Chapter Three
Nine days later, on Sunday morning, Lucy stood in front of the bathroom mirror, trying to rearrange her hair into something that looked vaguely woke-up-like-this sexy.
She had, in fact, been up for a while, but liked to look like she hadn’t.
Artfully constructing a messy bun, showering thoroughly, cleaning her teeth, adding a subtle touch of lip balm and mascara.
Her phone buzzed with a message from Marco. Puncture c u one hour.
Marco was a man of few words, but he worked in insurance so she could hardly expect him to be one of life’s romantic poets.
She padded through to the kitchen and made herself a coffee, then put the door to her flat on the latch so he could let himself in.
She’d hear him lugging his bike up four flights of stairs long before he made it through the door and unleashed those stupid clicky shoes on her wooden floors, but at least this way she’d be in bed looking come-hither and sexy when he arrived.
In the early days Marco had asked her not to shower before they hooked up, because he liked her to be what he called ‘naturally womanly’.
But that was a hard no for Lucy – the idea of not being clean, or Marco stripping off after a couple of hours of sweaty cycling and rubbing his muddy ankles on her Egyptian cotton sheets, gave her the ick.
Lucy took her mug back to bed and propped herself up on a mountain of pillows, trying to revel in the blissful luxury of being single and childless and having absolutely nothing to do.
The alternative was contemplating WHY she was single and childless and had absolutely nothing to do, but nobody needed to go there.
She scrolled through her phone and completed her daily Wordle – she was currently on a winning streak of 482 days, which she was keen not to break.
Today’s word was SPLAT, which she solved in three attempts after a lucky first guess.
There was a simple pleasure in a three-go win that was also an onomatopoeia, but maybe that was just being a writer and a self-confessed language nerd.
She didn’t know any others, so she couldn’t ask.
Lucy closed Wordle and skipped to TikTok, deciding to see if Kristoff had an account so she could prepare herself for small talk in Zermatt on Thursday.
She’d been on several video calls with him as part of the wider Titan team, but they’d never had a one-to-one conversation or met in person.
As expected, he had an account – called KristoffTheTitan, which was all kinds of embarrassing for him – mostly featuring him being drop-dead gorgeous and important in glamorous locations.
If he wasn’t boarding a jet to some world forum on sexual health or a celebrity gala, he was working out with his shirt off in one of his home gyms in Geneva, New York, London or Stockholm, showcasing an incredibly honed physique.
There was also a video from his thirty-fifth birthday a few months before, featuring thirty-five cakes stacked on top of each other to create a giant erect penis that was hidden under a Titan-branded condom made of parachute silk.
Stay classy, Kristoff, thought Lucy, rolling her eyes.
Sasha and Fran didn’t have TikTok, but Sasha was very active on LinkedIn (too boring to read on a Sunday) and Fran was on Instagram.
Lucy scrolled through her grid, but there was nothing remotely interesting, just pictures of hilly landscapes, a yappy-looking white dog, a Christmas tree, a glass of wine on a cafe table next to pair of sunglasses.
A distinct lack of creative effort on Fran’s part, but that was par for the course.
Maybe she should get Nate to do that for her too.
On a whim, Lucy searched for Nate Lambert, and was surprised to find he had an Instagram account.
His grid was mostly arty shots of Bristol or Paris and the occasional selfie looking a little shy and awkward, usually in sunglasses.
More intriguing was the black-and-white shot of him surfing, windblown and focused and incredibly fit, which made Lucy wonder who had taken it and whether they’d been as aroused as she was by the sight of his strong thighs in a wetsuit.
Another picture from a year ago featured an acoustic guitar on a chair, which was intriguing because he’d never struck her as the musical type.
But then Lucy realised she knew pretty much nothing about him – Nate could have three kids, a vegetable allotment and a houseful of foster kittens, for all she knew.
No sign of cats on his Instagram, but there were a few pictures of him hugging a black Labrador that reminded Lucy a little of Sasha’s dog Walter, which she’d often brought into the Bristol office before she spent most of her time in London.
Sasha had a house near Bath, but Lucy had heard from Jonno that her promotion to head office had come with a huge bonus that had allowed her to buy a flat in Chiswick too.
Lucy looked at her watch and realised she’d been browsing Nate’s Instagram for nearly half an hour.
She had no idea why, since he wasn’t even coming to Zermatt and she wouldn’t have to pretend to find him interesting.
But there was something about him that made her want to find out more; and it hadn’t escaped her notice that he was incredibly photogenic.
She clicked on her own Instagram profile and looked at her empty grid, wondering if she’d ever feel comfortable enough to post something of her own.
She’d thought about it lots of times – maybe a video about how her skincare routine had changed since she was in her thirties, or a photo montage of her favourite parts of Bristol, complete with funny captions.
But it had always felt dishonest and wrong to showcase her life in that way; to post photos or videos that plastered over the cracks of days when she did nothing more than two lots of laundry and an online word game.
So her social media accounts existed just for viewing other people’s content, in moments where she needed to detach from her own life and live vicariously through someone else’s.
Lucy shook her head and switched back to Nate’s Instagram, feeling restless and jittery.
She was just zooming in on a shot of him laughing at a wedding, the dark hair of a woman just visible at the edge of the frame but her face tantalisingly out of shot, when a knock on the door made her jump.
Marco’s face appeared, his legs caked in mud and his face red from the effort of carrying a three-grand bike up from street level.
‘Hey, carina,’ he said with a smile that made Lucy forget all about Nate’s wedding plus-one. ‘I’ll just have a shower and then I will be there.’
Lucy grinned and relaxed into the pillows, putting her phone down and sipping her coffee as Marco took off his shoes and padded through to her pristine bathroom.
She’d matched with him on Tinder a couple of summers ago, at a point where she’d realised that she didn’t want a romantic relationship of any kind, but absolutely wasn’t prepared to forgo great sex.
Anthony had come first (literally and figuratively), but he was a busy man, juggling several jobs and not always available when Lucy wanted company.
So she’d added Marco into the mix, and one or either of them was usually free when Lucy found herself at a loose end.
They came, they left. No strings, no pressure, nobody snoring in her bed or wanting anything more than she was willing to give.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Marco, appearing in the bedroom with a white towel wrapped around his slim hips.
When he wasn’t assessing insurance risk on the UK’s most treasured landmarks, Marco was a competitive triathlete – he’d taken part in the UK Ironman four times, and had the red M logo tattooed on his shoulder with four black lines next to it.
He was due to compete in his fifth later this year, so he could add the diagonal line to the tally and presumably move on to a new challenge before he started to look like the wall of a prison cell.
‘It’s fine,’ said Lucy, carefully putting her mug and phone on the bedside table as the familiar hum of arousal started to pulse through her veins. ‘I don’t have any plans this morning.’
Marco smiled seductively and sat on the edge of the bed, simultaneously leaning in to gently kiss Lucy’s neck and loosening the towel around his waist.
‘I have so many plans for you, carina,’ he said huskily, taking her hand and putting it somewhere that left her in absolutely no doubt about the nature and origin of his plans.
Lucy closed her eyes and arched her back, wondering whether Spanish women found the British accent as sexy as she found Marco’s.
Italian was just as hot, but what about French?
Her mind momentarily drifted to Nate talking on the phone in the office, which somehow merged into him peeling off that wetsuit and pressing his hard, wet body against hers.
‘My God, you are SO ready for me,’ whispered Marco, making Lucy gasp as his lips trailed down her neck and his fingers began their steady rhythm. Lucy’s bed on a Sunday morning was Marco’s church, and the only thing she needed to do was lie back and receive his devoted worship.
‘What are you doing for the rest of the day?’ asked Marco, pulling some clean cycling leggings over his sturdy thighs.
Months ago, Lucy had suggested he leave a spare set at her flat so he didn’t have to put sweaty kit back on, then she’d wash the dirty stuff for next time.
The irony didn’t escape her that Marco had never spent the night with her and she was only vaguely aware of when his birthday was, but she happily did his filthy laundry.
‘Life admin,’ said Lucy, who needed to clean out the fridge and wash her sheets, but that was about it. ‘Nothing very exciting.’
‘I’m going to a conference in Paris in a couple of weeks.’