The Flip Side Read online

  “Yeah, I remember we chatted with her last time. Why don’t you go and say hi?”

  “Why can’t we both go?”

  “Well, you’re single, and she’s clearly here on her own and is very good-looking. Do I need to say more?”

  “She’s dressed as a toilet!”

  “Go on, it will be good practice for you!”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure if I’m ready.”

  “You don’t have to propose to her, just have a chat . . . Hang on, I’ve got to take this. It’s the hotel.” Jake follows Jessie into the kitchen to take the phone call. He’s on duty all weekend, meaning he has to be prepared for any emergency. At the thirty-fifth of thirty-six hotels in the city, there tends to be a major problem every week.

  “Very convenient timing,” I say to him as he walks away, which makes it look like I’m talking to myself.

  I flip the coin to decide. It tells me to go and talk to her, rather than standing on my own and playing on my phone. I take the long route around the room to give me time to build up my confidence. This is a bad idea, as I am now approaching her from behind. I weigh up whether I should tap her on the back to get her attention until I decide against this and instead spring around, looking like a maniac.

  “Oh, hi,” she says, almost jumping. “I didn’t see you there.”

  “Sorry . . . hi . . . I think we met last year?”

  “Yes, I have some hazy memory of that,” she says with an Irish lilt.

  She is pretty, with shoulder-length ginger hair and bright blue eyes.

  “I like the outfit, again,” I say, looking down before jerking my head back up quickly so it doesn’t look like I’m staring at her chest.

  “Yes, I had to get my money’s worth for this toilet seat. Moaning Myrtle . . . Waterloo. I’m hoping next year is a music theme so I can come as Lou Reed.”

  “Or Lou Bega. Both musical geniuses, really.”

  “Very true. I am just annoyed that those guys dressed up as ABBA stole my idea and came as Waterloo. Thought I’d be unique.” She looks across the room, before turning back to me. “What are you?”

  I take my gun out.

  “Bond Street, James Bond Street.”

  Did I really just do that?

  “Of course, looking very suave. Especially compared to everyone else.”

  “Yes, that’s not too hard when that guy’s carrying a can of beer and has got a dildo on his head, dressed as Cockfosters.”

  “So have you had a good year?” she says, laughing as she looks at the guy I’m referring to.

  “Yeah, not bad, thanks. You?”

  “Yep. It’s gone quickly, hasn’t it?”

  What else do you say to someone you only see on an annual basis?

  Think of something, Josh.

  I try to recall anything I can remember about her from last year.

  Fortunately, Jessie joins us on her way back from the kitchen, holding a couple of drinks.

  “Did you want one?”

  “Only if it’s shaken, not stirred.”

  Really, Josh?

  “What were you two chatting about? Can I join?” Jessie asks Waterloo.

  “I was just asking how . . . sorry, what’s your name?”

  “It’s Josh.”

  “How Josh’s year has been.”

  “Oh, he’s not started telling you about his coin, has he?”

  I swing around to look at Jessie.

  “No, what’s this about a coin?”

  I watch on as Jessie recaps everything to this random girl dressed as a toilet.

  “Wow, that’s very brave. So how does it work? Would you have to flip a coin if I ask whether you’re coming out with us afterward?”

  “Yes, that’s about right.”

  “This sounds like it could be fun.” She smiles.

  AFTER TOO MANY drinks at the party, we walk from the house toward the Clifton Triangle. The motliest crew you’ve ever seen. To my left I have an Angel, to my right someone dressed as a Victoria sandwich. Four guys dressed as ABBA, a handful of Bakers in white chef’s hats, two of the Seven Sisters, the guy with his snooker cue, Waterloo, and Jessie, still holding her marmalade sandwiches, make up our entourage, with others following farther behind us. I don’t know where Jake has got to.

  “Did you see they’ve changed their name back to Lizard Lounge again?” Waterloo asks me as she takes a puff of a cigarette. She’s left the toilet seat behind, so looks the most normal of us all.

  “Are we really going there? Surely there’s a better club we could go to. The music is so cheesy.”

  “Yes, that’s why it’s great, duh.”

  “Why don’t we go to La Rocca?” one of the nuns suggests.

  “Josh, flip your coin to see if we should go to Lizard Lounge or La Rocca,” Waterloo demands.

  “OK, everyone, heads is Lizard Lounge, tails is La Rocca. Agreed?”

  Everyone huddles around as we pause on the pavement to make the big decision.

  I toss the coin into the night’s sky.

  “Heads. Lizard Lounge it is!”

  Benny, Björn, and the Bakers all celebrate wildly.

  “Yay. Let’s go.” Waterloo grabs my arm, excitedly, and drags me down the road.

  I haven’t been to Lizard Lounge since school. It is predictably full of students and schoolkids pretending to be over eighteen, and the music is as cheesy as I remember. By the time we’re in the club, our entire group has heard about the coin. Jessie is trying her best to discourage everyone, but it’s no use. Before I know it, everyone is chanting “toss the coin” as a row of shots are lined up for me to down.

  The room starts to spin as Waterloo puts her arms around me, and we dance to a medley of nineties hits, getting closer and closer with each song. Our hands all over each other. She leans in right next to my face to be heard over the Spice Girls.

  “So, Mr. Bond Street, let’s see if the coin thinks you should kiss me.”

  We spend the next twenty minutes interchanging between coin flipping and sloppy, tobacco-tasting snogging.

  THE NEXT THING I know, I’m waking up the following morning. I don’t know what time it is. I don’t even know where I am. I struggle to open my eyes. My head kills. Light streams in through the translucent gray curtains.

  Is this the house where the party was? I don’t recognize it, if so. It’s not Jessie’s. It’s not Jake’s. Is it Waterloo’s? Did I sleep here? Did we sleep together? How did we get back?

  I look down. I’m still dressed in my tuxedo, although judging by the state of it, no one’s going to want to buy it on eBay. I frisk myself for my phone and wallet. Fortunately, I still have them, but I seem to have lost my gun. It’s not in any of my pockets. I turn over in the bed to look for it and, to my surprise, I’m lying next to an Elephant. She is still wearing her trunk.

  I decide to get out of bed and out of this mystery flat, before Castle turns up.

  8

  I’m waiting at the bus stop, half-asleep, when my phone rings. I squint at my mobile. Even looking at the bright screen hurts my eyes.

  It’s Jessie.

  “Hey, Josh, I’m just checking you’re still on for meeting me at the gym?”

  Oh. Crap.

  “Josh, are you there?” she shouts.

  I quickly move the phone away from my ear.

  “Yes,” I say reluctantly.

  “So, I’ll see you there in an hour, then?”

  “Maybe we could do another day instead?” I plead.

  “Come on, you can’t cancel on me. I’ve got you a one-day trial membership for today.”

  “I’m not canceling, I’m just postponing.” A moped revs loudly past.

  Why is everything so loud?

  “You’ve already been postponing for ages. You promised the coin you’d come with me. You can’t cancel on the coin.”

  “But I feel so ill.”

  “Well, that’s your own fault. You should have stopped drinking when I did.”
>
  “And I haven’t got anything to wear,” I say, looking down at my outfit, which is dirty, smelly, and wholly impractical.

  “What are you wearing now?”

  “I’m still in the tuxedo.”

  “You haven’t been home yet?”

  “No, I’m just waiting to catch the bus.” I don’t try and explain where I’ve been all morning.

  I hear talking in the background.

  “Jessie?”

  “Sorry, just give me a second.”

  She is talking with someone else. From the muffled noises, it sounds like her housemate. She lives with two girls, whom she works with.

  “What size shoe are you?”

  “Are you talking to me now?”

  “Yes, you.”

  “Ten, I’m a ten.”

  “OK, eleven will do. Izzi said you can borrow some of her boyfriend’s gym gear.”

  “But . . .”

  “No arguments. Be there.”

  I FEEL SELF-CONSCIOUS as soon as I walk into the changing room. It doesn’t help that everyone is staring at me as I get changed out of my tuxedo. Izzi’s boyfriend is a gym freak and he has all the clothing to match. I’m wary as I slide on his bright-orange trainers that I look too much like a regular. I know I’m not very fit, and I don’t want my outfit to miscommunicate that. I’m only here because of Jessie and the coin. Sometimes I hate them both.

  “OK, let’s start with some push-ups. Show me how many you can do.”

  Crap.

  I’m sweating from my hangover even before I’ve started.

  “Come on, Josh, show me what you’ve got, mate.”

  I lie flat on my face on the ground, attempting to do one push-up. This is embarrassing. There are people all around watching.

  I don’t need a day pass to see if I like the place. I decide after one minute that I don’t.

  Come on, I must be able to do one.

  “No, you have to keep your back straight, mate. Come on. We’ll stop once you get to ten.”

  Ten?

  “I’ll give you one and a half stars for that. Let’s go and jump on the treadmill.”

  I didn’t realize the free consultation involved a rating system. I don’t think I’m going to get five stars for anything.

  He tries to motivate me in his strong northern accent.

  “We’ll just start off at a gentle jog, try and keep at this pace for five minutes, and then we’ll change it up. Let’s just get your muscles and heart working. Come on, you can do it.”

  There are only a few things I would run for. A bus. A train. An ice-cream van. But running for the sake of it? No, thank you.

  “Go easy on him.” Jessie walks over from another treadmill. Adam the PT puts his arm around her shoulder as she joins us.

  Brilliant. Now I have two spectators to laugh at me.

  “How did you get on?” I realize that Adam has now forgotten about me and has started a conversation with Jessie instead. They are enjoying a friendly chat while I’m dying.

  “Not too bad, thanks. Just ran for an hour. Did eight miles, which was OK.”

  An hour on the treadmill? I’m bored already.

  “When is your next long run?”

  “I think I’m going to do a sixteen-mile one this weekend.”

  I don’t know why I sponsored her so much now. The marathon doesn’t seem to be a challenge for her.

  “Josh, when you’ve finished with Adam, you can come to Boxercise with me and see if you like that.”

  When I finish with Adam, I will probably need an ambulance.

  “Hang on, the coin only decided that I come to the gym, not that I take classes too.”

  “Don’t try and get out of it now.”

  “I’ve got to flip again,” I say as I reach into the zipped pocket on my sweaty shorts before struggling to flip and jog simultaneously. For a second I think I’m going to fall off the back of the treadmill.

  Why does this coin hate me so much?

  My pained facial expression says everything.

  “There you go. Now hurry up and finish your running and meet me over in that studio,” Jessie says, pointing to a room with a transparent glass wall so everyone can watch my suffering. This gym is like a gladiatorial arena.

  It turns out that I am the only man in the Boxercise class, and I am hoping it’s not too energetic, as I can barely stand up. I envisioned it to be full of young, muscly wannabe boxers, but aside from Jessie, everyone else is over forty, so at least I won’t be too humiliated.

  “Do you know what happened to Jake?” I ask Jessie as we stretch to warm up.

  “Just as we thought. There was a problem at the hotel, so he had to go and help sort it out.”

  “What was it this week? Not another fight?” A couple of weeks ago Jake was called at 4 a.m. by the night porter when a man at a stag party discovered that another guy in the group had slept with his girlfriend. All hell broke loose, with a mass brawl erupting in the reception area. We all wondered why the porter called Jake rather than the police. . . .

  “No. Apparently there was some guy who started running around the hotel naked, and then he started smearing his own feces on the walls of his room.”

  “Lovely.”

  “It got worse when the cleaner came in, saw what had happened, and threw up everywhere. Aren’t you glad we’re not working in the hotel industry anymore?”

  I didn’t really leave by choice.

  “Poor Jake. Do you think other hotels have guests like this?”

  “Goodness knows. Anyway, enough about Jake, what happened to you is the bigger question,” she says seriously.

  “Come on, guys, split into pairs. One of you pick up the pads, and the other the gloves. There should be enough,” the coach interrupts.

  “What do you mean, what happened to me?” I say, as I punch Jessie’s pads.

  “I’m worried about you, Josh. It’s not like you to act like that. You were absolutely wasted. And then hooking up with Louise, whom you barely know.”

  “Louise?”

  “Waterloo.”

  “Oh, Lou, wearing a loo seat. I should have remembered that. . . . I can’t really remember much, if I’m honest.”

  I try and recall last night, but most of it is blank.

  “You don’t remember rolling around on the floor of the club, humming the James Bond theme tune, pretending to shoot everyone?”

  “Oh, God, did I do that?”

  “You don’t remember Louise getting upset when you tried to kiss someone else?”

  I’m glad I can’t remember anything now.

  “Do you know how I ended up in the same bed as the Elephant? Did we . . . ?”

  “You mean Sara. And no, you didn’t.”

  “That trunk would have probably got in the way,” I say.

  “Josh, this isn’t a joke. You really don’t remember anything? She let you sleep it off at hers after you got us all kicked out of the club.”

  “Oh no, really?”

  “Yes, really. That’s what I mean. Jake thinks it’s good you’re letting off steam, but I’m worried about you. You never go crazy like that. I don’t think this coin thing is a good idea, if it’s encouraging you to make choices like you did last night.” Jessie sounds like my mum.

  We switch pads and gloves, which I’m not sure is a good idea, with Jessie in this mood.

  “Am I not allowed to have some fun? It was the first time since Jade I’ve had a good time.”

  “Obviously you can have fun, but I thought flipping the coin was meant to help you get your life on track, not make things worse?”

  The throbbing pain inside my head concurs with her.

  “You have a point.”

  “I mean, do you really need to flip a coin to decide if you want another drink? Everyone was just taking advantage of you last night. I thought you were trying to be careful with your money until you get a new job.”

  “But I made a pact.”

  She pauses for
a second as she thinks.

  “Why don’t you switch to only flipping it for big decisions? Or just a few times a day? I don’t think that’s cheating.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No, it’s not.” I’m sure she punches my pads harder as she says it.

  I try to think things through, but my head is too sore, which answers my query.

  “Maybe you’re right. I probably shouldn’t flip a coin to see whether I should drink shots, and to be honest I probably don’t need it to pick what socks I wear either. I’ll just use it for big choices, or when I’m stuck and I can’t make a decision.”

  “I’m always right!” Jessie smiles, finishing off with a one-two combo.

  “OK, everyone switch partners,” the trainer barks.

  As we all rotate around the room, I’m separated from Jessie before she can confiscate my coin. I find myself opposite a tiny, middle-aged woman wearing librarian-style glasses. She holds her pads up first while I gently punch them as if she were a little child, wary of hitting her too hard and hurting her.

  “If you haven’t done so already, swap roles now.”

  I take off the gloves and switch them with the woman.

  With her first punch she sends me tumbling to the ground.

  9

  If Russian roulette is dangerous, tossing a coin to decide who to match with on Tinder is deadly. I’m only one flip of the coin away from being tied up in someone’s basement and used as a sex slave. Given it is Jake’s idea for me to get back into the dating game, I decide it is all his fault if I end up in a dungeon.

  There are only about seven women under the age of sixty living in a five-mile radius of our house, so the coin doesn’t have a wide pool to choose from. One describes herself as a “learner of witchcraft and lover of Satan.” Fortunately, the coin rejects her.

  Instead, at exactly 7.28 p.m., I’m standing in the village precinct waiting to meet the coin’s choice: Emma, dark hair, 24 years old, 5 ft 9, hairdresser. Loves Taylor Swift, prosecco, and pineapple on pizza.

  I scroll through our chat on Tinder as I wait for her. All of our correspondence has been perfunctory—“How was your weekend?” “Sorry for the slow response.” “Are you doing much this week?” I’m hoping in real life the conversation springs into life.