Chapter 13
The following Sunday evening, I found myself – or rather, Adam found himself – with a clear inbox. I’d filed that week’s answers to Greg on time and received the usual monosyllabic response. I’d read through all the incoming problems and decided which of them was on the shortlist for a reply the following week, although I hadn’t drafted my answers yet, in case anything juicier arrived in the meantime.
So it felt like a usual Sunday evening at home – or what used to be a usual Sunday evening before Adam and his… followers? Clients? Patients? I wasn’t sure what to call them, had become part of my life. I was on the sofa with Astro lying on my feet. A half-eaten carton of chicken and cashew udon was on the coffee table next to me, the lid propped on top of it to prevent Astro rummaging through the bits of bean sprout and carrot for fragments of chicken, like a cat fishing for koi carp in a pond.
My phone was on the sofa next to me, dark and silent, and the telly was on, tuned to a repeat of last year’s Eurovision Song Contest, which I wasn’t really watching. And then I felt a vibration coming through the sofa cushion next to me, shortly followed by the buzz of my phone.
I snatched it up and saw an incoming WhatsApp from Amelie.
I hadn’t heard from her in over a week. She’d read my messages giving her updates on my progress as Adam, although I’d carefully avoided asking for her advice on a couple of the problems he’d been sent. But she hadn’t responded in much detail at all. Just the briefest acknowledgments: All good here, miss you. Can’t read now, will try tomorrow. You’ve got this Luce, don’t worry.
But of course I was worried. Not so much about my ability to fly solo as Adam without driving his correspondents to drink, domestic violence, or involuntary celibacy – for now, at least, I was reasonably confident that wouldn’t happen on my watch. But about my sister. Her silence was unusual; Amelie was normally a multiple-times-a-day texter. She was on honeymoon. Even given the five-hour time difference, I’d have expected her to be sending me gushing updates on what she and Zack were up to – how glorious the weather was, how delicious the food, how beautiful the tropical fish they saw on their scuba dives, how off-the-scale the sex.
But there’s been nothing. And now she was calling me. Something must be wrong.
I snatched up my phone and hit the green button, after missing it a couple of times in my haste. Amelie’s familiar face filled the screen. She was half-sitting, half-lying on what looked like a deck chair or a sun lounger. She was wrapped in a fluffy white towel with the neon yellow strap of a bikini top emerging from it and circling round her neck. Her hair hung in damp tendrils around her face. Bars of sunshine fell over her body in alternating dark and light stripes.
‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘I thought you’d been eaten by a shark.’
She giggled. ‘Almost was, yesterday. At least, I thought it was a shark but apparently it was only a dolphin. Still, I’ll take it as a near miss and tell my grandchildren about it one day.’
I could only just hear her, so I turned up the sound on my phone. ‘Why are you whispering?’
‘Zack’s in the shower. We’ve called a screen ban for the honeymoon so I have to sneak online whenever he’s not around. Otherwise I’d be on social media all the time and he’d be on Teams. It’s better this way.’
‘Are you having a nice time?’
‘Off the scale. You should see our suite – there’s a free-standing bath that’s so massive I can only lie down if I jam my feet in Zack’s crotch, otherwise I’d drown. We’ve been having cocktails at lunchtime every day and yesterday I ate so much lobster I thought I’d legit burst. And isn’t it incredible how you don’t get hangovers on holiday?’
‘Amazing,’ I said, although I hadn’t been on that kind of holiday in the longest time.
‘Anyway,’ she leaned into the screen as if she was sitting next to me on my sofa, not thousands of miles away, ‘how’s it going? How’s Adam?’
‘Busy. I think I’ve been doing all right. Listen, while you’re here, what advice would you give a bloke who?—’
‘Stop.’ She held up a hand. ‘Luce, we discussed this. I’ve love to help, but it’s a slippery slope. I tell you what advice you should give this guy and the next thing you’d be asking me about the next one and the next and we’d be back to square one and Zack would probably divorce me.’
I thought, not for the first time, that if Zack would even consider divorcing her over something so trivial, he needed to take a long, hard look at himself. But I’d agreed to stop asking her for help with Adam, and I wasn’t going to break my promise.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Your loss. And it was a really juicy email, too, you’d have loved it. But I’m not going to tell you now, even if you beg me.’
Amelie giggled, softly and breathily. ‘No begging. Not a chance. But speaking of blokes, there’s another one I wanted to ask you about.’
I suspected I already knew who she meant. But I asked anyway. ‘There is? Who?’
‘Your man at work. Ross. Is he?—’
She stopped, and I saw her glance away, towards the dark shadow on the edge of the picture, which I assumed was the interior of their hotel bedroom – or suite, rather.
‘Is he what?’
‘Zack’s finished in the shower. I heard the water stop. Bollocks – he normally wallows in there for hours like a walrus, but we haven’t had breakfast yet so he must be rushing. I’ll call again when I can, okay?’
‘Okay.’ I hesitated. Amelie was fine. She was having a wonderful time on honeymoon. She hadn’t been eaten by a shark. But still, I was worried. Something about her – the whispers, the clandestine video call, the fact that it had taken (presumably) a three-line whip from Bryony for her to contact me at all – concerned me. It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t like my sister. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’
‘Course! I’m brilliant. Speak soon, love you Luce.’ She was still whispering, but so quickly that the words ran together. SpeaksoonloveyouLuce.
‘Love you. Bye.’
The screen went dark again. I looked at it, puzzled. I mean, a ban on work and social media use when you were on honeymoon made sense, in a way. It was a time when, I supposed, you wanted to be gazing into each other’s eyes not at your Tiktok feed. A time when you were meant to be practising sex positions, not selfie angles.
But even so. Amelie used her phone a lot, but she wasn’t obsessive about it. When we met up, she’d talk and listen, her phone on the table next to her, vibrating or lighting up intermittently, and she’d barely give it a glance. If I was Zack, I wouldn’t feel excluded or threatened by that at all.
So who had imposed this so-called ban, and why?
For the first time in months, I flicked open the Instagram app. I never posted on there myself – what would I post? There are only so many cat photos the world needs. Actually, that number was pretty high, given the two dozen or so exclusively cat-related feeds I’d followed when I first opened my account a few years back. But that didn’t mean I wanted to join them – Astro was a companion, not a celebrity, and everyone who loved him already knew what he looked like.
And there was nothing remotely insta-worthy in the rest of my life. I went to work, I came home. I ate takeaways or things on toast. I rarely bought new clothes or wore make-up. There was no aspirational hashtag-worthy content whatsoever being generated by my life.
I didn’t want to be going out for cocktails that cost north of twenty quid each on Friday nights or spending three quarters of an hour doing my face or eating buddha bowls or having everything showers on Monday evenings. I liked my life. But still, I didn’t want to be reminded, in unfiltered real time, how different it was from those of other people my age.
But now, I felt the need to look.
There was Nush’s carefully staged selfie of Amelie and her bridesmaids in the hotel before the wedding, glowing and smiling. There were Amelie and Zack next to each other in their business-class seats en route to their island paradise honeymoon – presumably before the screen ban had been imposed. There was Miranda at the hairdresser, having violet streaks added to her glossy almost-black hair.
And there was Bryony, in a post from Friday night. It wasn’t just one image, but a whole slideshow of them. Her in her bedroom, wearing jeans and a white broderie crop top, her hair artfully tousled round her face, her even white teeth showing between taupe-painted lips. ‘First date ready!’ she’d posted, with a selection of emojis ranging from the clinking champagne glasses to the boyfriend and girlfriend.
She must have posted at the end of the evening, I thought. No one – not even her – would feel confident enough to post the boyfriend and girlfriend emoji before even leaving the house for a first date.
And, swiping through the slideshow of images, I saw that her confidence had been justified. Evidently the evening had involved a walk along the South Bank of the Thames, which had taken them past the London Eye and then through the forest of fairy-lit trees by Tate Modern, and finished with Tower Bridge in the background. Then they’d moved on somewhere for cocktails. He’d had what looked like a dry martini with an olive in it, and she’d had something clear and pale pink, with a flower floating in it. After that they’d gone for burgers, and she’d persuaded her date to pose with her for a selfie, both of them clutching cheese-dripping, glossy-bunned edifices that looked like they should by rights have been impossible to lift with one hand. The wall behind them was bright red and hung with vintage vinyl LPs. They were both grinning delightedly.
It was Ross, of course. Ross and Bryony, on the date they must have arranged in a few minutes when he’d been away from his desk, leaving his sandwich behind – their #firstdate having #allthefun in #magicalLondon.
Bryony’s face, alight with excitement and promise – This date! This man! This moment! – reminded me all too starkly of how I’d felt after that first kiss with Kieren.
The morning after it happened, I was late for work. I texted my line manager and told her my bus was stuck in traffic, but the truth was I’d overslept – and overslept because I hadn’t been able to get to sleep the previous night. Instead, I’d lain there, the duvet pulled up to my chin, remembering and remembering that kiss.
And not only the kiss – the things that had gone before it. The things he’d said to me – talented, beautiful, sexy. The memory made me tingle all over. Part of me felt as if, if nothing like that ever happened to me again, it wouldn’t matter. I’d have this to cherish and remember always.
But a much bigger part was avid to hear him say those things again, to kiss me again, to have him here next to me in my bed, to wake up with him in the morning.
When I arrived at my desk, I forgot all the guilt and stress of being late, because there, just visible underneath my keyboard, was a page torn from a spiral-bound reporter’s notebook. At the bottom of the page was a letter K, bold and slanting, written in the familiar blue ink of Kieren’s fountain pen, the same colour as his eyes.
I made myself wait to read it until I’d switched on my computer, made coffee and checked my email before I read it. I didn’t mind waiting – the anticipation was glorious, electric.
And it was worth waiting for.
Lucy (The L was tall and slanting too, same as his own initial at the bottom of the page. The letters our names started with were next to each other in the alphabet, I realised, as if it was some kind of sign.)
I’ve been thinking about you all night. Who taught you to kiss like that? Whoever he is, I want to shake his hand – or maybe kill him. Come over and see me when you can – I want to look at you.
That was all, but it might as well have been a love poem going on for verse after verse for all the delight it brought me.
I got up and walked slowly across the office. Kieren was already at his desk – he’d have been there for hours; he was always one of the first in. I could see the back of his head, the dark hair, the faded collar of his green corduroy shirt, the leather jacket slung over the back of his chair.
As if sensing my approach, he stopped typing and turned around.
‘Good morning.’ He smiled.
‘Good morning.’ I felt an answering smile spread over my face.
‘Sleep well?’
‘Not really.’ It was like we were speaking in code, our words concealing a wonderful shared secret.
‘Me neither.’
His eyes travelled up and down my body, his smile intensifying as he looked at me. I felt something deep inside me soften, as if I was melting or evaporating.
‘Need a hand with anything?’ I asked.
It was a question I’d posed to him often, but today it felt loaded with innuendo, and I saw him register that, his eyes sparkling with humour.
‘Not right now. Maybe later?’
‘You know where to find me,’ I said.
Then I turned and walked back to my desk, slowly, allowing my hips to move in a way they never normally did, knowing that he’d be watching me all the way.
I struggled to get any work done that day. Every time I tried to focus my eyes on my screen, I saw his face. When I got up to go to the bathroom, the kitchen or the printer, I felt him watching me. Whenever I heard someone approach my desk, I prayed that it would be him – even though I knew it wasn’t, because the sound of his footsteps was already as familiar to me as the opening bars of a favourite piece of music.
He didn’t speak to me again until the evening, when it was just about time to go home. I didn’t want to go home, though – I wanted to stay and stay, until it was just us left, until it was time for what had happened the previous night to happen again.
And it did.
Just before six, I heard him behind me. Perversely, I didn’t turn around but kept tapping busily away at my keyboard, savouring the anticipation of him talking to me.
‘Lucy?’ he said at last.
I typed a couple more words, then stopped and swung my chair around.
‘Hey, Kieren.’
‘Do you have half an hour?’
‘Of course.’
‘I don’t want to keep you.’
I smiled. ‘I don’t mind being kept.’
Again, I felt that electric sizzle between us – the innocuous words meaning something completely different. I stood, and instead of following him back across the bullpen to his desk, I walked ahead, letting him look at me.
He pulled a chair over for me and we sat down, our heads close over a pile of proofs. I can’t even remember what was on them – they might as well have been blank pages. Because after a couple of minutes, I felt his hand on my thigh, under the desk where no one could see. It rested there for a moment, then moved slightly upwards, pushing my skirt higher.
I stifled a gasp and saw him smile, then bent my head determinedly down again, watching the ink from his pen marking the paper. Around me, I could hear computers shutting down, people beginning to leave, the swish of coats, voices calling out goodbyes.
At last, there was silence – apart from my breathing, faster than usual, almost ragged.
‘Looks like we’re the last ones standing,’ Kieren said.
‘We aren’t standing,’ I pointed out.
He laughed. ‘Figure of speech. But we can stand if you like.’
‘Or lie down,’ I suggested boldly.
‘Lucy.’ He shook his head. ‘Don’t say that. One, you’re torturing me. Two, I wouldn’t disrespect you like that. Not here. And three?—’
I never found out what three would have been, because I kissed him, turning my chair so my knees were outside of his, putting my hands on his shoulders and pulling him in close.
The kiss went on and on, and I didn’t want it to ever stop. His stubble was harsh against my face, but his lips were so soft they felt almost liquid. His shoulders under my hands were lean, almost bony. The skin of his neck was smooth as velvet.
My entire body felt suffused with desire, like every cell had been charged with electricity. I didn’t want the kiss to end, but at the same time I wanted more – I wanted to feel every part of our bodies touching, not just our lips. I wanted to taste more than just his tongue. I wanted to see his hands on my bare skin, not just feel them through my tights.
But you can’t carry on kissing for ever, however much you want to. It either leads on to more, or it ends.
This ended.
‘Come on, Princess,’ Kieren said at last. ‘We should get you home.’
‘Why?’ I asked, teasing him. ‘I don’t want to go home.’
He laughed. ‘You minx. Do you think I want you to? But I can’t bear this much longer, and like I said – I’m not doing anything here. You’re worth more than that.’
His words were so sweet they overpowered the bitter disappointment of stopping. He helped me into my coat, walked with me to the lift, kissed me again on the way down, and again we parted in the street.
Again, I made my way home on a cloud of bliss, like it wasn’t the Tube transporting me but some kind of magic carpet.
That must be how Bryony had felt, heading home after her date with Ross. If she had gone home, that is – it was far more likely that she’d gone back to his, or he’d gone home with her, and her magic-carpet Tube journey had only happened the following morning.
This, I told myself, swiping away from the images and dropping my phone on the sofa, then standing up so quickly Astro leaped off my feet and squawked in protest as I took my leftover chicken to the kitchen, this is why I never go on social media.
I wasn’t in the mood for a tear-jerking romcom that evening. Tears felt too close to the surface to need any help, and letting them fall would have brought me no comfort. Instead, I raided my bookshelf for my battered Terry Pratchett collection and read Witches Abroad, my all-time favourite, right the way through. I knew the story so well I could practically have recited it from memory, but it still transported me to a different world: a world where Ross and Bryony weren’t an item, or perhaps one where, if someone was writing my story, it would end with, ”And they lived happily ever after.’