– God. I felt my face invert in a grimace. The deal we’d both agreed was that it was nothing more than a friends with benefits sort of thing. Nobody getting too involved, nobody getting hurt.
I’d crept back downstairs, keen to make sure she didn’t realise I’d overheard.
In the end, half an hour later, Emma had popped her head around the kitchen door and said she was off out for last-minute drinks with a friend, and that maybe she’d see me later, if I was still up.
We’d slept together for the first time on New Year’s Eve, and now it’s April. I suppose it was naïve of me to think something could stay so casual for that long. It’s not Emma. She’s lovely. But after Alice – no way. Signing up for my new career meant walking away from a relationship I thought was for life, and I’m not taking that sort of risk again, not now, with years of training to do. I’m just starting to feel that, actually, I’m okay on my own, and I’m getting over the whole Alice thing.
I let myself think about Alice, which is something I don’t often do. I’m over her – but I don’t want to leap into anything else and end up in the same place all over again. If Emma is starting to think there’s something more to this, I’m going to have to knock it on the head, gently. But – I rub my face in confusion – how the hell do I do that without causing ructions in the house-share?
This is exactly what Becky had meant with her no-relationships rule. It wasn’t the being in a relationship that was the problem, it’s the end of them when it all gets messy. And Emma’s the sort of girl who likes things done her way.
Just as the credits begin to roll on my overdramatic hospital drama, I hear a commotion at the door. I figure it’s probably someone at the wrong house. I get to the door and pull it open and there’s a moment when Jess sort of falls through and crashes against me with a little ‘oomph’ noise of surprise. Her hair is damp and curling round her face in little strands, and all the dark eye make-up she’d had on is smudged. She takes a step back. Her coat’s splattered with huge raindrops.
‘Good night, was it?’ I can’t help smiling at her. She looks so cross.
‘Hardly.’
‘You coming in then?’ She wipes her feet on the mat. ‘So the date didn’t go well?’
‘Not exactly. I’m bloody freezing. If this was an April shower, I don’t like it.’
She steps past me and shrugs off her coat, revealing the bluey-green dress she’s got on underneath. I avert my eyes, as if she’s undressing, not pulling off a pair of black heeled boots. And then she’s Jess-sized again, standing in a pair of black tights on the carpet.
‘Want me to put the kettle on?’ I ask when I notice she’s shivering.
‘Give it five minutes. I’m going to run up and get out of this—’ she motions to the dress ‘—have a quick shower to defrost, and put on something that doesn’t make me feel like I’m dressing up.’
While Jess changes, I put the kettle on for tea, then make toast, buttering it thickly and spreading it with her favourite marmalade. And then I put it all on a tray, and take it into the sitting room. A moment later, Jess reappears, looking more like her usual self in a pair of checked flannel pyjama bottoms, and a light grey teddy-bear fleece top. Her hair and make-up are still in place, so she looks incongruous – like an actress after a performance on the West End stage.
‘Oh my God. I think I love you,’ she says, seeing the tea and toast. ‘You’re a mind reader.’
I hand her a mug. ‘I figured you might be cold even after the shower.’
I watch as she creates the little nest she always makes when she sits watching television, wrapping her fingers around the mug and curling up on the sofa like a cat. She pulls a fluffy blanket down and wraps it over her legs, building a cushion fort around her, and almost purrs with happiness.
Then she takes a sip of tea, and pulls a face of absolute horror.
‘Are you all right?’ I ask, thinking maybe I’ve put salt in her tea instead of sugar.
‘I am never, ever going on a Tinder date again,’ she says.