accounts
manager extraordinaire.’
    I stared at her…waiting…
    ‘And?’
    ‘And what?  You asked who he was…I told you.’  I gave her what I hoped
was a disparaging look.
    ‘OK…’ she relented, dipping into the packet again and waving another biscuit
in the air as she spoke.  ‘He is the blue-eyed boy at the moment, due to
bringing in more business this year than old Harrison has in the last three.
He’s got a bit of a reputation though… likes the girlies.’ Suzy’s small eyes
twinkled with amusement. ‘He must be after