"I told the little shit to fuck off. How dare he think I owe him a blowjob for picking me up from work. I owe nobody, nothing. Except the thieving bank. They charged me thirty bloody pounds to tell me I had no money in my account. That I already knew. So that's me now on minus thirty which is worse than being on fuck all! Silly fuckers."
It wasn't just Rebecca's language that was intensely colourful; everything about my flat mate was lambent and kaleidoscopic. She lived for the moment, she revelled in her wild, helter-skelter life with a lust for spectacular flamboyance and an adoration for the unusual.
Hence Brian.
He was a theatrical wild-child: a deeply flashy man who adorned his arrogance with a gaudy cheapness and a rude vocal lordliness. We didn't dislike him. Rebecca's boyfriends never stayed with her long enough for her friends to form too much of an opinion about them, but we weren't too disappointed when she announced their split.
"You need to find a nice, normal boyfriend."
"You need to get yourself on Internet dating."
"You need to buy yourself a proper vibrator and then you wouldn't need men."
All of her friends had advice for the unfortunate dater, and she'd listen to all of it, before ignoring every word and doing something totally unsuitable and inappropriate.
"I'm going to do porno-cams," she announced a few days later as I lounged on the couch, reading the latest best-seller from my favourite erotic author. "My mate Poppy says it's twaddle, I need the readies and ya never know."
This wasn't the worst idea she had ever had; that must rank as trying to smuggle her favourite loose tea through customs and being arrested for drug trafficking, only to be released an hour later when the police realised that the kilogramme of marijuana was actually Fortnam and Mason's finest Earl Gray. The vajazzle kit as a Christmas present for her grandmother wasn't too clever either, and nor was starting the barbecue with half-a-litre of paraffin.
I was certain she would do a couple of these "porno-cam" shows, get bored and then move onto her next hair-brained scheme. "Oh, and I need your help."
"Uh-huh." I glanced over the top of my Kindle, leaving fornicating monsters and their innocent girls waiting as I wordlessly expected an explanation.
"I need someone to help me set up the cam. And ... ummm ..."
"Yes?"
"... Fuck me!" Her eyes tore themselves away from me for a split-second as she scratched her thigh, deliberately raising her skirt as she less-than-innocently sated her itch. "I have Brian coming 'round tomorrow but he's in King Lear or something tonight. I'll give you half of what I make."