red can of fizzy pop. ‘That is Future Cola from China.’
‘Future Cola is good,’ I confirmed after taking a sip. ‘What’s this?’
‘Awadama, from Japan,’ Patrick replied, unwrapping one of the sweets and holding it out for me. ‘It translates to “foamy balls”. Very popular.’
‘Thank you,’ I muttered as it fizzed up in my mouth. ‘Very foamy.’
‘Probably shouldn’t have given it to you at the same time as the Future Cola,’ he replied with a grimace. ‘We’ve also got Vietnamese sesame rice balls, Tapita from Costa Rica, Doña Pepa from Peru and Chinese Ore No Milk Candy.’
‘Ore No?’ I replied, opening one of the little white packages to find a hard, white ball that looked like any other boiled sweet. ‘What does that translate as?’
‘It’s milk-flavoured,’ Patrick said as I put it in my mouth and almost immediately spat it back out. ‘It roughly translates as milk candy for tough guys. Or tough guy’s milk.’
‘I really didn’t want that in my mouth,’ I said, taking another swig of Future Cola to wash away the taste. ‘And don’t you dare say that’s what she said.’
He held his hands up to protest his innocence but with a huge smile on his face.
‘And what’s on the laptop?’ I asked.
‘Photos,’ he replied, climbing back onto the bed and pressing his body against mine. ‘Lots and lots and lots of photos.’
‘You’re going to show me your holiday photos?’ I asked, utterly delighted.
‘I’m going to show you my holiday photos,’ he confirmed as he rested his chin on my shoulder. ‘Shall we start with China?’
I nodded, far too excited for someone about to endure someone else’s travel pics. But this felt very different to Lucy and Dave’s three-hour-long honeymoon video from their trip to Sandals St Lucia. This felt like discovering they’d made three new seasons of your favourite TV show and bingeing on them all at once.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked, as Patrick began flicking through the photos.
He skipped back to a shot of himself, posing with his arm slung casually around the shoulders of a beautiful blonde woman. He was smiling into the camera but she was gazing at him with an expression I knew all too well.
‘That’s Judith,’ he replied.
‘She looks nice,’ I said in a bright, tight voice.
‘She is nice,’ Patrick said, matter-of-factly. ‘We met in Beijing. She teaches English out there.’
I took a sip of my Future Cola. It was already flat.
‘She still in Beijing, is she?’
‘She is,’ he confirmed, amused with my response. ‘And yes, we were seeing each other for a while but no, we’re not seeing each other now. I’m sure you haven’t been living like a nun for the last three years, have you?’
‘Nun-like,’ I replied. ‘Nun-adjacent.’
‘Nun-adjacent, I like that,’ he laughed lightly, sliding his legs underneath the covers. ‘When you get to the photos of the pretty brunette in Mongolia, her name is Shana and we went on three dates before she binned me off for an American footballer called Brad.’
‘You’re making that up,’ I muttered, clicking through the photos faster and faster. He stroked my hair, nuzzling into the back of my neck.
‘Does it matter?’ he asked as he slid his hand down my back until he reached the hooks of my bra. ‘She’s not here, eating my tough man milk sweets, is she?’
Quietly, I closed the laptop and placed the tray and the map down on the floor beside the bed before turning to face him.
‘I really did miss you,’ Patrick whispered when we were nose to nose, the oxygen burning out of the air in between us.
‘I really did miss you too,’ I whispered back, closing my eyes as I lay back against the bed.
One minute we were just talking, the next, we were together. There was no precise moment or second on the clock you could point to, we weren’t and then we were. His hands were hot on my skin as they followed familiar paths around my body, touching me in ways I’d only dreamed about for so long. The light seemed to fade, the bed got bigger and the room got smaller and everything became hazy at the edges as my body took over and my mind let go.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘You’re in a lot of trouble, young lady,’ Lucy said, grinning at me over her massively pregnant belly.
‘You’re the one with your legs in stirrups,’ I pointed out, shovelling a packet of salt and vinegar Discos into my mouth in between yawns. They tasted like heaven. The sky was bluer, the birds sang