Page 48 of The Spark

‘Tabitha used to tell people about my accident at dinner parties, like it was an amusing anecdote. My sister actually thought it was funny, too, for a while. Like, Who gets hit by lightning?’

I find myself thinking about Jamie’s brother Harry.

Could it be possible that in fact, he is Ash’s true sibling?

No. The idea is absurd. But still, I can’t resist the urge to float it.

‘Have you ever wanted a brother?’ I say, but lightly, like my mind’s just wandering.

‘Sometimes. I mean, not really, obviously. But occasionally...’

I lean forward. ‘Go on.’

He shrugs. ‘Everyone fantasises about the sibling they never had from time to time, don’t they?’

The moment passes. I take the last bite of my cinnamon swirl. ‘Absolutely. I’d love to have someone I could bitch about my mum with.’

Ash tells me Gabi met her current boyfriend at Coachella. ‘They’re this... complete toxic whirlwind, from what I can work out.’

‘I’ve been there,’ I say, sympathetically, thinking of Leo.

‘Right. And so have I. But then... you get out.’

‘Sometimes it’s not that easy.’

His forehead furrows. ‘Yeah. I guess. I’m being unkind, aren’t I?’

I nudge his knee with mine. ‘No, you’re being a brother.’

I help Ash style his apartment, sourcing rugs, light fittings, console tables, cushions, bar stools, lamps and bookshelves. I ask Parveen to find him some affordable art. And I avoid that scrap of paper bearing Jamie’s handwriting like my life depends on it.

We spend long nights together drinking wine, or whisky, and talking till it’s almost dawn. He cooks. I rave to him about the Before trilogy, so we watch all three back to back. He comes with me to spin class. We revel in the romance of empty beaches. We play poker, at which I have always been terrible, despite the fact I am forever being told I have an excellent poker face. One night, fuelled by rum – and weirdly buoyed by some cigars he has left over from a stag weekend that we decide to smoke for a laugh – it turns into strip poker. And this is the night I realise – with a clarity that I hope isn’t down to some hallucinogen in the tobacco – that I have no inhibitions whatsoever with this man.

It’s almost as if I have known him for years.

I meet his friends, and they make me feel comfortable straight away, sharing anecdotes and asking me questions and hugging me warmly at the end of the night, even though we came last in the pub quiz, which was largely down to my wrong answers (tzatziki, the Danube, John Travolta). I can see how different they must be to the crowd Ash says he used to run with. Nobody has been rowdy, or got steaming drunk, or picked a fight with a parking meter or ex-professional boxer or whatever it is they used to do.

‘I liked your friends,’ I say to Ash later.

We’re in bed, breathing hard, our skin glazed with sweat. My heartbeat is a long, liquid rush in my chest.

‘They liked you too,’ he says, stroking the hair from my face. ‘No, actually, they loved you.’ And then he holds my gaze, as though he wants to say something else, before changing his mind.

Later, after he’s showered, I go into the bathroom to find a heart traced into the steamed-up screen.

I know he wants to meet my friends, too. And though I’ve mentioned Lara, I’ve skirted most of the details. He seems to sense it’s a difficult subject, and hasn’t pushed it.

But he’s a good listener. I can ramble endlessly on about work, or politics, or my neighbours, and not once does he try to hijack what I’m saying, or change the subject. I know I could tell him about Lara, if I wanted to.

Picking up my phone at work to check for messages from him becomes a reflex. I try to hide this from Kelley, and keep finding myself in the ladies’, crouched down on the closed lid of the loo, typing away like a maniac, hoping no-one will catch me. I don’t have the time to behave like a teenager with a crush, but I compulsively do it anyway.

Parveen notices, of course. ‘I’ve never seen you like this before. Not even with Leo.’

Especially not with Leo, I think. There’s not another person on this planet for whom I would even think of risking Kelley’s wrath.

We become the kind of couple that people have to sidestep. We hear, ‘My God, get a room,’ more times than we can count. We kiss and touch in cars and taxis, on street corners, outside cafes, inside bars. One night, we get so stirred up in a restaurant that I find myself whispering into his ear, ‘Meet me upstairs.’

A ripple of laughter, on a caught breath. ‘You’re not serious.’

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