You smiled. I liked your crooked teeth.
“All that air,” you repeated. “You are funny.”
“No. I’m just Irish.”
“True,” he said. “You do have a natural inbuilt advantage when it comes to humor. So.” You turned back to the breakfast cereals. “Seven-year-old girl. Mother is a health freak, so no sugary stuff. What would you choose?”
Seven-year-old girl? Well, there’d been no mention of a seven-year-old girl in your biography. I can’t say I was too fond of small girls. “Is this your daughter we’re talking about?”
“Yes. Sara. Her mother and I recently separated and now I’m a weekend dad. So I can’t afford to make any mistakes. My wife already thinks I’m going to leave my daughter somewhere or let her put her hand in a food blender. That kind of thing.”
“Weetabix then,” I said. “It has the least sugar of all the cereals.”
Your face softened and you smiled again. “See,” you said, “I knew you’d know about things like that. I knew you would. Do you have children of your own?”
“No. Not even vaguely.”
You looked at me then, and I could tell you were wondering whether or not to say something, something in particular.
I acted like I wasn’t fussed and, whatever it was, you decided against saying it. I could see you swallowing the words back into yourself. “Well, you have been most helpful. Thank you, Noelle.”
You picked up the Weetabix. And that was that.
But it was enough so that the next time I bumped into you, a week later, we had a little open-ended thing going on, a little rapport. We chatted about the weather a bit then. And the next time we chatted about some government scheme to ruin all the schools, which we’d both read about in the papers that morning. It was the fourth time, a month after the Education Show, that you said, “Have you ever tried that Eritrean place? By the tube?”
“As it happens, no I have not.”
“Well, it is excellent. I’ve been going there for years. You should try it... In fact...”
And there it came, your invitation to dinner.
Yes, Floyd.Your invitation to dinner.I know you will try to twist this and rewrite it, like you try to twist and rewrite everything, but you know and I know thatyou started this. You saw me, Floyd. You saw me and you wanted me. You asked me to dinner. You turned up at that dinner on time and smartly dressed. You did not look at me and say,This has been a terrible mistake,and do a runner. You smiled when I walked in, you stood, you took my shoulders, and you pressed your face against my face. You said, “You look lovely.” You waited until I’d sat down before you sat down. You maintained a steady line of eye contact.
You did. You totally, totally did.
And then it wasyou. You phoned me a few days later (just long enough to make me sweat, just long enough to make me think about calling you first but I did not.I did not.). And you invited me to your house.
Yes you did.
Your goal was clear that night. You wanted to fuck me. But that was OK because I wanted to be fucked by you. I didn’t care that dinner was somewhat perfunctory—what was it now? Pasta, I think, with some kind of shop-bought sauce that must have taken you all of five minutes to throw together. But a nice bottle of wine, if I recall. And we ended up on your sofa an hour later and while you were pulling at my clothes and panting all over me I said, “Believe it or not, I am a virgin, possibly the last one in existence.” And you were very kind about it. You didn’t laugh or say,You’re taking the piss. You didn’t recoil or sigh or tell me to go home. You were kind. You touched me all over until I was a blob and then you were slow and patient. And it did hurt. Yes, it really did. But I’d been expecting that and frankly, you weren’t the biggest boy in the class, if you know what I mean. A blessing really.
And I knew. I think I really did know from that point on that you and I were mainly about sex. And that was fine with me.
But I grew accustomed to you over the months, grew accustomed to your pillows and your cereal bowls, the smell of your scalp before you had a shower, the sight of your name on my phone when you called or texted. You inhabited a big chunk of my life: over 30 percent if we’re going to talk in numbers. And probably 30 percent of that 30 percent was sex. The rest was just lying in your bed listening to you shower, waiting for your calls, watching you cook, watching you eat, sitting on your sofa watching TV with you, meals out from time to time, walks in the park from time to time, making arrangements to meet. That’s a lot of shared existence for two people in a sex-based relationship, a lot of time not having sex. More than enough time for a bond to form. I never told you I loved you. You never told me you loved me. Some people would say that that was sufficient grounds to diminish everything else that happened between us. But I disagree.
I disagree very strongly.
29
I first met Sara-Jade when you and I had been together for a year. Up until then she’d only been spending every other weekend at yours and it was easy to keep us compartmentalized. But then your ex got a job and suddenly she was dropping Sara on your doorstep all the time, quite often at short notice, quite often when you’d already invited me over for the evening.
Well, you’d told me that she was a difficult girl; she’d responded badly to the split, so you said. And like I said, I’d never really liked little girls. They have a way of looking at you sometimes, as though their hearts are full of hate.
And Sara-Jade, she barely looked human. Skin so thin and pale you could see the veins of her. And this shock ofwhitehair. Not blonde, no; white, like an old lady. She was tiny too, more like a five-year-old than an eight-year-old.
I tried to be nice. I really did. You know that. You were there, remember?
“Oh, so you must be Sara-Jade. It is a pleasure to meet you.” I tried to shake her hand. I always do that with young children because you never know whether they’re the kind to appreciate adult attention or not. Some children thrive on it; their eyes find you and they reel you in:Look at me, find me impressive, tell me that I’m better than all the other children.Others could not give a sideways shit and just want to get away from you as fast as they humanly can. So I find that a handshake is a good compromise between fussing over them and ignoring them, and sometimes you’ll find you’re the very first person to shake their hand and that’s a nice thing however you look at it.