I don’t know where Adam shopped, but it must have been the bird equivalent of Harrods, because the feeding table that arrived later that day was the poshest thing ever. It came in an enormous, glossy cardboard box with a picture of the finished article printed on it: painted pale green, it had a little pillared fence thing around the edge like a fancy colonial house might have and was mounted on a tall pole that I reckoned would make it almost Frazzle-proof. Along with it was another, plain box that I presumed contained food to put in it, and, together, they filled every inch of available space in Alice’s tiny office.
Throughout the afternoon, I kept glancing out of the windows at the front of the pub and the door at the back, checking that the birds were still there.
‘Hang in there,’ I told them. ‘Tomorrow your life of luxury will begin.’
As good as his word, Adam turned up before seven the next morning, yawning and smelling freshly showered, his hair still damp. He followed me through the empty, silent pub and I showed him the boxes.
‘Blimey.’
‘Blimey is right. They’re huge. Shall we get them outside?’
Together, we heaved the boxes out through the back door and into the garden, Frazzle watching us warily from the top of the fence. I fetched a knife from the kitchen and carefully slit open the tape that sealed the bigger box. Adam tipped it up, and about a million pieces of glossy green-painted wood slid out onto the grass, together with a little bag containing dozens of screws, nuts, bolts and Allen keys of varying sizes and, finally, a single A4 sheet of printed instructions.
‘Okay,’ Adam said. ‘I’m not sure I’m qualified for this.’
‘How hard can it be? I’ve put together enough Ikea chests of drawers in my time.’
‘You’re in charge, then.’
I picked up the assembly sheet and looked at it, then turned it the other way and looked at it again. Adam peered over my shoulder, so close I could feel his warm breath on my neck.
‘Uh… Maybe this is a bit more complicated than I thought.’
‘It looks like we’ve got to make the base first,’ he said. ‘Then that long pole thing fixes onto it. Then we put together the main bird-house bit, and that gets mounted on the top.’
‘Do all those fancy little balustrade things have to be screwed on individually? Seriously?’
‘Hey, I thought you only wanted the best for our birds.’
I laughed. ‘I’d best get screwing then.’
Half an hour later, we were almost done. The main post had toppled over and landed on Adam’s foot. The instruction sheet had blown away and I’d only just managed to catch it before it flew over the fence and was gone forever. Frazzle had come to help and carried one of the Allen keys away in his mouth. And we were almost helpless with laughter.
‘Oh my God, we are so crap at this,’ I said, inspecting a scrape on my knuckle and a corresponding smear of blood on the pale-green wood.
‘Those birds need to get some competent staff.’
‘As opposed to Tweedledum and Tweedledumber here.’
‘What do you suppose we do with that bit?’
‘No idea. Shall we just put the roof on and hope for the best?’
‘Let’s. And then I should probably get to work; I’m already going to be late.’
We finished the assembly as best we could, loaded up the bird feeder with fat balls, peanuts and even a whole sunflower head, then stood back to admire our handiwork, watched by Frazzle and an inquisitive squirrel.
Then Adam said reluctantly that he really needed to go and dashed off through the bar before I could even thank him properly.
All morning, Robbie and I kept sticking our heads out from the kitchen to see if any birds had arrived. We didn’t spot any that day, only the squirrel and a few of his mates, but the next morning there was totally, definitely a blackbird there, feasting away, and soon it was joined by another. I took a photo and sent it to Adam, and he replied with a heart emoji.
Twenty-One
You know what they say about boredom, Aquarius? It only ever affects boring people.
After that, I started having a coffee in the bar each morning, keeping an eye out for Adam on his way to work. A couple of times, in the beginning, I didn’t see him before I had to go into the kitchen to begin my work. But on Friday, after I’d sent another bird pic the previous day, I saw him walking down the road before seven, with his laptop bag and his sunglasses, which I’d noticed were well classy vintage Ray-Bans. In the darkness of the bar, I watched as he paused, stopped, looked up into the tree, then looked at the window where I was sitting.
I raised a hand and waved, and his face broke out into a grin and he hurried to the door.
‘Come in,’ I said. ‘We’re not open yet, obviously, but still.’
I hustled him through the pub, lit only by the early sunshine, and out of the back door, opening it cautiously with a finger to my lips.
Adam nodded and stepped silently outside behind me.
On the bird table were three blackbirds: the mum and two of the coal-feathered youngsters. As we watched, a robin flew down hopefully, but the mum flapped her wings aggressively at it and it departed, looking as pissed off as it’s possible for a common garden bird to look. We could see Frazzle crouched under one of the wooden picnic tables, just as transfixed as we were. On the roof of Archie’s shop next door, a squirrel was hopefully waiting its turn.
‘Like trying to get a table at the Chiltern Firehouse. Apparently it can take months, and that’s just if you’re a celebrity,’ I whispered.
Adam laughed. ‘I’m going there for lunch, actually, with work. It’s not all that. I’d rather have sausages and wedges here.’
‘Wow. That’s quite the work lunch. What is it you do?’
‘Nothing exciting. I just work in cyber security for a hedge fund. But my boss likes splashing the cash on lunches and stuff. He’s really old-school like that.’
If I’d ever thought of what Adam might do for a living – which I hadn’t really – I’d have assumed it was something IT-related. It was all of a piece with the algebra equation T-shirt I’d seen him wear and the laptop bag that seemed to be permanently attached to his shoulder. But I’d never have associated that with something as full-on fabulous as lunch at one of Mayfair’s most exclusive restaurants.
‘Lucky you. You’ll have to tell me all about it. Maybe over a coffee and some bird-watching tomorrow?’
‘Maybe,’ Adam said, but his face had kind of closed up. ‘I’d best be on my way. Thanks for showing me the birds.’
‘Thanks for bringing the bird table,’ I said, but I had to say it to his departing back, because he’d already hurried off back into the pub, and by the time I got inside myself, the front door was already swinging shut behind him.
The next Thursday was pizza night at the Ginger Cat, so my presence wasn’t required and Dani and I were out-out. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been able to get dressed up and go for cocktails with a mate, and I was practically giddy with excitement, especially as I hadn’t seen her at the gym for over a week. I was wearing a strappy black satin shift dress and, although I’d drawn the lines at heels, I was in one of my less battered pairs of Converse. My hair was behaving itself and I’d put on bright red lipstick which made me feel like I didn’t know what to do with my mouth.
However pleased I might have felt with my appearance when I left the flat, I knew no one would ever look twice at me with Dani around, though. She was wearing a black velvet bodysuit, high-necked but sleeveless, a tiny leather miniskirt and black suede shoe boots with massive heels that made her tower over me.
But comparisons didn’t matter – neither of us was interested in pulling, obviously; we were just there to get totally shitfaced on brightly coloured, too-sweet cocktails, and maybe even dance.
We were already on our second round of drinks that involved pink gin, lychee juice and sherbet, and we’d ordered a bowl of spicy Bombay mix that came, for some reason I
couldn’t fathom, with chopsticks. But everything here was both complicated and fabulous – even the drinks were served in two parts, with a tiny copper bucket hanging off the side of the glass so you mixed them yourself and watched them fizz up spectacularly.
The room was lit by neon tubing, Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’ was playing and I knew that I was going to get to spend the evening not thinking about work, or Jude, or even how much the bill would be at the end of the night.
But Dani seemed preoccupied. I’d asked her whether she’d been to the gym recently, and she’d said she wasn’t really feeling it right now, but she was sure she’d get back into it soon. I’d asked her how work was going, and instead of launching into a tirade about her boss messing her about, patients not turning up for appointments and then blaming it on the text-message reminder system not working, and people expecting refunds for tooth-whitening systems that had already spent several nights literally in their mouths, she’d just said, ‘Okay.’
Clearly, much more alcohol was going to be required for her to open up to me about what was wrong.
‘Look, they do strawberry milkshakes with vodka in them!’ I said. ‘I can’t have one because of the dairy but you can. Go on, take one for the team.’
‘Only if you have the lemonade that’s basically fizzy rum.’
‘With a stick of rock in it. Sold.’
Our drinks came, and we ordered a bowl of fries that came with ketchup in one of those squeezy red plastic tomatoes, and we sipped and ate, stuffing our mouths with crunchy saltiness until our lips puckered and we had to drink even more.
And after a bit, Dani said, ‘Zoë, do you mind if I ask you something?’
‘Course not.’
‘Have you ever been to a sex club?’
I tried very hard not to let shock register on my face. I mean, not that I thought there was anything wrong with stuff like that. Far from it. I wasn’t going to shame or blame anyone for their bedroom goings-on. But it was so far outside my experience as to be almost unimaginable. She might as well have asked me if I’d ever snogged Russell Brand – although, if what I’d read about Russell’s love life was true, that was far more likely.
‘Can’t say I have,’ I admitted. ‘In fact, to be perfectly honest, I’ve slept with six people in my entire life. If I went to a sex club I could double that in one evening, couldn’t I?’
I hoped that Dani would return the courtesy of me not judging her by not judging me, because I felt horribly naïve and vanilla in comparison to her.
‘I haven’t either,’ she assured me hastily. ‘But Fabian wants us to. He says it’s a massive thing now, everyone does it, it’s no big deal and it’ll make our relationship so much stronger.’
‘Okay…’ That sounded like typical Fabian. ‘But do you actually want to do it?’
‘I don’t know. Part of me thinks it’s just the most cringe thing ever, and I can’t get past imagining wipe-clean pleather sofas and bowls of condoms and being hit on by sleazy guys I wouldn’t ever shag in a million years. But also, Fabian’s got me to try other things I haven’t been sure about and some of them have ended up being kind of hot.’
And the ones that haven’t? I thought.
I said, ‘Honestly, if it were me, I’d be completely freaked out. I’d be worried about how I’d feel if my boyfriend shagged someone else in front of me, and about how he’d feel if I did. And I’d be all self-conscious about being the only person there with ginger pubes. Or any pubes. But maybe it’s different once you’re there, if you get into it.’
Dani took the straw out of her drink and chewed it, then grimaced and stopped. ‘Yuck. It’s one of those paper ones, and it’s disintegrating in my mouth.’
‘But you’re helping to save the planet, right?’
She laughed. ‘I guess a mouth full of paper is a price worth paying. But the thing is, Fabian’s way more experienced than me. He’s been with loads of girls and he watches loads of porn and I kind of feel like there’s this massive expectation that I’ll be into the same stuff.’
‘Like what?’ I couldn’t help asking, even though the thought of Fabian knocking one out to a porno gave me the literal shivers.
‘Like some poor woman having a load of men spunking all over her face until she looks like a plasterer’s radio. But other stuff, too. He likes me to dress up.’
‘An ex of mine tried that once,’ I remembered. ‘I don’t know what got into his head. I was in bed and he came into the room with an eyepatch on and a stripy jumper, and a breadknife stuck into his belt, and he was like, “Yarrr, a fine filly we have here, me hearties.”’
‘What?’ Dani spluttered. ‘He dressed up as a pirate?’
‘He did. But I don’t think he’d really thought it through. I tried to play along. I said, “No, sir, I am an innocent girl. Do not defile me!” and I pretended to cry, and he went, “Oh my God, Zoë, I’m so sorry,” and got into bed with me and gave me a massive hug, and that was the end of that. Well, the end of the pirate thing. We had sex, obviously, once I’d explained that I hadn’t really been scared.’
And that had been the end of any kind of fantasy role-playing sex games with Joe. We hadn’t needed to spice things up, not really – sex with him had always been amazing. But maybe it would be better with Jude if I made more of an effort? Maybe I should invest in stripper heels and cut-out bras and thong knickers that would get stuck up my bum crack and give me thrush? Maybe I was too boring, and that was why it wasn’t working out like I’d hoped?
‘Fabian keeps telling me about stuff he got up to with his exes,’ Dani said, when we’d ordered another round of drinks. ‘Threesomes with other girls, and even with other blokes. It just makes me feel so inadequate, like I should be up for all that stuff, when really I’m just not. But I want to be good enough for him. The sex club thing… he says we don’t have to even do anything – we can just go along and watch. But I don’t know if I want to watch a bunch of strangers getting it on.’
‘Honestly, I can’t think of anything worse. Like watching other people play computer games or something. Wouldn’t you be like, “No, don’t do it that way!” Or you’d be worried that you were staring and it was rude.’
‘I know, right? But then he tells me I’m so hot, and he wants to show me off, and that’s nice, isn’t it?’
‘It’s only nice if it’s what you want to do, surely?’
‘I know – you’re right really. But when we’re actually having sex and he talks about this stuff, I kind of go along with it. Maybe it’s just fantasy, and all he wants to do is talk about it?’
‘I wish there was more of that with Jude,’ I admitted. ‘Not sex clubs, obviously. But it’s… well, I wouldn’t say it’s crap. But when we shag, it’s always over in, like, a few seconds and I worry it’s because he doesn’t fancy me enough and he just wants to get it over with. I don’t know what to do.’
‘Of course he fancies you! Why wouldn’t he? Maybe you’ve just got into a rut. Maybe you need to spice things up a bit.’
Surely two months isn’t long enough to be in a rut, I thought. ‘Spice things up how?’
‘Like, buy some saucy new underwear. Light candles. Stuff like that. Nothing major. Just – you know – let him know you’re up for it.’
‘I guess,’ I said, thinking without much enthusiasm about scratchy lacy knickers that would be a case of thrush waiting to happen.
‘And talk to him,’ Dani went on. ‘Tell him what you’re into. Guys love that. They’re dead eager to please, really.’
‘You need to be honest with Fabian, too,’ I advised. ‘Maybe have a proper talk about it, when you’ve both got your clothes on, and tell him what your boundaries are. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work, with safe words and stuff? And if he suggests anything you’re not into, just say no.’
‘That’s all very well.’ Dani sighed. ‘But with Fabian, it’s just not as easy as that.’
Twenty-Two
When opportunity knocks, w
ill you open the door or stay under the covers? Take control of your destiny and you might notice your luck beginning to change.
It was almost a week before I saw Adam again. I still checked up on the birds every morning, and Robbie made a point of leaving bacon rind out for them instead of putting it in the kitchen food-waste bin. The blackbirds and the robin seemed to have made peace, and most mornings I saw them together, feasting at the bird table, joined by a couple of nondescript little brown birds I couldn’t identify.
Then, on the morning of our next Dungeons & Dragons game, I spotted Adam walking down the street on his way to the station, and almost without thinking I found myself opening the door of the Ginger Cat and stepping out to intercept him.
‘Morning,’ I said.
Adam’s eyes flicked beyond me for a second, like he was considering blanking me and hurrying on past. But, to my relief, he didn’t.
‘Hi, Zoë.’
‘Fancy a coffee?’
‘I should really… oh, go on, then.’
‘Come in.’
We walked into the empty pub and I switched on the coffee machine, its roar sounding even louder than usual in the early-morning silence. The heady smell of fresh coffee filled the pub as I opened the canister of organic, fair-trade Rwandan beans.
‘Double espresso?’ I asked.
‘How did you guess?’
I laughed. ‘Come on. You’re clearly an espresso drinker. I’ve been a cook for long enough to have a kind of sixth sense of what people are going to order. I guess it helps that I’m Aquarius, and we’re highly intuitive.’
The Stargazer app, I realised, had been upping the ante lately. Its push notifications, which had often been acerbic, were now sometimes downright vicious – so it was just as well, I told myself, that I didn’t take any of this stuff too seriously. But mentioning it was a good way to needle Adam, and it worked.
Thank You, Next: A perfect, uplifting and funny romantic comedy Page 19
