Alicia Meiss and Kat Patel were flatmates and best-of-friends. They cooked together and drank cups of tea together and hung out all the time like best-of-friend-flatmates tend to do. They even shared a bed (for convenience’s sake, but also for midnight-chats and morning-breath-natters).
This wasn’t to say they were two peas in a pod. Looks-wise, they differed to such an extent that any pod containing two such peas would be kept in a jar in some kind of museum of horticultural oddities. Their habits were a little at odds, too. Kat abstained from alcohol; Alicia drank into oblivion. Whilst Kat revelled in prayer and the infinite almighty, Alicia believed only in new-born lambs, funny shaped clouds, and humanity (sometimes). Kat was a beautiful human being who left a trail of tidiness and delicious meals in her wake. Alicia was a disastrous explosion of chocolate wrappers left in cups and clothes strewn all over the place like a tornado hit Topshop (or, perhaps, just Primark in its natural state). Kat’s clothes had never met a floorboard in their lives; they hung elegantly together in her closets, complementing each other, floating quietly.
Alicia tried desperately to keep her mess, her craziness under control. And for the most part, she did so. But when Kat announced she was going away for a week, a box of glitter hit the fan in Alicia’s head and shimmered down into her eyes. As soon as she heard the front door closed, the madness began.
On the first day, Alicia opened all the windows and danced naked around the apartment to Django Reinhardt and ‘Niggas in Paris’.
On the second day, Alicia, still naked, painted several large ‘murals’ onto the walls, taking inspiration more from Pollock than Van Gogh. When she got cold she put on some of Kat’s clothes and painted some more. No preventative measures were taken other than rolling up the sleeves.
On the third day, Alicia invited her friend Bernadette over to drink tea and eat chocolates and biscuits and sweeties. They cleared out the whole of Kat’s supply, and stuffed all the wrappers into teacups and glasses and then burped, really loudly. They had a burping contest. Bernadette won.
On the fourth day, she brought her bike up to the apartment and, naked once more, rode round in circles, crashing into everything and smashing Kat’s beautiful tagine set and hand-painted shisha pipe. She left the pieces in a teacup to deal with later.
On the fifth day, Alicia made a pig shaped piñata out of pink paper maché and strips of bacon. She filled it with salami and saucisson of all shapes and sizes, and, blindfolded with one of Kat’s scarves, beat it open with a huge frozen ham joint.
On the sixth day, Alicia made a lavish pavilion using the tables, chairs, curtains, throws and spare bed sheets (and some of Kat’s clothes) She lined it with the mattress and the cushions from the sofas and made a big nest in the middle with their duvets. Then she invited her boyfriend over to drink whisky and fornicate in the fornication fortress.
On the seventh day, she rested. Then she woke up and looked around her at the destruction she had caused, and it was good. But Kat would be back the next day, so she had a massive clean-up which involved repainting the walls, getting all of Kat’s clothes dry-cleaned, Hoovering and eating an awful lot of pork products.
When Kat got back she was impressed at how clean Alicia had been in her absence. It was as if she had never left! Then she saw the teacups filled with her broken shisha pipe and punched Alicia in the mouth and she bled and cried. Then they hugged and they were friends again.
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