Читать книгу What Happens Now - Sophia Money-Coutts - Страница 11

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.