‘Nina.’

‘She is. She’s a twat for making such a fuss when it’s clear Dad made an innocent mistake and had such lovely things to say about her boring old husband, even if he wasn’t dead. Why don’t you ring a minicab and go join the after-party? It’s only nine o’clock.’

‘I can’t now, it would take me ages to get into the costume and by the time I arrive I wouldn’t have long.’

‘What’s the costume?’ I could hear Mum rattling with impatience at the end of the phone – simultaneously desperate to tell me every twist and turn of this non-existent saga, while being irritated by my questions.

‘It’s Emily Davison. But I have to get into all the petticoats, then attach the big toy horse on the back of the dress, and I just can’t –’ I heard a voice in the background. ‘I’m on the phone to Nina. Would you like to talk to her? Fine. Nina, your dad wants to talk to you.’

‘Hello, Bean,’ he said.

‘Hi, Dad. Is everything okay? Sounds like there’s been a lot of drama about nothing today.’ I forced a chuckle, keen to placate the situation into relaxed normality.

‘Paul died. Paul Goldman. Such a lovely bloke. We once all went to the Lake District together and we saw a deer. He hadn’t been looking well for a while, but these things still take you by surprise.’ I heard Mum groaning in the background. ‘Are you coming for dinner today?’

‘Not today, Dad, I’m coming in a few weeks.’

‘Is it a few weeks already?’ he said with surreal dismay, like a character in a suburban Alice In Wonderland. ‘Blimey, blimey. How time flies.’

‘Don’t worry about what Mum’s saying about Paul and Mary, she’s just cross she doesn’t get to go on her big night out.’ I heard Mum call his name.

‘I better go. I think your mum wants me.’

‘Okay, Dad,’ I said, resolutely cheery. ‘Lovely talking to you and I’ll call you again tomorrow.’

‘All right, Bean. Bye, love.’

I kept the phone to my ear and heard the loud, flat beeps of Dad jabbing at keys that weren’t the button to hang up. Then I heard Mum’s voice, weary and waning, edge closer to the phone. ‘It’s this one, Bill,’ she said, then ended the call.

I put my mobile in my jacket pocket and pressed my face against the bus window, which was speeding over Hungerford Bridge, willing London’s sparkling outline to distract me from the curdle of emotions in my stomach. I had never known a feeling as unbearable – as sour, wrenching and unshakeably sad – as pity for a parent.

I went to bed as soon as I got home. I had never had trouble with sleep – it was something I was increasingly grateful for as I watched friends battle through nights of shallow-breathed tossing and turning or the repetitive servant’s-bell ring of a hungry, wailing baby. Unusually, I was woken up two hours later by the sound of loud male laughter coming from the garden below me. I drew the curtains and saw Angelo and another man sitting on plastic chairs, smoking, drinking beers and speaking in Italian. I lifted the window ajar.

‘Excuse me,’ I hissed. ‘Would you mind keeping the noise down? I was asleep, you woke me up.’ They both stopped talking, looked up briefly, then returned to their conversation.

‘Angelo,’ I hissed again. ‘Angelo.’ They continued to talk. ‘Angelo, it’s half twelve on a Monday night. On a Saturday I could understand, but it’s Monday. I’ve got a really early meeting tomorrow. Can you talk inside?’ They began laughing again, so loudly it became an orchestra of wheezing hi-hat cymbals and honking horns. Angelo’s friend slapped him on his knee from the sheer hysteria of it all. ‘Excuse me!’ I pleaded. They raised their voices, trying to rub out my voice like a pencil mark. ‘ANGELO!’ I shouted. He snapped his head up at me with the sudden pep and fixed expression of a marionette.

‘Do not. Shout at me. Like a dog,’ he said with a light garnish of threat.

‘Go talk inside.’

‘No,’ he said, turning his head away from me again. I closed the window with a bang, put on a jumper, coat and a pair of trainers.

After a phone call and a taxi, I stood outside Max’s front door and the breeze bit my bare legs, alerting me to autumn’s arrival. Max opened it and I smiled apologetically. He pulled me into the warmth of his hallway and body.

‘This is a lovely surprise,’ he said as I pressed my face into his chest, my arms wrapped pathetically tightly round his middle like a child meeting a character at Disneyland.

‘You don’t have a woman here, do you?’

‘Three of them,’ he said into my hair. ‘They’re all very cross you’ve prised me away from the bed.’

‘Weird dinner with my ex,’ I said, looking up at him. ‘Then sad conversation with my mum and dad. Then run-in with my horrible neighbour.’

He kissed me. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want a glass of wine?’

‘A gallon.’ We walked to his kitchen and I pulled myself up to sit on his counter as he retrieved two glasses from the cupboard.

‘I’ve never knowingly had a dinner with an ex that wasn’t weird,’ he said.

‘I know. I thought Joe and I had nailed it, but maybe we haven’t.’

‘Did he beg you to come back to him?’ he asked, pouring red wine into two glasses. ‘Because you know that’s not allowed.’

‘No, no. He’s getting married, which took me by surprise. We always said we’d never get married.’

‘How did it make you feel?’

‘I don’t know. Not jealous or sad or anything. He said this thing that I can’t stop thinking about – that you decide what you want from your future anew with every new partner.’

He gave me my glass, then took a sip of his own. ‘I think he’s right, isn’t he?’

‘I suppose he is, I just hadn’t thought of it that way before. I thought we decide what we want, then find someone who wants to do it with us.’ I reached down to my plimsolls and unlaced them. They dropped to the tiles and I pulled my feet up on the counter, my chin resting on my knees.

‘Look at your sexy socks,’ he said, moving towards me and tugging at my feet. ‘Bare legs and socks on you does something to me.’ He stood between my thighs and I clamped them around him. I thought of the perfect moment we had found ourselves in, entwined on a kitchen counter on a weekday evening – the ephemeral period of a new relationship when everything domestic could be erotic. When watching someone pour milk on their cereal or towel-dry their hair was more entrancing than the ocean. When smelling their morning breath or unwashed scalp was exciting because it took you one step further into their high-walled palace of privacy, where you hoped only you were allowed to roam. Sexed-up to saturation point, therefore trying out the novelty of being humdrum. If this turned into a long-term relationship, one day we’d be only humdrum and we’d have to revisit the novelty of being sexy again – arranging ‘date nights’ and putting on our best clothes for each other and purposefully lighting candles. We trick ourselves into being close until we really are close, then we trick ourselves into seeming distant to stay as close as we can for as long as possible. Sometime soon, our socks would no longer be seductive, they’d be a source of an argument (not rolled up, left on the radiator, left in the washing machine). For now, our socks were symbols of something secret and sacred.

‘God, I love this bit,’ I said. ‘This bit where you melt over my socks. How do we keep it in this bit? How do we freeze this in time? There must be a way of tricking all the laws of monogamy. There must be some sort of gaming hack.’

‘No, no, no,’ he said, pushing my fringe back off my face and kissing my forehead, then my cheeks, then the end of my nose. ‘We need to keep going. We need to keep pushing through to all the next rounds. Your socks are only going to get sexier, I know it.’

6

‘I’ll have the burger, please, with a gluten-free bun and mac and cheese on the side.’ Lola registered my confusion. ‘What?’

‘Your order makes no sense.’

‘Why?’

‘Because there’s gluten in the macaroni.’

‘Yeah, but at least then I’m halving my gluten intake.’

‘But you’re either allergic to gluten or you’re not,’ I said. ‘It’s not like fags, it’s not a bit of gluten is better for you than lots of gluten. Flour is just an ingredient.’

‘You can opt for wheat-free pasta?’ the waitress suggested.

‘Blurgh, no thanks,’ Lola replied, tossing her menu on the table. I stared at her, unsure of where to begin.

‘Burger with cheese, jalape?os and fries,’ I said. Lola’s phone rang.

‘Hang on,’ she said. ‘I left my cosmic shopping list at the library.’ She picked up the phone. ‘Hello? … Yes, we spoke earlier … well, I definitely left it there, so I’d appreciate it if you could look one more time … it’s just a piece of A4 paper with a list of words on it like “twin daughters” and “my own events company” … okay … appreciate it, thank you.’ She hung up.

‘Lola.’

‘What?’