‘I don’t,’ he said, putting his arms around her again. ‘I promise you I don’t.’
Underneath his clothes, he was lean and muscled, his hard chest pale in the dim light, his bare bottom peachy. ‘Is this okay?’ he asked a few minutes later. ‘I don’t want you to think that this is just about sex. Because it isn’t, Lara.’
‘Don’t stop,’ she groaned. She didn’t want any of it to stop – the kissing, the sex, the whole evening and night. But she knew what he meant: that this had none of the hallmarks of ‘random casual encounter’. There was no doubt in her mind that tonight was definitely the start of something.
The next morning, they’d woken up and the connection between them still felt right and immediate and good. Lara could hardly believe her luck. All of a sudden, the whole summer seemed to be stretching before her, bathed in a golden new light, full of joy and discovery. He was already talking about rearranging his itinerary so that he could spend more time with her. She was thinking about places around the city that they could explore that weekend. This is it, she kept marvelling inside her head. This is the one. She might not have met him at The Sun, or indeed at Glastonbury, but at last, third time lucky, Fate had succeeded in flinging them together and boy, was she ever glad. Everything was stacking up perfectly; it was meant to be. Before saying goodbye, they agreed to meet that evening at a fancy oyster bar inside Grand Central Station, and she’d spent the entire day fizzing with the thrilled anticipation of seeing him again.
Only . . . that was the sting in the tail. The surprise ending she hadn’t anticipated. Because she hadn’t seen him again, not once, not ever. It had been the biggest disappointment of her entire life, bar none.
Chapter Eight
‘Why do you always act like that?’ Kirsten had said to Ben the night before. ‘With your sisters, I mean. Why do you let them push you around?’
They’d been getting ready for bed when this conversation took place, the two of them in the lamp-lit bedroom, him standing on one leg to remove a sock (he’d heard that it was the first sign of old age, sitting down to take socks on and off, and was determined not to be defeated, a mere five years into his forties). ‘What?’ he asked, so surprised he inadvertently wobbled and put his foot down. ‘They don’t push me around.’
Kirsten snorted. She had a whole range of snorts, graded according to mood. He reckoned he’d just been awarded one from the category he thought of as Derision. ‘Ben, you’re too kind to them, they walk all over you! Will you move this for me? Could you pick that up for me? Do this, do that, mend this, lend me that . . . Honestly, I can’t bear it. For your sake, I can’t bear it. They take advantage of you; you have to tell them.’
Ben said nothing at first. There had been similar outbursts over the years, with Kirsten apparently not able to bear all sorts of issues related to his family. You’d think his sisters were queuing up to antagonise her personally, the way she got so up in arms about them. ‘They don’t push me around,’ he repeated mildly, peeling off his socks one, two and chucking them into the laundry basket. Both hit their target; still got it, he congratulated himself. ‘I’m their brother, they ask me for help now and then. What’s wrong with that? I don’t mind.’
She was sitting at the vanity table taking off her make-up, peering at her reflection as she swooshed a cotton-wool pad across one eyelid and then the other. As a boy, he’d been fascinated by the sight of his mum transforming herself with her various powders and pastes into a sparkly, dewy-eyed, newly delineated version of herself, but had always been relieved to see her return to her softer-faced natural self again the next morning. It was the same with Kirsten; she looked so cute and vulnerable at the end of the day, he thought, stripped of her going-out warpaint, clean and scrubbed. Her small blinking face reminded him of a baby hedgehog, although he’d never dare tell her so. He wasn’t a complete idiot.
‘Of course you don’t mind,’ she was saying, sarcasm lacing her voice. ‘Good old Ben, he won’t mind. That’s what they say about you. They treat you like a mug though. When did any of them do one nice thing for you?’
‘It’s not about that,’ he said, undoing his jeans and hanging them over the back of the chair. Nobody ever sat in the chair that lived in their bedroom; it was a clothes horse and nothing more. He briefly considered saying to her ‘You wouldn’t understand’, but Kirsten, an only child, had occasionally railed drunkenly about how only children got this unfair rep for being spoiled and bad sharers, and her theory was that it stemmed from basic jealousy, reckoning that everyone secretly hated their siblings. He didn’t want to get into all of that again. ‘And they’re my sisters. I can’t exactly say no to them.’
She exhaled noisily and he knew he’d said the wrong thing. ‘That is precisely my point,’ she said, patting night cream on to her cheeks. ‘Because you can say no, Ben. It’s very easy. No, Charlotte, I’m not going to have a look at your starter motor for you, because I’m not a mechanic, okay? No, Annie, you can’t borrow our lawnmower because you still haven’t given us back the power drill. Where is that, by the way? Has she broken it, do you think? And no, Sophie, I don’t have time to go and help empty your hoarder’s-paradise garage because – newsflash: you have two strapping teenage sons who should get off their idle arses and do that for you, rather than loafing around playing computer games all day.’ Her jaw clenched as she smoothed in the cream. ‘See? It’s not hard.’
‘I know,’ he said because he was too tired to argue. He’d had a busy day at work and spending the evening with his extended family was always exhausting, however much he loved them all. Plus, even though he had no intention of refusing his sisters so brutally (their faces! They would be so shocked and hurt! His ears already burned to imagine the storm of follow-up phone calls that would ensue), there were times when he knew that conceding points now meant he could at least get to sleep faster once they were in bed. This was not perhaps the most healthy way to view a marital disagreement, but never mind.
‘So you’ll tell them that, will you?’
He pulled his shirt over his head, not wanting to meet her eye. Wishing that Kirsten didn’t make him feel so weak at moments like this. He was not a weak person, all right? There was nothing wrong with wanting an easy life.
‘Annie, especially,’ she went on, when he didn’t reply. ‘Just because she’s single now, she seems to think she’s incapable of tackling perfectly ordinary household tasks herself. And that you are the only man in the world who can fix things for her. When, you know, there are plenty of handymen out there. And YouTube videos!’
He sighed. Kirsten and Annie had never got along; they were too similar, Ben thought privately, both unequivocal in their opinions and prone to making blunt remarks without thinking first. He rubbed his chest, feeling a sudden stab of indigestion. ‘She’s had a rough time,’ he said, escaping through to the en suite in his boxers to brush his teeth.