"Rachel Bailey," Janet said, taking a gulp of her wine and looking over the rim of her glass at her colleague, "Sometimes I wish I was you."
Rachel leant back in her chair and waited for Janet to elaborate. After a particularly hard day in the office (the fridge had broken over the weekend, and Rachel had spent the first few hours of her shift cleaning out her now-inedible yogurts) they'd come to the pub to unwind.
Rachel didn't see Janet tipsy very often; she was always the steady, reliable one, who'd have a couple of glasses and then switch to orange juice, but tonight she'd already moved onto a second bottle of wine. She'd seemed on edge all day today, and Rachel had caught her arguing with Godzilla in the loos at lunch, although of course she'd denied it later. Hey, why not let her let her hair down for a change, if she needed to forget the shit in her life?
"Because you're so–" Janet paused, tapped her nails on the dirty table top as though she was trying to calculate something, "You're so pretty and funny and carefree, aren't you, Rachel Bailey?"
"Oh, that's me, Janet Scott of Scotland Yard."
Janet laughed like it was the first time she'd heard that joke. "Sometimes I just wish I could be you."
Her lips slipped down from a grin into a contemplative grimace. Rachel was suddenly frightened that her friend was going to cry, so she topped up her empty glass and pushed the bowl of peanuts towards her. "Why don't you be me? Why don't we swap who we are, just for tonight?"
"Like Wife Swap."
Jesus Christ, Janet was a lightweight, she'd only had a few glasses and she was already away with the fairies. "A bit like that. Let's call it Life Swap."
"Let's do it, then. I'm Rachel, you're Janet."
Rachel laughed, wondering what the hell she'd let herself in for. She went to the bar and bought an orange juice, and when she returned to the table Janet was drinking wine from the bottle.
"I never do that."
"You do," Janet gargled, a trickle of wine escaping and dribbling down her chin, "You have done, several times."
Rachel forced herself not to argue indignantly. Janet never argues. I must maintain this 'higher moral ground' she's forever on about. "Come on, then, Mrs, what happened today to make you such a grumpy sod?"
"I am not a grumpy sod," Janet said, polishing off the remains of the wine and smearing the drops on her lips across her cheek with the back of her hand, "But sometimes Gill – I should say Godzilla, if I'm being you – is so bloody unreasonable. And then there's Taisie and Elise, always wanting this or that, and mise-bloody-rable Adrian, and don't even get me started on my bloody mother."
"Dorothy's lovely, really."
Janet's eyebrows flew up her face and sought refuge under her fringe. She rummaged in her handbag for her purse and wrinkled her nose upon seeing the contents, then held out her hand palm-up and fluttered her eyelids at Rachel. "Aw, please, Rach."
"I am not this bad," Rachel objected, "There's no way I'm this much of an embarrassment."
"I end up buying your drinks every time. You owe me. Ple-ease."
Rachel sighed and gave Janet a ten pound note; her friend immediately scampered away to the bar and began a debate with someone or other about which wine was the nicest. Rachel drank some of her orange juice. It was full of lumps which stuck in her throat like she was swallowing chunks of pineapple skin; she missed the burn of the alcohol, the way it warmed her.
She didn't miss the disorientation, though, or the queasiness. She was sure, in the morning, she wouldn't miss the hangover. She looked about her with interest at the men playing darts, the couples on first dates who seemed to be struggling to find something to talk about, the woman sitting alone in the far corner stuffing potato wedges into her mouth contentedly. She never normally got to people-watch in the pub; it was difficult when the room was spinning.
Janet came springing back and proudly dumped a fistful of copper coins in front of Rachel, "There you go."
"There's– there's about twenty pence here."
"Sorry, they only had pennies."
"You've spent nine pound eighty on a bottle of wine?"
Janet shrugged, already unscrewing the top of the bottle and pouring herself a new glass, "I bought some more peanuts too."
"Don't you think you've had just about enough now? What are the girls going to say if you roll home pissed?"
"I'm Rachel Bailey," Janet cackled, downing half of the glass in one gulp and taking a few peanuts, "I've never had enough."
Over the course of next few glasses of wine, Janet told Rachel more about her life than she'd told her in years (perhaps because Janet couldn't always get many words in edgeways with Rachel's constant blabbering about Nick or Sean or whoever). She told her about how much she loved her daughters and how frightened she was, constantly, that something might happen to them. She talked about still loving Ade, "despite how much of an arse he is".
Rachel found she didn't mind listening to Janet; she felt like a real friend, like she was repaying Janet for all the times she'd looked after her before now. "What've you fallen out with Godzilla about, then?"
"You," she said, "The real you, not the me you."
"What've I done?"
"Godzilla wasn't impressed about the fridge business, it was all oh, how immature is Rachel and oh, why can't she just do her job properly like the rest of us, working our arses off, and all this."
Rachel smirked and drained her orange juice, "So?"
"So I told her you did work your arse off, and you were far cleverer than either of us ever would be, when you got your brain in gear. And she took it a little bit the wrong way. She's a good copper, but she really thinks she owns the place, doesn't she? I'm not her slave."
"Good on you, pal."
"Pal," Janet repeated. She burped; it smelled like a mixture of wine and salt. "That's a Rachel Bailey word, 'pal'. I like it."
And then, out of the blue, Janet began to cry. Great, undignified sobs which made her eyes glisten highlighter blue and her lips tremble. She reached for the wine glass but Rachel pushed it out of her way, and she didn't complain; she took the napkin Rachel offered to her and wiped her eyes roughly with it.
"Oh, Jan, what's up?"
"Just pissed," Janet said, her sobs and laughter combining into a slightly ghastly sound. She allowed Rachel to hug her, something that very rarely happened; they didn't really show affection, they already knew how much they meant to each other, but Rachel knew how much a hug would mean to Janet tonight.
"Thanks, pal," Janet whispered eventually.
The strip of lights above them faded and the barman approached them cautiously, "You're going to have to leave, ladies, we've got a private party booked in here at ten."
"I don't want to go home, Rach."
Janet looked so miserable that Rachel, even tough-skinned cow as she was, suddenly felt desperately sorry for her and only wanted her to smile again. Jesus, was this how Janet felt all the time, like she needed to look after everyone? Rachel reached out and took her friend's hand.
"It's alright. We'll go somewhere else."
XxXxX
Janet's 'just pissed' is sort of a tribute to Jill's 'soz pised', which will never, ever stop being funny. Reviews would be lovely if anyone has a moment, I'll probably write another chapter or two at some point x