What Happens Now
Sophia Money-Coutts
The laugh-out-loud new book from the author of The Plus One, perfect for fans of Jilly Cooper and Bridget Jones, coming soon in 2019!Praise for Sophia Money-Coutts:‘So funny. And the sex is amazing – makes me feel like a nun!’ Jilly Cooper‘Light, fizzy and as snort-inducing as a pint of Prosecco.’ Evening Standard Magazine‘Hilarious and compelling.’ Daily Mail‘Perfect summer reading for fans of Jilly Cooper and Bridget Jones.’ HELLO!‘Bridget Jones trapped inside a Jilly Cooper novel. A beach cocktail in book form.’ METRO‘Gloriously cheering.’ Red Magazine‘Howlingly funny.’ India Knight, Sunday Times Magazine‘This saucy read is great sun-lounger fodder.’ Heat‘Sexy and very funny…perfect for fans of Jilly Cooper.’ Closer‘Cheerful, saucy and fun!’ The Sunday Mirror‘As fun and fizzy as a chilled glass of prosecco…this is the perfect read for your holiday.’ The Daily Express
SOPHIA MONEY-COUTTS is a journalist and author who spent five years studying the British aristocracy while working as Features Director at Tatler. Prior to that she worked as a writer and an editor for the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail in London, and The National in Abu Dhabi. She writes a column for The Sunday Telegraph called Modern Manners and often appears on radio and television channels talking about important topics such as Prince Harry’s wedding and the etiquette of the threesome. What Happens Now? is her second novel.
Also by Sophia Money-Coutts (#ulink_7992685e-45ab-5a2a-b329-92591b486ef0)
The Plus One
Copyright (#ulink_879c68d4-f593-5b65-b909-65165d232744)
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019
Copyright © Sophia Money-Coutts 2019
Sophia Money-Coutts asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © August 2019 ISBN: 9780008288525
Note to Readers (#ulink_630ae95f-0518-5577-b8e6-cfba884f63bd)
This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:
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Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008288563
Praise for Sophia Money-Coutts (#ulink_e8152dff-94b9-5f48-be85-a12cbe637ebc)
‘So funny. And the sex is amazing – makes me feel like a nun!’
Jilly Cooper
‘Howlingly funny.’
Sunday Times
‘Perfectly jolly chick-lit.’
Evening Standard
‘Bridget Jones trapped inside a Jilly Cooper novel. A beach cocktail in book form.’
Metro
‘Fast and furious, funny and fresh.’
Daily Mail
‘Light, fizzy and as snort-inducing as a pint of Prosecco.’
ES Magazine
‘Gloriously cheering.’
Red
‘I started reading this book on the 3.48 from Waterloo and by 4.15 I was crying with laughter. Brilliant.’
Sarah Morgan
‘A hilariously funny debut.’
Woman
‘Perfect for fans of Jilly Cooper and Bridget Jones.’
Hello!
‘As fun and fizzy as a chilled glass of Prosecco.’
Daily Express
‘Sexy and very funny.’
Closer
‘Fizzy, fun and some seriously saucy shenanigans.’
Mail on Sunday
‘Cheerful, saucy and fun.’
The Sunday Mirror
‘Bridget Jones’s Diary as interpreted by Julian Fellowes…a classy read.’
Observer
‘This saucy read is great sun-lounger fodder.’
Heat
‘Fresh and funny.’
Belfast Telegraph
‘Fans of Bridget Jones will love this romcom.’
Sunday Express S Magazine
‘The perfect book to escape with.’
The Sun
‘Marvellous…a juicy read to romp through.’
i
To all parents, whatever shape they come in.
Contents
Cover (#u0f9484d0-b168-5d6c-8357-f84bf072f262)
About the Author (#u70d692c3-566a-5492-ad37-623a3e07e559)
Booklist (#ulink_76b79767-5c6a-5f94-b158-408b7c47557f)
Title Page (#uc00c0ef8-8895-5504-8d21-e24f39125de4)
Copyright (#ulink_b8450060-693c-5cae-b120-81486bfc3aae)
Note to Readers (#uce0ec99f-62c0-5e8d-9a33-a5c5dd700bff)
Praise (#ulink_6d171a4c-7cda-51dc-a675-2edd16a463ca)
Dedication (#u696cc89d-eb93-50c8-9aec-f94395c42696)
PROLOGUE (#ulink_c74f7fd6-4f06-59e1-9885-c0c4b0a1e17d)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_ffb8a103-acf5-5abe-b582-4e4ae2f112d4)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_3a67b206-14b9-5ce8-8397-abc91348877a)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_b32e6406-1bae-5c45-9600-4a52334a1e40)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)
EXCERPT (#litres_trial_promo)
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ulink_47046ab3-bb68-5d77-b83d-28727f044e72)
I WASN’T SURE I had enough wee for the stick. I pressed my bladder through my jeans with my fingertips, holding the pregnancy test in the other hand. Not bursting but it would have to do. I peeled off the top of the foil packet, balanced the stick on the top of the loo roll and unzipped my flies. I sat down and reached back for the stick.
Looking down at my thighs, I realized I was sitting too far forward on the loo seat, so I shuffled my bottom backwards and widened my knees until there was enough space to reach my hand underneath me, trying to avoid grazing the loo bowl with my knuckles. Christ, this was unsanitary. There must be better ways.
I narrowed my eyes at the bath in front of me and wondered if it would be easier to step into that, crouch down and wee on the stick in the bath, letting it trickle out down the plughole. No worse than weeing in the shower, right?
I shook my head. I was in my parents’ bathroom. Couldn’t do a pregnancy test by pissing on a stick in my mum’s bath. She loved that bath. She spent hours in it wearing her frilly bath hat, shouting at Radio Norfolk.
I frowned down into the dark space between my legs again where the stick was poised in mid-air, ready for action. What a simple bit of plastic to deliver such potentially life-changing news. It was the shape of the vape my friend Clem carried round with him everywhere, loaded with lemon sherbert- flavoured liquid.
‘Why lemon sherbert?’ I’d asked him once. He’d shrugged and said he just liked sweets.
I shook my head again as if to try and physically dispel thoughts of Clem and lemon sherbert. Concentrate, Lil. The stick. Wee on the stick. Get on with it. But I couldn’t. At this, the most important moment of my bladder’s life so far, it had stage fright. Funny how, when you really concentrate on weeing, you can’t. And yet normally, when you sit yourself down what, six, seven, eight times a day, out it comes, no trouble.
I sighed. The other problem was I wasn’t sure where to hold the stick in order to catch maximum wee. I shifted my hand slightly towards the front. Was that a good place? Maybe. But if it came out as more of a trickle than a jet it would need to be in the middle.
‘Oi,’ came Jess’s voice from outside the bathroom door. I’d locked it because I knew she’d come in otherwise. ‘Have you done it yet?’
‘Shhhh,’ I hissed back. ‘No. I haven’t. And pressure from you won’t help.’
Jess went quiet for a few seconds, then I heard her whistling from outside the door.
‘Why are you whistling?’
She stopped. ‘It makes horses pee when you’re riding them.’
‘I’m not a horse.’ Although it gave me an idea. With my left hand, I reached across for the bathroom sink and twisted the hot tap, then held my hand underneath the warm water.
It worked instantly. I started weeing and moved the stick into prime position, sort of between the front and the middle. Please could I not be pregnant, I thought, my eyes fixated on the stick as I felt warm wetness on my fingers. Brilliant, I’d weed on my own hand. Please, please, please could this not be positive. I was thirty-one, single, barely able to afford my rent. I had a life plan. Well, a vague life plan. This was not it.
I finished and jiggled up and down on the loo seat, trying not to drop the stick. Then I turned off the hot tap with my left hand and tugged off a few sheets of loo roll. I retrieved the stick, resisted the urge to tap it on the section of loo seat in front of me like a teaspoon on the side of a teacup – ting, ting, ting! – and wiped myself.
I looked at the test in my right hand, feeling as if I’d swallowed a jar of butterflies, before gently dropping it on a pile of Mum’s History Today magazines and pulling up my jeans. I picked up the stick without looking at it and unlocked the bathroom door.
Jess was standing there, picking at her cuticles like a nervous father outside the delivery room.
‘Show me,’ she said instantly, holding her hand out for the test. ‘What’s it say?’
Come on, Lil, I told myself, stomach still churning, look down. Get it over and done with and then you can go to the pub with Jess and have a drink to celebrate. After that, no more sex. Never again. Not worth it. Not worth the hassle and the drama and this panic attack over the infinitesimally small chance you might be pregnant. I’d take a vow of celibacy and get a cat. I’d become a priest. I’d move to somewhere in the Far East, become a Buddhist and renounce all physical desires. I’d convert to asexualism. Just please, please, please, God, if there is one, if you are there, I know I’m always asking you things and swearing I’ll never ask again, but this time I really mean it. I promise I’ll never ask anything trivial again if you grant me this one tiny wish: please can I not be pregnant.
I looked down at the stick.
‘Fuccccccccck,’ I said, looking at it, holding it out for Jess. No question about it, there were two little purple lines. ‘I’m pregnant.’
Chapter One (#ulink_84dd7d00-f302-5bb3-95d1-d1def7af7464)
I’D RATHER HAVE EATEN my own foot than go on a date that night. The whole thing was Jess’s idea. She said I needed to ‘get back in the saddle’. Hateful expression. I didn’t feel like doing any sort of riding, thank you very much. But she’d insisted I download a dating app called Kindling, which is why I was now sitting on the bus, so nervous it felt like even my earlobes were sweating, on the way to some pub in Vauxhall to meet someone called Max. We hadn’t been messaging for very long so I knew almost nothing about him. Only that he was thirty-four, had dark curly hair and seemed less alarming than some of the other creatures I’d scrolled through – no, no, no, maybe, no, no, definitely not, you’re the sort of pervert who’d have a foot fetish, no, no, YES. Hello, handsome, stubbly man who looks like a cross between a Jane Austen hero and Jack Sparrow the pirate. That was Max.
He’d asked me out a couple of days after matching, saying he didn’t believe in ‘beating around the bush’. I liked his straightforwardness. No messing about. No dick pics. Just, ‘Fancy a drink?’ I figured it was better to meet and see whether you got on with someone rather than message for several weeks and paint a madly romantic picture of them in your head, then meet up and realize you’d got it wrong and in real life they were a psychopath.
So, even though Max’s question made me want to throw up with nerves, I’d agreed. A tiny, minuscule part of me knew Jess was right, knew that I had to make an effort. Otherwise I’d never get over Jake, the one I used to think was The One before he broke my heart into seventy thousand pieces and turned me into a cynic who had bitter and self-pitying thoughts whenever I saw a couple holding hands on the Tube.
Jake and I had split six months earlier. He split up with me, I should say, if we’re being totally accurate. It was after eight years together, having met at uni. Various friends had started getting engaged and, all right, I’d very occasionally allowed myself to think about what shape diamond Jake might buy for an engagement ring. But only once or twice, tops. Maybe three times. Tragic, I know, but in the absence of a ring I was happy with Jake. I just wanted us – married or not. And I thought he did too. We used to fall asleep making sure we were touching one another every night. My arm over his chest or our feet touching. Or holding hands. And if one of us woke in the night and we’d moved apart, we’d reach out for the other one so we could feel them there again. It was real. I knew it.
Well, some clairvoyant I was. Six months ago, Jake came home from his office to our flat in Angel and told me he that he felt ‘too settled’. That he wanted more excitement. And as I sat at the kitchen table, crying, wondering whether I should offer to dress up as a sexy nun or be more enthusiastic about anal sex, he told me he was moving out to go and live with his friend Dave. It felt so sudden that I could only sit at the kitchen table weeping while Jake packed and left ten minutes later with the overnight bag I’d bought him from John Lewis for his last birthday. With hindsight, not the sexiest purchase. But he’d said he loved it. It had a separate compartment for his wash bag. Practical, no?
The Dave thing turned out to be a front for the fact that Jake had been shagging a 24-year-old called India from his office. Jess and I had devoted hours (whole days, probably), to stalking her on all forms of social media. On Instagram, she was a blonde party girl who never seemed to wear a bra; on LinkedIn, her profile picture showed a more serious India, smiling in a collared shirt, blonde hair tied back in a smooth ponytail. It was also via LinkedIn that Jess and I discovered she’d only been working at Jake’s law firm for two months before he left me.
‘Quick work,’ I’d slurred, pissed, lying belly down on the floor of Jess’s bedroom where we were stalking her on my laptop one evening.
The next day, I’d got an email from Jake.
Lil, you can see who’s been looking at your profile on LinkedIn. I’m not sure this is healthy. Please leave Indy out of it.
Indy indeed. I’d thrown my phone on the floor in a rage and smashed the screen. But my fury was helpful. Anger was more motivational than sadness. Sadness sat in my stomach like a stone and made me cry; anger made me want to get up and do something. I decided I needed to move out of the flat I’d shared with Jake and find another room somewhere. I’d start again. Optimistically, I bought a book about Buddhism and tried a meditation I found on Spotify, half-hoping to wake up cured the following day.
I didn’t wake up cured. But I knew I had to give it time. The oldest cliché there was and the most irritating, depressing thing anyone can say to you when you’re in the depths of a break-up, staring at your phone, longing to message them. Or for them to message you. But the time thing was true. Annoyingly.
Six months later, I was living in a flat in Brixton on a street just behind McDonald’s. My flatmates were an Aussie couple called Riley and Grace – he was a personal trainer, she was a yoga teacher – who made genuinely extraordinary noises when they had sex. I’d joked to Jess that Attenborough should study them (‘And now the male climbs on top of the female’), but they were lovely when they had all their clothes on, and my room was cheap. Plus, India had made her Instagram profile private which meant I couldn’t stalk her any more. Probably better for all of us that way.
So, here I was, on the bus chugging towards Vauxhall for this date with Mystery Max, sweat patches blossoming in the armpits of my new Zara shirt. I’d gone shopping earlier that day for an outfit because my wardrobe was full of sensible work dresses and it felt like the last time I went on a first date women wore bonnets and floor-length gowns. And although the shops seemed to be full of clothes designed for thin hippies – sequinned flares in a size 8, anyone? – I’d eventually found a pair of black jeans that made my legs look less like chicken drumsticks, and a silky black shirt which gave me exactly the right amount of cleavage. Not too Simon Cowell. Just a hint, so long as I was wearing my old padded bra which hoiked my small to average-sized breasts up so high I could practically lick my own nipples.
While showering, I’d had a brief moral battle with myself about whether to shave my legs or not. I didn’t want to go on this date feeling like a rugby player, but there would be no sex because the thought of sleeping with someone other than Jake still terrified me, so what was the point? Plus, I hadn’t bothered for so long my razor was rusty. Can you get tetanus from using a rusty razor? My Google search history was littered with such quandaries: ‘sharp stabbing pain under ribs cancer?’ Or ‘walk 20,000 steps a day lose weight?’
In the end, I’d used Grace’s nice new pink razor and shaved because I thought it was sloppy preparation not to. Like going into battle without armour. I felt a twinge of guilt at blunting her razor on my legs – it was like scything though a jungle with a machete – but I figured certain household items like this could be co-opted in an emergency. I’d told myself the same that morning when I stole the batteries from the flat’s Sky remote for my vibrator. This was an emergency, I decided as I’d sat on my bed, solemnly removing the triple AAAs from one device and sliding them into the other. But I’d also realized this was a new low and that I should probably go out and at least flirt with a human being again. I couldn’t rely on my vibrator all the time. What if I got so used to it that no man could ever make me come again? That happens. I read about it once in a magazine.
I felt my stomach spasm again as we pulled into Vauxhall bus station. It was mostly nerves, I hoped, but Jess’s twin brother Clem, a haphazard cook, had made us curry the night before at their place and I’d spent much of that morning on the loo, trying to ignore the grunting coming from Grace and Riley’s bedroom. I reached into my bag to check I’d brought my Imodium with me. I’d taken one just before leaving the flat but figured I should bring the packet. Just in case. Got to be prepared. The packet was there, safely zipped from sight in my bag’s side pocket. Then I looked at my phone. Missed call from Mum which could 100 pc wait. A message from Max asking what I wanted to drink.
Vodka and tonic please! I texted him back, annoyed at myself for using an exclamation mark – so perky! – but worried I sounded too demanding otherwise.
The bus doors hissed as they opened and my heart sped up at the anxiety. Jesus, come on, Lil. It’s a date, not an induction into a cult. You can do this. Literally thousands of people go on first dates every day. And they weren’t all total disasters. They couldn’t be. Otherwise the human race would die out. It was going to be fine. One or two drinks in the pub with a man, like a normal person. Or at least as much like a normal person as I could manage. I wiped my clammy palms on my jeans as I stepped down from the bus into the sticky evening air.
I continued chiding myself as I walked towards the pub. You’re going to be fine. What did that Spotify meditation say? Breathe. Smile. Imagine your higher self, whatever that was. Ignore your stomach, the Imodium will kick in soon. I pushed open the pub door and was immediately hit by noise from clusters of people ordering at the bar and others laughing at tables. For the billionth time that day I wondered if there was anything worse than a first date. Waterboarding?
Then I saw him wave from a table by the window. Max.
Oh.
My.
Days.
Was this a joke? Some kind of set-up?
He was so good-looking, so obviously, absurdly handsome, that I felt instantly more nervous. I’d always been someone who’d appreciated classically good-looking men from a distance. Sure, that man at the bar, or the party, or the wedding might be so hot he was almost beautiful – Superman jaw, wide shoulders, big smile – but he was never going to go for me, so I wasn’t going to consider him. It was self-defence – I had mousy hair that fell to my shoulders and frizzed out at the ends, and a nose with a weird bobble. I often squinted at women I saw on Instagram – perfect fringes, matt skin, flicky eyeliner – and wondered if I could ever be one of them. But whenever I tried to do flicky eyeliner, my hand wobbled and the line went all watery.
Jess once told me my best attribute was my height since I was only a couple of inches off six foot. But ask a man what he looks for in a woman and none of them reply ‘a giantess with a nose like a bicycle horn.’ The handsome ones were out of reach, I’d long known, and yet here was a man so mesmerizing I could barely look at him without blushing. He was trying to mouth something at me from the table. What was it? I squinted at him to try and guess what he was saying, then regretted it. Don’t squint at the handsome man, Lil.
‘Hi!’ I mouthed back at him. Maybe he was short, I thought, as I pushed my way through other people. Maybe that was the problem. That was why he was single. Face like a gladiator, legs like a hobbit. That had to be it.
He stood as I approached. Not short. He was several inches taller than me. Well over six foot, for sure. In jeans and a dark blue shirt which was undone to reveal a perfect triangle of chest. Not hanging loose to his navel like a dancer from Strictly. Not buttoned to the top, which was too East End hipster. Couldn’t see his shoes. And shoes were crucial. But so far, so excellent.
‘Lil, hello,’ he said, leaning forward over the table to kiss me on the cheek. He smelt good. Course he did. Woody. I pulled back but he went in for a kiss on the other cheek. A two-kisser. We brushed cheeks on the other side and then both laughed awkwardly.
‘I got you a vodka,’ he said, nodding at two glasses on the table. He sounded posh, a low drawl like James Bond.
‘Thanks,’ I said, trying to slip off my leather jacket in a manner which didn’t reveal my sweaty underarms.
‘Good to meet you,’ he said, once I’d sat down, lifting his glass towards mine.
‘You too,’ I replied, raising my glass slowly, still trying to keep my right arm clamped. I grinned shyly at him and my mind went blank. Suddenly, it was as if I’d lost the power of speech. I’d gone mute while all around us people laughed and talked normally.
‘This is an all right location for you because you’re in Brixton, right?’ he said.
I had a sip of my vodka and nodded. What can I ask him? Come on, Lil, think of something otherwise you might die of awkwardness.
‘Where are you again?’ I asked.
‘Hampstead?’ he replied, as if it was a question.
I nodded again.
‘Cool,’ I said, having another sip of my drink. Quite a big sip. ‘You been there long?’
‘Yeah,’ he replied, ‘a few years. I love it. Got the park. Can get out of London easily. It’s great.’ He had a sip of his drink. ‘You?’
I frowned at him. ‘Huh?’
‘Have you been in Brixton long?’
‘Oh right, sorry, er, no. Not really. Like, six months.’
‘Where were you before?’
‘Angel?’
He nodded.
We both had another mouthful of our drinks.
‘And you said you were a teacher?’
‘Mmm,’ I replied. ‘Five-year-olds. I love them most days, want to kill them on others.’ Why are you threatening child murder on a date, Lil?
He smiled. He had good teeth. White. And the vibe of a man who owned and, crucially, used dental floss. ‘You must be unbelievably patient,’ he went on. ‘I have a couple of godchildren who I love, but I get to hand them back again after a couple of hours.’
I laughed. People always said that about teachers, that we must be ‘patient’. But children were easier to handle and less complicated than most adults I knew.
‘What about you though?’ I asked him. ‘How come you’re always jet-setting? Are you a spy?’ Well done, a joke! That’s more like it, this sounds more like an actual conversation two human beings would have.
Max laughed. ‘No, I’d make a terrible spy. Very bad at keeping secrets. But I travel a lot because I’m a climber.’
I frowned. ‘A climber? Like… of mountains?’
‘Exactly. Mostly mountains. Walls when I’m in London. Not many mountains in the city.’
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Cool. I didn’t know it could be a job.’
He laughed. ‘I carry rich Americans up Swiss mountains to pay the bills, then go off and climb elsewhere for myself.’
‘Like where?’
He shrugged. ‘Wherever. Europe. America. Himalayas. I’m about to go to Pakistan to try and climb a mountain there.’
‘Pakistan? Wow, amazing,’ I said. I worried I sounded vacuous. But I didn’t know much about climbing. And if you handed me a map and asked me to stick a pin in Pakistan I wasn’t absolutely sure I could. I taught my 5-year-olds basic reading and writing skills. Not geography.
My phone lit up on the table. A message from Jess.
‘Sorry,’ I said, sliding it into my bag, feeling quite grateful that the screen hadn’t flashed up again with ‘Mum calling’.
Max shook his head. ‘No problem.’
‘Just a mate checking up on me,’ I said, rolling my eyes at him.
‘That you’re not on a date with a crazy?’ he teased. His tanned forehead had lines running across it and smaller lines at the corners of his eyes which crinkled when he smiled. A modern-day Robinson Crusoe who’d clearly spent more time outside than cooped up in an office.
‘Something like that.’
He nodded and ran a hand through his hair. Then he grimaced at me. ‘I’m sorry. First dates are awkward, aren’t they?’
I grinned sheepishly. ‘I thought it was just me. But… yeah, they are. You do many of them?’ Then I cursed myself for letting that slip out. I didn’t want to sound like I was trying to suss his intentions so early.
He shrugged, unfazed. ‘Not millions. I’m away a lot. Don’t do much dating in the mountains. You?’
I shook my head. ‘Nope. Not a huge… dater.’ I could feel the vodka loosening my hang-ups. ‘This is my first date since a break-up, actually, so I may… er… I may be a bit rusty.’
I looked down, fingers encircling my sweating glass on the table during the awkward silence that followed. It was dumb to mention Jake, so I wondered how long it would take me to get to Jess’s from the pub. If I jumped on the Tube to Hammersmith I could probably be there in forty minutes. Buy a bottle of wine from Nisa on the walk to the house, order a Deliveroo. Perfect. It wouldn’t be a wasted night. And I could take this bra off and let my breasts settle back down at their usual altitude.
I looked up again at Max across the table, his mouth in a lopsided smile.
‘What?’ I asked, narrowing my eyes at him.
‘Then we’re in the same boat, you and me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I broke up with someone not very long ago.’ His smile fell and he looked suddenly serious. ‘Although, to be fair, it was more a mutual decision in the end.’
‘Ohhhhh,’ I said slowly. ‘Brutal, huh?’
He shrugged. ‘All part of life’s rich tapestry.’
‘Why d’you break up?’
He shrugged again. ‘I wasn’t around much. She wanted to settle down. Get married, children, that sort of thing.’
‘And you… didn’t?’ I said it carefully. Again, I didn’t want him to think I was trying to work out his potential as a baby-daddy. For him to think I was on some sort of husband-hunt myself.
‘No. Well, not no. Just… not yet. Things to do. Places to see.’
‘Mountains to climb?’
‘Something like that,’ he said, smiling and leaning towards me. ‘What about you?’
I frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, if we’re having a joint Jeremy Kyle session, how come you broke up?’
‘Oh.’ I grimaced at him. ‘We’d been going out for eight years. Living together. I thought it was going one way, he… didn’t. So that was that.’
I picked up my glass and was raising it to my mouth when Max laughed.
‘What?’ I said, defensively. I still found it hard to articulate my feelings about the break-up. I went over it in my head all the time. Over and over again. Over things I could have done differently. Over moments that I realized should have given me a clue. Over Jake’s increasing reluctance to hang out with my friends. Over his late nights in the office. But I felt like even Jess had heard enough now so I kept quiet about it unless prompted.
Max shook his head and waved a hand at my expression. ‘I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at us. Sitting here, nursing our drinks like we’re at a wake. Come on, let’s have another drink and cheer up.’
I laughed back. ‘OK, but my round.’
Max shook his head again as he stood up. ‘No. Absolutely not. Same again?’
‘Yep, please.’
‘Grand. And when I get back, no more talk about break-ups. This is supposed to be a date, not a counselling session. Deal?’
‘Deal.’
I watched him push his way back to the bar and touched my right cheek with the back of my fingers. It was warm. We were one drink in, the point at which I’d envisaged one of us making excuses – ‘Good to meet you,’ awkward kiss goodbye, never message one another again – but I didn’t want to escape to Jess’s house. I wanted to stay here talking to Max. Initial awkwardness over, I could sense that I liked him. Sitting here, chatting, I could feel a spark of excitement at exploring someone new, at finding out all those first things about someone. I hadn’t felt that for a long time. Years, if I was honest. The excitement of finding out about one another dissipated early with Jake and lapsed into something more comfortable. This Saturday night already felt more exciting than most of our relationship. Or maybe that was the vodka.
‘I took the liberty of buying some crisps,’ Max said, returning to the table a few minutes later with a drink in each hand and two packets in the crook of his arm. ‘And also, here’s a menu.’ He put the drinks down, dropped the crisps (one ready salted, one salt and vinegar – promising taste in crisps), pulled two menus out from underneath his elbow and handed me one. ‘You hungry?’
I’d been too nervous to eat much all day. Too adrenalin-y at the thought of the date. Plus there was my dodgy stomach issue. All of which probably accounted for why I felt a bit pissed already.
‘Yep,’ I replied.
‘Great,’ he said, sitting down. ‘Me too. Although I warn you, I’m greedy. It’s all freeze-dried food on expeditions. So if I’m out, I go a bit mad.’
With hindsight, the second bottle of wine was probably what did it. We’d ordered food – actual steak for him, tuna steak for me, then shared cheese – and stayed at the pub until closing. One bottle of red wine, then another. Conversation had meandered more easily from travels to where we grew up. When I told him about being raised by two eccentric academics in Norfolk, he laughed.
‘No way!’ he said, grinning at me. ‘Mine live just over the border in Suffolk. I’ll drive up and we can go for a walk along the beach.’
‘Which beach?’ I asked, trying to stay outwardly cool while all my internal organs were cheering. A walk on the beach meant there had to be at least one more date. I envisaged us strolling along Brancaster, my hair blowing in the wind in a manner which left me looking tousled and sexy rather than a woman who’d recently escaped the local asylum. Perhaps we’d hold hands. Perhaps we’d have sex in the sand dunes! Calm down, Lil, I told myself, this is a hypothetical situation.
‘I don’t know the beaches of Norfolk,’ went on Max, doing his lopsided smile again. ‘You’ll have to show me.’
My stomach flipped so hard this time I was nearly sick on the table, but I managed to claw it back. ‘Sure,’ I said, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘Do you go home much then?’
Max puffed out his cheeks as he exhaled. ‘Not as much as I’d like, but then I’m away a lot. You?’
I nodded. ‘Yeah, quite a bit. It’s home. And I went back for a while after, er, the break-up and everything.’
Max took one of my hands from my lap in his and shook his head, looking at me with a mock-serious expression. ‘Nope, I told you, no exes. We’re having a good time. Let’s not ruin it.’
‘OK, deal,’ I said, feeling his fingers curled over mine, hoping that my palms didn’t start sweating again.
And it was nice. More than nice. It was wonderful, actually, sitting, gently flirting with one another. It was the kind of date you never wanted to end, and I tried to bottle every minute in my head (after the first half hour was over), so I could go over it again and again the next day. To luxuriate in the pleasure at having met someone who made me feel this giddy. I’d always inwardly cursed any of my girlfriends when they talked excitedly about meeting someone new and having ‘a spark’. I often wanted to suggest they save it for a soppy card and not subject the rest of us to their Hallmark ideas of romance. But there was… something here. I felt it.
‘Can I kiss you?’ Max said, shortly afterwards, having shifted closer to me when the waitress took our plates away. I nodded, even though I was worried that I had red wine teeth and a tongue that tasted of cheese. He gently reached out and put his hand behind my head, pulling me to him. His beard tickled my chin. It was softer than I’d expected. And you know that kiss in The Notebook? On that boat jetty in the rain? In my head, the kiss with Max looked a bit like The Notebook kiss. A proper, steamy, full-on-the-mouth snog. In reality, it probably looked a good deal less romantic, given all the vodka and wine. But I didn’t care. Look at me! I was out on a Saturday night kissing a man like a normal person instead of crying on my sofa! I pulled back after few moments, though, aware that we were in a public space and people might be trying to enjoy their dinner around us.
‘You want to get out of here?’ he said, his hand still on the back of my head.
‘Sure. To where?’
‘My place?’
I didn’t hesitate, even though this was a man I’d known for less than five hours. I just had a sense that it would be all right. Murderers have eyes that are too close together and matted hair. Or no hair. Max had thick hair that I wanted to run my hands through, and a collared shirt. Murderers didn’t wear collared shirts.
‘Cool,’ I replied.
As we stood on the pavement outside the pub minutes later, I felt less confident, as if I was about to lose my virginity again. I could just about remember which bit went where. But what if Max was into something weird? What if he wanted me to talk dirty? I couldn’t do that first time. I didn’t even know his surname. Or, what if he wanted me to put my finger in his bottom? I wasn’t into that.
‘Lil?’ Max was standing by a black cab, holding the door open for me.
‘Oh great, sorry, was just… thinking,’ I said, jumping in the taxi.
‘Hampstead, please,’ Max said to the driver. ‘East Heath Road.’
The cabbie pulled out and I fell back against the seat as Max put a hand on my leg. It made my stomach flip again. I don’t want to say ‘I felt something inside me stir,’ because that would be embarrassing. But I did feel something I hadn’t for several months, or longer, if I was honest with myself, as happiness unfurled itself underneath my ribcage. I put my hand over Max’s and gently ran my fingers over it. Then he drew me in for another kiss, more urgent than the last, his mouth pressing hard against mine as he ran his hand up my thigh.
‘I’m glad I messaged you,’ he said, pulling back, but remaining inches from my face.
‘Me too,’ I said back. I nearly added ‘Just please don’t murder me,’ but I decided it would kill the vibe.
We got out on of the cab in front of a huge white house. Enormous. It was a mansion. I counted the windows. It was four storeys high, set back from the road slightly with a path leading to the front door.
‘Jeeeeeeesus. How big is your house?’ I said, looking up at it.
He laughed as he pulled his keys out of his pocket. ‘It’s not mine.’
‘Huh?’
‘I mean it’s not all mine. It’s flats.’ He opened the front door and walked me through a carpeted hall to another door. ‘This is my bit,’ he said, unlocking that door and standing aside for me to walk in first.
It opened into a bright white corridor with a dark wooden floor. A neat row of shoes and boots was lined up underneath a full-length mirror at the end of it. It was huge. Who knew climbing was such a lucrative career option?
‘This way,’ said Max, closing his front door behind me.
‘Um… can I quickly go to the bathroom?’ I said. I was desperate to pee and still worrying about my breath. I’d been desperate to pee all taxi journey but didn’t want to say anything. I figured ‘I need a wee,’ fell into the ‘List of bodily functions you cannot talk about on a first date.’
‘Course,’ said Max, turning round and pointing. ‘That door there.’
‘Great, two seconds,’ I said.
I sat down in the bathroom and frowned as I tried to gauge how my digestive system was feeling. Fine, I decided. A big relief. I ripped off a square of loo paper and ran it across my teeth to de-fuzz them. It was a lacklustre attempt at freshening up but I didn’t have any gum. I pulled my jeans up and inspected myself in the mirror. Weird how you can start off the night feeling like Brigitte Bardot and check yourself a few hours later to see a creature from a Stephen King novel staring back. I washed my hands and ran a damp index finger under both eyes to remove the smudged mascara, then reached into my bag for my bronzer to try and make my skin look less like I was attending my own funeral.
When I opened the loo door I heard classical music, so I walked in the music’s direction, pausing to look at a photograph of Max, framed in his hall. It was a close-up of his face, clearly somewhere cold because his beard was frozen, and he had a hood pulled tightly around his head. His eyes looked almost turquoise against the ice.
I followed the music and pushed another door open to find him standing in the kitchen, opening a bottle of red wine. I say kitchen, it was an enormous kitchen and living room in one: metallic kitchen cupboards and counters up one end, sofas in front of a floor-to-ceiling window at the other end.
‘Drink?’ he asked, raising the bottle at me.
‘Go on then,’ I said. ‘What’s one more?’ He laughed as I walked towards the big window and put my hands to the dark to try and see out. My breath frosted the glass.
‘It’s the heath,’ Max said, suddenly behind me. ‘The most sensational views. It’s why I moved here. Wilderness in the middle of the city.’
‘Poetic,’ I said, taking the glass and grinning at him.
‘Cheeky,’ he said, looking at me. ‘I like it.’ Then he leant forward and kissed me again, so I stumbled back against the window shutter behind me and red wine sloshed over the rim of my glass.
‘Oh shit, sorry,’ I said, rubbing the wood with my foot. ‘I don’t want to stain your floorboards.’
‘Fuck the floorboards,’ said Max, taking my wine glass and putting it down on a glass coffee table. Fuck the floorboards! It was the sexiest thing anyone had said to me for years. In my recent adventures on Kindling, a few men had tried heroically bad pick-up lines. ‘Hey, sexy,’ was one. Seriously? Another tried ‘You look a lot like my next girlfriend.’ Bless. But Max hadn’t said anything moronic, clearly saving his best lines for now. He took my hand and led me to the sofa, pulling me down with him as he sat.
He kissed softly, his beard prickling my lower lip, his tongue gently pushing at mine. And then it became more urgent, his lips pushing against mine while one of his hands ran up my neck and into my hair. Jake and I hardly ever kissed like this towards the end of our relationship. I’d assumed it was because we were both mindful of morning breath, politely avoiding one another’s mouths. But I’d also worried that it showed how much passion had leaked from our relationship.
I sighed like a hormonally deranged teenager and ran my right hand up the back of his shirt. Here we go, it was all coming back to me. Moaning softly again into his mouth, I pushed my hand through his hair, although I froze when one of my fingers caught a knot and he inhaled sharply.
‘Sorry,’ I squeaked.
But he pulled back his head and grinned at me, one of his hands still in my hair, his eyes centimetres from mine. ‘I’ll live.’
Then he stood up and held his hand out for mine. So I got up and Max led me from the sofa to his bedroom next door. It had another huge window facing the same direction, into the inky darkness of the park.
He kicked off his shoes beside an antique chest of drawers, and went to the window to fold its shutters. I slipped my shoes off and sat on his bed. Then he walked towards me and pushed me back against the mattress.
Weirdly, as I leant back, I realized my anxieties had vanished. I was in the flat of an improbably handsome man who I could sense I liked already. I was about to have sex with him but, as Max leant over me, his groin against mine, my fears about it were quelled.
He carried on kissing me while expertly undoing the buttons of my shirt with one hand. Then, when he reached the last shirt button, he carried on southwards, flicking open the button of my jeans and pulling the zip down.
‘Take them off for me,’ he said, nodding at my jeans before he stood up at the end of his bed and reached for the bottom of his shirt. He removed it over his head in one go to reveal the kind of body I’d only ever seen in pictures. Not grotesquely muscled and smooth. We’re not talking Love Island. But perfectly defined, with a light covering of dark hair across his chest, which tapered down towards his stomach.
He started undoing his flies, while keeping his eyes on me.
‘Off,’ he instructed again, inclining his head towards me. I was less cool here, trying to get my shirt off but flailing my arms around as if competing in an Olympic butterfly heat. Then I peeled my jeans down my legs, arching my back and making a sort of bridge like you do in yoga. Incredibly, Max didn’t seem turned off by this. His eyes stayed on me the whole time until my legs were finally free, when he leant down to pull his jeans off in one easy motion. No underwear, I noticed, which I was kind of into. Macho, no? Although you have to hope the jeans are washed regularly.
I didn’t want to drop my gaze and immediately look at his penis. I’m too coy. So as Max knelt back on the bed and lowered his body above mine, I stared at his face. He started kissing me again, running the side of his hand across my nipples and down my body. I could feel his erection against my thigh and then, suddenly, he rolled himself on top of me and started kissing the hollow between my breasts and down my stomach. Thank GOD I’d had a whip round and tidied myself up earlier instead of doing that thing where I deliberately left it looking like an overgrown allotment so I couldn’t go home with him.
He worked his way south until his head was between my legs and he was very lightly flicking my clit with his tongue. I looked down a couple of times to check his head was there and this was actually happening. A tiny thought bubble had formed in my mind: Is there any way I can take a photo to preserve this moment where a stupendously handsome climber with a body like a classical statue is going down on me? Jess had once knowledgeably told me that handsome guys were bad in bed because they didn’t have to try so hard. But I wasn’t at all sure I believed her, right at this moment. Max knew exactly the right pressure and where I wanted to be touched, so I wasn’t lying there thinking, ‘Down a bit, up a bit.’
I arched my back again and exhaled loudly as he carried on flicking his tongue over me, and then gently pushed a finger into me at the same time. I could feel an intense heat growing, spreading across my belly, and I rolled my hips in time with his tongue but just before I came, he stopped and pulled himself up. ‘Uh-uh, not yet.’
WHAT?
Maybe that was his problem. Maybe he was a sadist.
‘I’m going to grab a condom,’ he said, kneeling up on the bed.
I shook my head. ‘It’s OK, I’m on the pill,’ I said quickly. I couldn’t bear to delay this moment, a moment which felt like it should be in a film it was so perfect, with a basic discussion about contraception.
It’s often this way when you’re having sex with someone new, right? You’re hardly going to raise the matter in advance at the pub because you don’t necessarily know you’re going to have sex with them.
‘Excuse me, I know we’re only on our second round, but do you mind if we have a quick chat about contraception so it’s not awkward later?’
I don’t think so.
So the subject is left until you’re rolling around together, often pissed. But this never feels like the right moment to have a big discussion either. Unromantic. It breaks the rhythm. So you mumble at one another about it being ‘all right’ or needing to ‘be careful’. Irresponsible, I know, but in that second, I was so seduced by the surprisingly erotic turn of my evening that I didn’t want anything to ruin it. I wanted to experience the kind of sex I’d read about and watched onscreen, but never quite managed myself. No pauses. No awkward fumbling with a fiddly plastic packet. No carpet oyster afterwards. Nobody ever steps on a squishy, cold, carpet oyster in the movies.
So the condom was ignored and Max carried on, putting his hands under each of my bum cheeks and pulling me to the edge of his bed, before lifting my legs up so each was resting on his shoulders. Then, slowly, so slowly, he pushed himself into me.
‘Fuccccccck,’ I said, as he carried on thrusting in and out of me, unhurriedly, as if he was teasing me. I wasn’t sure it was the most flattering position in the world. I glanced down at my stomach and the rolls had all bunched together so they looked like packet ham. Plus my legs were over my head; my feet were, in fact, dangerously close to his head and I worried they might smell. But it felt so good, and Max was staring at me so intensely, that I forgot about my feet.
After a few minutes, he then pulled out and turned me lengthways across his bed. I tried to shift position as gracefully as possible. Never sexy to be thrashing around on top of a duvet like a dolphin, but Max had a knack of sweeping me around effortlessly so I was suddenly underneath him and we were doing it missionary, his head buried in my shoulder as he kissed my neck.
I rocked with him, running my nails down his back as we kissed properly again, mouths wide, tongues pushing against one another. Ha! All those worries about forgetting how to do it, I thought. Not a problem. Look at us go. Look at me having sex with this beautiful man. I moved my nails down over his bottom and then up across his back again. I am a modern, single woman, enjoying myself, being all liberated, enjoying being back on the dating scene again. It’s a Saturday night and instead of getting drunk with Jess, I’m having sex with Max. No more stalking Jake on social media. No more moping over old selfies of us. No more tears on a Sunday evening. I am free! I can do whatever I want! I am—
Suddenly, Max pulled out and, reaching underneath my back with one of his muscly arms, flipped me on to my stomach. I tried to look over my shoulder at him in what I hoped was a smouldering way, although I knew my eye make-up had probably smudged again so I looked like Noel Fielding. Max was on his knees behind me, but lowered his head to kiss my left shoulder, then my right shoulder, then, slowly, he kissed his way down my spine. His beard gently tickled my back and I sighed into my pillow. Then the kissing stopped and I was pulled backwards by my legs, Max’s hands underneath my thighs. My bottom was now on the end of the bed, my knees on the carpet.
‘Give me your hands,’ he said, so I lifted my arms from under my head and moved them behind me.
‘Here, put them here,’ he said, putting one hand on each of my butt cheeks and spreading them apart slightly. There I was, lying on my chest, with my hands on my bottom as if I was about to do a naked version of the Macarena.
Max then buried his head in my crease, starting to flick up and down with his tongue again, harder this time. It felt so good that I didn’t even worry about what my bottom looked like at that angle. I just wanted him to carry on, harder, faster, harder, faster, harder, faster, until that hot feeling of being on the cusp of exploding again and I came, moaning into the pillow.
‘That was amazing,’ I whispered, looking over my shoulder.
‘Good,’ he replied, and then, within seconds, he was lying on top of me, having pushed his cock into me again. His forearms were on the bed and he moved back and forth, breathing loudly and more urgently until he too made a sort of roar and flopped down on my back.
I silently congratulated myself for the performance then wondered how long I had to lie there underneath him before trying to move. I needed a wee.
He kissed my neck and rolled off a few moments later.
‘I’m just going to nip to the bathroom,’ I said, sitting up on the edge of the bed.
‘That one,’ said Max, inclining his head towards a doorway besides his wardrobe.
‘Thanks,’ I said. Strange how you could suddenly go into polite mode when moments ago someone was licking your bottom.
I sat down on the loo in his bathroom – grey marble and black and white photos of mountains on the walls – and tried to wee. It took ages. Come on, Lil, he’ll think you’re doing something revolting in here if you don’t hurry up. Finally, I weed. Then I wiped, stood up and looked at my face in the mirror. My cheeks were flushed, my lips pink. I reached for the Colgate, lying beside the basin, and dabbed it on my forefinger. Then I ran the finger over my teeth and gums, turned on the tap, palmed a pool of water into my mouth and swilled it around.
I tiptoed back towards his bed and got into it, glancing across at him as I lay down. He was lying on his back, one arm bent above his head on his pillow, but rolled on to his side as soon as I was lying down.
‘Head up,’ he instructed, so I lifted it and he put one arm underneath it and wrapped the other over me. Spooning someone you’d met only hours earlier seemed weirdly intimate. Even more intimate than them licking your bottom. But it was the perfect end to this most perfect night, and I fell asleep without even a second of neurosis that I shouldn’t have gone home with him on the first date.
The only thing was, when I woke up in the morning, Max wasn’t there. I lifted my head to survey his room, listening for clues. Ouuuuuuuuchhhhhh, my head. It felt as if my brain had grown too big for my skull overnight. Throb, throb, throb. I tried to ignore the pain and listen for any noise in the flat. But the place was silent. What time was it? I looked on the floor for my bag. No bag. I must have left it in the sitting room. Then I spotted a clock on his bedside table: 8.23 a.m. Early for a Sunday. I sat up in bed.
The floor of Max’s room looked like a battlefield, various items of discarded clothing lying on the carpet like wounded soldiers. My knickers, my bra, my shirt, my jeans, all at different spots. I swung my legs out and reached for my knickers, pulled them on and then tiptoed to listen at his bathroom door. Nope. Nothing. I retrieved my clothes from their various locations, put everything on and opened his bedroom door a fraction to the hall to see if I could hear a kettle or a radio out there. Still nothing. I found my way back to the living room but he wasn’t there either. Then I saw a note on the kitchen counter.
L, SORRY TO ABANDON YOU, JUST GOT A FEW WORK THINGS TO DO. BUT MAKE YOURSELF A CUP OF TEA AND GREAT TO MEET. M.
I stood at the kitchen counter analysing it. Analysing every word. Analysing every letter. No kiss after the M, was my first thought. And did ‘great to meet!’ feel a bit corporate? I don’t want to harp on about the bottom thing, but ‘great to meet!’ felt like something you said after meeting someone at a middle-management awayday, not what you said after putting your tongue in – I quickly counted in my head – three of their orifices. And who had work this early on a Sunday morning? But he’d also called me ‘L’, which seemed sweet. A bit intimate. L&M, we’d be, if we were a couple. As in ‘Shall we have L&M round for dinner?’ or ‘I wonder if L&M are free this weekend?’
I ordered myself to stop. What was I doing, standing barefoot in a stranger’s kitchen, wondering about what we’d be called if we were a couple? That was nuts. I needed a cup of tea and thirty-seven glasses of water, plus toast. And some Nurofen. And some more water. Lots more water. My mouth felt like something had died in it. But I didn’t want a cup of tea in Max’s flat. I wanted to get out of there and into my own space where I could go over the evening in my head, or at least the bits I could remember.
I folded the note up and slid it into my pocket, grabbed my bag off the sofa and went back to the bedroom. I resisted the urge to poke around his room too much – what if he was watching, somehow? – so made the bed and then took my bag into his bathroom to sort out my face. It was predictably terrible. Dry flaky skin. Faintly bloodshot eyes. Probably a good thing Max wasn’t there. I’d seen better-looking animals when I took my class to London Zoo.
A few minutes later I let myself out, praying silently that I didn’t bump into a neighbour. I made it to the front door of his building when I realized I didn’t know how to get home. What line was Hampstead on? I felt for my phone in my bag and retrieved it. Uh-ohhhhh. Eight missed calls from Jess and a mad number of WhatsApps. I scrolled through them. The gist, basically, was had I been murdered.
Are you dead? Please don’t be dead read her penultimate message.
Then the last one, sent at midnight: If you’re just shagging and not dead, then I might kill you myself when you surface. LET ME KNOW YOU’RE ALL RIGHT xxxxx.
I was about to open Citymapper and work out how long it would take me to get home when my phone started buzzing in my hand. It was Jess.
‘Hi,’ I croaked into the phone.
‘Oh thank God, you’re not dead,’ she said, deadpan.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘Not quite. But I feel like I might die soon.’
‘Did you stay with him?’
Christ. I wasn’t up to this before a cup of tea. It was like being on the phone to MI5.
‘Yup.’
Jess whooped down the phone. ‘String up the bunting, let the bells ring out. I need to see you immediately.’
I sighed on the pavement. Had anyone in history ever needed a sugary tea more than I did at that very moment? ‘I’m about to go home, love, think I need a bath and piece of toast. What are you doing later?’
‘No, forget later. Where are you? Why don’t you come over now and I’ll cook us breakfast while you have a bath here. I can hear Clem clanking downstairs in the kitchen.’
She was in one of her determined moods. No point in arguing. I didn’t have the energy. And maybe it would be better to go debrief with Jess. To be fed and watered by someone else and go home afterwards. Grace and Riley were probably making the flat walls shake this morning anyway.
‘OK,’ I replied. ‘I’m… in Hampstead… somewhere. Fuck knows how I get down to you. But give me, say, forty-five minutes?’
‘Amazing,’ said Jess. ‘I’ll go to Nisa and get some juice.’
It took me an hour to cross London. Jess and Clem lived in a tall, thin house on the north side of the river near Chiswick. Theirs was one of those red-brick houses that overlook the Thames, with big windows surrounded by climbing ivy; a road ran in front of the house and beyond that there was a little private garden which sloped down to the river. Most of the houses along this stretch were immaculate, the sort of homes lived in by rich hedge-funders or app millionaires. They had wisteria climbing up their walls, roses twisting over the railings and painted signs on their gates with grand names like Heron House and River View. Dog walkers strolled up and down the road, peering nosily into the bay windows, trying to gawp at the owners.
Jess and Clem’s house was different. Chaotic was the word I’d use, but I mean it affectionately. It was just as big as all the others – three storeys, plus an attic room in the roof which Jess – a portrait artist – had turned into her studio when she and Clem moved in. But if you were a dog walker wandering past their place, you might have assumed it had been taken over by squatters. The paint was peeling off the window frames, the path to their front door was uneven because several bricks had mysteriously disappeared and moss had long since covered the others. There was no painted sign on their railings – which were rusting – just a number: 19. Although the ‘9’ had swung upside down so it looked a bit like it was number 16 Chiswick Mall.
Clem and Jess couldn’t afford to patch it up. They couldn’t have afforded to live there at all, but they’d inherited their house from their grandmother, Blanche. She’s dead now but she was a famous concert pianist, who had a daughter with an Italian conductor in the 1960s. The daughter was Jess and Clem’s mum, Nicoletta, who’d inherited the conductor’s fiery tendencies and just about managed to get her two children safely to adulthood before abandoning London a decade or so ago for an apartment in Rome.
By the time I knocked on their door that morning, I was practically hallucinating about tea.
‘Here she is,’ said Jess, as she opened the door in her dressing gown. She stood back and squinted at me. ‘I can tell you’ve had sex.’
‘What?’ I rasped, standing on the step but leaning on the door frame. ‘You can’t possibly tell that.’
‘I can,’ she said, standing aside as I went in. ‘You look shattered. And you have sex hair.’ She waggled a finger in small circles at my head and then closed the door behind me. ‘Plus I can smell it.’
‘You’re a bloodhound, are you?’ I said, heading towards the kitchen. ‘That’s gross, by the way.’
‘I have a very sensitive nose. Tea?’
I nodded and pulled out a seat at the kitchen table, then sat down and put my arms on the table in front of me, laying my face on top of them. ‘Where’s Clem gone?’
‘Out walking.’
Clem was a terrible musician who had to supplement his creative endeavours by dog-walking. He’d gone through various musical stages since leaving uni. The guitar phase. The drumming phase. Even, at one particularly bad moment, an accordion phase. Now he was into his electronic phase and was working on his ‘first single’. He’d been working on his ‘first single’ a while and, lately, this seemed to mean a lot of sitting in his bedroom, enormous headphones on, tapping away at his laptop. Whenever he felt an artistic block, which was frequently, he sought refuge in the kitchen, hacking about with knives and experimenting with strange bits of meat the butcher on Chiswick High Road had persuaded him to buy. Offal, if you were unlucky. I remembered a vile liver tagliatelle; he was roughly as good at cooking as he was at music.
On the upside, he was the most popular dog-walker in the area, not only because he was so charming, but also because he had a boyish face that appealed to women of a certain age. He was tall and blond but had soft, pink cheeks that looked like they’d never needed to be shaved and he was always dishevelled. Mismatched socks, shirts fastened with the wrong buttons, tufty hair poking up like straw from the head of a scarecrow. But he came off as endearing, rather than useless, and so he had successfully, if unintentionally, cornered the local bored wives market. They scrabbled to sign their dogs up with him and then appeared in very pink lipstick and tight lycra at the house each morning to drop off their pugs and French bulldogs.
Jess busied herself with mugs and milk while I remained with my head on the kitchen table, gazing at the TV in the corner where a politician whose name I should know was droning on about some scandal in the Sunday papers.
‘Walt was upstairs,’ Jess went on, ‘but I’ve sent him home.’
Walt was an art dealer – full name Walter de Winter – who Jess had been dating for the past couple of months. Very English and very posh, he always wore corduroys and was ‘too fumbly’ in bed, Jess had told me a few weeks ago. But he took her to exhibitions and discussed painters with her.
‘Oh sorry,’ I said, sitting up. ‘I didn’t mean to crash your Sunday morning.’
Jess shrugged in her dressing gown. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I want to know everything.’ Then she lowered her voice. ‘And I can’t spend all day with him again. Yesterday afternoon was too much but I’ll tell you about that in a minute. You first.’
I wondered where to start. ‘OK, so we met at the pub, and it was total agony to begin with.’
‘Why?’
‘Just sticky. Couldn’t think of anything to say so made small talk about where we lived until a couple of drinks in.’
‘What happened then? Do you want sugar?’
‘Two please. And then it just got a bit easier. Talking, I mean. Then our respective relationship history came up.’
She spun around from the kettle on the sideboard and raised her eyebrows at me. ‘Did it now?’
‘I didn’t bang on about it. Promise. And he mentioned his ex as well so we were equal.’
‘OK, go on.’
I sat up from the table and leant back against my chair. ‘And then… we just stayed there getting more and more pissed, basically.’
‘Aaaaaaand?’
‘Then he suggested going back to his place.’
‘Aaaaaaaaand?’
‘And then, well, we had sex.’
Jess put a mug down in front of me so hard that tea spilled over the edges on to the table. ‘I’m not cooking you breakfast for that pathetic recap. Come on, more details.’
I heard the front door close in the hall and Clem appeared in the kitchen in his dog-walking kit: ancient green Barbour with plastic bags bursting from one pocket and a whistle hanging around his neck. ‘Lil, top of the morning.’ He bent down and kissed my head. ‘Bit early for you, isn’t it?’
‘Shhhh, Clem, she’s telling me about her date and she’s just got to the sex,’ said Jess.
‘Excellent,’ said Clem. ‘Can I join in? Is the kettle on?’
‘It’s just boiled,’ said Jess. ‘And I’m making bacon. Want some?’
‘Yes please.’
‘It was sort of… athletic,’ I started. ‘Because he’s a climber.’
‘A climber?’ said Clem. ‘What does he climb?’
‘Be quiet, Clem. He’s climbing Lil right now,’ said Jess, peeling rashers of bacon from a packet and laying them in a frying pan.
‘He sort of threw me around. Was quite… dominant. One minute I was underneath him, the next he was behind me.’ I stopped and thought. ‘It was like having sex with the Jolly Green Giant.’
Jess threw her head back and laughed. ‘Ha, I’m so jealous. Did he have a jolly green penis?’
Clem sat down heavily at the table. ‘Girls, it is the Sabbath, you know.’
‘Never mind Jesus, Clem,’ said Jess, then she looked back at me. ‘How have you left it?’
‘OK, this is the thing,’ I said. ‘When I woke up this morning, he was gone.’
‘Gone?’ they chorused.
‘Mmm. As in, gone from bed. His bed. Vanished. And I found a note in his kitchen that said he had “work”.’
‘Have you got the note?’ said Jess.
‘Yes, Miss Marple,’ I said, leaning forward in my chair and sliding it from my jeans pocket. ‘Here you go.’
She smoothed it on the table and read it silently.
‘But yeah, I would like to see him again,’ I said, while Jess read. ‘It was the ideal date, after the first bit. We chatted for hours in the pub. And I did vaguely wonder whether I should play hard to get and not go to his place, but it just felt so natural, that I thought, why not?’
Jess nodded while still looking at the note. ‘I’m not sure rules like that matter any more.’
‘I’m always thrilled if a girl comes home with me on a first date,’ added Clem.
‘Well that’s the other thing,’ I said. ‘I know it was just a first date, but it felt like there was more to it than that. That there was something, you know?’
Jess looked up at me from the note. ‘Well it’s not Shakespeare. But it’s sweet. Polite. Good manners. Have you texted him?’
‘No, obviously not. I can hardly form proper sentences this morning, let alone compose a message.’
‘OK, let’s have breakfast and then think about it. You need to be casual yet sexy. Clem, you’re on toast duty. And can you get the ketchup out? And put the kettle on again. We all need more tea.’
‘Some people call Sunday the day of rest,’ he said. But he stood up anyway, winking at me as he did.
An hour or so later, plates smeared with egg yolk and baked bean juice, Jess held her hand out and asked for my phone.
‘OK, but can you not send anything without checking first?’ I said, passing it over the table.
‘Obviously I won’t. But I’m very good at this.’
I narrowed my eyes at her.
‘I am!’ she insisted. ‘Aren’t I, Clem? Didn’t I help you with whatshecalled last week? Milly? Philly? Jilly?’
‘Tilly,’ corrected Clem, who always had someone on the go. Mostly petite blonde girls who he wooed intently with Spotify playlists and by taking them for romantic walks along the river. They often disappeared shortly after he cooked for them, but Clem remained stoically unaffected and simply moved on, as if he were a Labrador looking ahead to its next breakfast.
‘Yes, Tilly, exactly,’ went on Jess. ‘How long is she going to last, by the way? I had to help her with the front door because she couldn’t work out how to open it.’
‘She’s very sweet and the door was probably double-locked,’ said Clem, ‘and anyway, at least she’s not boring. I had to hide in my bedroom last week because Walt was loitering downstairs and I couldn’t face another conversation about his latest artist. And he leaves terrible skid marks in the loo, if you hadn’t noticed.’
‘Clem!’ said Jess. The house echoed with cries of ‘Clem!’ several times a day. ‘At least he’s got a brain.’
‘Enough!’ I said, interrupting them before they really got going. ‘Can we write this message?’ I nodded at my phone in Jess’s hands. ‘What about “Thanks for last night, had a lovely time. Hope the head’s feeling all right this morning.” With one kiss?’
Jess looked disgusted. ‘You can’t say “had a lovely time”. That’s what you’d say to a great-aunt who’d taken you out for tea and scones. And not the head thing either.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s feeble, that’s why.’
I sat back in my seat and thought. Funny how much energy we can all expend on a few words in messages like these. Hours, potentially, to write a message that was designed to sound as if it had been composed casually in a few seconds.
And that was when I saw him, while I was gazing blankly at the news again. I didn’t take it in for a few moments. I just stared at the screen, thinking the dark hair looked familiar. Then I realized. It was him. It was Max.
But WHAT? What the hell was Max doing on television? Why was he sitting in the news studio talking to the news presenter? I looked at the time. Just after midday. I’d left his apartment basically three hours ago and he was now in front of me on the screen. I felt like I was dreaming. Maybe I was dreaming? Maybe I was still asleep and this was all made up. But it didn’t seem like a dream. I wiggled my fingers in front of me. They were definitely my real fingers. And a fresh bout of bickering between Jess and Clem over the washing up was also quite loud and real, which is why I couldn’t hear what Max was saying.
‘It’s your turn,’ Jess said, reaching for our plates.
‘Guys…’ I tried to interrupt, eyes remaining on the TV.
‘Absolutely not,’ said Clem. ‘I did it last night.’
‘Shhhhh, don’t fight in front of guests,’ said Jess.
‘Calm down, it’s just Lil,’ he replied.
‘Guys, stop it,’ I said, louder, so they both looked at me.
‘What?’ said Jess.
‘It’s Max, it’s the guy, he’s… he’s there… he’s on TV.’ I nodded my head at the television and they both turned to it. ‘Can you turn it up a bit, Clem?’
‘British explorer Max Rushbrooke aims to be the first man to scale…’ Jess started reading from the screen but stopped at a complicated name.
‘Muchu Chhish,’ said Clem. ‘In Pakistan, I think.’ Then he swivelled round in his seat to look at me. ‘But, Lil, that’s Max Rushbrooke, the explorer. You went on a date last night with Max Rushbrooke?’ He sounded offensively surprised.
‘Technically she didn’t just go on a date with him. She shagged him,’ said Jess, who’d stopped gathering plates and was also staring at the screen. ‘But who is he? How do you know about him, Clem?’
‘Shhhhh, guys, seriously, can we just watch for a second?’ I nodded at the television again and gestured at Clem to turn the volume up.
‘It’s a daunting expedition. My most ambitious challenge to date,’ said Max, ‘but I’ve dreamt about this mountain my whole life. Ever since I was a small boy.’
‘How confident are you about succeeding?’ said the presenter, a blonde woman who was wearing quite a tight, red dress and straining towards Max.
Max looked seriously at her, his eyebrows knitting together. ‘Pretty confident. I wouldn’t do it otherwise. We just have to keep our fingers crossed for a weather window.’
‘And when do you leave?’
‘We fly from London next week, and then it’s about a week to base camp where we’ll be acclimatizing for a few weeks. Then hopefully starting the climb shortly after that, hopefully mid-October,’ Max replied.
‘Well we’ll be rooting for you, and thank you very much for coming in,’ said the presenter, still gurning at him.
‘Not at all,’ said Max. ‘Thank you for having me.’
They smiled at one another again before the presenter swung back to face the camera. ‘That was Max Rushbrooke talking about his upcoming expedition to climb Muchu Chhish, one of the highest unconquered mountains in the world. So best of luck to him, and next we’re going to Adam for the weather.’
I put my hands to my cheeks and shook my head in disbelief. ‘I mean,’ I started saying, ‘I had no idea. He just said he was a climber.’ And then I thought about his flat. ‘But it makes more sense now. He had photos of himself in climbing kit and pictures of mountains everywhere.’
‘I’m confused,’ said Jess. ‘Clem, how do you know about him?’
‘Guys, come on, he’s pretty well-known,’ said Clem, frowning as if exasperated by our lack of expertise about explorers, remote control still in his hand.
‘No?’ he said, to our blank faces. ‘He’s a sort of Bear Grylls. I think they’ve climbed together, actually. And I’ve read about his expeditions before. Max’s, I mean. Can’t remember what the last one was…’ He stopped and frowned. ‘Somewhere in Tibet. And I think he comes from quite a posh family. His dad’s a cousin of the Queen or something.’
‘Well I’ve never heard of him,’ said Jess. ‘But he’s hot. Lil, this is amazing. I’m going to google him.’ She picked up her phone. ‘OK, M… A… X… Rushbrooke,’ she said as she tapped. ‘Fuck! He’s got his own Wikipedia page. Lil, you’ve shagged someone with a Wikipedia page!’
‘Modern romance,’ I said, getting up to peer over her shoulder. Annoyingly, a little part of me was pleased by this, but there was no way in hell I would openly admit that. ‘Let’s have a look.’
‘“Max Rushbrooke is an English mountaineer and guide,”’ Jess read. ‘“He is one of Britain’s leading high-altitude climbers and has summited Mount Everest ten times. He was born in 1985” – so he’s…’
‘Thirty-four,’ I said. ‘I knew that already. It said that on his profile.’
‘Went to Eton College then… Er, didn’t go to uni. Went to Sandhurst. Oh my God, with Prince William. Then it just lists loads of expeditions.’
‘There was some Everest disaster a few years back,’ said Clem authoritatively from the other side of the table. ‘Bad weather and they got stuck. He might have nearly died. I think they all nearly died.’
‘Shhhhh, Clem,’ Jess went on, flapping her hand at him. ‘Lil, listen to this bit. “His older brother Arundel died in a skiing accident in France in 2002…”’
‘Oh shit, he didn’t mention anything.’
‘But listen to this,’ went on Jess, still staring at the computer screen. ‘“His older brother Arundel died in a skiing accident in France in 2002, which makes Max the heir to his father, the 17th Viscount Rushbrooke. The family seat is Little Clench Hall in Suffolk and their estimated wealth is around £135 million.”’ She looked up at me. ‘Lil, he’s a trillionaire! Did he not mention any of this?’
‘No, course not! What would he have said? “Hello, Lil, nice to meet you. I’m Max. My brother died when I was younger which makes me a viscount as well as a famous mountaineer and, oh, did I mention I am also very rich?” I paused. ‘I think I like him more because he didn’t talk about it.’
‘Technically, he’s not a viscount yet,’ said Jess. ‘But he will be.’ And then she added, quickly, as if all her words were trying to overtake one another, ‘Oh my God, imagine, you could be a viscountess.’
‘Jess, come onnnnnnn. We haven’t even sent that message,’ I said, reaching for my own phone to look Max up on Instagram. Bingo. There he was. Blue tick, 64.2k followers. I scrolled through his photos. Mostly him on mountains – in France, in Canada, in Switzerland. Max on the top of Everest last August, shards of ice in his beard.
‘There’s some stuff here about his ex-girlfriend,’ went on Jess, and then she put on a high-pitched posh voice. ‘Lady Primrose Percy and Max Rushbrooke are believed to have dated for several years.’ She looked up at me. ‘Did he talk about her?’
‘Briefly, only when we discussed exes.’
‘Look, here’s a picture of them,’ said Jess, squinting at her screen. ‘She’s got quite a long nose. And a big forehead. I don’t think we have to worry about her.’
‘Show me.’
She held up her phone. Lady Primrose was pretty. Jess was exaggerating about the nose. And blonde and smiley. It was a picture of them taken at a party. Max had his arm around her waist, she was tanned and wearing a strapless top that showed her collarbones. She looked quite thin, irritatingly.
‘Mmm,’ I said, as Jess lowered her phone again. ‘He didn’t actually mention her by name but she must have been the one he was talking about. But then he said our date wasn’t a therapy session and we had to discuss something else.’
‘We need to compose that message right now,’ said Jess, firmly. ‘Clem, do the plates. Lil and I really need to think about this. Oh this is thrilling. Imagine how furious Jake would be if he knew.’
Jake. I hadn’t thought about him since the day before, which meant he hadn’t taken up any head space for nearly twenty-four hours. Practically a record.
Jess insisted that she take my phone back again and concentrated on the message while I sat at the table, still reeling from this discovery, and Clem wearily picked up our plates and slid them into the sink. The news shouldn’t change how I felt about Max, I knew, but part of me couldn’t help but feel even more impressed by him. Why was sleeping with someone even slightly famous such a thrill? Did that make me a bad person?
Jess was quiet for a few moments while tapping.
‘What are you saying? Jess?’
She ignored me.
‘JESS?’
She looked up. ‘Cool it. All I’ve said is “Gorgeous Max, what a night. Looking forward to the next one. Dot, dot, dot.” And then two kisses. Little ones. Bit more casual than one big kiss. Less premeditated.’
I shook my head. ‘I’m not saying that, give it back. I can’t say “looking forward to the next one”. It makes me sound mad. Even more psycho than calling him “gorgeous Max”. I hate the word gorgeous. Come on, give it back.’
Jess sighed. ‘Here you go. But it’s too late. I’ve sent it.’
‘WHAT? Jess, you promised.’
‘I did no such thing. And come on, Lil, men need encouragement like that. They can be very slow otherwise.’
‘Oh, thank you very much,’ interjected Clem, from the sink.
I checked my phone. Two grey WhatsApp ticks. She had sent it.
‘Fuck. Jess. That isn’t cool. Clem, what do you think about that message?’
He turned his head to look at us. ‘Honestly, girls, Churchill wrote some of his greatest speeches with less fuss than this. I’m sure it’s fine.’
I winced with embarrassment and stared at my phone screen, willing the message to come back. Could I send another message to him, explaining the first to lessen this intense embarrassment? Or did that look even weirder? Was it even possible to sound weirder? I wasn’t sure.
‘I wish you hadn’t,’ I muttered. But I could never get cross at Jess.
‘What were you going to tell me about Walt anyway?’ I asked her, deciding to change the subject and remembering what Jess had said earlier.
She frowned at me.
‘You know. You said you’d tell me something. About Walt. About yesterday.’
‘Ohhhh.’ She nodded in recognition. ‘Yes. He said he’d bought us tickets for a weekend in Paris.’
‘That’s sweet of him. Isn’t it?’
‘Incredibly sweet, that’s the trouble.’ Jess bit her lip and looked guilty. ‘A man tells you he’s bought tickets for a romantic weekend in Paris and your heart should leap right out of your chest. I should be rushing off to buy sexy knickers and thinking about all the oysters and the shagging.’
‘And you’re not?’
She shook her head. ‘Not really. Not at all, in fact. My first thought was “Ooooh, Paris. I wonder if I’ll meet any hot men.”’
‘Not ideal,’ I agreed.
‘Anyway, it’s not for a few weeks. So I was sort of noncommittal about it. But I felt so guilty I said I’d go to this exhibition opening at his gallery on Friday. You free? Will you come with me? Then we can stand in a corner and get pissed and decide what I should do.’
‘Think so,’ I said, looking at my calendar on my phone. ‘Yup, I am.’ My week looked bare, but I was hoping that one of the nights might be a second date with Max. Or at least I’d been hoping that before Jess sent the world’s most embarrassing message.
I didn’t get home until about nineish and the ticks beside the message were still grey. I was trying to stay breezy but that clearly meant he was ignoring it. Who didn’t check their phone for seven hours? Even Mum looked at hers more often than that. Max had definitely seen it. I just had to hope that they’d go blue and he’d send something back later that evening. I imagined he would, he didn’t seem like the kind of guy to just ignore a message, however embarrassing it was. Good manners to reply, right?
I found Grace and Riley doing yoga in the living room on their mats, laid out in front of the TV.
‘Hi, guys,’ I said, dropping my bag on the kitchen counter.
‘What time d’you call this, missy?’ said Riley, remaining twisted in his pose, his head hanging down between his legs.
‘D’you shag him?’ added Grace, in the same position.
I paused and then laughed. ‘Yes.’
They both cheered from their mats.
‘Good work,’ said Riley, admiringly. ‘Grace only gave me a gobby on our first date.’
Grace reached out and smacked him on the leg. ‘You’re a pig.’
‘What’s a gob— actually, do you know what? Never mind,’ I said, knowing that I’d regret asking him.
‘It’s a blowie,’ clarified Riley.
‘Mmmm. I guessed,’ I said, opening the fridge to see if it had anything promising in it. I’d been eating biscuits all day at Jess and Clem’s but I still had a little gap for a snack. A piece of toast, maybe. My forty-seventh cup of sugary tea that day.
‘Oh, darl, you seen the Sky remote?’ said Grace, standing up on her mat and frowning. ‘We can’t find it anywhere.’
I felt a stab of guilt, knowing it was in my bedside drawer, lying next to my vibrator. But shook my head and reminded myself to smuggle it back into the living room.
‘Sorry,’ I said, trying to look innocent, before excusing myself for a bath, saying I was desperate for an early night.
I left my phone on the bath mat so I could see if it blinked with a message. It didn’t. But just after 10 p.m., I got an alarming email from my boss, Miss Montague, St Lancelot’s headmistress.
Dear Miss Bailey, started the email. There was a school rule that all staff call one another by their surnames, which most of us ignored so long as we weren’t within earshot of Miss Montague. Please could you come to my office at 7.30 a.m. tomorrow morning for a meeting.
I felt instantly guilty. One week into the school year and I’d already done something wrong. What could it be? Mothers were always emailing the school on Sunday evenings having spent all weekend brooding over something spectacularly minor – a lost sock, a quibble about the school’s internet policy, was the cottage pie served at lunch last Thursday made with antibiotic-free beef? There was no matter too trivial for a St Lancelot mother. I set my alarm for 6.15 a.m. and went to sleep with my phone on vibrate on my other pillow. But by the time I drifted off, Max still hadn’t messaged.
Chapter Two (#ulink_0f3de729-e52e-56e5-abb5-bcd9cda2b64b)
THE SITUATION ON MONDAY morning remained unchanged. The ticks were still grey, two little daggers beside that preposterous message. But I forced myself out of bed and tried to summon up some optimism in the shower. Dating had changed since I’d started going out with Jake, I knew. People didn’t reply immediately any more. Probably I’d get a message that day. And if not that day, because he might be busy doing whatever explorers did during office hours, then I’d hear from him that evening. I was sure of it. Nobody left a message unread for longer than that. It was rude. I elbowed my way on to the Tube at Brixton feeling hopeful about Max, but slightly less so about my meeting with Miss Montague.
I knocked on her door at precisely 7.29 a.m. She was a woman who appreciated punctuality and the school ran as if it were a military academy.
‘Come in,’ came the crisp, English voice.
She was sitting at her desk looking as she did every day – stern, in a blue skirt suit, collared shirt, a pearl in each ear sitting underneath a rigid hairstyle which I’d always figured was inspired by that unlikely style icon, Princess Anne.
‘Morning,’ I said, hovering just inside the door. Pasta, Miss Montague’s dachshund, lay dozing on his side in a patch of early sun beaming through the window.
‘Miss Bailey, good morning. Do have a seat.’
I sat. She looked over her glasses at me from behind her desk and leant forward, the chair creaking as she did. ‘It’s a sensitive situation, which is why I’m telling you now before I mention it to the other members of staff.’
I raised my eyebrows at her and spoke slowly. ‘O-O-O-K-K-K-K.’
‘It’s a late entry to the school year. Coming into your class. Roman Walker.’ She paused and looked at me expectantly.
‘O-O-O-K-K-K-K,’ I said again. It sounded familiar but I couldn’t quite place him. St Lancelot’s had various celebrity sons – of royalty, of musicians, of artists, of tech billionaires, of politicians. Who’d called their son Roman?
‘As in, Luke Walker’s son, Roman.’
‘Oh. Right.’ The mists cleared and I realized who she was talking about. Luke Walker, the premiership footballer. His son. This was a huge deal. No wonder Miss Montague had called it sensitive. There had been a rumour that we’d get Prince George a few years ago, an exhausting period of time when Miss Montague was especially warlike and had made all members of staff practise their curtsy or bow ahead of the anticipated Royal visit. But then they’d picked Thomas’s in Clapham and we’d all calmed down again.
‘Probably a blessing,’ my favourite colleague Steph had said in the playground shortly afterwards. ‘Imagine what the mothers would wear if he was here, poor little bugger.’
‘Why’s Roman coming here now?’ I asked Miss Montague. Term had already started. It didn’t make sense.
Miss Montague opened her mouth but remained silent for a few moments as if working out how to explain. ‘Spot of trouble at Holland Gate. I gather there was a… dalliance between Mr Walker and a teacher. And apparently the governors there felt it best that Roman be moved.’
‘To here?’
‘Well, to somewhere different,’ said Miss Montague, smoothly. ‘It’s all extremely last-minute and I’ve spent the weekend arranging it. But he’ll be joining your class this morning, so could you make sure everyone welcomes him and be aware of the… sensitivity?’
‘Yes, course.’
‘No need to do anything differently. Do reading this morning and see how he gets on. If there are any problems, please inform me.’
‘Sure,’ I nodded. ‘And should I, er, meet the, er, Walkers at any point this week? Like the others…’ All class teachers had met their new parents just before the new school year had started, to talk them through the syllabus and what would be expected of their sons. I’d spent an evening in August shaking hands with my new parents and lecturing them about mobile phone policy.
This year, I had eight boys in my class, including the son of a Tory MP, the son of a Russian steel magnate (the father had the menacing air of a man who ate his victims for breakfast; the mother looked eleven years old); a Greek prince, and a sweetheart called Vikram whose family had just moved from Delhi to London. His mother was so concerned about Vikram settling in that she’d asked if they could send his nanny to sit at the back of the classroom, so I’d had to say gently she couldn’t.
Miss Montague shook her head, the helmet of hair unmoving. ‘The Walkers aren’t coming in for now. I’m going to liaise with them directly. It does of course mean there may be more media interest in us. But the usual rules apply – nobody is to talk to any press and if anyone approaches you please direct them to me.’ Her eyes burned into me like a female huntress on safari.
‘OK, no problem,’ I said.
‘Marvellous, I’ll see you for staff meeting in a second then,’ said Miss Montague.
I nodded and stood up, relieved I wasn’t in trouble.
Because I’d come in so early, the staffroom was empty when I arrived, so I dropped my bag on a chair and went straight for the coffee machine in the corner. I liked being in early. It gave me time to swallow at least two coffees before the kids started sliding up to the school gates on their scooters.
St Lancelot’s wasn’t huge compared to some of its rivals in Knightsbridge and Battersea, but it was generally considered the most exclusive boys’ school in London (as Miss Montague told us almost daily), with just over five hundred boys aged from four to thirteen. It occupied the site of a Gothic red-brick building between Chelsea and Pimlico which had once been a hospital but was converted into the school after the Second World War by a zealous army captain. Captain Bower, he was called. I had a sip of coffee and glanced at the portrait of him in army khakis hanging up in the staffroom. He had a moustache and was covered in medals. He had also studied Classics at Oxford and so the school motto – moniti meliora sequamur – was engraved in stone over the main entrance.
During my interview for the job five years earlier, Miss Montague, Captain Bower’s granddaughter, had begun by asking whether I knew what the motto meant. Hadn’t a clue.
She’d peered at me over her desk and replied: ‘After instruction, let us move on to pursue higher things.’
‘Oh I see,’ I’d answered politely.
‘It’s a line from Virgil’s Aeniad. I expect you’ve read it,’ she said, and I’d nodded vaguely into my coffee cup.
I hadn’t.
‘It’s fitting,’ went on Miss Montague, ‘because we teach a great many pupils who are destined for public life. Both here and abroad. Do you feel capable of shaping these young minds, Miss Bailey?’
I’d said yes, obviously, but five years on, I sometimes wondered whether these young minds should be destined for public life. Just ahead of the last general election, a Year 2 called Theodore had marched up to me in the playground during lunch and asked who I’d be voting for.
‘Errr,’ I’d started, unsure what to reply. We weren’t supposed to foist our own politics on the pupils. ‘The thing is, Theodore, some people think it’s rude to ask that question.’
Theodore had looked nonplussed at this. ‘My daddy says everyone who doesn’t vote Conservative is an idiot.’
I was so surprised I didn’t have time to answer before Theodore had turned round and swaggered off to canvass elsewhere in the playground.
‘Don’t worry about him,’ said Steph, standing next to me and keeping an eye on the future prime ministers and despots pushing one another off the climbing frame. ‘His dad’s a minister. Minister for sheep or something.’
Being a teacher at school is much the same as being a kid at school. You need mates. Allies. Steph was one of my closest allies. She taught Year 8, the 12-year-olds, and I loved her for her no-nonsense attitude – she didn’t take lip from the kids or grumbles from the parents. Outspoken and somewhere in her mid-forties (I’d never dared ask), she lived in Surbiton where her own kids were at the local school and where her husband, Tim, worked as a GP.
‘Morning, love,’ she said, coming through the staffroom door laden with bags, red in the face and with wisps of hair sticking to her forehead.
‘Hiya. Coffee?’ I replied, still hovering beside the kettle.
‘Mmm, please,’ said Steph. ‘Victoria was a fucking nightmare this morning.’
I spooned some Nescafé into the least grimy cup I could find on the tray and poured hot water over the top. It often sounded more like a working men’s club than a staffroom in here, although Miss Montague took a dim view of swearing among her staff. She took a dim view of many things – beards, the internet, staff on their mobile phones, parents who picked their boys up late, parents who dropped their boys off too early, parents who took their boys out of school before the holidays for skiing in Val d’Isère, and parents who threw their son’s birthday party at Claridge’s.
‘Fuck knows where all my lesson plans are this morning. I thought I had them but couldn’t find them anywhere on the train so I’m going to have to print them all off again,’ added Steph, collapsing on a chair next to her bags and bending down to take off her trainers. ‘I hate the bastard Anglo-Saxons.’
I put the coffee on the table next to her.
‘Ta, love. How was your weekend?’
‘Good.’ Then I paused and lowered my voice. ‘I had that date on Saturday night.’
‘Oh my giddy aunt,’ said Steph, looking up from untying her trainers, cheeks puce from the effort. ‘Tell me everything.’
Other staff members were drifting in and hanging their coats up. ‘Morning, Renée,’ I said, waving at the art teacher, then I lowered my voice again. ‘It was… nice.’
‘Nice?’ shrieked Steph. ‘Lilian, love, I’m an old married woman who gets her leg over once a year. You’ve got to do better than nice.’
‘All right all right. It was better than nice. Lovely. Will that do?’
‘So you shagged him?’ she said, narrowing her eyes at me. ‘A proper shag?’
‘Shhhh!’ I inclined my head towards the door, which Miss Montague had just drifted through, like a battleship coming into port.
‘Hiya, Mrs M,’ said Steph, who’d taught at St Lancelot’s for over a decade and was one of the few members of staff who could get away with referring to her as such.
‘Good morning,’ said Miss Montague, loudly, so everyone heard.
We dutifully murmured mornings back and looked round the room for seats. Every Monday morning we had a staff meeting. Sometimes the meetings were five minutes; sometimes they were twenty. The trick was to grab a seat as fast as possible, because if you had to stand throughout the meeting the chances were Miss Montague would catch your eye when she was after a volunteer for something – cleaning out the guinea pig cage or taking that week’s Lego Club.
As Miss Montague made her way to the front of the room, colleagues parting for her and Pasta to waddle their way through, I reached into my pocket to check my phone – nope, still nothing from Max. And because I was momentarily distracted, I missed the spare seats, so I had to hover awkwardly behind Steph’s chair.
‘Undivided attention, please, everyone. There’s a serious matter I need to bring to your attention,’ said Miss Montague, standing underneath the painting of Captain Bower. He looked like he’d been a stern, imperial chap and I imagine that was where she’d inherited her authority from. If Stalin and Joan of Arc had had a lovechild, it would have been exactly like Miss Montague.
Her face darkened as if ahead of a storm. ‘Joel Glassman in Year 6 arrived at school in a Range Rover last week,’ she announced.
Steph glanced up at me and frowned. I shrugged. What was the problem? Most of the school arrived in a Range Rover every day. Dmitri, the Russian in my class, arrived in a blacked-out one each morning, and only jumped down, clutching his schoolbag, once a security guard from the front of the car had opened a back door for him. He had two security guards, actually, who he referred to as his uncles. ‘Uncle Boris’ and ‘Uncle Sasha’. Burly, with necks thicker than their heads, I still hadn’t worked out which was which but one of them had winked at me during the first week of term and I’m afraid to say I did feel a frisson of excitement.
‘I don’t mean a normal Range Rover,’ went on Miss Montague, her voice louder and more menacing, as if she was a party leader building to a crescendo. ‘What I am talking about is one of those electric, toy Range Rovers.’ She said the word ‘toy’ with absolute disgust. ‘Joel had been given it for his birthday and decided to drive it to school, accompanied by the nanny, but we simply don’t have room in the scooter park for electric vehicles. So I’ve had words with Mr and Mrs Glassman but I would like you all to keep a vigilant eye on the situation and alert me if you see this happening again.’
The toadiest teachers – mostly the language department – all nodded back dutifully before Miss Montague moved on.
‘I’ve also had an email from Lady Fitzalan over the weekend. She and her husband are divorcing so can whoever is little Rupert’s form teacher – ah, Miss Cookson, yes, there you are – can you keep an eye on him, please?’
Steph sighed heavily in her seat and I saw Mike slip through the staffroom door. He was our other ally. Head of music.
‘Good of you to join us, Mr Abbey,’ said Miss Montague.
‘Ah yes, um, sorry,’ he said. ‘Tube was terrible.’
‘But of course it was,’ she said, blinking at him with a deadpan expression. ‘And could I remind you all that it’s our Harvest Festival in few weeks so if you could talk to your forms about it that would be appreciated. An email will be going out to all parents this week.’ We all nodded dutifully while I caught Mike’s eye and smiled. He was always charged with assembly rehearsals for the Harvest Festival and, for several weeks last year, arrived at the pub after work humming songs with titles like ‘A Very Happy Vegetable’.
‘Finally, could I have a volunteer for someone to help Mrs O’Raraty with Harry Potter Club on Wednesday afternoon?’
Mike winked back at me and I stifled a laugh with my hand, turning it into a cough. He was always late and the Tube was always the excuse but the truth was that he was hung-over and slept through his snooze button. This meant he always looked crumpled – creased shirt, scuffed shoes, curls of hair springing out from his head at odd angles, as if he’d slept on it while wet. I winked back.
‘Miss Bailey, how kind of you to volunteer,’ said Miss Montague from the front. ‘Please could you liaise directly with Mrs O’Raraty as to what she needs you to do.’
Shit.
I nodded.
‘And that’s everything from me. So I suggest we all get on with our day. Unless there’s anything else?’ said Miss Montague, gazing out at her teachers like Napoleon about to send troops into battle.
Silence.
‘Very good,’ she said, and the room started moving again.
Mike hurried over to Steph and me. A pillow crease was still imprinted on his cheek.
‘Either of you got any Nurofen? My head feels like it’s about to fall off and I’ve got to give a Year 6 his French horn lesson,’ he said.
‘No, sorry,’ I said.
‘Go see Matron,’ said Steph. ‘She’ll have some.’
‘She told me off last week. Said it wasn’t her job to hand out painkillers like sweets. Mad old bag.’
‘Well you’ll have to have a coffee and get on with it then. Come on, let’s get going. The sooner we start the sooner it’s over,’ said Steph, getting to her feet.
Roman took the number of my class to nine. Small class sizes at St Lancelot’s was one of the reasons that parents paid £8,420 a term (extras and uniform not included) for their sons to come here. It meant that the pupils were supposedly lavished with attention by the teachers and our teaching assistants, although my teaching assistant this year was a dim 18-year-old called Fergus who got the job because Miss Montague is his aunt and he apparently needed to ‘get something on his CV’ during his gap year.
Only one week into the school year, I had mentally relegated Fergus to the same level of intelligence and ability as the 5-year-olds. He arrived late every morning, made more mess at the art table than any of the boys, constantly checked his phone in the classroom (phones were forbidden there, ‘only visible in the staffroom’ was the rule) and took extremely long loo breaks.
Still, the boys were mostly cherubic (it was like teaching a litter of puppies every day), and Fergus’s uselessness hadn’t mattered a great deal. Yet.
The four British boys sounded as if they could have stepped straight from the pages of an Oscar Wilde play – George, Arthur, Cosmo and Phineas (although I’d got off lightly because Steph had a Ptolemy in her class this year). Plus Dmitri the son of the Russians; Achilles, the Greek prince; Hunter, the son of two Americans who wanted him to go to Harvard, and Vikram, who hadn’t acclimatized to London yet and had arrived at school every morning, his teeth chattering, wearing three coats.
Because the classes were so tiny at St Lancelot’s, the parents (or nannies, or bodyguards) of the boys brought them to their classrooms every morning, instead of dropping them at the gate. Or to Nelson, as my classroom was called, since Captain Bower had named them all after British military heroes. Other class names included Wellington, Marlborough, Kitchener and Steph taught Allenby, Year 8.
A couple of years ago, one mother had said this was distasteful and launched an impassioned discussion about the classroom names on Mumsnet. But when this came to Miss Montague’s attention, she sent an email to all parents saying if they didn’t like the school traditions, they were welcome to take their sons elsewhere. Nobody did. Nobody ever gave up a place at St Lancelot’s because their boys were guaranteed to go on to Eton, Harrow, St Paul’s or Westminster. Really, wherever the parents wanted.
That morning, the boys started arriving as usual from around 8.30.
‘Hi, George, did you have a nice weekend? Pop your bag on your desk.’
‘Hunter, hello, I could hear you coming down the corridor. Did you have magic beans for breakfast?’
‘Vikram, quick, come inside and warm up.’ This went on for a few minutes as I waved to various nannies.
Then Roman appeared in the doorway, or at least who I took to be Roman because I didn’t recognize him. I squatted down and held my hand out. ‘Hello, you must be Roman.’ He frowned at my hand and didn’t take it.
‘I’m not allowed to talk to strangers,’ he said, kicking the heel of his shoe repeatedly against the carpet.
‘Roman!’ said a woman hurrying in behind him in suede ankle boots and sunglasses. ‘I’m so sorry, I think he’s nervous.’
‘Of course,’ I said, standing up. ‘You must be Mrs Walker.’
She nodded and we shook hands. ‘Miss Bailey?’
‘Exactly.’ She looked like many of the other St Lancelot mothers – expensive. She had a yellow diamond the size of a raspberry on her right hand and long, shiny hair which I suspected wasn’t all her own.
‘Great. Can we just have a word…’ She gestured to the corner of the classroom away from the door.
‘Sure, er, Fergus?’ He had just arrived, wafting cigarette smoke around the classroom. ‘Can you man the door?’
‘Yah, no problem,’ he replied.
In the corner, Mrs Walker talked in a hushed voice: ‘I just wanted to triple-check the privacy issue. I know Miss Montague said there’s a strict no mobile phone policy. It’s just that I don’t want any photos of Roman to leak and we can’t move him again.’
‘Not a problem,’ I said smoothly. ‘I’m sure Miss Montague has already told you but we have several high-profile pupils here and security is our first priority.’
‘Fabulous,’ she said. ‘OK, gotta run. Bye, sweetie. Be good.’ And without even kissing her son goodbye, she trotted out on her suede boots.
I turned back to Roman and smiled brightly. ‘Let’s get you to your desk.’
By Wednesday, not only had I not heard from Max (even though the ticks had finally gone blue), I’d also got thrush. I realized this while sitting in the staff loos that lunchtime because my vagina felt like it was on fire, and not in a good way. Terrific, I thought grimly, standing and pulling my knickers up. I’d have to nip to Boots for some Canesten. I absolutely couldn’t teach anything about the Pyramids this afternoon with this level of itchiness going on in my pants.
When I got to Boots, there was a queue of people taking for ever to discuss their Nicorette and their sleeping problems. And then, finally, when I got to the front of the queue, the pharmacist seemed deaf.
‘Could I have some Canesten please?’ I said quietly. Almost a whisper.
‘I’m sorry, dear?’ said the elderly man in his lab coat, leaning towards me.
‘Some Canesten,’ I hissed, slightly louder. I pointed behind him at the boxes of it.
‘Oh, right you are,’ he said, turning round to look. Then, bellowing so that everyone in Boots could hear, he said: ‘The Canesten Combi or just the cream? Or just the pill?’
‘The combi,’ I whispered, glancing over my shoulder to see a snake of people behind me. I hoped they were all buying embarrassing items too. I hoped they were all buying Anusol for their piles.
‘Here you go,’ he said, slowly picking a box, slowly turning back to the till, slowly scanning it. ‘Would you like a bag?’
‘No thanks,’ I said, snatching it and shoving it into my pocket.
I went straight back to the staff bathrooms, pulled my knickers down again – Christ, the INTENSE itchiness – unscrewed the lid on the little tube and rubbed it in. ‘Aaaaaaah,’ I sighed audibly as I felt the cream’s soothing effect immediately kick in, forgetting that there was someone in the cubicle next to me.
When I stepped outside the cubicle to wash my hands, it transpired that the person in the cubicle next to me was Miss Montague. I quickly dropped the Canesten back into my pocket.
‘Hello,’ I squeaked, our eyes meeting in the mirror in front of us.
‘Afternoon, Miss Bailey,’ she said, raising her eyebrows at me. ‘Everything all right?’
‘Mmm, all good.’
But the cream still hadn’t helped much by the time Harry Potter Club rolled round at 4.30 that afternoon, so I spent an hour trying to help boys of varying ages try to design their own broomstick while crossing my legs back and forth to try and take the pressure off things down there.
I didn’t have time to go home between school and Walt’s exhibition on Friday evening so I had to go straight there. I hate doing that. For a night out, I feel like you need to go home, wash your hair, put on a clean pair of pants and reapply make-up to transform into weekend mode. I wanted to get drunk tonight. I was in that sort of mood.
Max was clearly not going to text, which made me sad. And gloomy about my dating antennae. I knew we’d had a good time. A great time. So I didn’t understand the silence. Maybe it was the shagging him on the first date thing? Maybe the old rules did still apply? Depressing.
I caught the Tube to Green Park and walked down Piccadilly towards a pub in Shepherd’s Market to meet Jess. In the evening dusk, the former red-light district still had a raffish air. Several pubs, a few cramped restaurants with tables that over-spilled to the pavement outside and the unmistakable whiff of London drains.
I saw her standing outside the pub, a bottle of wine in a cooler between her feet. She was smiling and chatting to a tall man in a black polo neck and a leather jacket. One of the art crowd, I decided, walking towards them. Either that or a trained assassin.
‘Hiya,’ I said, giving her a hug.
‘Hi, babe, here you go,’ she said, picking up an empty glass at her feet and filling it with wine. ‘And meet Alexi. He’s coming to the party too. Alexi, this is Lil. My best pal. Knows literally nothing about art. No offence, love.’
‘None taken,’ I said, reaching for the wine glass from her.
‘Lil, sensational to meet you,’ said Alexi, whereupon I went for a handshake and he went for a kiss on the cheek, so we did both and I then pulled back, awkwardly.
I thought sensational was over-egging it a bit. Was he high?
‘How do you guys know each other?’ I asked, before tipping back my wine glass. Ah, that first mouthful on a Friday evening.
‘We don’t,’ said Jess. ‘I met him at the bar and we realized we were both going to the opening.’ She smiled at Alexi and reached behind her neck to pull her hair over one shoulder. Oh dear. I recognized that flush on her face. She fancied this tall, dark stranger who was wearing a polo neck even though it was a balmy Friday evening in September. I glanced from Jess to Alexi. She and I had very different taste. Jess was into beautiful men – slim, delicate, arty men. The sorts you saw drifting about Rome or Florence in drainpipe jeans, who existed on tiny coffees and rolled cigarettes. Not for me. I’d never fancied a man with skinnier thighs than me.
‘Rrrrrright,’ I said, slowly. ‘And Alexi, how do you know Walt?’
‘Old friend from art school,’ he said, scratching his chin.
‘You’re an artist?’
He shook his head. ‘A collector.’
As Jess said, I knew little about art. If you asked me, most Picassos looked like they’d been drawn by a 4-year-old with a packet of Crayola. But collecting meant Alexi had money, no? Rubbish collecting was a job. Art collecting was less of a job, more a hobby for rich people.
‘What sort of thing do you collect?’
Alexi shrugged in his leather jacket. ‘I’m interested in young artists, but it can be any medium. Paint, graphics, installations. So long as I feel something towards it. A reaction. Something visceral, you know?’ At this, he curled his right hand into a fist and held it up to his chest, beating it against his heart.
‘Mmm,’ I replied vaguely into my glass of wine. I went to gallery openings every now and then with Jess and the only thing I felt at them was hunger because there was always plenty of wine but no snacks.
‘I think you’ll love this show,’ Jess said to Alexi, eyelashes fluttering like a baby gazelle’s. Christ. I wondered if she’d told Alexi she knew Walt because she was dating him.
Alexi smiled back at her. ‘I’m excited about seeing it.’
I felt like a pawn in a game of foreplay. ‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘I mean, who’s the exhibition by?’
‘A young artist called Daniel,’ said Jess. ‘From the Ukraine. So his work is quite intense. Twisted.’
‘He uses light to show darkness and darkness to show light,’ added Alexi.
‘Exactly,’ said Jess, gazing at Alexi with such admiration it was as if he’d just announced he’d discovered the secret to everlasting life.
‘Sounds cheerful.’
‘Oh, come on, misery guts,’ said Jess, digging me in the ribs with an elbow. ‘I take it no word from you-know-who then?’
‘Nope,’ I said, grimacing at her. ‘But it’s all right. Onwards and sideways, as Mum says.’
‘He’s an idiot, in that case, and there’ll be millions more,’ said Jess, before turning to Alexi. ‘Lil had a date last weekend but he hasn’t texted her.’
I wasn’t sure I wanted Alexi knowing about my love life, but too late.
‘Lil, I can’t believe it,’ said Alexi, smoothly. ‘I’m sorry. You liked him?’
I sighed. ‘Yeah. He was interesting. And it was my first date in ages. But I reckon if you haven’t heard from someone in five days that’s probably a bad sign, right? You’re a man. If you guys want to see someone again you let them know, no?’ I hoped my tone didn’t come across as desperate.
Alexi looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘Normally, yes. But without knowing the details it’s quite hard to say. Sometimes we can be just as complicated as women.’
‘Fiiiiiinally, a man who admits it,’ said Jess, laughing.
Oh God. If there was one thing that Jess liked more than a skinny man who was into art and tight trousers, it was a complicated, skinny man.
‘What about you, Alexi?’ I said. ‘You single?’
‘Ha.’ He grimaced and ran a hand through his hair. ‘It’s complicated for me, too.’
Course it was. This was a disaster. Poor, innocent Walt, I thought, who was probably this second pouring wine into plastic cups and brushing down his neatly ironed chinos ahead of the opening. He didn’t stand a chance.
Walt’s gallery was a few minutes away on a little street off Piccadilly. ‘Walter de Winter’ said a sign hanging outside it. By the time we arrived, people were already overflowing on to the pavement outside the gallery, under the sign, plastic cups of white wine in hand. It looked like a circus gathering. A woman with bright purple hair stood talking to a man in a tartan jacket with a large dog asleep at his feet. Behind them was a man wearing a cravat over a T-shirt and a panama hat, deep in conversation with a lady who’d come dressed entirely in black lace. One man, standing with his back to us, had the world ‘REAL’ tattooed across his neck.
‘Alexi!’ shouted someone, so he said he’d come and find us in a minute and slunk his way through the crowd.
‘Let’s find Walt,’ said Jess, so I followed her inside the gallery where I spotted him, just as I’d suspected, in chinos, a sensible blazer and suede loafers, standing in front of a large canvas, gesturing to a lady with cherry-coloured lipstick beside him. We snuck up behind him and stood silently, not wanting to interrupt.
The canvas was entirely black, so far as I could see. As black as a blackboard. It was like looking out through a window into the night. No colour whatsoever.
‘And you can see here,’ said Walt, sweeping his hand across the bottom left-hand corner of the canvas. ‘He intensifies the drama. There’s a sense of heightened emotions, of fury, of anger and despair which is juxtaposed with here, where the mood changes.’ Walt stopped and waved his hand towards the top of the canvas, which was exactly as black as the lower half. ‘It’s calmer, it’s lighter, there’s less chaos. So really what he’s revealing is a true picture of mental anguish. Black and violent at times, but at other moments, far less disturbed.’
The lady with the vibrant lipstick nodded. ‘Hmmm,’ she said. ‘Eeet ees fascinating.’ And then she squinted at a small label beside the canvas. ‘Let me haff a look at the others and decide, but I like thees very much.’
‘Absolutely, take your time. Would you like another drink?’ said Walt, gesturing at her empty glass.
She shook her head and handed him her glass as if he was a waiter. ‘Marvellous,’ he said. ‘Like I said, take your time.’
She wobbled off on her heels and Walt turned to us, his face beaming at the sight of Jess.
‘Hello, you two. Wonderful you could both come. Have you got drinks?’ He leant forward to kiss Jess, then me.
‘Nope, only just got here,’ said Jess. ‘We met your friend Alexi in the pub beforehand.’
‘Oh, Alexi’s here, that’s tremendous news,’ said Walt. ‘I should go and say hello, but will you two be all right?’
‘Yes, yes, course, go and mingle. Chat up the punters,’ said Jess. ‘Don’t worry about us.’
He kissed her on the cheek again and headed towards the door as Jess reached for two glasses of wine from a passing waiter.
She gave one to me and I raised my eyebrows at her.
‘What?’
‘Don’t what me. Poor Walt. I saw the way you were looking at Alexi.’
Jess bit her lip. ‘Oh, Lil. Trouble is, Walt’s too nice. I mean, look at him!’ We turned to watch Walt through the front of the gallery where he was clasping Alexi in a hug. Then Walt released him and stood gesticulating madly with his hands, grinning like a madman.
‘I get it,’ I said, turning back to her. ‘He’s nice but…’
‘Too nice,’ said Jess. ‘In no way do I want to rip that blazer off his back. And Alexi is more my type.’
We looked back through the window. Alexi was rolling a cigarette while Walt held his packet of tobacco.
‘Yeah, he looks dangerous.’
‘Right?’ she said, grinning at me. And then her face fell. ‘Oh, but I’m sorry about Max. He’s not good enough. And I reckon explorers must be selfish fuckers anyway. All that time at extreme temperatures. Can’t be good for you.’
‘I guess,’ I said, shrugging. ‘It’s just weird because I thought we really got on. But, I’m fine. Honestly.’
‘Tosser,’ said Jess. ‘Come on, let’s have another drink. Then I want to talk to Alexi again.’ She glanced back through the window at him.
‘Oi,’ I said, waving my hand in front of her face. ‘Focus. Come on, why don’t you tell me about these terrible paintings?’
Waking up the next morning, I knew something bad had happened. I could sense it. I opened my eyes and felt a few moments of bewilderment as my brain groped for information. Why this lurking sense of guilt?
I reached out my hand for my bedside table. And at least my phone was in its usual… Oh. No, it wasn’t. Fuck. Where was my phone? Why wasn’t it charging on my bedside table? Astonishing, the panic this can induce in a fully-grown woman. No phone! I sat bolt upright in my bed and saw my phone lying on my bed beside my pillow. And then I remembered what I’d done. I remembered why there was something niggling at me. A little voice in my head that was whispering ‘Shame.’ A sinking feeling. Already half-knowing what I’d see, I opened WhatsApp. Yep, well done, Lil. I’d sent Max a message last night at… 2.03 a.m. Brilliant.
I read it back, feeling sick.
The message started ‘Just to say,’ which was a bad beginning because it already sounded hectoring. People start sentences with ‘Just to say’ when they’re annoyed about something but are trying to sound laid back about it.
‘Just to say, I think you’re a dick.’
‘Just to say, I never liked your mother in the first place.’
‘Just to say, I hate you and I never want to see you again.’
My intention at 2.03 a.m. was clearly to sound calm. And yet, the underlying vibe was fury. Just to say, last Saturday was my first date in six months, I’d written, which made me groan out loud in bed because it managed to sound cross and tragic at the same time. Quite a skill, that.
I read on, my stomach sinking further at each word. Just to say, last Saturday was my first date in six months. Which was kind of a big deal for me. And I know you’re busy climbing mountains or whatever but I think it’s polite to reply to messages from people you’ve shagged. X
FUCK’S SAKE, LIL, TELL IT TO A THERAPIST. TELL IT TO JESS. TELL IT TO GRACE. TELL IT TO THE MAN WHO SERVES YOU COFFEE IN THE PORTUGUESE CAFE. JUST DON’T TELL IT TO MAX.
The single ‘X’ was a hilariously mental touch too. The subtext, basically, was ‘I’m furious and want to rant at you, but I’m also going to try and sound normal by rounding off this message as if we’re mates.’
There was no reply, obviously. And he’d read it at… 7.22 this morning. I rolled over on to my front and screamed into my pillow. That was it. I’d disgraced myself. I’d become one of those people you worry about becoming. We knew it was in all of us, this propensity to be a psycho, but the trick was to try and stop it slipping out. To maintain the façade of sanity until you’d been with someone for, what, six months? A year? Only then could you start absolutely losing it over things – their inability to pick up socks, their stubble shavings scattered across the basin like iron filings, when they liked a random girl’s photo on Instagram.
What you absolutely shouldn’t do is hint at any sort of lunacy after one date. Not that there would be another date with Max. I knew that for sure now. I wouldn’t blame him if he stayed safely up that unpronounceable mountain. And somehow, this pitiful scenario felt worse because Max was famous. As if he’d be sitting round the campfire or wherever they sat on the mountains, joking about it with his climbing pals. He probably had this all the time, groupies sending him desperate messages.
I roared into my pillow again. How had this happened? We’d been at the gallery for a couple of hours, I remembered that. Then we went to a pub round the corner. Then? I supposed I’d had one too many glasses of wine. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I was livid with myself. And I felt a hot sense of shame sweep through me. I was literally never having sex again.
Chapter Three (#ulink_66a1cd1d-8558-5a26-bde2-78d690d97b79)
IT WAS THREE WEEKS later, on the train home to Norfolk, that I developed an inkling. Or maybe the word ‘inkling’ is too strong. It suggests that I knew what was coming, which I didn’t, despite what certain people claimed later. But it was on the train that the possibility presented itself in my head and, milliseconds later, my body responded by convulsing with fear. Shit. What if? Nah, couldn’t be. And yet? What if?
It was all thanks to Jess, who’d decided to come home with me for the weekend because she said she wanted to escape London for the ‘wilds’ of the country. This seemed ambitious considering we were off to stay in my parents’ semi in Castleton, but Jess had overly romantic ideas about life. She was late to Liverpool Street that Saturday morning so I picked up our tickets and dithered for ten minutes in Caffè Nero wondering whether I could stomach a Danish. I felt sick, which was weird, because I hadn’t been out drinking last night. I stood in front of the glass cabinet frowning to myself. What did I have for supper? I remembered. My ‘special’ pesto pasta – pasta, couple of spoonfuls of pesto and a few peas – the ‘special’ element of this gourmet dinner – lobbed in from a bag in the freezer so I could tell myself I was getting one of my five a day. But it didn’t contain anything sinister, so why did I feel vommy, as if saliva was pooling at the back of my throat?
‘Can I have an Americano please? Medium?’ I said to the woman behind the till. She wordlessly nodded at the card machine in front of me.
I reached down for the purse in my bag and stood up again, but had to put a hand on the counter to steady myself. I felt like I’d been out until 3 a.m. doing parkour in the streets, yet all I’d done was eat my pasta on the sofa with Grace and Riley while we watched a weird Netflix documentary they’d chosen about dolphins. Did you know that dolphins masturbate? I didn’t. Male dolphins wrap wriggling eels around their penises apparently and that does it for them. Isn’t that odd? It made me think quite differently about ever wanting to swim with dolphins. Each to their own but I prefer a vibrator. Although even that had felt like too much work last night, so after the documentary finished I’d dragged myself into bed and, before I could hear any of Grace and Riley’s own mating rituals, fallen asleep.
I picked up my coffee from the end of the counter just as my phone rang in my coat pocket.
‘Morning, darling, I’m here,’ said Jess.
‘Hi. Just grabbing a coffee in Nero. But we should maybe hurry up because…’ I pulled my phone away from my ear to check the time, ‘we’ve only got eight minutes so our platform should be up.’
‘Amazing, I’m desperate for a coffee. Wait there and I’ll come find you,’ said Jess, ignoring my mention of the train. In the eleven years I’d known her, she’d never been early, or on time, to anything. ‘Sorry, Italian blood,’ she’d say, shrugging, and not sounding remotely sorry whenever she arrived at the pub half an hour late.
I hovered at the door of Caffè Nero, scanning the station for a familiar blonde head. There she was, not moving with any sense of urgency, rolling along in a leather jacket with a red canvas bag hanging over her shoulder. She waved as she got closer.
‘Hello, my heart. Let me get this coffee. What an adventure, I can’t wait to see your parents, it’s been FOR EVER.’
‘Could I have a cappuccino please? Large?’ she asked the Caffè Nero lady, before turning back to me, grinning.
‘Guess what?’ she said.
I narrowed my eyes at her and took a swig of my coffee. ‘Er, dunno. Give me a clue.’
‘OK. How do I look this morning?’
I scrutinized her face. It was a face I knew almost as well as my own. Unfairly small nose, wide mouth, brown eyes which were generally thick with black liner, hair, well, generally all over the place but today it was pulled over one shoulder in a plait.
I shrugged. ‘Had your eyebrows done?’
She shook her head. ‘Guess again.’
‘Cappuccino,’ grunted the coffee lady, putting Jess’s cup down at the end of the counter.
‘Come on,’ I said, checking the time on my phone again. ‘We’ve got to go. Can’t stand round playing Guess Who?. Tell me on the train.’
Since it was early Saturday morning, the train was empty. One middle-aged man in a rugby shirt sitting at a table, reading his paper.
‘This one?’ I said, gesturing at a free table opposite him.
Jess nodded and sat. ‘OK, since you’re not going to guess it, I’ll tell you,’ she said. ‘Are you listening?’
‘Yup,’ I said, sniffing my coffee. I wasn’t even sure I could drink it. I felt like swallowing anything would make me gag.
‘Lil?’
‘Mmmm,’ I said, lifting the paper cup towards my mouth.
‘Did you hear me? I just said I think I’m in love.’
‘What?’ I put the cup back down on the table and frowned at her. ‘With Walt?’
Jess quickly shook her head. ‘No. No, not Walt. I’ve had to let him go. I’m talking about Alexi.’
‘Who’s Al— Ohhhhh. That guy from the exhibition?’
‘Exactly,’ said Jess. ‘We’ve been texting ever since that night and I saw him again last night. And he’s amazing, Lil. Like, properly amazing. Funny and clever and he’s into art and—’
‘Hang on,’ I said, holding my hands up in front of me as if stopping traffic. ‘We need to go back to the start. You met him on that Friday but you only saw him again last night? And now you’re in love with him?’
‘I know, I know. It’s mad. But he was travelling after the exhibition. In America. And then he got back on Thursday so he came over last night. That’s why I was asking about my face. I only got about two hours’ sleep and I probably look like hell.’
‘No no, you don’t at all.’ She didn’t. She hadn’t bothered to remove last night’s eye make-up so it was smudged, but she looked kittenish, like a 1960s model. Whenever I slept in my make-up I woke up looking like Miss Havisham.
‘I know I’ve said this before but I think he’s maybe… well, I just have a good feeling about this, Lil. You know when you know? Or you know when people say “you know when you know”? I think I know.’
I hate that saying. I thought I’d known with Jake and then look what happened. I didn’t know at all. And then I thought about Max. Ha, Max! Another thing I was wrong about. He’d seemed a nice one on our date but then off he’d scarpered, up that mountain quicker than Ranulph fucking Fiennes on speed.
‘Lil?’
Obviously I did not say any of this to Jess, who was radiating such excitement that I felt I had to be enthusiastic.
‘Exciting! Although poor old Walt. But how come I’m only hearing about this now?’
Jess looked guilty, pulling one side of her mouth into a grimace. ‘I didn’t want to say anything until I saw you because I just thought it might be mean, given the Max thing. I’m actually still so cross with him that I don’t even like saying his name. I never want to say it again.’
I laughed. ‘Thanks, love, but never mind about him,’ I said. ‘Tell me about last night. What did you do? How was the…’ I glanced across the aisle to the table with the man reading his paper, then I lowered my voice and turned back to Jess. ‘S-e-x?’
‘Why are you spelling it?’
‘Because…’ I flicked my head towards the table.
Jess rolled her eyes. ‘You’re so paranoid. And we didn’t have sex because I’ve got my period, which was annoying.’
I heard the man rustle his papers as Jess rattled on: ‘But we did everything else, then we just lay there for hours chatting. About my work, about his work, about my family and where he comes from. He’s got an aunt who lives in Liguria too. Isn’t that spooky?’
I listened to her while holding my cup in the air. It was when she mentioned her period that my brain clicked, as if in a film scene, like a police detective who has a brainwave in his car while eating a doughnut. My period. Where was my period? Shit. I was due this week. I’d finished a packet of the pill last week, hadn’t I? I picked up my phone and scrolled through my apps for my calendar. I opened it and counted by drumming my fingers on the table. Thumb, two, three, four, five.
‘What you doing?’ said Lex.
‘Counting,’ I said, still looking down at my phone screen.
‘Counting what?’
I took a breath and paused before going on. ‘I’m late.’
‘Huh?’ Jess leant towards me to look at the calendar. ‘Ohhhhhh. You mean period late?’
‘Mmm.’
‘You should have got it when?’
‘Er, like, Tuesday. Wednesday latest.’
‘OK, Tuesday,’ went on Jess. ‘And it’s now Saturday. But you’re never normally regular, right?’
I thought back. I’d had my first period when I was thirteen. I went to the girls’ loos during lunch break and was astonished to see rust in my pants. Why was I rusting? But then I’d wiped myself, seen blood all over the tissue and nearly screamed over the cubicles that I was dying, only to realize this must be the great moment of womanhood that my mother had told me about. I’d felt so pleased with myself. A grown-up! A woman! I couldn’t wait to get home and share the news. Mum embraced me with a hug when I told her, and, later that evening, I found a box of tampons and a copy of The Female Eunuch on my bed with the corner turned down on a particular page, a sentence underlined in faint pencil: If you think you are emancipated, you might consider the idea of tasting your own menstrual blood – if it makes you sick, you’ve a long way to go, baby. That didn’t seem a very sanitary idea to me. I’d ignored it and tucked the book underneath The Worst Witch on my bedside table.
Over dinner that night at the kitchen table, Mum had advised how to insert a tampon, waving her index finger in the air by way of demonstration. ‘You have to angle it towards your back, darling.’ I studied the leaflet in the box while sitting on the loo afterwards, musing that tampons looked like cocktail sausages with string, and when I finally succeeded getting one in there, it felt like a milestone. Not dissimilar to when I later passed my driving test. Just a bit messier.
It only took a few more periods for me to realize it wasn’t a great development. All those sanitary products, all that leaking, the pain, and all that paranoia about suddenly dying from Toxic Shock Syndrome if you slept with a tampon in.
It was now eighteen years on and, what’s eighteen times twelve? I did the sums in my head: 18 times 12 equals 216. I was now roughly 216 periods into my life but I couldn’t single any of them out. They’d all blended in my head, a boring hiccup that punctuated every month. Sometimes three days, sometimes five days. But mine were never late because I’d been on the pill for years. Ever since Jake and I started going out. Give or take a day, I knew when it would arrive. I knew when my stomach would bloat like a barrel and I’d start crying at adverts for donkey sanctuaries. I knew when to stock up on Feminax Express because the pain felt like my uterus was about to fall out of my vagina.
I’d thought about coming off the pill when Jake and I broke up, about giving my body a break, but decided to carry on just in case. So where was my freaking period?
I shook my head. ‘No, I’m always regular. I’m still taking the pill. But does that happen sometimes, that you sort of miss a period? If you’ve been taking it for years?’ I looked hopefully at Jess.
‘I don’t really know, love. Maybe?’ Jess didn’t believe in contraceptives. She insisted that she knew where she was in her cycle, then made them pull out and hoped for the best. ‘Or maybe it was so light you didn’t even notice it?’ she suggested.
That seemed unlikely. Quite hard to miss a whole period, right? I was always amazed at those headlines you sometimes saw: ‘Woman who didn’t know she was pregnant gives birth in a motorway service station!’
I put my right hand over my left boob, then my right one. They felt a tiny bit sensitive, like I was about to get my period. But it was so late. I wondered if I should google it, and then decided against it. Google would only tell me I was 100 per cent pregnant. Or I had some form of cancer. Then I looked at my coffee again.
‘I don’t feel great either this morning,’ I said to Jess. ‘Like, a bit sick. But I can’t be… can I? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘I’m sure it’s fine,’ she said, reassuringly. And then slightly less reassuringly, ‘But maybe we should get a test just to make sure? So you don’t worry?’
I nodded and looked across at the man with his newspaper, who briefly met my eye and then looked back down. Poor man. He presumably thought he was catching a peaceful Saturday morning train with the paper only to find he was trapped in his very own live version of Loose Women.
We walked straight to Boots from King’s Lynn station, praying that I didn’t see anyone I knew. One of Mum’s t’ai chi women asking questions about my love life, that was all I needed. But we reached Boots unscathed, and I grabbed a £4.99 Boots own brand test despite Jess’s grumbling that I should get a more expensive one.
‘All I’m going to do is wee on it. I don’t think it matters whether I have the Rolls Royce test or the Skoda version,’ I told her. ‘Let’s just get it and go.’
‘Do you want a bag?’ asked the lady behind the till as I paid.
‘Nah, it’s all right thanks,’ I said, stuffing the box down the side of my overnight bag.
When we got home ten minutes later, I pushed open the front door to a familiar smell – the sweet, fruity tang of boiling jam. Mum was always making jam for local markets and selling it for good causes – women’s charities, animal charities, children’s charities. Distressed llamas of North Norfolk, that sort of thing. She loved a cause.
‘Hi,’ I shouted loudly into the hall, dropping my bag at the foot of the stairs and waving at Jess to follow me through to the kitchen.
Mum, standing with her back to us at the oven, whirled around with a wooden spoon in her hand. She was wearing her favourite apron – ‘There are no soggy bottoms in my kitchen’ slogan on the front – and a pair of glasses that had steamed up.
‘Hello, my ducks,’ she said, reaching for her glasses with her free hand and taking them off. ‘Give us a hug.’
She reached for me first, wooden spoon going over one shoulder, then Jess. Drops of jam fell to the lino.
‘How was the journey? Do you want a cup of tea? Dennis is at the football. Won’t be home till sixish, so I’m making a batch of this for the market tomorrow. Look, sit down, sit down.’ Mum always talked quickly, imparting information in bursts as if we only had a limited number of seconds left on this planet and she had to get it all out.
Mum met Dennis in the early 1990s while she was teaching students and working on her PhD (about the role of the Victorian prostitute) at Norwich University. She’d already had me by then since my biological father was a guitarist called Adrian, who Mum had a brief fling with while studying for her undergraduate degree at Manchester a few years before. Dennis appeared on the scene when I was four. He was a military historian in the same faculty at Norwich, and moved into our lives overnight. Sometimes, Mum would refer to a period of her life ‘BD’, which meant ‘Before Dennis’, but I didn’t remember that time. Dennis was the man who taught me to swim one summer off Holkham beach. Dennis was the man who taught me to recite the dates of famous battles – the Siege of Thessalonica, Verdun, Barbarossa – like other children reeled off nursery rhymes. Dennis was the man who smelled like his writing shed in our garden, of strong coffee and old history books.
Mum had explained the situation to me with a biology lesson not long after she met Dennis. As I sat in the bath one evening, she drew a picture in the fogged-up bathroom window of a pair of ovaries, a womb and a single sperm. She explained the facts of life with huge enthusiasm and talked about how she’d made me with another man, not Dennis.
‘But can Dennis be my daddy?’ I’d apparently asked her, having digested the drawing on the window in silence for some minutes.
I didn’t remember this conversation. It became one of those memories I formed in my head from Mum recounting it to me when I was older. She often used the story about the biological drawings to embarrass me as a teenager. But the upshot of that bath-time chat was Dennis became my father in everything but name. Not stepfather, because he and Mum never married, but also because calling Dennis a ‘step’ felt disloyal. He was more than that to me. He was everything. Adrian, a stranger I’d never met and knew nothing about, was technically my father, but Dennis was my dad.
He and Mum had bought the house in Castleton a couple of years on and had taught at Norwich ever since, combining academic life with their social crusades. These days, subjects they felt strongly about included but were not limited to: the demise of the Labour Party, the lack of education funding, the lack of NHS funding, Andrew Marr, the bus service in their area of Norfolk and the price of milk in the Tesco Express.
Both he and Mum were now sixty and retained the zeal and energy of Russian revolutionaries. That’s why I was called Lil, or Lilian technically, after one of Mum’s favourite suffragettes, Lilian Lenton. She was a flinty-eyed woman who, in a black and white picture taken in 1955, looked like a witch. But she’d been part of the suffragist movement during the pre-First World War years, committing arson, going on hunger strike and escaping prison so many times she was nicknamed the ‘tiny Pimpernel’.
Mum put the spoon down beside the cooker and gathered up a pile of papers in her hands, moving them from the table to the wooden dresser underneath the kitchen window. Gerald the tortoise was eating a piece of lettuce under a kitchen chair.
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ I said. ‘Jess – tea?’
She nodded at me. ‘Yep, please. What you making?’
‘Well,’ said Mum, a note of uncertainty in her voice. ‘I picked some plums from the farm this week, so it’s supposed to be plum jam. But…’ she stopped and peered into the pan, ‘I’m not sure it’s going to set properly. So it might be plum sauce, at this rate.’
‘Delicious,’ said Jess.
‘Mmmm,’ said Mum, still peering into the pan, before she spun around again. ‘But forget the jam. How are you both?’
‘Jess has exciting news actually,’ I said, keen to deflect attention from me.
‘Oh yes?’ said Mum.
‘I think I’m in love,’ said Jess, a faraway smile on her face.
‘Oh that is exciting,’ said Mum, stirring the plums. ‘Who with?’ Mum loved a romance. If I ever came home from school when I was younger and even mentioned a boy’s name, she’d start asking about who he was and did he want to come over for tea.
‘He’s a Russian art collector, called Alexi. I only met him recently. Lil was there, actually, so it’s super quick but we spent all last night together and just…’ Jess exhaled loudly, ‘I think he’s the dream.’
I’d gone through this process several times with Jess. Complete and utter obsession with a man for a few weeks, couldn’t think about anything else, mentioned his name every other sentence, fantasized about their future life and how many children they’d have until it was nearly intolerable for the rest of us. If falling in love was like being high, it was as if Jess had taken several drugs simultaneously.
I’d felt that high briefly when I started going out with Jake, but then it mellowed into something more sedate, less manic. I longed for that thrill again. That buzz of clicking with someone and wanting to spend every minute with them, of dreading the moment you had to leave them even if it was for a night. Of falling into a gloom if you weren’t going to see them for a few days. That was love, right? It made idiots of us all, but it was also the most intoxicating feeling in the world.
Which is why whenever Jess declared she’d fallen in love, part of me felt jealous. How did she manage it? How did she fall in love and find someone who fell in love with her back, when I couldn’t even get a reply on WhatsApp? I didn’t want to feel bitter towards my best friend, but it seemed a tiny bit unfair. Although her latest story kept Mum distracted for half an hour, before she said she had to nip into town to drop off the jam at the village hall for the market in the morning.
That’s how I ended up standing outside Mum and Dennis’s bathroom, having handed the damp, positive pregnancy stick to Jess. I didn’t do the second test. We’ve all seen films where the woman has the bladder of a horse and does 193 pregnancy tests, simply unable to believe that it’s positive. But firstly, I didn’t have any wee left, and secondly, it was like I kind of knew.
I didn’t know know. I wasn’t telepathic. But from the moment on the train when I realized I was late, I suspected. I still hoped I wasn’t pregnant with a strange man’s baby, but a little voice inside my brain told me I was. I put a hand on my stomach. I was pregnant with the baby of a man I’d met once. I was carrying a bundle of cells, half of which technically belonged to someone else. It felt freakishly intimate. What was one normally left with after a first date? A bad case of thrush? A string of embarrassing, flirty WhatsApp messages which stop immediately the morning after when you both realize it wasn’t meant to be? I remembered Jimmy Day in biology lessons at school once asking Mrs Martin if it was true that semen survived for three days. Mrs Martin had looked at him with the unfazed expression of a long-serving biology teacher and said yes, spermatozoa could indeed survive for up to seventy-two hours, or even longer in the correct, ‘hospitable environment’.
Jimmy had sniggered and gone round for weeks afterwards asking confused girls if their stomachs were ‘hospitable environments’. I don’t know what happened to Jimmy. I suspect he hadn’t gone off to work in Silicon Valley or find the solution to world peace.
While leaning against the bathroom doorframe, I felt Jess’s hand on my arm.
‘You all right?’
I nodded slowly and looked at the test in her hand. ‘Yeah, but shall we get rid of that and go for a walk before they get back?’
‘Good plan,’ said Jess.
I took the stick back from Jess and went to the kitchen, where I grabbed a Co-op bag from under the sink and bundled it in there.
We walked for five minutes, straight to the pub, via a bin just outside the village shop where I chucked the plastic bag.
‘What d’you want?’ said Jess, once inside the Fox and Cushion, as I looked around for a table.
I opened my mouth to say ‘vodka and tonic’ and then stopped.
Jess read my mind. ‘I think you need one.’
I shook my head. ‘Nope. Just… lemonade?’
I found a table in the corner, bench along the back, rickety wooden chair on the other side of it. I sat. My brain was flitting about like a sparrow, unable to settle on any thought for more than a few seconds.
In your twenties, maybe in your teens, did you ever play that game with your girlfriends: what would you do if you got pregnant? Jess and I would discuss it at uni from time to time, together with our three flatmates – Nats, Lucy and Bells – as we lay on the sofa watching Ready, Steady, Cook, still in our tracksuit bottoms, still hung-over from the night before. Probably one of us had had a scare, or forgotten to take our pill, and the answer had always seemed obvious. ‘Get rid of it,’ we would agree, before discussing whether it was a red tomato or green pepper day. We could just about afford to keep ourselves in pasta and have enough money left over for tequila in Edinburgh nightclubs. The thought of a baby was laughable. Not for us. We had plans. We were going to graduate, get jobs, work and have children at a blurry date in the future. That was how it would go.
When we got to our mid-twenties, nearer thirty, the question came up again in cheap Italian restaurants in London where we met for catch-up dinners. Breadsticks. Bottles of chianti that made your teeth furry. Bowls of spaghetti, or tricolore salads for the ones who were on diets. By that point, I’d been going out with Jake for a few years. The others had boyfriends too. Apart from Jess, who always had someone but was about to move on to a different victim.
The game had become trickier by this stage, more of a moral maze. If we’d got pregnant with our boyfriends, what would we do? There were still dozens of reasons not to: lack of money, I wanted to spend more years teaching, I remained too young, I wanted to get married first, I wasn’t even sure that I could keep a baby alive. What if I dropped my imaginary baby on its head and it fell on that soft bit where its skull hasn’t fused yet? That seemed like the kind of thing I would do.
But the idea of being pregnant was less terrifying than it had been at uni. I was in a long-term relationship with Jake, I wanted to have children with him one day anyway, he had a job which could just about support us. Plus, what if I got pregnant, then aborted it, then found out I couldn’t have any more? We decided at these dinners that it would depend on the circumstances and we wouldn’t necessarily ‘get rid of it’. Then we’d order another bottle of wine and merrily move on to another topic – some new TV drama, our mothers, how much we hated our bosses, whether one of us should get a pixie cut or would it make our face look fat?
A few years on, people started getting married and having babies anyway and the game was forgotten. Everyone started changing their Facebook profile pictures to them on their wedding day, like a badge of honour. There was Nats being showered with confetti as she came out of church. Lucy sitting in the back of a posh car, beaming through the window. Bells on her new husband’s shoulders, the dress bunched up around her hips, while we all waved sparklers around her. My profile picture remained just me, on the beach in Norfolk, a picture taken by Dennis a few years ago.
Jess came back from the bar, a white wine in one hand, lemonade in the other.
‘Right,’ she said, sitting down and raising her eyebrows at me, ‘what you going to do?’
I shrugged. ‘Honestly, I don’t know.’
‘Did you miss a day? Or take it at a different time?’
I shook my head. The packet lived on my bedside table and I always took it when I woke up in the morning.
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