“I want to see you.”
“You’ve got a funny way of showing it.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
She sighs loudly, exasperated, as if I should know what she’s talking about.
“Are you annoyed with me?”
She sighs again. “I’ve never been humped and dumped before. Not ever.”
“Humped and…?” I can’t help but laugh. “Is that what you think happened?”
“Well, it is what happened.”
“It’s only been four days.”
“Four days is a long time after something like that.”
“Something like…?” I smile. “Well, in which case, I apologize. I thought I should leave you alone, it being New Year and everything. To be honest,” I say, not entirely disingenuously, “I thought maybe you’d regret it.”
She gives a tiny shake of her head; her eyes dart from left to right. “Not really,” she says.
“Well, can I come in?” I wave the bottle again.
She shrugs and then reaches behind her to buzz the gate open.
“Are you alone?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says. “Mum’s taken Daisy to the cinema. They won’t be back for a couple of hours.”
I step through the door, leaning down to pet Hugo, then follow Jessamine into the kitchen. She immediately reaches for the wineglasses. I wonder how long it’s been since she had a drink.
“When does Daisy go back to school?” I ask.
“Wednesday.” She unscrews the cap from the bottle and then there is the urgentglug glugof wine into two tiny glasses, a perfunctory cheers, a swooshing sigh of relief. I see the color return to her cheeks, a flash of something across her eyes. “Well,” she says, “where’ve you been?”
“At home.”
“Where’s home?”
I tell her about the squat near the Royal Free, my attic room, the dark-haired boy called Frankie.
“Where are you going to stay?”
I sigh, top up her wineglass. “No idea, to be honest.”
She cups the back of her neck with her hand and nods. “Do you want to go upstairs?”
I start slightly but then I nod. “Yeah,” I say. “Sure. Absolutely. Lead the way.”
She grabs the wine bottle; I grab the glasses; I follow her up the stairs, Hugo hot on my heel.
Even though I know what to expect this time, it’s still a raw surprise when I see her naked. She is basically perfect. I mean, obviously, there’s wear and tear, she has some scars, a large one near her groin that I assume is from a C-section. But in terms of what I like in a woman’s body, she has it. Skin that looks as if it never saw a ray of sun, not once, that kind of yogurt color, with dips and troughs, pink nipples on soft small breasts, yielding flesh on sturdy thighs, like a Rubens nymph, and no, I don’t know why I like these old-fashioned bodies, maybe it’s because you don’t get to see them anywhere. Modern bodies are on view everywhere with their taut tanned thighs, furious chiseled bones, tight torsos, sinewed arms. I can see that body anywhere. But these secret bodies, bodies from a time gone by… there is something deeply rooted in my psyche—maybe a relic of a past life, a seventeenth-century version of me who was rampaging through the back streets of gaslit London fucking maidens in rancid petticoats—that wantsthisbody, this creamy, forgiving creature who looms above me now, mousy bobbed hair swishing, a look of grim determination on her face as she puts me inside her, rocks me back and forth, and while most of me is lost, mesmerized, stunned with pleasure and lust, there is another small part of me asking myself why. Why?
Why am I doing this?
Why am I here?
