"What's up with porcupine?" Lavinia asked, joining the others at the breakfast table, motioning to Mary who wore a rather grim and tiresome expression, speaking wearily into her phone in the corner of the kitchen.
"She hasn't had sex in over two months," Tom said casually, his voice a little gruff as he crunched his cheerios. This earned him a swat over the head with the morning newspaper from Mary as she passed. "What? It's true!" He objected in-between spoonful's.
The others chuckled discreetly into their respective breakfasts as Mary glared daggers at them all.
She hung up the call. "I'm glad that my private life is such a source of amusement to you all." She said stiffly, re-joining the table and looking at her breakfast with little appetite.
Anna looked at her phone. "Mabel says she can come for curry night tonight."
"Oh, just what I needed!" Mary exclaimed sarcastically. "Mabel flirting with everyone in the near vicinity in between prolonged gushing over how wonderful her new relationship with Tony is."
"Tony is Mary's ex," Evelyn clarified to Matthew.
"Ah," he said, a little warily. "And your friend is dating him?"
"Well, hang on a minute," Tom interrupted, scolding Matthew's sympathetic tone. "Mary dumped him."
"She had her reasons," Lavinia said defensively. "But you really do need to get over this vendetta you have against Mabel, Mary. She's perfectly nice, you two just like to compete with each other."
"Mary, you need to eat something," Matthew prompted, noticing she'd barely touched her food. "Or else you'll be too fatigued to spar with Mabel later."
"Tom?" Matthew turned to his friend from the couch, looking on as Tom perused the contents of the fridge.
"Yeah?"
"Do you think it would be alright if I asked Mary out?"
Tom shut the fridge.
The more Matthew had thought about the matter, the more it had seemed like a good idea. He liked Mary. Quite a lot. In fact, he'd found, since he'd moved in, that the majority of his thoughts were made up solely of her and, for a long time now, he wondered if it wouldn't just be worth biting the bullet and putting himself out there. Because if the result ended in a date with Mary, it would be entirely worth the momentary nervousness and sick-feeling in the pit of his stomach that always came between asking someone out and the gravity of the inevitable reply.
"I'm not too sure that's such a great idea, mate." Tom admitted, wincing a little even as he said the words.
"Why not?" Matthew seemed genuinely abashed and disappointed, as if he'd been hoping for an answer in the opposite effect.
"Well, Mary's different." Tom said, with a slight difficulty in finding his words. "She pretends she isn't, of course, but she's really quite Sensitive. Complicated. I don't want to see her lose another friend if it doesn't work out."
The truth of the matter was that Mary had become akin to a sister to Tom, and he'd seen her hurt too many times to be keen to risk it again. Previous friendships that had evolved into relationships had only ended in difficulty and eventually it had become too hard to even maintain the ruse of being civil to one another. It wasn't that he thought Matthew would do the same, not at all, but living in such close proximity with such a close group of friends would only end in everyone having to choose if the relationship came to a head.
"I'm sorry, mate. I just don't think it's such a good plan, is all."
Matthew nodded. "No, no, I get it. I don't to put anyone in an awkward position." Especially not Mary.
Perhaps he'd just have to put his feelings for her to one side.
"So, it seems Mary's got her eye on someone." Anna teased from behind her book.
"Have I?" Mary asked, looking up from a couple of case files she'd been perusing. "I wasn't aware. Do enlighten me."
"Oh, come on Mary, it's obvious!" Lavinia laughed, coming into the living room and seating herself on the arm of the couch.
"Not that obvious, clearly," Mary argued, "Or I'd know what on earth you were referring to."
"Oh, you know," Anna said slowly, "just the same guy you're always giggling privately with in the corner, going for coffee with after work…"
"…falling asleep on during movie night," Lavinia continued.
Mary felt her face flush, betraying her as their comments persisted with further evidence of her affection. It wasn't entirely fair to blame her for dozing off in Matthew's lap; the movie in question had been some boring old two-hour tale about a character she could barely remember the name of and she'd been shattered after a long day of work on a particularly difficult case and Matthew's shoulder had just been there. It wasn't her fault he was comfortable. It certainly wasn't her fault that, due to lack of space on the couch, she'd been shuffled over so she ended up curled against his chest. And it absolutely wasn't her fault that she'd stayed there, unaware that Anna had decided they should all watch a second film.
"And…"
"For the last time," Mary insisted, interrupting the girls' long list of supposed evidence. "There is nothing going on between Matthew and I!"
There was a short silence.
"That's funny…" Anna mused. "No one even mentioned a name."
Mary's face turned nearly fuchsia.
Lavinia and Anna made no attempts to stifle their giggles.
"Ooh, you've got a new one in the group," Mabel all but purred at Matthew, coming to stand close before him with a very obvious flirtatious smile
Mary threw a sofa cushion at her, smirking to herself as Mabel's drink sloshed over her arm at the impact.
"Oh, I do apologise," Mary said profusely, guiding Mabel from Matthew and over to the sink, "I was aiming for Tom."
"Oi!" Tom protested indignantly. "If that's how you want to treat me, I'll order you a fish curry and hide your naan."
Mary wrinkled her nose, deliberately ignoring Anna's attempts to catch her eye as she took Mabel's previously occupied space by Matthew.
"So, what bought you to London, Matthew?" Mabel asked, her hand laying over his arm. "Where are you from again?"
"Manchester," he said quickly, bringing his arm away from her touch through the pretence of reaching for more rice. "I was training in a firm over there after Uni, but when my girlfriend and I broke up, I thought I'd go for a transfer over here."
"Ooh, cross country move to escape a girl," Mabel said with a little relish. "That must have been bad."
"It wasn't the best time of my life, no." Matthew confirmed.
"Well, I can safely say, we're glad to have you, whatever the circumstances that drove you here." Evelyn put in.
"Here, here!" Tom called
Mary shot him a gentle smile, her stomach doing that irritating fluttery-flipping thing when he winked back, grinning widely.
They all talked while they ate, nicking each other's food and squabbling happily over the last poppadum.
Evelyn told them all how he'd accidentally almost blown up a class of thirty children when he'd been made to cover a chemistry lesson at the secondary school. Lavinia lamented on her waitressing days to pay her rent at university ("Most people just thought I was a slutty waitress." "You were a slutty waitress."). Anna told them all of some really horrendous tales from her medical training and Tom spoke of his plans to spend next Christmas back in Ireland.
When they'd finished, everyone having eaten a little on the side of too much, Matthew and Mary drew the short straws to do the washing up while the others settled themselves down in the living room, well-fed and drowsy, continuing with pointless chat as they lazed about the various chairs.
"You didn't tell me you moved to London to escape an ex," Mary said quietly, taking up a tea towel and picking a plate to dry.
"You're one to talk, porcupine," Tom accused, only just having overheard Mary as he passed through the apartment bearing several cans of beer.
"You didn't tell me why you were nicknamed porcupine." Matthew countered, turning to her with soft blue eyes as she looked straight back into them.
"They say I can be prickly," Mary admitted. "I can't remember whose idea it was now."
"And are you?" He asked, a little teasingly.
"Prickly? Probably."
"On the outside, maybe." Matthew said. "On the inside? I don't think so. Not really."