He wants to do something small to help, to relieve some stress in my life. He wants to clear all of the clutter that can make modern life so hard.
‘You’d do that, for me?’ I ask.
He looks me in the eye. ‘I’d do it with you. I don’t want to unsubscribe you from your cheeseplease.com emails and then get told off.’
‘It was a Christmas gift for my brother,’ I explain.
‘Cheese?’ he asks me.
‘It was a cheese a month for a year. I think I overegged how much he actually liked cheese though.’
‘Unsubscribe?’
‘Yes,’ I say confidently, knowing that I haven’t opened an email from them since I sent the gift.Three years ago.
Ben presses delete and at least fifty emails disappear into the ether. The relief is strangely lifting.
‘It is quite easy, isn’t it?’ I say, surprised.
‘It can be,’ he says, taking control of the computer again. ‘But you do have emails here dating back…crumbs, ten years.’
‘Don’t you?’ I ask him.
‘No,’ he says incredulously.
‘It’s not just marketing spam in there. I keep emails from friends, old relationships, my mum. Like a digital scrapbook.’
‘So receipts and old dick pics, interesting. Anything juicy in there?’ he asks.
‘No…I keep the dick pics on my phone,’ I say, narrowing my eyes.
Ben nudges me with his elbow. ‘Oh, we can tidy that up later too,’ he says, still smiling at me. He stops for a moment, his fingers hovering over my keyboard in case he comes across anything too personal. ‘Before I do the deep dive though…and just for honesty’s sake, none of these old relationships are a thing, right? Or in the picture? For clarity, honesty, in the interest of clean slates.’ He says this so warmly, not out of jealousy but in a way which says that whatever this is, he wants to do it properly without complications.
‘I am single. My last long-term relationship was an accountant called Beau and that didn’t work out.’
‘Why?’ he asks.
‘For many reasons but especially because I found some saucy texts from someone he worked with and that knocked that on the head.’
‘Saucy?’ he asks. ‘Did it involve béchamel?’
‘That’s a terrible joke,’ I say, laughing.
‘I’m sorry he was such a dick,’ he says, his concern kind and authentic.
‘But no one of significance since,’ I tell him. ‘You?’Maybe this is the in, this is where I find out what’s wrong with him. There’s a wife, a love child, a crazy ex in prison.Worse, this is a simple fling, a summer romance to be forgotten when I return to the cold and grey climes of London. I feel my chest freeze in panic.
‘No one. My sisters used to joke that I’m married to my restaurant. There was a florist but that didn’t?—’
‘Bloom?’ I suggest.
He side-eyes me.
‘You literally just made a joke about béchamel.’
Ben laughs. ‘I spend too much time with work so really you and I have more in common than you might think.’ He reaches over and puts his hand in mine. ‘I love what I do and I think I’m decent at it. I work hard and I want to do things well. I see that in you too. How you’ve come here and you’re always scrutinising the villa, the landscape. You don’t switch off from it?—’
‘Because it’s a passion, part of who you are…’
