‘I’m feeling lucky tonight, Matt,’ bragged Ross to his colleague, surveying the interior of Martino’s Diner with a leer.  ‘I can really have my pick of the pussy in here!’

‘You say that every Saturday, mate,’ retorted Matt, unimpressed.  He didn’t even look up from the wine bottle he was uncorking.  He and Ross were most definitely not, in fact, ‘mates.’

Ross, for his part, was not going to lose sleep over Matt’s coolness.  It was true that he ‘felt lucky’ on the vast majority of his evening shifts here – such was the height of his inexplicable self-confidence – but he was particularly spoilt for choice tonight.  What seemed like the Black Country’s entire babe quota had chosen to eat here – and, unusually, the best lookers were not the ones accompanied by smitten boyfriends.

‘I fancy trying my luck with that honey at the table by the window – the one with the long dark hair and the nose ring – there – look – ’  Matt grudgingly looked.  ‘She reminds me of that wench from The Corrs.  Cor, more like!  Bet she’s a goer!’

‘She’s well out of your league,’ said Matt sourly, yanking at the corkscrew so that it exited the bottle with more urgency than necessary, ‘she’s probably dead snooty and only dates Hugh Grant types.’

Ross considered no woman to be out of his league.  He chuckled at what he perceived as Matt’s jealousy.  ‘Failing that, then, one of the pissed-up hen party over there’ll do.  Bet they’d be up for anything!’

He leaned smugly back against the bar, sizing up his menu for the evening.  If the Corr clone was his main course, the buxom lush in the deeley boppers bearing the legend ‘CHIEF BRIDESMAID’ was the cheese.

That Matt was such a swot!  Always on at him for slacking; for spending more time pussy-watching than doing what he was paid to do.  Ross just considered it waiter’s privilege.  To him, pulling sexy patrons was the best perk of the job – even better than the tips.

Martino’s had been open four months.  Its pizzas and steaks, cocktail-twizzling barmen and colourful atmosphere made the place a hit with young groups and couples.  Ross had worked – using the word extremely loosely – there since the place’s launch, which had coincided conveniently with his sacking – for slacking – from a part-time stint selling popcorn at the Showcase Cinema.

He was twenty-five.  He served in Martino’s on Saturdays and Tuesdays, to help fund his way through Birmingham College of Food and Tourism, where he was two years into a Hospitality and Food Management degree.  Since leaving school seven years ago, Ross had done little but doss his way through dead-end part-time jobs and college courses from which he would never graduate.

He lived in Halesowen, a small town four miles south of Dudley, and as the only son of an indulgent mom and a docile dad, had scant incentive to leave home.  Neither settling down nor seeking full-time employment were high on his personal agenda.  Ross was the ultimate commitmentphobe.  The life to which he aspired was one free of responsibility and other inconvenient constraints that tended to feature in the real world.

Matt called him a ‘sex addict.’  It could certainly be said that he was hooked on pulling.  He could not get through a shift without chatting up at least one female diner.  It was debatable whether he genuinely liked all of these girls, or simply saw his attempts to relieve them of their knickers as his duty in life.

Matt couldn’t fathom why his workmate enjoyed such success.  Ross, by his own admission, was no Adonis – with his Mr Beany physique and angular, nondescript face.  He had a mystifying knack, though, of netting girls who were way too good for him; pleasant, bright ones who could do a great deal better.

They seemed disarmed by his down to earth looks and calculatedly self-deprecating charm.  Matt thought they were probably duped, by these factors, into believing Ross to be a modest, caring guy.  Surely that alone explained how he managed to reduce so many of them to swooning wrecks?

Well, either that or he possessed a dick the size of a ladder.

‘Anyway,’ Matt pointed out sharply, ‘you’ve already got a girlfriend.’

‘Ar, and don’t I bloody know it!  We’ve only been going out a few weeks, but already it feels like I’m married to the wench.’

Matt liked and pitied Ross’s girl, who he’d met a couple of times.  He – Matt – would be made up to bag someone half as tasty.  But Ross was forever whingeing about her alleged insistence on commitment and ‘soppy stuff.’  The way that bastard went on, anyone would think someone was pointing a gun at his head and manacling him to a Miss Piggy lookalike.

‘Well I for one,’ Matt said bitingly, ‘wouldn’t mind being married to a wench like yours.  She’s a right looker, with a great pair of knockers an’ all.  If I’d got a girl like that, I sure as hell wouldn’t go a-cheatin’ on her like you do!’

‘Oh hark at Mr Prissy,’ Ross sneered.  ‘Well you’m welcome to her, if it’d put you out yer misery!  To tell yer the truth, mate, I’d have jacked her in long ago if she weren’t such a crackin’ shag.  Big tits am all very well, but I want to sample all shapes and sizes – know what I mean?  This world’s full of girls, Matthew my son – and I intend having as many of ’em as possible before I carp it.  And I’m gunna start by trying for the Corr over there!’

He sauntered to the window table, keeping his eyes and smile upon his black-haired target, to let her know she was the lucky one he’d be singling out tonight.

Seeing her close-up confirmed to Ross that he’d made the right choice.  She was, without doubt, the most attractive woman in the restaurant, and certainly stood out from the four very average-looking friends who accompanied her.  Like a diamond in a tray of diamanté.  The wenches with her weren’t mingers, not at all, but she had something special: confidence, deportment, and looks which Ross might have described as ethereal – had he known what the word meant.

She wore a long halterneck dress in midnight blue crepe – a shade which looked ravishing against her hair and buttermilk skin.  It was no more expensive than the little tops and denim skirts her friends had on, but she carried herself in such a way that it might as well have come from Gucci.

If Ross’s attention was meant to make the girl feel special, it didn’t. 

He fancies himself rotten, this one, she thought, smiling back at him with politeness but no admiration.  If he thinks he’s getting his leg over me at the end of the night, he’s got another thing coming. 

Ross, though – egotist that he was – took her smile as a come-on.

‘Everything OK with your main courses, ladies?’  He went into slick waiter mode, scooping up plates in a showy way, as though he were on the Orient Express.  ‘Would you like to see the dessert menu – or are you all sweet enough?’  There were mingled groans and giggles at his trite pun.  ‘And you – ’  he winked at the dark stunner and lowered his voice to a breathy, ‘I’m so irresistible’ pitch – ‘you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been able to take me eyes off you all evening.  Well I’ve got a night off next Saturday, and I’d like to take you out for a drink.  Would you do me the honour of accompanying me?’

‘What?’  The girl’s beautiful chocolate eyes blazed as though she’d never been so insulted in her life.  Her friends – not one of whom would have turned Ross down were they in her shoes – sniggered at his mock-gentlemanly tones, and this irked her even more.  Being asked out by pizza waiters did one’s dignity few favours as it was.

‘I asked if you’d be up for a few bevvies next Saturday,’ Ross repeated, but using less affected parlance.  He pouted puppyishly.  ‘C’mon – I’ve booked the night off specially.  As soon as I saw you, I said to me boss: “Can I have next Saturday free so as I can take that gorgeous babe out for the evening?”’  This was a ridiculous fib, but then Ross and the truth were seldom on speaking terms.  ‘What’s your name, sweetheart?’

‘Why?’

Ross, unused to knock-backs, began to think Matt’s warning – about her being out of his league – carried a ring of truth.  But he continued attempting to seduce her with unrepentant humour.  ‘That’s a funny name.  I’ve never heard that one before.’

‘It’s Faith,’ one of her pals divulged, keen to butt in on the fun.  Her mischief was punished by a glare from Faith that could have turned brown sugar into a brûlée topping.

‘Well it’s great to meet you, Faith.’  Ross smirked, gratified by the friend’s disloyalty.  ‘I’m Ross,’ he did a cheesy little point to his ticker-taped name badge to prove this, ‘Ross Froggatt.  As you can imagine with a name like that, I’ve got plenty of nicknames.  Some folks call me Froggy, or Crazy Frog, others call me Ross Stir-Fry.  You can choose whichever one you wish – I don’t mind.’

This was Ross’s favourite line.  He’d developed it after years of name-related teasing at school – his mother’s solution for which had been: ‘Laugh at yourself, son; get in first with the joke, it shows them they’re not hurting you’ – and it rarely failed.  Sure enough, the simpering quartet were wetting themselves now – oh, these girlies did love a bit of self-effacing wit – but Faith went on sipping her wine and looking disdainful.

She thought this Ross Stir-Fry was a total gargoyle.  Faith liked a man who dressed well.  Smart and understated was her favoured look – and Ross fell well short on both counts.

Some of Faith’s mates waitressed part-time.  One reason she had never followed suit was the manky uniforms restaurant staff were compelled to wear.  The Martino’s one scaled new heights of mank.  It was burnt orange and green – presumably to evoke peppers – and featured a gangsta rapper-style baseball cap.  Ross couldn’t help that, of course, but the sovereign rings and chains that glinted amid the pepper livery reflected his own hideous taste.  They looked as though he’d won them out of Christmas crackers.

Seeing that he was on to a loser, Ross hissed, with obvious desperation: ‘So do you wanna come for this drink then, or what?’

A gentle ‘No’ would have been far too dull a rebuff.  Faith was an even greater show-off than Ross, and in scenarios like this always had to bring acting skills into play.   This was her chance to recapture the upper hand; to get her silly little friends laughing at her quips instead of Ross Stir-Fry’s – and she was going to damn well milk it.

Tossing her raven tresses as though she’d won the part already in the Flake commercial, Faith crushed him with a bored glare, as if to say ‘Dear me, are you still here?’

‘Sorry, love’ – pregnant pause, sip of wine, caustic smile, elegant arch of eyebrows – ‘I don’t date outside my species.’

Her pithy barb was rewarded with laughter from the other girls.  Their loyalty restored, Faith was back to her usual invincible self.

And Ross, who was at least professional enough not to react within their earshot, could do little else but stomp off with their stack of soiled plates, only snarling ‘Stuck-up bitch!’ to a smirking Matt when far enough away from them.

‘He’s hitting on the chief bridesmaid now – look,’ Faith scoffed later, between mouthfuls of cheesecake.  The five girls were disproving Ross’s theory about being ‘sweet enough,’ by tucking into cream-laden desserts.

The tenacious waiter himself was now executing Plan B: working his way through the cheese course – otherwise known as the hen night wenches.  They were cackling away like, appropriately enough, hens, at his well rehearsed gags. 

‘Who’m yow – the stripper?’ one of them catcalled to him.

‘At least they’re paralytic enough to be susceptible,’ Faith said wryly as she saw Ross pocketing Becky the chief bridesmaid’s phone number.  ‘That guy is unbelievable.  It reminds me, though – I’m singing at a wedding next Saturday.’

‘Not hers, I hope,’ her friend Sophie giggled, nodding over to where Kirsty the bride, in her veil and L-plate, was performing unspeakable acts upon a naked inflatable man doll.

‘Shouldn’t think so.  It’s not round here, it’s over Aldridge way, place called the Fairlawns.’

‘Oh.’

Oh fab, thought Faith, feeling crestfallen and stupid, is that the best reaction you can come out with?  Her friends were so not on her wavelength.  They were an easy group to be shallow and dizzy with, but at times Faith ached for more insightful chats about the subjects she held dear.  She had a hobby and talent which set her apart from the dossy uni lot, but she didn’t discuss it much as keeping quiet was preferable to confiding in a bored audience.

‘Still,’ she said philosophically, changing tack, ‘next Saturday happens to be the night Ross the tosser asked me to go out with him.  So I couldn’t have made it to meet him even if I wanted to – shame!’

It was the final weekend in May.  Faith and her regular uni crew were enjoying a celebratory, post-exams piss-up – not to be confused with the pre-exams one they’d had at Flares.  They’d come into Dudley this time: meeting in a pub called the Bostin’ Fittle for a few drinks, ‘to get us in the mood,’ then progressing to Martino’s, which was a short walk away.  Next on the itinerary after this meal was to be a quick taxi ride to one of the clubs at the nearby Waterfront complex, on the Brierley Hill canalside.

Wannabe started playing on the restaurant CD, turning Faith’s thoughts automatically to the One-Girl Spice Girls Tribute.  Ever since that night a month ago when they’d missed out on meeting, she had kept an eye out for further boards and posters that might advertise her appearances, but had seen none. 

Faith had never mentioned the barmy busker to her friends, for she could just imagine their reaction were she to suggest that they go and see a Spice Girl tribute.  She’d have to go to such a show on her own, that was for sure.

‘C’mon,’ she said bossily, interrupting the disheartening flow of her own thoughts, ‘let’s get our bill and bag ourselves a taxi.  We’ve got some serious clubbing to be getting on with!’

And they all drank to that.

The hen party had the same idea.

Ross was helping Becky’s noisy mates heave her into a taxi outside as Faith and her crowd left the diner.

‘I’ll see you Saturday then, Bex,’ Ross said pointedly, making sure Faith heard.

‘Yeah, ’bout half-seven in the Foley Arms.’  The bevvied bridesmaid planted a very squelchy kiss on to his lips before tumbling inelegantly back into the taxi, treating him to an inadvertent flash of G-string.  ‘Shee you, Rossh!  I love you, Rossh!’  She waved at him from her prone position on the back seat.

‘Your loss, sweetheart,’ Ross gloated, as though Faith’s heart would truly be breaking with jealousy.

‘Hope she can remember to turn up,’ Faith said as she and her friends climbed, with considerably more grace, into their own taxi.  ‘When she wakes up tomorrow with a killer hangover, she’ll be hard pressed to recall that she even talked to you.  Maybe you should have written the date on her hand!’

Ross scowled after her.  Sarky bitch!   As he sprinted back to the kitchens, his mobile started ringing.  His scowl turned even blacker because the caller could only be one person.  His girlfriend.  She of the large chest, porn-star bedroom prowess and baffling preference for fidelity in relationships.

Can’t she give me a minute’s bloody peace?

The Vindaloo ringtone drilled right through Ross’s brain like a nagging wife.  He stabbed at the ‘answer’ button to kill it as he stomped into the kitchens and dug the phone out of his deep apron pocket.

‘How many times,’ he snapped into it, dispensing with such irksome formalities as saying hello, ‘have I told you not to bother me at work, Chantal?’