Page 35 of The Love Hack

For the first time in months, I flicked open the Instagram app. I never posted on there myself – what would I post? There are only so many cat photos the world needs. Actually, that number was pretty high, given the two dozen or so exclusively cat-related feeds I’d followed when I first opened my account a few years back. But that didn’t mean I wanted to join them – Astro was a companion, not a celebrity, and everyone who loved him already knew what he looked like.

And there was nothing remotely insta-worthy in the rest of my life. I went to work, I came home. I ate takeaways or things on toast. I rarely bought new clothes or wore make-up. There was no aspirational hashtag-worthy content whatsoever being generated by my life.

I didn’t want to be going out for cocktails that cost north of twenty quid each on Friday nights or spending three quarters of an hour doing my face or eating buddha bowls or having everything showers on Monday evenings. I liked my life. But still, I didn’t want to be reminded, in unfiltered real time, how different it was from those of other people my age.

But now, I felt the need to look.

There was Nush’s carefully staged selfie of Amelie and her bridesmaids in the hotel before the wedding, glowing and smiling. There were Amelie and Zack next to each other in their business-class seats en route to their island paradise honeymoon – presumably before the screen ban had been imposed. There was Miranda at the hairdresser, having violet streaks added to her glossy almost-black hair.

And there was Bryony, in a post from Friday night. It wasn’t just one image, but a whole slideshow of them. Her in her bedroom, wearing jeans and a white broderie crop top, her hair artfully tousled round her face, her even white teeth showing between taupe-painted lips. ‘First date ready!’ she’d posted, with a selection of emojis ranging from the clinking champagne glasses to the boyfriend and girlfriend.

She must have posted at the end of the evening, I thought. No one – not even her – would feel confident enough to post the boyfriend and girlfriend emoji before even leaving the house for a first date.

And, swiping through the slideshow of images, I saw that her confidence had been justified. Evidently the evening had involved a walk along the South Bank of the Thames, which had taken them past the London Eye and then through the forest of fairy-lit trees by Tate Modern, and finished with Tower Bridge in the background. Then they’d moved on somewhere for cocktails. He’d had what looked like a dry martini with an olive in it, and she’d had something clear and pale pink, with a flower floating in it. After that they’d gone for burgers, and she’d persuaded her date to pose with her for a selfie, both of them clutching cheese-dripping, glossy-bunned edifices that looked like they should by rights have been impossible to lift with one hand. The wall behind them was bright red and hung with vintage vinyl LPs. They were both grinning delightedly.

It was Ross, of course. Ross and Bryony, on the date they must have arranged in a few minutes when he’d been away from his desk, leaving his sandwich behind – their #firstdate having #allthefun in #magicalLondon.

Bryony’s face, alight with excitement and promise – This date! This man! This moment! – reminded me all too starkly of how I’d felt after that first kiss with Kieren.

The morning after it happened, I was late for work. I texted my line manager and told her my bus was stuck in traffic, but the truth was I’d overslept – and overslept because I hadn’t been able to get to sleep the previous night. Instead, I’d lain there, the duvet pulled up to my chin, remembering and remembering that kiss.

And not only the kiss – the things that had gone before it. The things he’d said to me – talented, beautiful, sexy. The memory made me tingle all over. Part of me felt as if, if nothing like that ever happened to me again, it wouldn’t matter. I’d have this to cherish and remember always.

But a much bigger part was avid to hear him say those things again, to kiss me again, to have him here next to me in my bed, to wake up with him in the morning.

When I arrived at my desk, I forgot all the guilt and stress of being late, because there, just visible underneath my keyboard, was a page torn from a spiral-bound reporter’s notebook. At the bottom of the page was a letter K, bold and slanting, written in the familiar blue ink of Kieren’s fountain pen, the same colour as his eyes.

I made myself wait to read it until I’d switched on my computer, made coffee and checked my email before I read it. I didn’t mind waiting – the anticipation was glorious, electric.

And it was worth waiting for.

Lucy (The L was tall and slanting too, same as his own initial at the bottom of the page. The letters our names started with were next to each other in the alphabet, I realised, as if it was some kind of sign.)

I’ve been thinking about you all night. Who taught you to kiss like that? Whoever he is, I want to shake his hand – or maybe kill him. Come over and see me when you can – I want to look at you.

That was all, but it might as well have been a love poem going on for verse after verse for all the delight it brought me.

I got up and walked slowly across the office. Kieren was already at his desk – he’d have been there for hours; he was always one of the first in. I could see the back of his head, the dark hair, the faded collar of his green corduroy shirt, the leather jacket slung over the back of his chair.

As if sensing my approach, he stopped typing and turned around.

‘Good morning.’ He smiled.

‘Good morning.’ I felt an answering smile spread over my face.

‘Sleep well?’

‘Not really.’ It was like we were speaking in code, our words concealing a wonderful shared secret.

‘Me neither.’

His eyes travelled up and down my body, his smile intensifying as he looked at me. I felt something deep inside me soften, as if I was melting or evaporating.

‘Need a hand with anything?’ I asked.

It was a question I’d posed to him often, but today it felt loaded with innuendo, and I saw him register that, his eyes sparkling with humour.

‘Not right now. Maybe later?’

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