After You

‘Anyway. So, yes. Probably not much of a boyfriend back then. So who was yours?’ he said, when he finally turned back to me.

‘Will.’

‘Of course. Nobody since?’

‘Nobody I want to talk about.’ I shuddered.

‘Everyone’s allowed their own way back, Louisa. Don’t beat yourself up about it.’

His skin was hot and wet, making it hard for me to hold on to his fingers. I released them, and he began to wash his hair. I sat and watched him, letting the mood lift, enjoying the bunched muscles in his shoulders, the gleam of his wet skin. I liked the way he washed his hair: vigorously, with a kind of matter-of-factness, shaking off the excess water like a dog.

‘Oh. I had a job interview,’ I said, when he finished. ‘For a thing in New York.’

‘New York.’ He raised an eyebrow.

‘I won’t get it.’

‘Shame. I’ve always wanted an excuse to go to New York.’ He slid slowly under the water so that only his mouth remained. It broke into a slow smile. ‘But you’d get to keep the pixie outfit, yes?’

I felt the mood shift. And, for no reason at all other than that he didn’t expect it, I climbed fully clothed into the bath and kissed him as he laughed and spluttered. I was suddenly glad of his solidity in a world where it was so easy to fall.

I finally made an effort to sort out the flat. On my day off I bought an armchair, and a coffee-table, and a small framed print, which I hung near the television, and those things somehow conspired to suggest someone might actually live there. I bought new bedding and two cushions and hung up all my vintage clothes in the wardrobe so that opening it now revealed a riot of pattern and colour, instead of several pairs of cheap jeans and a too-short Lurex dress. I managed to turn my anonymous little flat into something that felt, if not quite like a home, vaguely welcoming.

By some beneficence of the shift-scheduling gods, Sam and I both had a day off. Eighteen uninterrupted hours in which he did not have to listen to a siren, and I did not have to listen to the sound of pan pipes or complaints about dry-roasted peanuts. Time spent with Sam, I noted, seemed to go twice as fast as the hours I spent alone. I had pondered the million things we could do together, then dismissed half of them as too ‘couple-y’. I wondered whether our spending so much time together was wise.

I texted Lily one more time. Lily, please get in touch. I know you’re mad at me, but just call. Your garden is looking beautiful! I need you to show me how to look after it, and what to do with the tomato plants, which have got really tall (is this right?). Maybe after we could go out dancing? x I pressed send and stared at the little screen just as the doorbell rang.

‘Hey.’ He filled my doorway, holding a toolbox in one hand and a bag of groceries in the other.

‘Oh, my God,’ I said. ‘You’re like the ultimate female fantasy.’

‘Shelves,’ he said, deadpan. ‘You need shelves.’

‘Oh, baby. Keep talking.’

‘And home-cooked food.’

‘That’s it. I just came.’

He laughed and dropped the tools in the hallway and kissed me, and when we finally untangled ourselves, he walked through to the kitchen. ‘I thought we could go to the pictures. You know one of the greatest benefits to shift-working is empty matinées, right?’

I checked my phone.

‘But nothing with blood in it. I get a bit tired of blood.’

When I looked up he was watching me.

‘What? Don’t fancy it? Or is that going to stamp all over your plans for Zombie Flesh Eaters Fifteen? … What?’

I frowned, and dropped my hand to my side. ‘I can’t get hold of Lily.’

‘I thought you said she’d gone home?’

‘She did. But she won’t take my calls. I think she’s really upset with me.’

‘Her friends stole your stuff. You’re allowed to be the one who’s upset.’

He started to pull things out of the bag, lettuces, tomatoes, avocados, eggs, herbs, stacking them neatly in my near-empty fridge. He looked up at me as I texted her again. ‘Come on. She could have dropped her phone, left it in some club, or run out of credit. You know what teenagers are like. Or she’s just throwing a massive strop. Sometimes you need to let them work it out of their system.’

I took his hand and shut the fridge door. ‘I need to show you something.’ His eyes lit up briefly. ‘Not that, no, you bad man. That will have to wait till later.’

Sam stood on the rooftop and gazed around him at the flowers. ‘And you had no idea?’

‘None at all.’

He sat down heavily on the bench. I sat next to him and we both stared at the little garden.

‘I feel awful,’ I said. ‘I basically accused her of destroying everything she went near. And all the time she was creating this.’

He stooped to feel the leaves on a tomato plant, then straightened, shaking his head. ‘Okay. So we’ll go talk to her.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. Lunch first. Then cinema. Then we’ll turn up on her doorstep. That way she won’t be able to avoid you.’ He took my hand and raised it to his lips. ‘Hey. Don’t look so worried. The garden is good news. It shows that her head’s not in a totally bad place.’

He released my hand and I squinted at him. ‘How come you always make everything better?’

‘I just don’t like seeing you sad.’

I couldn’t tell him that I wasn’t sad when I was with him. I couldn’t tell him that he made me so happy I was afraid of it. I thought of how I liked having his food in my fridge, how I glanced at my phone twenty times a day waiting for his messages, how I conjured his naked body in my imagination in the quiet minutes at work and then had to think very hard about floor polish or till receipts just to stop myself glowing.

Slow down, said a warning voice. Don’t get too close.

His eyes softened. ‘You have a sweet smile, Louisa Clark. It’s one of the several hundred things I like about you.’

I let myself gaze back at him for a minute. This man, I thought. And then I slapped my hands heavily on my knees. ‘C’mon,’ I said briskly. ‘Let’s go watch a movie.’

The cinema was almost empty. We sat side by side at the back in a seat where someone had knocked out the armrest, and Sam fed me popcorn from a cardboard bucket the size of a dustbin, and I tried not to think about the weight of his hand resting on my bare leg, because when I did I frequently lost track of what was happening with the plot.