Chapter 23
23
Bel suggested she and Connor meet for a pre-match drink elsewhere in Didsbury, and walk to Ci Vediamo together. Otherwise they’d have to snap into a loved-up mode they hadn’t practiced and quite possibly couldn’t pull off, as soon as their shoes hit the pavement outside the cab.
Appearances were everything here, so Bel had bought a dress for the occasion: a strapless black mini with maribou feather trim along the hem, plus sheer tights and black stilettoes, which she had to balance on carefully, as if she was on ice. Her hair was in a big bundle of salon-created up-do with artful wisps. The lip-linered brick-pink lips and false-lashed eyes she did at home.
It had been witty in the planning and felt fairly ludicrous in practice, not least because it was straining to be sexy. Bel accepted her usual half-arsed style was a form of protection. If you’d not tried that hard, no one could mock your effort. She was strangely vulnerable, and more so when she was plus-oneing with terminally judgemental Captain Cheekbones.
When she walked into the carpets-and-wooden-beams pub she’d chosen, Connor had a table and a pint in front of him. He was in a light grey, thin wool jumper, his hair shorter, clean-shaven. Unhelpfully, he looked like an enhanced version of office Connor.
He got up to insist he buy her wine, but not before Bel caught a look of extreme despondency on his face before he’d seen her. Was an evening in her company that much of an ordeal? She knew the likely answer.
‘Did Jennifer have a nice visit?’ Bel asked, once they both had a beverage, and Connor momentarily looked wrongfooted that she knew that much.
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing too strenuous. Dinner at Erst in the Northern Quarter if you know it? Yeah, it was really good.’
As predicted, even without anyone listening in, it was tricky to find topics that were sufficiently innocuous. As they drained their drinks, Bel’s anxiety that they weren’t about to magically transform into relaxed, fizzy chemistry made her snap.
‘Connor, I’m worried it’s not going to work if there’s this between us,’ she whispered, through gritted teeth, flapping her hands at the air.
‘A pub table?’ Connor said.
Bel hadn’t eaten much through a combination of butterflies and the pressure of a tight dress, and a large Sauvignon Blanc had landed fairly hard.
‘The obvious frost of arseiness,’ Bel said. ‘The touch of cold arse in the air.’
‘How do you mean?’
She smiled. ‘You tolerate me at best.’
‘Whereas you’re super keen on me?’ Connor said, with a sardonic look.
They stood up to leave, Bel picking her way carefully across the carpet.
‘When you see two people in close conversation, you can immediately tell if they’re involved or not,’ Bel said, as they emerged into the street. ‘The body language, the eye contact, the way they lean in when they talk. If they’re new, it’s all intense. The whole “nobody else in the room” feeling.’
‘Your point is …?’
‘We’ve been going out eight months and we recently moved in together, you’ve come up north for me. We’re serious, but we’re in the first flush of love. There’s still going to be the crackle of …’ she cleared her throat, ‘electricity . ’
‘Electricity?’ Connor repeated, dully.
You are going to have to act like you fancy the shit out of me, are you up to that considerable acting feat? was embarrassing enough to hint at, without Connor blanking her like this.
Bel ploughed on.
‘I’m giving you explicit permission for any physical contact during this evening. Anything that a couple would do. You’d not worry about putting your hand on your girlfriend’s knee. If it feels natural, do it.’
‘Right.’
Connor’s flat monosyllable made it clear she had offered a Snickers to someone with a severe peanut allergy.
‘I assume vice versa is allowed, too?’
‘I’ll probably cope,’ Connor said.
Yet she didn’t feel she could grab for his hand. If she didn’t have the courage when no one was watching, how much worse would it be when they were?
‘This is what I mean!’ Belle hissed. ‘The chilly sarcasm. Allgreat as office enemies, but I’m worried it’s going to knacker us cosplaying lovers.’
‘We’re not enemies!’ Connor said, looking surprisingly offended.
‘I wouldn’t call us friends?’ Bel said.
‘We’re colleagues,’ Connor replied.
‘You know how corporate team-building weekends do trust exercises? What’s our equivalent?’
Connor sighed and put his hands in his pockets. They couldn’t arrive like this, Bel thought. You wouldn’t believe they’d share a Netflix login, let alone knocked boots.
‘OK. My bra size is 34DD. I think they’re holding up quite well but if I was on top and lights on, I’d definitely be self-conscious enough to keep my shoulders back, like …’
Bel stopped and gestured a tension in her chest, performing an impression of a heavy-lidded, coital gaze, mouth gone slack. She dropped it and grinned again.
‘I don’t bother with waxing because I’m too lazy. I bought one of those at-home hair removal IPL things. I am worried with my styling skills it looks like roadkill.’
Bel glanced over and Connor was grimacing. He actually grimaced at the notion of her nude. He was so not her kind of person: pube jokes were life.
‘Sorry, what’s the point of this?’ Connor said.
‘It’s the private stuff you’d know if we were seeing each other. I’m breaking down our barriers.’
‘I don’t think they’ll ask me to draw a picture?’ he said, with distaste.
Could he give her a tiny bit less of the I Am Repelled By You Physically And In Other Ways Too vibe?
‘I’m fast-tracking a sense of intimacy between us, through the cold water shock plunge of sensitive information.’
‘How do you imagine this will help? Are we walking into a Mr & Mrs quiz, round one: “Is he circumcised?”’
‘Are you?’ she said, brash with nerves.
‘Fucking hell! No. I don’t much want to talk about private stuff as prep if that’s OK? I feel a man doing it to a woman would be taken very differently, too.’
Oof. That hit home, he was right.
‘All right, apologies, zero by way of grot,’ said Bel, holding her ‘New Jersey wife’ red manicured hands up, trying to sound breezily unbothered.
‘I don’t think chatting about our genitalia brings “ease”, in British society,’ Connor said, and although he was at least smiling as he said it, Bel was suitably mortified.
Sharing the state of one’s depilation, only to be firmly put in your place because you were grossing out the listener, was not a pleasant sensation. They walked the rest of the distance in silence, with Bel feeling, thanks to white wine pissedness, self-beclowning and apprehension, borderline tearful.
Connor turned to her as the fairy lit palm trees appeared in the distance.
‘We’ll be fine.’
He took her hand, and having not anticipated this whatsoever, Bel felt self-conscious at it revealing she was sweating. She was having a bout of extremely ill-timed stage fright.
They joined the hubbub of the bar and immediately got: ‘Andwho are you?’ from not only the door police, but other guests.
‘Hi! We’re the “first day at school” ones here– we only met Amber a fortnight ago. Well, my girlfriend did, I’ll let her tell the story,’ Connor said, ‘Connor and Bella … A Peroni is great, thanks … One of these?’
He lifted a Prosecco from a passing tray and handed it to her, clinked.
‘Amber’s popular, huh? I’d not get a third of this turnout.’ He paused to gently and affectionately brush an artful wisp of Bel’s sweepy fringe out of her eyes. ‘You look really great, by the way.’
Bel was a mixture of piteously thankful and completely stunned. Where had Connor been hiding this easy-going lookalike, the whole time?