my hands staring with undisguised admiration at Alex, and that wouldn’t be a good look.
‘God I’m dying for some chocolate. I tell you what, I’ll go get some and grab some ice from Tesco Express while I’m at it.’
‘We’ll clean up.’ Alex stands up from the freezer and turns around. ‘And then I’ll make cocktails. You don’t think Rob will mind that we’ve borrowed his blender thing to crush ice?’
I pull a face. ‘I dunno. I think it’s knives chefs are funny about. Anyway, that thing’s a monster. As long as we clean it out, I’m sure he won’t object.’
Alex pokes an experimental finger at the huge behemoth of a blender standing on the worktop. It roars into life for a second and he steps backwards.
‘Bloody hell. That thing could take your arm off.’
‘Back in a sec,’ Becky says, wrapping a scarf around her face and pulling on a bobble hat.
‘Don’t freeze,’ I say, looking out the window. ‘Oh look, the rain’s turned to snow.’
‘Really?’ Alex and Becky join me, looking out. The snow is falling in flurries, swirling in the spotlight glow of the street lamp outside the front of our new home. It’s disappearing as soon as it hits the wet pavement, but it looks gorgeously Christmassy and romantic nonetheless. For a moment we all stand in silence, watching it, all lost in our own thoughts.
Michael Blooming Bublé is playing in the background again.
It only takes me and Alex a moment to clear up the table, shoving the rubbish and recycling in the bins, and loading up the ancient dishwasher.
‘My last place didn’t have one,’ Alex says, unwrapping a dishwasher tablet and shoving it in. ‘This thing might be prehistoric, but it’s a luxury. No more waking up in the morning to last night’s dishes.’
‘Were you in a house-share before?’ I ask.
He pauses for a second. ‘Mmm, sort of.’
I get the feeling there’s more to it than he’s saying, but I don’t want to push it.
‘And you used to work with Becky?’
I am standing by the sink, rinsing my hands, aware he’s standing close beside me and putting glasses back on the shelf. I can feel the heat of his body and it makes the tiny hairs on my arms stand up. This is the tequila talking, I think. Tequila, and the fact that I have been single for a year and the only reason I fancy him is because I’ve been told there’s no relationships allowed in this house so my brain is being contrary. He is Alex, a friend of my friend Becky, and my new housemate. And he is one hundred per cent off limits. I take a step sideways, drying my hands on the dishtowel and spending an excessive amount of time hanging it back up, neatly.
‘I used to work with Becky, yeah,’ says Alex, after a long pause.
I turn around.
‘Turns out that thirty is the perfect time to have my first oh my God what am I doing with my life crisis.’
I find myself smiling. ‘Me too.’
‘So she’s found herself a houseful of strays. That’s very Becky, isn’t it? She likes to think she’s all corporate law and hard as nails, but I reckon she’s just as much of an old hippy as her mum. So what brings you here?’ he asks.
‘Oh God. It’s a long story.’
Alex takes four limes from the fridge, then passes me two and a kitchen knife. ‘Chop these, then, and tell all. It makes me feel better to know I’m not the only one making what everyone thinks is the biggest mistake of my life.’
He’s taken a lemon zester and made a stack of bright green furls of lime zest, and he’s putting them all together in a little grassy heap. I realise I’ve stopped chopping and I’m staring at his hands like some sort of weirdo.
‘So I did English literature at uni. I’ve always loved books, and I used to dream of living in London and working in a publishing house, but it just seemed like you had to know someone in the business or have enough money to get an internship and work for nothing, and I had student loans to pay off, and bills to pay, and …’ I pause, thinking of the responsibility of making sure that Nanna Beth and Grandpa were okay, because my mum was never around. I take a deep breath. ‘Anyway, so I’d pretty much given up on that idea – I did look, but the money was terrible, and