A few hours after getting her number from Rona, Alain called Sacha. Sacha was excited despite herself when she heard the 'phone ring: it had hardly rung at all since she'd left Canberra. She could barely disguise her disappointment when Alain's voice came down the 'phone line. Nonetheless, Alain persisted:

"I was thinking it'd be nice to hook up tomorrow night. Go out for a drink, maybe grab something to eat."

Sacha lowered the 'phone and muttered something to herself at the other end of the line. Then she lifted the 'phone to her mouth again: "You mean like a date?"

"Well . . . No, I mean like, just hanging out. I haven't had much of a chance to get to know you, and now you're a friend of Rona's and everything . . . And you haven't had much of a chance to get to know me, either, and I'd like to get to know you better, you know?"

"So, you do mean like a date then."

"Well . . ."

Sacha cut him off. "And why exactly do you think I'd want to accept this offer?"

Alain laughed in what he hoped was a winningly cheeky way. "Because I'm offering to pay for everything?"

"Oh I see, so the selling point here is not that I get to spend time with you, but that I get to have a cheap night out?"

"Well no . . . Well . . . I don't know, both really."

"Ah, so I'm cheap then, and even though everything tells me I've got no interest in you whatsoever, clearly I don't know what I really want."

"I didn't say that!" Alain protested. This was not going as he'd planned.

Sacha continued unabated. "You know, and maybe someone's already told you this and you've just forgotten, but there are way to get a girl to like you - and patronising her, insulting her and just generally sleazing onto her are generally speaking not among them."

"But -"

"Besides which, I've already seen on Saturday night with Rona how you treat your friends. Do you really think that did anything to endear you to me?"

"That was just a joke!"

"A joke?"

"Yeah. Hey, Rona and I have know each other for years. You've only just arrived in this town, you don't know anything about how me and Rona get along!"

"Well if it's anything like the way you want to get along with me, then the chances of me dating you are getting slimmer by the second!"

"Well fine then, why don't you and Rona go and lock yourselves away together, and you and her and Hannah too can all go on hating men together for the rest of your lives!"

"Oh, fuck you!" Sacha slammed the 'phone down, and then on second thoughts picked it up again in case Alain was still on the other end and shouted into the mouthpiece: "And don't fucking call me again!"