by Mark Edwards
‘Did I tell you I’d bought this place?’ I couldn’t remember much of the conversation.
‘Yeah, you said something about having a mortgage.’
‘Wow, Mr Interesting. But I can afford this place because of money I got from my parents.’
Charlie gave me another of her ironic looks. ‘Ooh, are you rich? Have I lucked out?’
I hesitated. I don’t really like to tell people about my parents straight away because I don’t want them to feel sorry for me, and it can be awkward. I certainly didn’t want Charlie to feel sympathy for me but, at the same time, I didn’t want to keep any secrets from her, so I told her, keeping my voice as light as possible.
‘Oh Andrew,’ she said, her eyes shining with compassion. ‘That must have really . . . sucked.’
I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘You could put it like that.’
‘I’d like to meet Tilly. She sounds very brave.’
‘Yeah, she is. But if you said that to her she’d tell you to fuck off.’
‘Ha. My kind of girl. And then you had your eye thing. Sounds like you’ve had a lot of bad luck.’
I took another sip of wine, surprised to find that I’d finished my second glass.
‘I’ve had some good luck too,’ I said.
She raised an eyebrow. ‘You won the Lottery?’
‘No, I mean meeting you.’
She grinned. ‘Oh God, that is so corny.’
But she put her arms around me and kissed me.
It was even better than the kiss we’d shared at the end of our night out. She was so soft, and her lips so warm, and heat radiated off her body as she pressed it against me. It was like being a teenager again: kissing for its own sake, not only as a prelude to sex. Charlie made little noises in her throat, her eyes shut tight, one hand on my chest, the other snaking around my back, slipping up inside my T-shirt.
‘You’re a very good kisser,’ she said, breaking off for a moment. ‘Have you had lots of practice?’
I just laughed.
We kissed some more, music playing in the background, our empty wine glasses at our feet. She took my hand and put it on her thigh, her dress hitched up, and soon my T-shirt was lying beside the wine glasses.
‘Do you want to go to bed?’ she asked.
I nodded. When I stood up, the room swam. Drunk on wine and Charlie. I held her hand and helped her up, realising I needed a pee. Typical – my bladder was determined to ruin the atmosphere.
‘I need to go to the bathroom,’ I said. ‘The bed’s that way.’
My bedroom had a dimmer switch and when I got back from the bathroom I found that Charlie had turned the light low. Her clothes were on the floor and she was in the bed, the quilt tucked under her chin. I stripped, wondering for a moment if I should take everything off or leave my underwear on, deciding to go for it. I kicked my shorts across the room.
‘Fuck, your hands are cold,’ she protested.
‘They’ll be warm in a minute.’
We stopped talking.
I won’t pretend that our first time was amazing. I was too anxious about my performance, not yet familiar with her body, what she liked, what she wanted me to do. Our limbs knocked together, we both whispered apologies a couple of times. I had to concentrate hard to stop myself from finishing too soon, determined to make her come before me.
Not only that, but I was too aware that I was making love to Charlie, this woman who, in the few days I’d known her, had filled my head, knocked me out of orbit. It was impossible to sink into the moment, to become fully absorbed, because I was watching myself, recording the moment like someone taking a video on their phone at a gig, instead of enjoying the there and then.
Afterwards, Charlie lay with her head on my chest, her hair tickling my face.
‘Do you think I’m easy?’ she said, hoisting herself up and looking into my eyes. Her face and collarbone were flushed from her orgasm. She really was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
‘If you are, I must be too.’
‘That’s true. But there are different rules for guys, aren’t there?’
‘Stupid rules.’
She kissed me. ‘Can you see me without your glasses?’
‘Not much. I have to get really close.’
‘They suit you,’ she said. ‘You’ve got that hot professor thing going on. You look cute without them too. Like a little mole.’
‘Oh, thanks!’
‘I like moles.’
‘I like freckles,’ I said, touching hers.
‘Oh God, you really are corny.’
‘I know. I just made myself sick.’
She rolled onto her side, propping her head up with her elbow, her free hand tracing patterns on my torso. ‘How come you haven’t been snapped up already?’
‘I was going to ask you the same thing.’
She grinned. ‘Plenty have tried to snap me up, Andrew.’
I must have looked worried, because she said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m not about to give you a speech about how I’m not looking for anything. On the other hand, I’m not going to ask you to marry me either.’
‘Phew.’
‘I do like you though.’
‘Yeah, I can tell.’
She mock-slapped me. ‘Watch it. So, anyway, you didn’t answer my question. About why you don’t have a girlfriend.’
‘Oh. Well, I did have one until about nine months ago. We were together for a couple of years.’
The hand that had been drawing spirals on my flesh stopped moving. ‘What was her name?’
‘Harriet.’
‘Harriet! Posh.’
I stroked Charlie’s shoulder. ‘She was a little bit posh, yes.’
‘Did she have a pony?’
‘As a matter of fact . . . When she was a kid, anyway. I think she had a couple.’
Charlie was silent for a second. ‘So what happened with posh pony-loving Harriet?’
I shrugged. ‘Oh, there was no big drama. We were together a couple of years, we talked about moving in together, but then it kind of went flat. Fizzled out. We’re still friends though.’
Charlie’s hand had started wandering up and down my torso again. ‘Is that her picture out there in the living room?’
‘Huh? Oh – no, that’s Sasha. My best friend.’
There was a photo of Sasha and me on holiday in Ibiza on the wall by the door. We were standing on top of a large rock, laughing. It had been a fun holiday, quite debauched, in fact.
‘She looks like a laugh.’
‘Yeah, she’s lovely. I’ll introduce you to her.’
‘Can’t wait.’
She kissed me again, wriggling closer, and the kiss grew more passionate and Charlie came closer still until she was on top of me. We made love again, and this time I was fully absorbed, not worried about anything at all, great warm rushes of happiness enveloping me as Charlie made me feel better than I’d ever felt before.
Five
At some point during the next couple of days, I told Charlie about Tilly and my conversation with Rachel.
‘So I need to find something to try to cheer her up,’ I said. We were lying in bed. We had been in my bed for almost forty-eight hours, only leaving it to go to the bathroom or to eat or grab drinks.
‘You think that’s a better plan than simply talking to her?’
‘Well . . . I think what I’d like to do is take her out somewhere and then talk to her, rather than turn up and say I want to have a word with her.’
‘You’re lovely,’ she said.
I liked hearing her say things like that.
‘What kind of thing does she like doing?’ Charlie asked.
‘That’s the tricky part. She’s really into sport – she supports Arsenal, for her sins – and she loves swim
ming. Other than that, normal stuff.’ I shrugged. ‘Stuff that girls like.’
‘Stroking kittens, knitting, cooing over babies. That kind of thing?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Having their nipples slowly licked while their boyfriend slides ever so slowly into them . . .’
‘Actually, Tilly is the only woman I know who’s even ruder than you.’
Charlie smiled. ‘I’d love to meet her.’
‘You will.’
‘And I’ll try to think of some ideas. You’re clearly a bit useless at that kind of stuff.’
‘True. Thank you.’
‘So. What I was saying about nipples . . .’
Charlie went home in the afternoon to do laundry and ‘some woman stuff,’ as she put it.
‘Not meeting your other boyfriend?’
She didn’t think it was funny. ‘I’m a one hundred per cent monogamous person. I hope you are too.’
‘Yes, of course.’ I pulled her against me. ‘Like I’d have enough energy left anyway.’
She kissed me softly. ‘That’s what I like to hear.’
It was the first exchange we’d had that made me think that she saw us as boyfriend-girlfriend. Some men might have been frightened by this development but I was delighted.
When she came back later, she was carrying several carrier bags full of shopping. She produced a market stall’s worth of fresh vegetables from one bag – broccoli, red and yellow peppers, plump tomatoes, button mushrooms, a cauliflower smeared with mud – and a variety of spices and pulses from another. The third bag contained two bottles of wine. She opened one, commanded me to relax and have a drink and set about cooking what turned out to be the best curry I’ve ever eaten.
She rolled a couple of spliffs too, one of which she smoked with me while she was waiting for dinner to cook. I wasn’t normally into drugs of any kind – hadn’t been since university – but the weed made me feel so chilled and giggly that I wondered why I didn’t do it more often. After dinner I laid the quilt on the living room floor and we made slow, stoned love to a playlist of old soul classics Charlie found on Spotify: Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway. Writhing in slow motion on the floor, it felt like we were making love for hours, the rest of the world eradicated by the intense focus of our desire for each other. It was extraordinary, like nothing I’d ever experienced before. It was like being in a fugue state, my whole body alive and humming, wanting to consume Charlie, to devour her, my mouth all over her, and hers all over me.
The trance was only broken when, in a stoned voice, I told Charlie her skin was ‘softer than kitten’s fur’ and she roared with laughter, and then I did too and within moments we were rolling about literally clutching our sides, barely able to breathe.
‘Ha, ha, bonk,’ I said, when I was able to get some air into my lungs.
‘What?’
‘It’s the sound—’ A convulsion of laughter stabbed at me. ‘The sound of a man laughing his head off.’
That set us off again.
Eventually, when we’d come down and calmed down, Charlie lay on her front beside me, legs crossed at the ankle, showing off the small mermaid tattoo on her right ankle, and said, ‘Can you get your sister to come up to London on Saturday?’
‘I expect so? Why?’
She laid her head on one side and smiled. ‘I have a surprise for you.’
Charlie asked me to meet her by the London Eye at noon. At Victoria station I steered Tilly through the vast crowds, many of them apparently heading to a football match. Tilly and I stopped en route to the taxi to grab a doughnut, my treat.
‘What’s all this in aid of?’ she asked in the back of a black cab.
‘The doughnut?’
‘The excursion! You don’t invite me up very often.’
Traffic was slow and I was concerned we’d be late to meet Charlie. No matter how much I’d begged, she wouldn’t tell me what she had planned.
‘Andrew?’ Tilly said.
‘I just thought it would be fun for us to spend a day together. Plus I want you to meet Charlie.’
‘Wow. You’ve only known her for two minutes.’
‘Yeah, but . . .’
‘Oh. Em. Gee.’ Tilly put on a silly voice. ‘My big brother is in el you vee.’
‘Stop it.’ But I knew my face must have gone pink. I groped for something else to say. Although Tilly seemed amused, I was worried that flaunting my new relationship, when I was supposed to be helping to cheer up my recently dumped sister, was going to have the reverse effect.
We sat and watched the scenery roll by, a thin mist giving the London streets a soft-focus Saturday morning sheen. The cab dropped us by Borough Market. We were early and I wanted breakfast, so I bought us each a bacon roll, which made Tilly moan with pleasure, before heading down to the South Bank.
‘Doughnuts. Bacon rolls. Is your plan for today to fatten me up and sell me to a hungry troll?’
‘Damn. Rumbled.’
It was bitterly cold by the river and the Thames was the colour of a bruise, but the icy wind was invigorating, a wake-up slap that made my nose run and my eyes sting.
‘Dad would have said this was brass monkeys,’ Tilly commented.
‘Are you too cold?’ I asked.
‘No, I like it. I always think I’m at my most attractive when my teeth are chattering and my nose is red.’
As we neared the London Eye, where Charlie had asked us to meet her, the morning crowds thickened. A street performer covered head-to-toe in silver robot make-up was setting up and the skater kids were already doing their stuff. Outside the National Film Theatre, early-morning shoppers browsed second-hand paperbacks. Then, in the distance, I saw Charlie and my heart did this little skipping thing.
‘That’s her.’
‘Where?’ Tilly asked.
‘The beautiful one.’
Tilly pointed to a bag lady enjoying an early-morning can of cider on a nearby bench. ‘What, her?’
‘Yes. It was the scent of her crusty hair that first drew me to her.’
Tilly laughed. ‘Hey, do you remember that homeless guy who used to live in Eastbourne – what was his name? Bobby Pole?’
Charlie had spotted us. She waved and walked towards us.
‘Yes. Bobby Pole. Mum said she saw him once in the indoor market.’
‘When he stopped and shook his trouser leg.’
‘And a fossilised turd fell out.’
Charlie arrived. She was wearing a long black coat and was wrapped in a scarf with a green woollen hat completing the winter look. Spots of pink burned in her pale cheeks. She looked adorable. She grinned, showing the little gap between her two front teeth. ‘What are you two laughing at?’
I told her the story of Bobby Pole and Charlie laughed like this was the funniest thing anyone she’d ever heard. Tilly and I joined in. I had never laughed as much as I had the last few days. I didn’t know if my stomach could take much more.
‘Tilly, this is Charlie,’ I said when I’d got my breath back. ‘Charlie, Tilly.’
They shook gloved hands.
‘So you’re the girl,’ Tilly said.
‘Oh no, don’t embarrass me,’ I said.
Tilly held up her hands, mock-innocent. ‘Hey, I’m not going to say a word.’
‘Please do,’ said Charlie.
‘So what are we doing?’ I asked, redirecting the conversation.
Charlie gestured behind her. ‘I’ve booked us tickets on the Eye to start with. Have you been on it before?’
Neither of us had. Tilly was delighted and wheeled herself along beside Charlie towards the big wheel, the two of them chatting like they’d known each other for years. Charlie gesticulated as she talked, her face animated. She looked like a movie star, the girl next door in an old American film, and I was struck by two e
motions, one immediately following the other: joy, that she was with me; and fear, that at any moment she might disappear like she did after our first night out. I told myself to get a grip. Relax, enjoy it. She seemed to like me a lot. The way she looked at me reflected back the way I looked at her. And if she didn’t care about me, didn’t want to give this budding relationship the chance to bloom, she wouldn’t be here now, taking my sister out, would she?
The London Eye was even better than I’d hoped, the city stretched out before us, proud and ancient and alive. Charlie pointed out her favourite buildings and Tilly recounted the time she and ‘a load of other wheelchair kids’ were taken to Buckingham Palace to meet the Queen. Charlie had a related story, about how the Queen had come to their school in Leeds and they’d all stood outside waving flags, hoping she’d brought her corgis with her.
‘I’m not a big fan of the royals now, though,’ she said.
‘Oh, are you a republican?’ Tilly asked.
Charlie waved a hand. ‘Actually, let’s not spoil the day with politics.’
I knew already, from watching the news with her, that anything Charlie saw as injustice made her angry. I had listened to her rage against some new policy the government had brought in, the so-called bedroom tax, and halfway through her diatribe I’d had to calm her down, pointing out that I wasn’t the prime minister and couldn’t do much about it. I liked the fact that she cared so much, though. It was another sign that she was a passionate person.
After the London Eye, we went on to Trafalgar Square and looked round the National Portrait Gallery.
‘Charlie’s an artist,’ I pointed out to Tilly.
‘An aspiring artist,’ Charlie said.
‘I really want to see some of your work,’ I said.
‘You will. Maybe you can pose for me.’
I was taken aback and Tilly laughed. ‘If you get Andrew to pose for you naked, please don’t ever show me the picture.’
That set them off again and led on to a conversation about penises that got ruder and ruder as we walked around the gallery, the two of them giggling like schoolgirls and pointing at portraits of historical figures and rock stars.
