Yes Chef, No Chef - By Susan Willis Page 0,12

go to? Her mum would be at bingo and Lisa only had a one bedroomed flat. She would go to Sarah she decided, turning the key in the ignition.

Chapter Three

Tim finished the glass of wine in one long slug and listened to what sounded like Kate opening and closing drawers and the wardrobe door creaking. Christ, she wasn’t packing was she? Was she really going to walk out and leave him? His mind reeled in disbelief as he tried to rationalise in the drunken fog. She was his Kate and she loved him above all others, didn’t she? He heard the front door bang shut and, staggering to the window, he watched her throw the holdall into the back of her car and drive away.

With a shaking hand he spilled some wine from his glass onto the floor and coffee table. Damn, he cursed, and then in between gulps he cried out aloud, ‘She’s actually gone and left me!’ Anxiously, he shook his head in disbelief while the silence of the room seemed to close in around him. Should he go after her in a taxi? But he wasn’t sure who she’d go to? And anyway, he raged, why the hell should he? She was the one who’d walked out and she was the one who obviously didn’t want to be with him anymore. Looking towards the bedroom and the wardrobe door she’d left open he repeated the words again slowly, ‘She. Doesn’t. Want. To. Be. With. Me.’

He felt the old horror of rejection raise its ugly head and memories from the past started to creep around his insides. Get a grip, he thought shuddering with trepidation and reached for the remote to turn up the volume on the TV. He tried to focus on the football but the images on the screen were blurred with alcohol so he laid his head back on the settee and squeezed his eyes tight shut. Someone had actually left him. It was the first time it had happened since he was eighteen - since the brutal rejection by Sally.

Sally had been his first serious girlfriend at university and they’d gone out together for two months when suddenly one night when she was very drunk she’d told him it was over.

“But why?” he begged. He’d been desperate not to lose her.

She’d pulled the sheet back from their naked bodies, pointed and laughed maliciously at him, “It’s that!” she’d cried aloud. “The way your penis is bent at the end. Well, it’s not much of a turn-on, is it?”

She’d thrown her head back and cackled mercilessly at him while he’d stared down at his penis still aroused from their love-making session and felt his face burn hot with embarrassment and shame.

“B…But, you never said anything before…” he’d stammered awkwardly as she’d simply shrugged her shoulders and carried on laughing at him. He’d gathered his clothes quickly from the pokey flat in the halls of residence and fled back to his own room, shaking and crying with humiliation. The next day a visit to the doctor with his best friend, Luke, put his anatomical fears to rest. There was nothing wrong and nothing to inhibit his performance, and he’d left the surgery in a state of relief with the doctors comforting words that all men were different sizes and shapes. Luke had wanted to give Sally a piece of his mind but Tim had stopped him by grunting that he could fight his own battles well enough. Following this episode, his confidence had taken a battering but it was the feeling of humiliation which had lingered for years after Sally’s cruel words. And from then onwards he’d made sure he always finished with girlfriends first, until he’d met Kate of course. His Kate was different to all the rest. He moaned, floating into a drunken stupor and black oblivion.

Monday morning dawned and when he began to focus on where he was and why he was curled up shivering on the settee his memory of the night before crashed back brutally. His tongue was so dry it was stuck to the back of his throat and the pain in his head was thunderous. ‘Christ Almighty,’ he sighed swinging his legs over the edge of the settee. ‘What have I done?’ But when he tried to sit upright his stomach retched and he lay back down again taking deep breaths. ‘She’s gone and I’ve lost her, and it’s my own damn fault,’ he wailed. What the hell had