being swallowed into his thick, black hair. I’m lying on my back and looking down at my body and his head. It’s nodding slightly as he moves his tongue a fraction to send me beyond consciousness. That bit was slow. But then that was our fourth time. Or was it our fifth?
Issie is quite traditionally dumbfounded.
‘We stayed in bed for three days. In the end we were more or less evicted.’
I smile to myself as I think of the exasperated chambermaid begging us to leave our room so that she could clean it.
‘After that, after listening to each other’s breathing, dreams, thoughts, we became… necessary to each other.’ I struggle, then come clean. ‘I couldn’t let him go home alone.’
I’d have lost part of myself.
‘Instead I asked him back to my apartment.’
Because if not, I’d have missed his singing in the bathroom. I’d have missed him tracing kisses from the end of my hair, to my scalp, past my ears, to my jaw line, then up – finally – to my mouth. I’d have missed the sound of his pee hitting the loo.
‘He left this morning. He had to go to the Cotswolds – a tree with measles.’
Issie is quickly piecing together my story. She’s counting days on her fingers. She looks confused. She must have put two and two together and, quite unusually for Issie, she’s come up with four.
‘He stayed here for a week?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you never let men stay at your flat for more than twelve hours. That’s your rule. What did you do for a week?’
‘Well, besides the obvious, which took up a substantial amount of time, we went to the pub, I met his flatmate, Jock. We went for a curry, we watched vids.’
‘You dated.’
‘No.’ I think about it. ‘OK, well, yes, I suppose.’
‘What about work?’
‘Work?’ What an odd question.
‘What did you tell Bale?’
‘You know, I told him I had laryngitis.’ I’m irritated that she wants to talk about work.
‘But Cas, when you had an emergency appendicitis you discharged yourself early because the hospital staff wouldn’t let you use a mobile phone. Illness doesn’t stop you working. Bale won’t have believed your story about laryngitis. Why did you say laryngitis? You’ve never had it. Do you have any idea what it’s like? How long it lasts? How contagious it is?’
Issie’s panicking.
She moves towards my bookshelves and starts rooting around for a medical journal. She’s obviously going to look up laryngitis. Which is sweet of her, but why is she so concerned? I can hardly bring myself to be bothered.
‘You could lose your job. You are in deep do-do.’
I try not to giggle at the expression and instead I think about Darren. I smile, widely, remembering how he hesitated by the door. We’d both been trying, for a week, to get back to work. We’d both been trying, for a week, to stay glued together. Issie notes my serenity and yells, ‘Aren’t you worried?’
What can I say? If she doesn’t get it, it proves to me what I have long suspected: Issie has never been in… Issie’s never felt like this. It would be pointless to explain that he let me warm my (eternally) cold feet on his (eternally) hot shins, or bum, or bollocks. It would be futile to elaborate. The thing is, from that first kiss my head spun but my life stopped wobbling. I hadn’t even known it was wobbling before. I know what his hair smells like. I know where he is ticklish. I’ve licked the inside of his nostril. I had sex until I was raw, but for the first time ever, it was entirely to do with love. My body does not feel like a gambling chit, a bargaining tool or a funfair ride. The world is Technicolor.
All of this from me! The confirmed steel heart. Poor Issie, how could she possibly understand? I consider myself the more perceptive, intuitive, sagacious of the two of us and I have no clue how this happened.
I make a move towards the kitchen to pour us both two more gigantic G&Ts. I carelessly slosh gin into the glasses and splash some tonic on top. Issie stares. She’s incredulous.
‘No ice?’
‘It’s in the freezer,’ I reply, heading back to the settee.
‘And lemon?’ I ignore her altogether. Normally I insist on measuring the drink carefully. Pouring the gin over three ice cubes and adding a slice of lemon and lime (my own speciality). I prepare G&Ts with the same care and attention that most people reserve for