Dominic
Tim, the groom, is sleeping, head pressed against the window, and Theo is doing the same, only he’s using Tim as his pillow.
Charlie and Graham are playing snap because they bought a pack of cards in the Eurostar departure lounge, with big ideas about poker, and then realised they don’t know how to play anything other than snap.
Two of the stag’s mates from work, whose names I didn’t fully get at the start of the trip and therefore have avoided calling anything all weekend, are sharing headphones to watch a film on an iPad.
Tim’s younger brother, Ed, has gone to see if they’ve got any of the ‘really cool Dutch crisps’ in the bar car.
I try to get my phone to connect to the very not working Wi-Fi so I can see if Orla has messaged me.
‘How’re you feeling?’ Ed is back, holding three packets of said crisps. I look up.
‘Not bad,’ I say. ‘I was pretty restrained, went harder on the first night. Always the trick.’
‘Lucky you,’ he replies. The train lurches and he looks even more nauseous. ‘I had seven beers last night.’
He reads in my face that I clearly think these are amateur numbers, and says, ‘I haven’t been drinking this year, solidarity with Jules and all that.’
‘I didn’t know you were having another one,’ I reply, my enthusiasm entirely genuine.
Ed and his wife had a nightmare getting pregnant with their first kid.
I remember Tim glumly telling me at the pub that he was worried they might ask him to be a sperm donor.
I reassured him that given he was eleven before he could tell the time, they probably wouldn’t want his DNA. ‘That’s great news,’ I add.
‘Yeah.’ He looks bashful. ‘Nice to have a weekend away before the madness starts again. And I reckon it’s the last stag I’ll go on, now Tim’s finally locked someone down.
Getting a bit old for it all these days.
’ As he finishes the sentence he seems to realise that he’s said something potentially offensive because his face falls.
‘I only mean. . .’ he says, with no idea what he’s going to follow it up with. I laugh, to put him out of his misery.
‘I know,’ I say. ‘Fewer and fewer of us singles left.’
My laugh has done too good a job of reassuring him because he beams and then doubles down. ‘Not even fewer – none. You’re literally the only one left.’
‘No,’ I start, looking around the carriage. ‘I’m not the only. . .’ I trail off. Because of all the men in our group here, I actually— yeah. I actually am. ‘Fuck me,’ I say. ‘You’re right.’
He looks worried. ‘But you like it that way, right?’
The train crackles with an announcement, first in Dutch and then in English, telling us that we’re about to arrive into London.
‘I’d better sit down,’ Ed says. It’s not a flight, he absolutely doesn’t need to take his seat for landing, but I sense he thinks he’s put his foot in it and wants to escape.
His guilt is entirely misplaced. I was surprised to realise that all of our gang are married, but certainly not upset. Like he said, I like it.
We’re out in the station before my phone finally decides to start working.
Orla has indeed messaged me. Her flight has landed – good old Ryanair, not going to risk paying compensation by being a minute late.
She’s navigating customs and then she’ll be in a cab, which gives me two and a half hours to be ready for her.
It’s a cold, clear day. Sunday lunchtime.
We all say our goodbyes, exchanging hugs and excitement about the wedding, and then they’re all on the Tube, or trains to the countryside, where their wives and kids are awaiting their return.
I, on the other hand, decide to walk from Kings Cross to my flat, a pleasing twenty-ish minute stroll over to Barnsbury.
I stop at M rocket salad, because someone I dated in my twenties insisted that plates needed salad and I’ve realised she’s right; and a packet of chocolate mini rolls because Orla told me last time I saw her that her mother didn’t let her have sugar as a kid, so she’s never enjoyed any chemical-riddled party foods.
Then I stop at the florist by the Tube to get something to make the flat smell nice, and the wine shop for the velvety red she was so taken by on her last visit.
Seduction shop completed, I let myself in through the front door and then the door to my flat, and note with relief that I did not leave a load of laundry in the washing machine as I’d been intermittently telling myself I probably had.
I take a long, hot shower to get the train off me, then I pull on a pair of cords and a wool jumper she’d liked last time.
I change the sheets, put on some music and then start half reading, half pretending to read.
I splay the book cover down when the intercom goes, hoping she’ll notice that I’m halfway through something that won a lot of very highbrow literary prizes.
‘Hello?’ I answer.
‘Did you want to buy some drugs?’ she says, voice loud.
‘Absolutely not, I’m waiting in for the Mormons,’ I respond, buzzing her in.
She manages to look sexy even while pulling a wheelie suitcase, which is quite an achievement. ‘Trying to get me in trouble with the neighbours?’ I ask, kissing her.
‘Always.’
Orla finds my relationship with the people downstairs extremely amusing.
They’re a stern-looking couple in their early twenties who put a TRADITIONAL VALUES sticker in their window.
Orla is fully aware that I have a decent number of female visitors come through the flat, and takes great joy in both being one of them, and being provocative about being one of them.
‘You look gorgeous,’ I say, entirely truthfully.
She’s just got off a plane but she’s the kind of very thin, very pale woman who looks neat even when she should really look rumpled.
Her dark hair is pulled back severely, her skin a blinding contrast against her black T-shirt when she takes her coat off.
‘Can I have a shower?’ she asks. ‘I—’ She stops herself. I imagine she was probably going to say something about being worried that she smells, and then realised that we’re not quite familiar enough for that.
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘There’s a robe on the back of the door and a hairdryer—’
‘I know.’
The first time she stayed she laughed at me for the Aesop products in the bathroom, the hairdryer and the make-up wipes.
Actually, first she accused me of having a girlfriend.
Then, after I absolutely insisted I didn’t and offered to let her go through the wardrobes to check for clothes, she laughed at me.
‘You really have enough girls through here to justify this?’
At the time I was surprised she’d said girl rather than woman, given that she’s an academic, and a feminist. But then this was three, four years ago?
So she would have been in her mid-, maybe late twenties.
More of a girl than a woman, arguably. I answered her honestly, at the time.
Told her that yes, I absolutely do have enough women come here to justify it.
She asked me how many and I said one, maybe two a month.
Plus a handful of friends who returned time and time again for what was hopefully a low-pressure, high-enjoyment rematch.
And after she’d asked me a laundry list of questions about how any of this could work, I took her to bed.
And the next time she was in town, she messaged me, Fancy a rematch?
And then I blinked and time passed, and we’ve done this for three nights every three months for three years.
Thirty-six rematches. All from that one fateful right-swipe on an app when she was in London for a few days.
‘I have bad news,’ Orla says, when she comes out of the shower. Her cheeks are pink and she’s wearing the towelling robe. Smiling up at me through her thick, dark lashes.
‘Has the shower shelf come off the wall? Because the guy who installed it was incredibly dodgy and I told him that—’
‘I’m in love with you,’ she says.
Right.
Shit.
She’s still smiling, which gives me the horrible feeling that she might think I’m going to say it back. I can’t say it back because I’m thinking that I’d much rather she’d told me that the shower shelf had come off the wall.
‘Is that. . . okay?’ she asks, her smile fading.
‘Of course it’s okay,’ I tell her, pouring her a glass of wine. She accepts the glass, holding it between both hands.
‘Do you—’ She pauses. ‘I mean, if I have to ask. . .’ She swallows. ‘I take it you. . . don’t?’
I’d love to lie to her. I really would. I’d love to tell her I love her, then take her to bed and see what she’s like to fuck when she’s just been told that she’s loved, and then tomorrow do the same thing, and then block her the second she gets on the plane back to Dublin and pretend none of this ever happened.
But for all the obvious reasons pertaining to my inconvenient moral code, I can’t do that.
‘You being here is incredible,’ I say, slowly.
‘Genuinely. I spent the entire weekend in Amsterdam thinking about counting the freckles on your shoulder blades, and asking what you thought of the last Rooney novel.’ I force myself to look her in the face, because she came here to tell me something that I mistakenly allowed her to think I was going to not only celebrate but return, and honestly the more this experience pains me the better I’ll feel about it afterwards.
‘But, no. I don’t. Not because I couldn’t – if I let myself then I would, absolutely.
But I’m not like that. I don’t want all the stuff those feelings entail.
Life-wise. So I’ve sort of. . . guarded against it. ’
She takes a long drink from her glass and then nods. ‘I get it,’ she says.
We stare at each other for a while. I think quite a long while. ‘D’you fancy a fuck anyway?’ she says, half laughing, with a twist of a sob in the middle of it.
After we shag, we sleep next to each other, my arms wrapped around her narrow torso, and then in the morning she leaves and I pretend to be asleep.