After that, I started having a coffee in the bar each morning, keeping an eye out for Adam on his way to work. A couple of times, in the beginning, I didn’t see him before I had to go into the kitchen to begin my work. But on Friday, after I’d sent another bird pic the previous day, I saw him walking down the road before seven, with his laptop bag and his sunglasses, which I’d noticed were well classy vintage Ray-Bans. In the darkness of the bar, I watched as he paused, stopped, looked up into the tree, then looked at the window where I was sitting.
I raised a hand and waved, and his face broke out into a grin and he hurried to the door.
‘Come in,’ I said. ‘We’re not open yet, obviously, but still.’
I hustled him through the pub, lit only by the early sunshine, and out of the back door, opening it cautiously with a finger to my lips.
Adam nodded and stepped silently outside behind me.
On the bird table were three blackbirds: the mum and two of the coal-feathered youngsters. As we watched, a robin flew down hopefully, but the mum flapped her wings aggressively at it and it departed, looking as pissed off as it’s possible for a common garden bird to look. We could see Frazzle crouched under one of the wooden picnic tables, just as transfixed as we were. On the roof of Archie’s shop next door, a squirrel was hopefully waiting its turn.
‘Like trying to get a table at the Chiltern Firehouse. Apparently it can take months, and that’s just if you’re a celebrity,’ I whispered.
Adam laughed. ‘I’m going there for lunch, actually, with work. It’s not all that. I’d rather have sausages and wedges here.’
‘Wow. That’s quite the work lunch. What is it you do?’
‘Nothing exciting. I just work in cyber security for a hedge fund. But my boss likes splashing the cash on lunches and stuff. He’s really old-school like that.’
If I’d ever thought of what Adam might do for a living – which I hadn’t really – I’d have assumed it was something IT-related. It was all of a piece with the algebra equation T-shirt I’d seen him wear and the laptop bag that seemed to be permanently attached to his shoulder. But I’d never have associated that with something as full-on fabulous as lunch at one of Mayfair’s most exclusive restaurants.
‘Lucky you. You’ll have to tell me all about it. Maybe over a coffee and some bird-watching tomorrow?’
‘Maybe,’ Adam said, but his face had kind of closed up. ‘I’d best be on my way. Thanks for showing me the birds.’
‘Thanks for bringing the bird table,’ I said, but I had to say it to his departing back, because he’d already hurried off back into the pub, and by the time I got inside myself, the front door was already swinging shut behind him.
The next Thursday was pizza night at the Ginger Cat, so my presence wasn’t required and Dani and I were out-out. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been able to get dressed up and go for cocktails with a mate, and I was practically giddy with excitement, especially as I hadn’t seen her at the gym for over a week. I was wearing a strappy black satin shift dress and, although I’d drawn the lines at heels, I was in one of my less battered pairs of Converse. My hair was behaving itself and I’d put on bright red lipstick which made me feel like I didn’t know what to do with my mouth.
However pleased I might have felt with my appearance when I left the flat, I knew no one would ever look twice at me with Dani around, though. She was wearing a black velvet bodysuit, high-necked but sleeveless, a tiny leather miniskirt and black suede shoe boots with massive heels that made her tower over me.
But comparisons didn’t matter – neither of us was interested in pulling, obviously; we were just there to get totally shitfaced on brightly coloured, too-sweet cocktails, and maybe even dance.
We were already on our second round of drinks that involved pink gin, lychee juice and sherbet, and we’d ordered a bowl of spicy Bombay mix that came, for some reason I couldn’t fathom, with chopsticks. But everything here was both complicated and fabulous – even the drinks were served in two parts, with a tiny copper bucket hanging off the side of the glass so you mixed them yourself and watched them fizz up spectacularly.
The room was lit by neon tubing, Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’ was playing and I knew that I was going to get to spend the evening not thinking about work, or Jude, or even how much the bill would be at the end of the night.
But Dani seemed preoccupied. I’d asked her whether she’d been to the gym recently, and she’d said she wasn’t really feeling it right now, but she was sure she’d get back into it soon. I’d asked her how work was going, and instead of launching into a tirade about her boss messing her about, patients not turning up for appointments and then blaming it on the text-message reminder system not working, and people expecting refunds for tooth-whitening systems that had already spent several nights literally in their mouths, she’d just said, ‘Okay.’
Clearly, much more alcohol was going to be required for her to open up to me about what was wrong.
‘Look, they do strawberry milkshakes with vodka in them!’ I said. ‘I can’t have one because of the dairy but you can. Go on, take one for the team.’
‘Only if you have the lemonade that’s basically fizzy rum.’
‘With a stick of rock in it. Sold.’
Our drinks came, and we ordered a bowl of fries that came with ketchup in one of those squeezy red plastic tomatoes, and we sipped and ate, stuffing our mouths with crunchy saltiness until our lips puckered and we had to drink even more.
And after a bit, Dani said, ‘Zoë, do you mind if I ask you something?’
‘Course not.’
‘Have you ever been to a sex club?’
I tried very hard not to let shock register on my face. I mean, not that I thought there was anything wrong with stuff like that. Far from it. I wasn’t going to shame or blame anyone for their bedroom goings-on. But it was so far outside my experience as to be almost unimaginable. She might as well have asked me if I’d ever snogged Russell Brand – although, if what I’d read about Russell’s love life was true, that was far more likely.
‘Can’t say I have,’ I admitted. ‘In fact, to be perfectly honest, I’ve slept with six people in my entire life. If I went to a sex club I could double that in one evening, couldn’t I?’
I hoped that Dani would return the courtesy of me not judging her by not judging me, because I felt horribly naïve and vanilla in comparison to her.
‘I haven’t either,’ she assured me hastily. ‘But Fabian wants us to. He says it’s a massive thing now, everyone does it, it’s no big deal and it’ll make our relationship so much stronger.’
‘Okay…’ That sounded like typical Fabian. ‘But do you actually want to do it?’
‘I don’t know. Part of me thinks it’s just the most cringe thing ever, and I can’t get past imagining wipe-clean pleather sofas and bowls of condoms and being hit on by sleazy guys I wouldn’t ever shag in a million years. But also, Fabian’s got me to try other things I haven’t been sure about and some of them have ended up being kind of hot.’