Page 77 of Not in a Million Years

He grinned. ‘No one, but no one, has ever enjoyed my singing. Fact.’

‘Okay. I was enjoying listening to you making a twat of yourself when you thought no one could hear.’

‘That’s more like it. How’s…?’ He gestured towards the door to the flat.

‘Gone to a meeting. At least that’s where he said he was going.’

‘Best place for him right now, I reckon. Did you sleep okay?’

‘Yeah. Thanks for the pillow and stuff.’

‘You were totally sparko. Didn’t even move when I took your shoes off. Looks like Pierre didn’t stint on the booze.’

‘His name’s Claude.’

‘Whatever.’ He picked up the mirror, carefully angling it towards the light and inspecting the patina on its frame. Although he’d covered its glass with clingfilm to protect it, I could see the reflection of his face clearly, my own behind it, shiny and make-up free after my rudimentary morning cleanse. ‘You going to see him again?’

An automatic, snarky reply sprang to my lips – What’s it to you? But I didn’t say that. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Really? Last night you were all set to go home with him, now you don’t know if you can be arsed with a – what is it – third date? Don’t you fancy the guy?’

‘Sure, I fancy him.’

I thought back to the previous night – the daydream I’d indulged in of Claude and me together, a power couple in our fancy house with our privately educated children. It felt a world away from this cavernous, dusty space where Daniel made old things new again. A world away from how I’d felt holding Andy’s hand on the sofa, my feelings torn between tenderness that was almost maternal, concern born out of years of friendship, and a fierce rage that came from a different place entirely.

‘But?’ Daniel put down the mirror, picked up his cloth and started stroking at the wood again, working his fingers carefully into every cranny.

‘It feels – I don’t know. Not real, somehow. I think we’re quite different people.’

‘Really? With your high-powered careers and your Net-a-Porter clothes? You seem pretty well matched to me.’

‘What? For all you know he could work in the mailroom.’

‘You don’t date guys who work in the mailroom, and they couldn’t afford to take you for dinner in fancy restaurants.’

‘As it happens, I paid for our dinner.’ Not the wine, but Daniel didn’t need to know that.

‘And anyway, I—’ He stopped, bending down over his work again but not so low that I couldn’t see the flush of red creeping up his tanned neck.

‘You what?’

‘Looked him up on LinkedIn.’

‘Daniel!’ I burst out laughing. As clearly as if it was in front of me, I could see Claude’s online profile: his handsome face, professionally shot by a photographer who knew how to light black skin; his Salvatore Ferragamo tie; his CV listing the Sorbonne, Yale and Cambridge followed by a string of jobs at blue-chip companies in London and abroad.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘You. You are. Who the fuck put you in charge of vetting my boyfriends?’

‘I was just curious,’ he muttered.

‘Curious enough to remember he’s called Claude, not Pierre, and find him online without knowing his last name. Of course you were.’

‘What is his last name, anyway?’

‘I’m not fucking telling you. Find it on LinkedIn if you can’t remember.’

We were both laughing now, awkwardly but without animosity. It felt good to have this moment with him – like we were friends again, sharing the sort of banter we used to have before everything turned sour. I wanted it to last, but I knew that it wouldn’t be long before the shades of the past – distant and so, so recent – descended again.

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