It had been years since she had done anything like this. In fact, when Pepper tried to cast her mind back, she was not sure if she’d done karaoke once since her late teens. Her father’s first girlfriend after he moved out had been a big fan, and on the weekends Pepper spent with them, she was invariably dragged along to whichever local pub happened to be running a karaoke night and encouraged to have a go. Not wanting to upset her dad, who was still wobbly then and prone to bursting into tears at the mere mention of her sister, Pepper had obliged, even though she could see people in the audience wincing.
‘You can choose.’ Finn stood back from the screen, which was now displaying a list of songs by various artists. ‘These are the most popular choices,’ he explained, breaking off as the girl returned with drinks.
Pepper studied the options, chuckling to herself as she selected ‘Private Dancer’ by Tina Turner, ‘It’s Raining Men’ by the Weather Girls and ‘I Will Survive’ by Gloria Gaynor. The thought of Finn singing any of these was enough to make her laugh, but when she turned to hand him a microphone, she saw that he was now looking more apprehensive than anything else. She knew full well that Finn had a playful side – he teased her often enough – but she couldn’t deny the fact that he sometimes seemed rather strait-laced, too. They had broken down physical barriers in his apartment earlier that day, but now what she wanted more than anything was for him to kick back and relax a bit more, maybe even laugh at himself.
The opening bars to Tina Turner’s sultry hit filled the tiny booth, and Pepper grasped her microphone with both hands, throwing back her hair and staggering forwards and backwards on her tiptoes.
Finn’s eyes widened behind his fringe.
‘Come on!’ she urged, when she had warbled out the first two verses in her best Tina-drawl alone. Finn was making short work of his tall glass of beer, his eyes darting from the words on the screen over to Pepper. When the second chorus chimed in, he finally opened his mouth and began to sing. Very, very badly.
‘Hooray!’ Pepper cheered, laughing as Finn began to copy her strutting moves. For a man who moved so fluidly and seemed so comfortable in his own skin, Finn had absolutely no coordination when it came to dancing. But it was this ineptitude that made Pepper’s heart burst with affection for him.
He was taking himself way out of his comfort zone – for her.
He was making an absolute tit of himself – for her.
In a strange way, being here in this booth with him, singing songs at the top of their lungs while they lurched about like three-legged tortoises, felt even more intimate to Pepper than their earlier lovemaking had. Finn had not been at all vulnerable in that scenario, but here he was unsure of himself, and it made her trust him more, and like him more, to see it.
By the end of the third song, he had got into his stride, and did not bat so much as an eyelash when Pepper selected ‘Islands in the Stream’ for them to sing as a duet. Never had the lyrics meant so much, or felt so apt, and never had the looks they were exchanging felt so loaded with feeling.
Perhaps love at first sight was a myth after all, wondered Pepper.
Maybe it was love at first song.
Chapter 24
Night had fallen by the time Pepper and Finn left the karaoke bar and swayed together back through the streets of St Pauli. They were on the way to Freunde, the bar and restaurant Finn co-owned together with his two best friends, Clara and Otto.
‘I think maybe I shouldn’t drink much more,’ she decided, punctuating her words with a comically timed hiccup.
‘You can try,’ Finn told her, as they arrived at their destination. ‘But most of the time, the only question we ask here at Freunde is red or white?’
With a comforting squeeze of Pepper’s hand, he bounced them both up the two steps into the wine bar, giving her only a few seconds to take in the vast queue that ran along outside the restaurant next door.
Like all the most exclusive venues, the bar was quite small inside, with two wooden tables and a bench seat built in around a large open window. The walls were white brick, the floor polished oak, and a family of plants were trailing leaves over the edges of a macramé hammock that had been strung up between two brass hooks. A shelf the length of the room groaned under the weight of bottles, and an artful web of fairy lights dangled from the ceiling.
Pepper was busy admiring a collection of potted succulents lined up along the bar when a small, lithe man bounded out from behind it and enveloped Finn in an enthusiastic hug.
‘Hallo, hallo,’ he exclaimed, letting go of his friend and throwing two skinny arms around Pepper.
‘This is Otto,’ Finn said.
Releasing a bewildered Pepper, Otto looked at each of them in turn.
‘Where have you been hiding, heh, you fuckers? In bed all day, I bet?’
Finn threw up his hands and began berating his friend in German, and soon they were both laughing uproariously and slapping each other on the back.
‘This guy,’ Otto said, one of his spider-monkey arms draped around Finn’s neck. ‘He is a good man – the best fucker I know.’
‘He is,’ Pepper agreed, unable not to laugh at Otto’s casual drop of the F-bomb. She was wearing a star-print dress that had felt like a good choice when she put it on in Finn’s apartment earlier, but now she wished they had gone back to shower and change. It would have been nice to meet Finn’s friends when she was not quite so sticky-skinned – or wearing something that could easily have been fashioned from a pair of clown’s underpants.
Otto, however, did not seem to have noticed her dress. He was far too busy ushering them over to one of the tables and commanding that they sit down, before assuring them that he would look after their every need. No sooner had Pepper deposited her bag on the floor and arranged herself on a chair than Otto was back, four bottles in one of his big bony hands and three large wine glasses in the other.
‘This one,’ he said, brandishing the first of the wines, ‘is fucking beautiful. You have to try it.’
‘Oh, I really shouldn’t, I’m––’ Pepper began, but Otto was having none of her excuses.
‘Drink,’ he instructed, thrusting a glass into her hand.
Pepper bowed her head obediently, sniffing the small measure of white wine before taking a sip.
‘That is delicious,’ she said. ‘So light and sweet.’
‘Like me, heh?’ Otto’s entire body seemed to rock with laughter as he reached for another bottle. His light-brown hair kept slipping over his forehead and covering his eyes, and every time it happened, he flicked his head to one side as if he had a tic. In fact, Pepper thought, as she swilled the next measure around in her glass, Otto never seemed to stop moving, whether he was pouring, fetching bottles, drinking, or telling a story that required him to make a huge number of exaggerated gestures. Pepper could not work out if he was drunk, high, or plugged into the nearest socket.
After he had given them tasters of six different wines from various regions, Otto was distracted by the arrival of a group of young women, and promptly swept off to greet them, kissing each of their cheeks and waving his arms around like a human windmill.
‘Wow,’ Pepper said to Finn, raising her glass. ‘He is . . . Wow.’
‘Ja,’ he agreed. ‘Wow is exactly the right word. He has always been like this – the wave machine of a party, the one who will supply the midnight oil and keep it burning until morning. Sometimes, he can seem too much, too exhausting – but,’ he added, his eyes following his friend as Otto retreated behind the bar at speed, ‘everyone loves him. He is very good for our business, even if he does drink his way through our stock.’
‘He does?’ Pepper stared at the empty glass Otto had abandoned on their table. ‘And that’s OK?’
‘Of course.’ Finn shrugged. ‘It is not all that much really, and it helps him to stay energised. It is hard to be an entertainer every single night of the week, but Otto is an expert.’
Pepper was far too sozzled herself now to
condemn anyone else’s drinking habits.
‘So,’ she said, her hand seeking out Finn’s muscular thigh, ‘if Otto runs things in here and Clara is the head chef next door, that means you get to enjoy both?’
Finn tapped the side of his head. ‘Ja! That is because I am the brains.’
‘Well, obviously – the brains and the beauty.’
She had meant it as a joke, but Finn didn’t disagree with her.
‘Do you ever muck in?’ she asked him. ‘Chop vegetables or collect empty glasses?’
Finn pulled a face. ‘Only if I have to, when somebody is ill or something. But I prefer to be behind the scenes.’
Otto skidded to a halt beside them.
‘Everything all right here, fuckers?’
Finn put his exasperated head in his hands.
The restaurant next door was full to capacity, so it wasn’t until much later that Clara joined them. Pepper’s first thought was that she was tall – almost as tall as Finn – with long chestnut curls that she quickly untied and shook out over her shoulders. Despite wearing striped chef’s trousers and a stained white apron, she looked as if she’d strolled in right off the end of a catwalk. As soon as she realised who Pepper was, she dragged her stool closer to the table and began chatting away to her as if they’d known each other for years.
‘It is great to have someone to practise my English on,’ she confided, even though she was clearly as fluent as Finn. ‘Sometimes, I think, I choose the wrong word, and the true meaning can turn out to be something crazy.’
‘You have nothing to worry about,’ Pepper assured her. ‘You are pretty much perfect, as far as I can tell.’
‘Finn is supposed to teach me,’ she said, nudging him with an elbow. ‘But he is always away, off doing this or that, travelling around the world while the rest of us are sweating like dogs in this place.’
Otto, who was passing, let out a long howl.
‘Dummkopf!’ Clara shouted at his departing back. Then, leaning in closer to Pepper, ‘He is even crazier than a dog.’
‘I think he’s brilliant,’ she said. ‘People must love him – look how busy it is.’
The bar was full of people now, as was the street outside. Everyone seemed to know not only each other, but Otto, Clara, and Finn, too. He wasn’t exaggerating earlier when he told her how popular Freunde was – it was after two in the morning and the night was showing no sign of winding down. Pepper, who was starting to feel the effects of an early morning flight, followed by sex and multiple hours of exploring, drinking and singing, gave in to a yawn that she had been trying to suppress for ages, and rested her head against Finn’s shoulder.
‘Your girl needs sleep,’ Clara ordered, tossing her curls around like the star of a shampoo commercial. At some point during the course of the past hour, she had swapped her chef’s uniform for cropped jeans and a plain white shirt, and had painted her lips fire-engine red. She also chewed gum incessantly, explaining to Pepper that she was trying to quit smoking.
‘Every day, I wake up and I feel sick from it,’ she said, wrinkling her pretty nose. ‘I stand out on the street there every night, talking, drinking, smoking – it is not good for me.’
‘Shut up and have a fucking shot, heh?’ put in Otto, who had overheard as he scooted past from one of his many trips to the bar. Clara swatted him away like she would a fly, then smiled helplessly at Pepper.
‘Now you see what I am up against?’
Finn, who’d had his back turned talking to a couple at the next table, looked round and kissed Pepper lightly on the lips.
‘Shall we go home?’ he asked, and she nodded, elated at the prospect of more time alone with him. It had been such an enjoyable evening, but she guessed that Clara was probably only chatting to her to be polite – she almost certainly had other people to catch up with.
As they stood to leave, Clara put a hand on her arm.
‘Finn told me just now that you went singing?’
Pepper grinned. ‘We did.’
‘Not once in twenty years have I seen that man sing,’ Clara exclaimed. ‘And he is very, what is the word? Entspannt – relaxed. You are bringing out a side to him that I have never seen.’
Impossibly touched, Pepper gripped Finn’s hand a fraction tighter.
‘You are good for him,’ Clara added with a brisk nod. ‘I hope that it is the same for you?’
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Pepper assured her, wondering if she had ever been so happy.
Because it was true, wasn’t it? It didn’t matter if she found herself lacking, because Finn liked her exactly the way she was.
Chapter 25
The bed was empty when she awoke, but there were traces of Finn everywhere. In the tangled sheets and dented pillow, in the ripe, musky scent of the air and the half-empty bottle of red wine on the wooden floor.
Pepper sat up and rubbed her eyes, tried to run a hand through her hair and found she couldn’t. It was a jungle knotted by sex, by exploratory hands that had tugged and stroked. As she recalled the events of the previous night, she felt a shiver go through her and let the covers drop, biting her bottom lip as they brushed against breasts that were sensitive to the touch. She recalled the sensation of Finn’s mouth at her throat, on her chest, down across her stomach and lower, his tongue seeking her out, driving her onwards until her eyes were closed, and her head was thrown back.
She jumped as a door opened and shut on the floor below, then pulled up the sheet and clamped it under her arms when she heard feet on the stairs. Finn’s tousled blond hair appeared first, followed closely by his smile and two glasses of what sounded a lot like Alka-Seltzer.
‘Hallo, Hübsche,’ he said, flopping down onto the bed.
‘Hey.’
Pepper felt coy all of a sudden, embarrassed by the torn condom wrappers littering the floor and the discarded knickers she knew he must have passed on his way across the bedroom.
‘You look nice,’ he said. ‘I like this new hairstyle.’
‘Whatever happened to, “Beer then wine, you’ll feel fine”?’ she groaned, clutching her head with both hands.
‘This is the Otto effect,’ Finn explained, handing her a glass. ‘He has a reputation in Hamburg for breaking people.’
‘Well, consider me broken,’ she said, forcing herself to down the fizzing liquid, then almost gagging as her stomach lurched in protest.
‘First, we should have a reviving shower,’ Finn instructed, taking each of her elbows in his hands. ‘Then food.’
He took her to a small café called – rather wonderfully, Pepper thought – Pauline, which was tucked away amidst a warren of narrow residential streets. On the opposite side of the road, there was a small grassy area framed by trees, and Pepper watched bleary-eyed as an old man threw a tatty tennis ball for his even-older dog.
Finn, who had gone inside to order, returned to their table with water, apple juice and coffee.
‘You need to stay hydrated,’ he said.
‘How are you not hungover?’ she asked, starting on her juice. ‘Are you secretly a robot?’
Finn squared his shoulders and stiffened his arms. ‘I am a Dalek,’ he said, through clenched jaws, and Pepper laughed.
‘It’s no good,’ she told him. ‘You still look better than most people, even as a machine.’
‘Perhaps, I am a love machine?’ he joked, and Pepper groaned.
Their breakfast arrived on three tiers, like an afternoon tea, and Pepper’s mouth watered as she took in the plates piled high with an assortment of hams, cheeses, scrambled eggs, salad, pastries and a whole basket of bread.
‘To soak up the wine,’ Finn said, and beamed at her over the rim of his coffee cup.
Pepper let him do most of the talking while she made her slow way through as much of the food as she could. The morning had begun overcast as before, but the sun leached through as they ate, warming their upturned faces and Pepper’s bare toes. Anticipating a day of exploring, she had opted for tra
iners, but had kicked them off as soon as she sat down. Removing her shoes was a childhood habit that had stuck, and Pepper could remember being endlessly told off by her irritated mother, who was forever tripping over them.
Pepper speared a slice of tomato and turned to Finn.
‘Has Otto always been . . .’
‘A madman?’ Finn guessed.
‘I was going to say energetic.’
Finn thought for a moment as he chewed his way through a particularly dense slice of rye bread.
‘Mostly, yes,’ he said. ‘We all used to be that way, to be partying all the time, but then Clara and me, we both grew up – grew tired of it. Otto still likes to play.’
‘Is he seeing anyone?’ she asked, but Finn shook his head.
‘No – he drives them all crazy. His last girlfriend got fed up of waiting for him to come home every night. He is at the bar until five or six every morning, then back at four the next day. He sleeps between, so that does not leave much time for anything else – or anyone else.’
‘What about Clara?’ Pepper asked. ‘She is so beautiful.’
‘Ja,’ Finn agreed. ‘But again, she is too busy with the restaurant. We used to joke that we were all married to each other, the three of us and that Freunde is our child.’
‘A very popular child,’ Pepper pointed out, and he smiled.
‘She keeps us busy – too busy for any real children.’
Pepper paused with a rolled slice of ham halfway to her mouth. Lowering her fork, she considered what she could say to that. She and Finn had not discussed babies – it was way too soon and too serious a topic. But by making this statement, was he inviting her to begin a conversation about it? Pepper had made peace with the fact that she would probably not meet anyone soon enough to have children, but that was before Finn had come along.
‘Children take up a lot of time,’ Finn went on, nodding as if in agreement with himself. ‘And with Otto,’ he added, ‘it is like I already have a child to look after. Clara and I are his mama and papa.’
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