Page 74 of The Interview

“Bull! Shit!” Marley cries while grinning and shaking his head.

I ignore him and continue with my traumatic tale. “Bern had issued all of us girls with pepper spray for when we finished work in winter and it was dark, or for any time we might need it. I came through my front door, saw this strange geezer…”

“You didn’t recognise him?” Daniel jumps in.

“D’ya know what? I’d already forgotten what he looked like by then,” I lie.

“More bullshit,” Marley declares.

“Stop interrupting me,” I order. “Anyway, I walk through the door to this strange bloke in my place and scream at him to get out, and when he doesn’t move, I decide right then was one of those times I needed to use my pepper spray. So, I whip it out and spray it in his direction. When he can’t see and starts flailing around, screaming like a nanny goat, I kick him in the balls. He goes down to his knees, exactly where he belonged, then rolled on the floor, complaining.”

“I was literally fucking dying. My eyes were melting in their sockets, my skin was dissolving, and my balls were up around my shoulders,” Marley complains.

I hear a gasp, then another. When I look around the room, I realise everyone is laughing. George, Harry, and Cam are bent double, trying to catch their breaths, a bit like Marley was that day.

“Fucking hell, that gets funnier every time I hear it,” Len says as he wipes tears from under his eyes.

“It really doesn’t,” Marls argues.

“I’m sorry, Marls, but it definitely does,” Georgia adds while leaning into Jim, their foreheads pressed together as they laugh.

Daniel takes a swig from his bottle of water, wipes under his own eyes before Chastity, the makeup girl, appears and starts dabbing powder all over his face.

I can’t wipe the smile off my own face. I love making and seeing people laugh. Being loud and funny is how I survived the trauma of my childhood. Now, it just seems to come naturally.

“Continue, please,” Daniel says, gesturing with his hand for me to carry on.

“Like I said, he laid there, rolling around, hands between his legs where his balls used to be, grizzling and complaining. By that stage, I’d realised who it was and who’d broken into my flat, and thought I’d better help him. Before I had a chance, though, he threw up all over my floor.”

“Because I was still fucking dying. I probably received internal injuries as my nut sack flew from where it was supposed to be to my chest cavity,” my husband whines.

“Babe, we have three kids. That obviously didn’t happen. Anyway, I didn’t know if it was fact or just an old wives’ tale, but I’d heard there was a way to ease the burn of the pepper spray, so I went to the fridge, got out the milk, and poured it over his face.”

“Did it help?” Daniel asks.

“At first, it just made him scream louder.”

“I couldn’t see. I didn’t know what you were going to be assaulting me with next,” Marley moans.

“Did it help?” I repeat Daniel’s question.

“Well, yeah…”

“Shut up, then.”

We both look at Daniel. I’ve no idea what I’m supposed to do or say now, so I wait.

“Did you kiss and make up?” he eventually asks.

“Did we fuck,” Marley answers. “I attempted to apologise for my actions, but she wasn’t interested and told me never to talk to her again, and when I could walk, to get the fuck out. Then she went and had a shower, locking the bathroom door behind her and leaving me lying there.”

A loud whistle carries through the room as someone claps, and Lu shouts, “Yes, Ash! You legend!”

I hold my fingers up in a peace sign, lapping up the recognition I’m receiving on behalf of every woman ever wronged by a man.

“Did he leave?” Daniel asks.

“I laid there for a while contemplating my life choices before I recognised the fact that every one of them had led me to this moment, and Ashley Morrison was the girl I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.”