‘Maybe he is,’ I said.

‘Yeah, or maybe Kit is.’ Draining the last of her tea, she set the mug on the bedside cabinet and sank lower into the bed. ‘I imagine she’ll be fine once she meets the guy and his tongue is hanging out like every other man she’s ever encountered.’

‘I’m sure you’re right.’ Though confident there was no insinuation in her comment, I turned onto my front and buried my face in the pillow. There was nothing for it but to sleep off my shame.

9

March 2019

It was a relief on Monday morning when Kit made no move to lure me onto the deck and bundle me overboard. Evidently, he knew nothing about what had taken place in his kitchen. In any case, rain was lashing down and the deck was closed. The buildings at ground level were slick from the downpour, their tops obscured by low cloud. Umbrellas, mostly black, formed jagged walkways of shelter.

‘Saturday night, mate,’ he said by way of a greeting. As tradition dictated, Clare had sent the thank-you text, not me, and would slip a card through their letterbox later, even though either of us could have handed it over directly. Those Edinburgh manners prevailed.

I pulled a classic lads’ expression: sheepish, but unrepentant. ‘Can I give you some cash for, you know?’

‘No, you’re all right. Just being good hosts.’

Free drugs and a grope of his girlfriend – or, more precisely, a groping from her. Remembering my hands-free helplessness, I felt a surge of desire, turned my head from Kit and pulled myself up from the seat. ‘Let me at least get the coffees.’

‘Great. Oh, get me a pastry as well, will you? Didn’t have time for breakfast.’

There was a queue at the bar and by the time I returned, we’d reached the peninsula and Steve had joined us. As they discussed the weekend’s football scores, Kit tore at his pastry as if he hadn’t eaten for days. Everything he consumed, he consumed so vigorously.

‘You’re quiet today, Jamie,’ Steve remarked. ‘Having a bit of a Zen moment, are you, before you clock in at the Cabinet Office?’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ It hadn’t taken me long to recognize him as one of those people skilled at making a sneer sound like a bit of harmless fun. I turned from their cackling to look at the river.

By the time I got to work, I’d dismissed Saturday’s canoodle as an isolated incident (how could a woman as beautiful as Melia possibly fancy a man who used words like ‘canoodle’ unironically?). Even so, the subconscious is a powerful thing and I found myself humming that old Special AKA song, ‘What I Like Most About You Is Your Girlfriend’. I played it to Regan – she’d never heard of the Specials – and started thinking it might be one of my Desert Island Discs (I didn’t dare ask her if she’d heard of Desert Island Discs. Or just discs).

Then, mid-morning, a text came:

Enjoyed Sat. Want to meet just U & me?

I stared at it for some time before replying, Is this you, Melia? and breathing in painful snatched gulps until the next text appeared:

How many of us R there? Yes, M. Thurs 7.30?

I began typing, I’m flattered, but, and found myself pausing. I can’t claim that events ran away with me, that I was swept along like some hapless antihero, because I actively stopped mid-composition and considered my answer from a bigger-picture perspective. Even a long-lived life is tragically short – would I ever get an offer like this again?

I hit the delete key, tapping away at that little cross, and then typed:

Yes. Where?

Simple as that. As treacherous and opportunistic and – I would like to think – uncharacteristic as that. Never mind that I’d be sitting side by side with her boyfriend every morning between now and then in a seat paid for by my partner, never mind that Melia worked with that partner and was several ranks her junior. I was a cad, a heel, and other terms Kit and Melia would never have heard of. She was whatever passed in millennial vernacular for the female equivalent.

Her message came back with an emoji I’d never used before but that I guessed meant ‘my lips are sealed’:

Goody. I’ll send address deets.

*

It was easy enough on the evening in question to tell Kit I was getting the usual boat and then deliberately miss it to get the one after. Even in minimum-wage work – especially in minimum-wage work – you got held up, and so he took the 17.55 and I the 18.25.

I was meeting Melia after her final appointment of the day. The flat was on the twelfth floor of a new development on the east side of the peninsula, with a view downriver towards City Airport. It was dusk, the lights of the planes piercing the smog.

She was already there, waiting for me as the lift doors parted and kissing me boldly on the mouth before singing hello. Her hair was loose, little flicks of auburn at the ends that I hadn’t noticed before. She wore close-fitting black trousers and a rose-pink silk blouse.

I followed her high-heeled steps down a narrow, carpeted corridor and through the door of a low-lit corner apartment. Unlike in the movies, we didn’t fall wordlessly on each other the moment the door closed behind us, but instead acted as if we were the first to arrive at a gathering of many. I unscrewed the bottle of wine I’d picked up, filled the takeout coffee cups brought from work, and made a little circuit of the open-plan living space. The windows had those gauzy white drapes you find in beach hotels in Bali, the furniture black and sleek. On every sofa and chair there was a complex scheme of throws and cushions, unlit candles in porcelain pots on the low central table, even a photography book open on a spread of a rooftop pool. It had obviously been professionally staged, a notion I’d always found ridiculous when Clare mentioned it, but entirely appropriate for this, a drama with adult scenes, a running time of, what, an hour? Ninety minutes? ‘Who owns this place?’ Had Melia misused work properties before or had I sown the seed in that jesting exchange at the food hall?

‘A buy-to-let investor,’ she said. ‘She’s never lived here herself. I’m not sure she’s ever set foot in the place.’

‘And I assume she has no idea you’re using it for your extramarital assignations?’

Her lips pressed together in amusement. ‘I’m not married, Jamie.’

And nor was I. ‘Extracurricular then.’

‘And only one assignation. We won’t come here next time.’ She watched for my reaction to this casual assumption that we would continue in subsequent locations, and nerves flurried in my stomach.

Nothing has happened yet. You could still walk away.

‘Come and see the bedroom.’

I tailed her to a lamplit box of fashionable charcoal hues, as pristinely arranged as the rest of the place. Whereas the living room had a deep balcony beyond its walls, the bedroom window was a single-pane cliff face of glass.

‘You don’t have a fear of heights as well, do you?’ she said.

‘As well?’ I laughed. ‘You see me as completely maladjusted, don’t you?’

‘Maladjusted, that’s a great word. But no, of course I don’t. We’re all maladjusted in some way. We all have The Fear.’ She held out her hand to me, palm down and fingers outstretched, almost as if she expected me to kiss her hand. Wild impulses sparked.