Page 49 of The Spark

I nod and slide away from the table, attempting to keep my composure as I head to the toilets, wondering even as I go what’s got into me. This is so unlike me. We’re just out to dinner. We don’t have the excuse of being on a plane, or come to that, amphetamines. Why can’t I control myself?

I think back to a particular conversation with Jamie.

We could have done it at the restaurant.

Next time.

Jamie and I never did end up going through with it. Possibly because we only ever usually went to fancy restaurants when we were in the company of Jamie’s dad.

A couple of minutes later, Ash approaches me at the top of the staircase where I’m pretending to look into a mirror. He is smiling disbelievingly, yet he knows this is happening, and is no more likely than I am to suggest we pull ourselves together and get the bill.

Thankfully, the ladies’ are empty, and – crucially – clean, because this is a nice restaurant (recommended to us, ironically enough, by Ash’s boss). We make for the end cubicle. To my relief, it smells only pleasantly floral, a bit like the perfume section in a department store.

Inside the cubicle, I put my back to the door and lock it, and in the next second we are kissing, fumbling, lips and hands everywhere. I am wearing a knee-length satin dress, which contains a useful amount of stretch. Ash hikes it up around my waist, and then there is the tug of a zip and my legs are around him. As we start to move, something begins squeaking inelegantly – I have no idea what – and if anybody were to walk in, they would be in no doubt at all as to what we are doing.

The trust between us is implicit. I’m confident he won’t message his mates to report on our bathroom encounter; that it won’t become an anecdote (except maybe between us). I never feel self-conscious with him, or awkward. He doesn’t crack jokes that make me want to crawl inside my handbag. And after dark, when the drug of him hits hardest, the connection we share feels once-in-a-lifetime.

Except that I know it isn’t. Once-in-a-lifetime, I mean.

Whenever I’m with Ash, I try very hard to push all thoughts of Jamie out of my head. But sometimes – usually as we’re drifting off to sleep, my head on his chest, our bodies knotted together – I catch myself thinking of Jamie’s joke that he’d come back to haunt me. And how I assured him nothing would ever come close to the physical connection we shared.

Pretty soon, I know I have to let Ash in on the most painful story from my past.

I mean, I don’t have to. I want to. It’s something I think he should know.

I do it as he’s shuffling a deck of cards one night. We are drinking Old Fashioneds, which helps.

‘Do you reckon you might... want children one day?’ It all comes out clumsily, but it’s the only way I can think of to start the conversation.

He glances up from the cards. ‘I mean, eventually I would. I think I want... a family life, at some point. I’m probably quite conventional like that.’

‘Have you ever . . . got anyone pregnant?’

He clears his throat, like he thinks (hopes) he might have misheard. ‘Have I ever what?’

‘Got anyone pregnant,’ I say more slowly, begging him silently, Think. Think. Think.

He does a little double-take with his eyes. ‘Is this... a trick question?’

‘In what way?’

‘Not sure.’ He laughs uncomfortably. ‘Do you know something I don’t?’

Maybe, I want to reply. But I manage to hold back. ‘Just curious.’

‘Nope, never got anyone pregnant.’ He punches out a breath. ‘Sorry, teenage flashback.’

I smile.

He throws me a look. ‘My parents convinced themselves I was going to get someone pregnant. Or should I say, they were apoplectically terrified. Mum used to sit me down at least once a week and remind me about safe sex. My dad used to buy me boxes of condoms.’

‘Oh. So you were—’

‘No! Actually, they had it all wrong. My crazy nights back then were more about drinking and pratting around. No legions of illegitimate children out there, I promise.’ He glances at me. ‘Might stop talking now.’

Weakly, I smile. ‘Actually... there’s something I wanted to tell you.’

And now the words are tumbling from my mouth, and his face is contracting in sympathy, and I would love to know if this is ringing any bells for him, if he has even the faintest sense of recollection as I’m talking. I tell him about what Jamie’s mum did, and the flesh wound of that conversation, the scar that still remains, all these years later.

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