Page 14 of Days You Were Mine

Hannah leans forward and says, voice low, ‘Oh Alice. Poor you.’

Alice closes her eyes for a second; she nods.

‘I tried, Luke, I really did. But in the end I couldn’t keep you. And after you’d gone, well, to say that I regretted it …’

Hannah says, ‘I’m sorry,’ and I know from the break in her voice that she is fighting tears. I hear the words she leaves unsaid. Sorry for asking about it. Sorry for what happened, for losing your son.

‘You did the right thing for me,’ I say, even though I believe the opposite is true. Take a child from its natural mother? How could that possibly be the right thing? But instinctively I understand that this woman, this real live mother of mine, cannot cope with the truth. ‘It was brave of you. You gave me a life with the security of two parents, even though it was the last thing you wanted.’

Alice reaches out to cover my hand with her own, and it’s the first relaxed physical contact between us.

‘Luke,’ she says. ‘You have grown into the nicest human being.’

Then

Alice

Here at the French House (actual name the York Minster, though no one calls it that), Jacob is famous. Everyone knows him: young, old, the red-faced, bad-tempered barman, who redeems himself when he shouts, ‘What’s your girl drinking, Jake? Gin or beer?’

It’s halves of beer and pressing ourselves into a tightly packed corner, no tables or chairs or anywhere even to put down my sketchbook. I keep it wedged beneath one arm until Jacob notices, takes it from me and stashes it behind the bar.

The white noise of a hundred or so people talking and laughing, the air putrid with smoke and spilt alcohol, our bodies unnervingly close. We try to talk a few times but it’s like puppet theatre. I’m mouthing words, like I’m underwater; he’s shaking his head.

‘Nope,’ he shouts. ‘Still can’t get it.’

And then he looks at me in a way that makes me aware of my heart thudding, pulsing, and my breath, which I let go in one long rush. He doesn’t drop his eyes and I don’t drop mine and the look, the half-smile, lets me know that he feels as I do. There is a conclusion to this, an obvious one, and I understand it here in this densely packed bar where the noise is like a cocoon, just me and Jacob at its very centre, no room for anyone else.

I’ve made a decision and the decision is this. If there’s achance to sleep with Jacob tonight, I’m taking it. The desire to touch him, with my hands, my mouth, to press my cheek against his, it’s exactly the same pull I felt when I watched him on stage at the Marquee.

‘What are you thinking about, Alice?’ he shouts. He pulls his face into a comical frown.

I’m thinking that I would really, really like to kiss him, though I can’t say that.

‘Shall we find somewhere quieter after this?’ I shout back, and he smiles again.

‘Come on.’ He takes hold of my hand, and just that first contact is an electrical charge that judders through my bones.

Outside, it’s a crowded Friday night in Soho. There are people everywhere, the streets now vivid with neon signs for strip joints and peep shows and girlie bars. When I first arrived in London, a few weeks ago, I was shocked by the blatant, frenzied sexualness of Soho. Not like my father, who decries it as a snake pit of immorality (he’s always been unoriginal in thought); more the fact that these bodily desires I’d always considered secret, and possibly shaming, were to be honoured and celebrated instead. I took the trouble to lose my virginity in my last year at school; nothing special, a few pleasant-enough skirmishes with a boy from school I liked but didn’t love. One thing I knew was that I wasn’t going to arrive in London with the tag of virginity tied around my neck.

Drinkers pool on the pavement outside every pub we pass, and quite often we walk in the middle of the street just to get around them, still hand in hand, Jacob now with the sketchbook beneath his arm.

‘Are you hungry?’ he asks, and I tell him yes, wanting to stretch the evening out for as long as I can.

‘Chinatown then.’

Our ‘business deal’, such as it is, is struck in a red and gold restaurant over bowls of chicken in black bean sauce and egg-fried rice.

‘What we have in mind is a charcoal drawing of the three of us on stage, something very posed and stylised, almost like a classical painting, but it’s a sketch.’

He flips through the final pages of my sketchbook and comes to the last drawing of Josef.

‘This is incredible, Alice. You have so much talent.’

I can’t hide the glow of pleasure at his words.

‘There are some classic poses that life models always adopt. Maybe we could incorporate some of those?’

‘Are you suggesting we do this in the buff?’

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