What Happens Now?

‘I took the liberty of buying some crisps,’ Max said, returning to the table a few minutes later with a drink in each hand and two packets in the crook of his arm. ‘And also, here’s a menu.’ He put the drinks down, dropped the crisps (one ready salted, one salt and vinegar – promising taste in crisps), pulled two menus out from underneath his elbow and handed me one. ‘You hungry?’

I’d been too nervous to eat much all day. Too adrenalin-y at the thought of the date. Plus there was my dodgy stomach issue. All of which probably accounted for why I felt a bit pissed already.

‘Yep,’ I replied.

‘Great,’ he said, sitting down. ‘Me too. Although I warn you, I’m greedy. It’s all freeze-dried food on expeditions. So if I’m out, I go a bit mad.’

With hindsight, the second bottle of wine was probably what did it. We’d ordered food – actual steak for him, tuna steak for me, then shared cheese – and stayed at the pub until closing. One bottle of red wine, then another. Conversation had meandered more easily from travels to where we grew up. When I told him about being raised by two eccentric academics in Norfolk, he laughed.

‘No way!’ he said, grinning at me. ‘Mine live just over the border in Suffolk. I’ll drive up and we can go for a walk along the beach.’

‘Which beach?’ I asked, trying to stay outwardly cool while all my internal organs were cheering. A walk on the beach meant there had to be at least one more date. I envisaged us strolling along Brancaster, my hair blowing in the wind in a manner which left me looking tousled and sexy rather than a woman who’d recently escaped the local asylum. Perhaps we’d hold hands. Perhaps we’d have sex in the sand dunes! Calm down, Lil, I told myself, this is a hypothetical situation.

‘I don’t know the beaches of Norfolk,’ went on Max, doing his lopsided smile again. ‘You’ll have to show me.’

My stomach flipped so hard this time I was nearly sick on the table, but I managed to claw it back. ‘Sure,’ I said, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘Do you go home much then?’

Max puffed out his cheeks as he exhaled. ‘Not as much as I’d like, but then I’m away a lot. You?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah, quite a bit. It’s home. And I went back for a while after, er, the break-up and everything.’

Max took one of my hands from my lap in his and shook his head, looking at me with a mock-serious expression. ‘Nope, I told you, no exes. We’re having a good time. Let’s not ruin it.’

‘OK, deal,’ I said, feeling his fingers curled over mine, hoping that my palms didn’t start sweating again.

And it was nice. More than nice. It was wonderful, actually, sitting, gently flirting with one another. It was the kind of date you never wanted to end, and I tried to bottle every minute in my head (after the first half hour was over), so I could go over it again and again the next day. To luxuriate in the pleasure at having met someone who made me feel this giddy. I’d always inwardly cursed any of my girlfriends when they talked excitedly about meeting someone new and having ‘a spark’. I often wanted to suggest they save it for a soppy card and not subject the rest of us to their Hallmark ideas of romance. But there was… something here. I felt it.

‘Can I kiss you?’ Max said, shortly afterwards, having shifted closer to me when the waitress took our plates away. I nodded, even though I was worried that I had red wine teeth and a tongue that tasted of cheese. He gently reached out and put his hand behind my head, pulling me to him. His beard tickled my chin. It was softer than I’d expected. And you know that kiss in The Notebook? On that boat jetty in the rain? In my head, the kiss with Max looked a bit like The Notebook kiss. A proper, steamy, full-on-the-mouth snog. In reality, it probably looked a good deal less romantic, given all the vodka and wine. But I didn’t care. Look at me! I was out on a Saturday night kissing a man like a normal person instead of crying on my sofa! I pulled back after few moments, though, aware that we were in a public space and people might be trying to enjoy their dinner around us.

‘You want to get out of here?’ he said, his hand still on the back of my head.

‘Sure. To where?’

‘My place?’

I didn’t hesitate, even though this was a man I’d known for less than five hours. I just had a sense that it would be all right. Murderers have eyes that are too close together and matted hair. Or no hair. Max had thick hair that I wanted to run my hands through, and a collared shirt. Murderers didn’t wear collared shirts.

‘Cool,’ I replied.

As we stood on the pavement outside the pub minutes later, I felt less confident, as if I was about to lose my virginity again. I could just about remember which bit went where. But what if Max was into something weird? What if he wanted me to talk dirty? I couldn’t do that first time. I didn’t even know his surname. Or, what if he wanted me to put my finger in his bottom? I wasn’t into that.

‘Lil?’ Max was standing by a black cab, holding the door open for me.

‘Oh great, sorry, was just… thinking,’ I said, jumping in the taxi.

‘Hampstead, please,’ Max said to the driver. ‘East Heath Road.’

The cabbie pulled out and I fell back against the seat as Max put a hand on my leg. It made my stomach flip again. I don’t want to say ‘I felt something inside me stir,’ because that would be embarrassing. But I did feel something I hadn’t for several months, or longer, if I was honest with myself, as happiness unfurled itself underneath my ribcage. I put my hand over Max’s and gently ran my fingers over it. Then he drew me in for another kiss, more urgent than the last, his mouth pressing hard against mine as he ran his hand up my thigh.

‘I’m glad I messaged you,’ he said, pulling back, but remaining inches from my face.

‘Me too,’ I said back. I nearly added ‘Just please don’t murder me,’ but I decided it would kill the vibe.

We got out on of the cab in front of a huge white house. Enormous. It was a mansion. I counted the windows. It was four storeys high, set back from the road slightly with a path leading to the front door.

‘Jeeeeeeesus. How big is your house?’ I said, looking up at it.

He laughed as he pulled his keys out of his pocket. ‘It’s not mine.’

‘Huh?’

‘I mean it’s not all mine. It’s flats.’ He opened the front door and walked me through a carpeted hall to another door. ‘This is my bit,’ he said, unlocking that door and standing aside for me to walk in first.

It opened into a bright white corridor with a dark wooden floor. A neat row of shoes and boots was lined up underneath a full-length mirror at the end of it. It was huge. Who knew climbing was such a lucrative career option?

‘This way,’ said Max, closing his front door behind me.

‘Um… can I quickly go to the bathroom?’ I said. I was desperate to pee and still worrying about my breath. I’d been desperate to pee all taxi journey but didn’t want to say anything. I figured ‘I need a wee,’ fell into the ‘List of bodily functions you cannot talk about on a first date.’

‘Course,’ said Max, turning round and pointing. ‘That door there.’

‘Great, two seconds,’ I said.

I sat down in the bathroom and frowned as I tried to gauge how my digestive system was feeling. Fine, I decided. A big relief. I ripped off a square of loo paper and ran it across my teeth to de-fuzz them. It was a lacklustre attempt at freshening up but I didn’t have any gum. I pulled my jeans up and inspected myself in the mirror. Weird how you can start off the night feeling like Brigitte Bardot and check yourself a few hours later to see a creature from a Stephen King novel staring back. I washed my hands and ran a damp index finger under both eyes to remove the smudged mascara, then reached into my bag for my bronzer to try and make my skin look less like I was attending my own funeral.

When I opened the loo door I heard classical music, so I walked in the music’s direction, pausing to look at a photograph of Max, framed in his hall. It was a close-up of his face, clearly somewhere cold because his beard was frozen, and he had a hood pulled tightly around his head. His eyes looked almost turquoise against the ice.

I followed the music and pushed another door open to find him standing in the kitchen, opening a bottle of red wine. I say kitchen, it was an enormous kitchen and living room in one: metallic kitchen cupboards and counters up one end, sofas in front of a floor-to-ceiling window at the other end.

‘Drink?’ he asked, raising the bottle at me.

‘Go on then,’ I said. ‘What’s one more?’ He laughed as I walked towards the big window and put my hands to the dark to try and see out. My breath frosted the glass.

‘It’s the heath,’ Max said, suddenly behind me. ‘The most sensational views. It’s why I moved here. Wilderness in the middle of the city.’

‘Poetic,’ I said, taking the glass and grinning at him.

‘Cheeky,’ he said, looking at me. ‘I like it.’ Then he leant forward and kissed me again, so I stumbled back against the window shutter behind me and red wine sloshed over the rim of my glass.

‘Oh shit, sorry,’ I said, rubbing the wood with my foot. ‘I don’t want to stain your floorboards.’

‘Fuck the floorboards,’ said Max, taking my wine glass and putting it down on a glass coffee table. Fuck the floorboards! It was the sexiest thing anyone had said to me for years. In my recent adventures on Kindling, a few men had tried heroically bad pick-up lines. ‘Hey, sexy,’ was one. Seriously? Another tried ‘You look a lot like my next girlfriend.’ Bless. But Max hadn’t said anything moronic, clearly saving his best lines for now. He took my hand and led me to the sofa, pulling me down with him as he sat.

He kissed softly, his beard prickling my lower lip, his tongue gently pushing at mine. And then it became more urgent, his lips pushing against mine while one of his hands ran up my neck and into my hair. Jake and I hardly ever kissed like this towards the end of our relationship. I’d assumed it was because we were both mindful of morning breath, politely avoiding one another’s mouths. But I’d also worried that it showed how much passion had leaked from our relationship.

I sighed like a hormonally deranged teenager and ran my right hand up the back of his shirt. Here we go, it was all coming back to me. Moaning softly again into his mouth, I pushed my hand through his hair, although I froze when one of my fingers caught a knot and he inhaled sharply.

‘Sorry,’ I squeaked.

But he pulled back his head and grinned at me, one of his hands still in my hair, his eyes centimetres from mine. ‘I’ll live.’

Then he stood up and held his hand out for mine. So I got up and Max led me from the sofa to his bedroom next door. It had another huge window facing the same direction, into the inky darkness of the park.

He kicked off his shoes beside an antique chest of drawers, and went to the window to fold its shutters. I slipped my shoes off and sat on his bed. Then he walked towards me and pushed me back against the mattress.

Weirdly, as I leant back, I realized my anxieties had vanished. I was in the flat of an improbably handsome man who I could sense I liked already. I was about to have sex with him but, as Max leant over me, his groin against mine, my fears about it were quelled.

He carried on kissing me while expertly undoing the buttons of my shirt with one hand. Then, when he reached the last shirt button, he carried on southwards, flicking open the button of my jeans and pulling the zip down.

‘Take them off for me,’ he said, nodding at my jeans before he stood up at the end of his bed and reached for the bottom of his shirt. He removed it over his head in one go to reveal the kind of body I’d only ever seen in pictures. Not grotesquely muscled and smooth. We’re not talking Love Island. But perfectly defined, with a light covering of dark hair across his chest, which tapered down towards his stomach.

He started undoing his flies, while keeping his eyes on me.

‘Off,’ he instructed again, inclining his head towards me. I was less cool here, trying to get my shirt off but flailing my arms around as if competing in an Olympic butterfly heat. Then I peeled my jeans down my legs, arching my back and making a sort of bridge like you do in yoga. Incredibly, Max didn’t seem turned off by this. His eyes stayed on me the whole time until my legs were finally free, when he leant down to pull his jeans off in one easy motion. No underwear, I noticed, which I was kind of into. Macho, no? Although you have to hope the jeans are washed regularly.

I didn’t want to drop my gaze and immediately look at his penis. I’m too coy. So as Max knelt back on the bed and lowered his body above mine, I stared at his face. He started kissing me again, running the side of his hand across my nipples and down my body. I could feel his erection against my thigh and then, suddenly, he rolled himself on top of me and started kissing the hollow between my breasts and down my stomach. Thank GOD I’d had a whip round and tidied myself up earlier instead of doing that thing where I deliberately left it looking like an overgrown allotment so I couldn’t go home with him.

He worked his way south until his head was between my legs and he was very lightly flicking my clit with his tongue. I looked down a couple of times to check his head was there and this was actually happening. A tiny thought bubble had formed in my mind: Is there any way I can take a photo to preserve this moment where a stupendously handsome climber with a body like a classical statue is going down on me? Jess had once knowledgeably told me that handsome guys were bad in bed because they didn’t have to try so hard. But I wasn’t at all sure I believed her, right at this moment. Max knew exactly the right pressure and where I wanted to be touched, so I wasn’t lying there thinking, ‘Down a bit, up a bit.’

I arched my back again and exhaled loudly as he carried on flicking his tongue over me, and then gently pushed a finger into me at the same time. I could feel an intense heat growing, spreading across my belly, and I rolled my hips in time with his tongue but just before I came, he stopped and pulled himself up. ‘Uh-uh, not yet.’

WHAT?

Maybe that was his problem. Maybe he was a sadist.

‘I’m going to grab a condom,’ he said, kneeling up on the bed.

I shook my head. ‘It’s OK, I’m on the pill,’ I said quickly. I couldn’t bear to delay this moment, a moment which felt like it should be in a film it was so perfect, with a basic discussion about contraception.

It’s often this way when you’re having sex with someone new, right? You’re hardly going to raise the matter in advance at the pub because you don’t necessarily know you’re going to have sex with them.

‘Excuse me, I know we’re only on our second round, but do you mind if we have a quick chat about contraception so it’s not awkward later?’

I don’t think so.

So the subject is left until you’re rolling around together, often pissed. But this never feels like the right moment to have a big discussion either. Unromantic. It breaks the rhythm. So you mumble at one another about it being ‘all right’ or needing to ‘be careful’. Irresponsible, I know, but in that second, I was so seduced by the surprisingly erotic turn of my evening that I didn’t want anything to ruin it. I wanted to experience the kind of sex I’d read about and watched onscreen, but never quite managed myself. No pauses. No awkward fumbling with a fiddly plastic packet. No carpet oyster afterwards. Nobody ever steps on a squishy, cold, carpet oyster in the movies.

So the condom was ignored and Max carried on, putting his hands under each of my bum cheeks and pulling me to the edge of his bed, before lifting my legs up so each was resting on his shoulders. Then, slowly, so slowly, he pushed himself into me.

‘Fuccccccck,’ I said, as he carried on thrusting in and out of me, unhurriedly, as if he was teasing me. I wasn’t sure it was the most flattering position in the world. I glanced down at my stomach and the rolls had all bunched together so they looked like packet ham. Plus my legs were over my head; my feet were, in fact, dangerously close to his head and I worried they might smell. But it felt so good, and Max was staring at me so intensely, that I forgot about my feet.

After a few minutes, he then pulled out and turned me lengthways across his bed. I tried to shift position as gracefully as possible. Never sexy to be thrashing around on top of a duvet like a dolphin, but Max had a knack of sweeping me around effortlessly so I was suddenly underneath him and we were doing it missionary, his head buried in my shoulder as he kissed my neck.

I rocked with him, running my nails down his back as we kissed properly again, mouths wide, tongues pushing against one another. Ha! All those worries about forgetting how to do it, I thought. Not a problem. Look at us go. Look at me having sex with this beautiful man. I moved my nails down over his bottom and then up across his back again. I am a modern, single woman, enjoying myself, being all liberated, enjoying being back on the dating scene again. It’s a Saturday night and instead of getting drunk with Jess, I’m having sex with Max. No more stalking Jake on social media. No more moping over old selfies of us. No more tears on a Sunday evening. I am free! I can do whatever I want! I am—

Suddenly, Max pulled out and, reaching underneath my back with one of his muscly arms, flipped me on to my stomach. I tried to look over my shoulder at him in what I hoped was a smouldering way, although I knew my eye make-up had probably smudged again so I looked like Noel Fielding. Max was on his knees behind me, but lowered his head to kiss my left shoulder, then my right shoulder, then, slowly, he kissed his way down my spine. His beard gently tickled my back and I sighed into my pillow. Then the kissing stopped and I was pulled backwards by my legs, Max’s hands underneath my thighs. My bottom was now on the end of the bed, my knees on the carpet.

‘Give me your hands,’ he said, so I lifted my arms from under my head and moved them behind me.

‘Here, put them here,’ he said, putting one hand on each of my butt cheeks and spreading them apart slightly. There I was, lying on my chest, with my hands on my bottom as if I was about to do a naked version of the Macarena.

Max then buried his head in my crease, starting to flick up and down with his tongue again, harder this time. It felt so good that I didn’t even worry about what my bottom looked like at that angle. I just wanted him to carry on, harder, faster, harder, faster, harder, faster, until that hot feeling of being on the cusp of exploding again and I came, moaning into the pillow.

‘That was amazing,’ I whispered, looking over my shoulder.

‘Good,’ he replied, and then, within seconds, he was lying on top of me, having pushed his cock into me again. His forearms were on the bed and he moved back and forth, breathing loudly and more urgently until he too made a sort of roar and flopped down on my back.

I silently congratulated myself for the performance then wondered how long I had to lie there underneath him before trying to move. I needed a wee.

He kissed my neck and rolled off a few moments later.

‘I’m just going to nip to the bathroom,’ I said, sitting up on the edge of the bed.

‘That one,’ said Max, inclining his head towards a doorway besides his wardrobe.

‘Thanks,’ I said. Strange how you could suddenly go into polite mode when moments ago someone was licking your bottom.

I sat down on the loo in his bathroom – grey marble and black and white photos of mountains on the walls – and tried to wee. It took ages. Come on, Lil, he’ll think you’re doing something revolting in here if you don’t hurry up. Finally, I weed. Then I wiped, stood up and looked at my face in the mirror. My cheeks were flushed, my lips pink. I reached for the Colgate, lying beside the basin, and dabbed it on my forefinger. Then I ran the finger over my teeth and gums, turned on the tap, palmed a pool of water into my mouth and swilled it around.

I tiptoed back towards his bed and got into it, glancing across at him as I lay down. He was lying on his back, one arm bent above his head on his pillow, but rolled on to his side as soon as I was lying down.

‘Head up,’ he instructed, so I lifted it and he put one arm underneath it and wrapped the other over me. Spooning someone you’d met only hours earlier seemed weirdly intimate. Even more intimate than them licking your bottom. But it was the perfect end to this most perfect night, and I fell asleep without even a second of neurosis that I shouldn’t have gone home with him on the first date.

The only thing was, when I woke up in the morning, Max wasn’t there. I lifted my head to survey his room, listening for clues. Ouuuuuuuuchhhhhh, my head. It felt as if my brain had grown too big for my skull overnight. Throb, throb, throb. I tried to ignore the pain and listen for any noise in the flat. But the place was silent. What time was it? I looked on the floor for my bag. No bag. I must have left it in the sitting room. Then I spotted a clock on his bedside table: 8.23 a.m. Early for a Sunday. I sat up in bed.

The floor of Max’s room looked like a battlefield, various items of discarded clothing lying on the carpet like wounded soldiers. My knickers, my bra, my shirt, my jeans, all at different spots. I swung my legs out and reached for my knickers, pulled them on and then tiptoed to listen at his bathroom door. Nope. Nothing. I retrieved my clothes from their various locations, put everything on and opened his bedroom door a fraction to the hall to see if I could hear a kettle or a radio out there. Still nothing. I found my way back to the living room but he wasn’t there either. Then I saw a note on the kitchen counter.

L, SORRY TO ABANDON YOU, JUST GOT A FEW WORK THINGS TO DO. BUT MAKE YOURSELF A CUP OF TEA AND GREAT TO MEET. M.

I stood at the kitchen counter analysing it. Analysing every word. Analysing every letter. No kiss after the M, was my first thought. And did ‘great to meet!’ feel a bit corporate? I don’t want to harp on about the bottom thing, but ‘great to meet!’ felt like something you said after meeting someone at a middle-management awayday, not what you said after putting your tongue in – I quickly counted in my head – three of their orifices. And who had work this early on a Sunday morning? But he’d also called me ‘L’, which seemed sweet. A bit intimate. L&M, we’d be, if we were a couple. As in ‘Shall we have L&M round for dinner?’ or ‘I wonder if L&M are free this weekend?’

I ordered myself to stop. What was I doing, standing barefoot in a stranger’s kitchen, wondering about what we’d be called if we were a couple? That was nuts. I needed a cup of tea and thirty-seven glasses of water, plus toast. And some Nurofen. And some more water. Lots more water. My mouth felt like something had died in it. But I didn’t want a cup of tea in Max’s flat. I wanted to get out of there and into my own space where I could go over the evening in my head, or at least the bits I could remember.

I folded the note up and slid it into my pocket, grabbed my bag off the sofa and went back to the bedroom. I resisted the urge to poke around his room too much – what if he was watching, somehow? – so made the bed and then took my bag into his bathroom to sort out my face. It was predictably terrible. Dry flaky skin. Faintly bloodshot eyes. Probably a good thing Max wasn’t there. I’d seen better-looking animals when I took my class to London Zoo.

A few minutes later I let myself out, praying silently that I didn’t bump into a neighbour. I made it to the front door of his building when I realized I didn’t know how to get home. What line was Hampstead on? I felt for my phone in my bag and retrieved it. Uh-ohhhhh. Eight missed calls from Jess and a mad number of WhatsApps. I scrolled through them. The gist, basically, was had I been murdered.

Are you dead? Please don’t be dead read her penultimate message.

Then the last one, sent at midnight: If you’re just shagging and not dead, then I might kill you myself when you surface. LET ME KNOW YOU’RE ALL RIGHT xxxxx.

I was about to open Citymapper and work out how long it would take me to get home when my phone started buzzing in my hand. It was Jess.

‘Hi,’ I croaked into the phone.

‘Oh thank God, you’re not dead,’ she said, deadpan.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘Not quite. But I feel like I might die soon.’

‘Did you stay with him?’

Christ. I wasn’t up to this before a cup of tea. It was like being on the phone to MI5.

‘Yup.’

Jess whooped down the phone. ‘String up the bunting, let the bells ring out. I need to see you immediately.’

I sighed on the pavement. Had anyone in history ever needed a sugary tea more than I did at that very moment? ‘I’m about to go home, love, think I need a bath and piece of toast. What are you doing later?’

‘No, forget later. Where are you? Why don’t you come over now and I’ll cook us breakfast while you have a bath here. I can hear Clem clanking downstairs in the kitchen.’

She was in one of her determined moods. No point in arguing. I didn’t have the energy. And maybe it would be better to go debrief with Jess. To be fed and watered by someone else and go home afterwards. Grace and Riley were probably making the flat walls shake this morning anyway.

‘OK,’ I replied. ‘I’m… in Hampstead… somewhere. Fuck knows how I get down to you. But give me, say, forty-five minutes?’

‘Amazing,’ said Jess. ‘I’ll go to Nisa and get some juice.’

It took me an hour to cross London. Jess and Clem lived in a tall, thin house on the north side of the river near Chiswick. Theirs was one of those red-brick houses that overlook the Thames, with big windows surrounded by climbing ivy; a road ran in front of the house and beyond that there was a little private garden which sloped down to the river. Most of the houses along this stretch were immaculate, the sort of homes lived in by rich hedge-funders or app millionaires. They had wisteria climbing up their walls, roses twisting over the railings and painted signs on their gates with grand names like Heron House and River View. Dog walkers strolled up and down the road, peering nosily into the bay windows, trying to gawp at the owners.

Jess and Clem’s house was different. Chaotic was the word I’d use, but I mean it affectionately. It was just as big as all the others – three storeys, plus an attic room in the roof which Jess – a portrait artist – had turned into her studio when she and Clem moved in. But if you were a dog walker wandering past their place, you might have assumed it had been taken over by squatters. The paint was peeling off the window frames, the path to their front door was uneven because several bricks had mysteriously disappeared and moss had long since covered the others. There was no painted sign on their railings – which were rusting – just a number: 19. Although the ‘9’ had swung upside down so it looked a bit like it was number 16 Chiswick Mall.

Clem and Jess couldn’t afford to patch it up. They couldn’t have afforded to live there at all, but they’d inherited their house from their grandmother, Blanche. She’s dead now but she was a famous concert pianist, who had a daughter with an Italian conductor in the 1960s. The daughter was Jess and Clem’s mum, Nicoletta, who’d inherited the conductor’s fiery tendencies and just about managed to get her two children safely to adulthood before abandoning London a decade or so ago for an apartment in Rome.

By the time I knocked on their door that morning, I was practically hallucinating about tea.

‘Here she is,’ said Jess, as she opened the door in her dressing gown. She stood back and squinted at me. ‘I can tell you’ve had sex.’

‘What?’ I rasped, standing on the step but leaning on the door frame. ‘You can’t possibly tell that.’

‘I can,’ she said, standing aside as I went in. ‘You look shattered. And you have sex hair.’ She waggled a finger in small circles at my head and then closed the door behind me. ‘Plus I can smell it.’

‘You’re a bloodhound, are you?’ I said, heading towards the kitchen. ‘That’s gross, by the way.’

‘I have a very sensitive nose. Tea?’

I nodded and pulled out a seat at the kitchen table, then sat down and put my arms on the table in front of me, laying my face on top of them. ‘Where’s Clem gone?’

‘Out walking.’

Clem was a terrible musician who had to supplement his creative endeavours by dog-walking. He’d gone through various musical stages since leaving uni. The guitar phase. The drumming phase. Even, at one particularly bad moment, an accordion phase. Now he was into his electronic phase and was working on his ‘first single’. He’d been working on his ‘first single’ a while and, lately, this seemed to mean a lot of sitting in his bedroom, enormous headphones on, tapping away at his laptop. Whenever he felt an artistic block, which was frequently, he sought refuge in the kitchen, hacking about with knives and experimenting with strange bits of meat the butcher on Chiswick High Road had persuaded him to buy. Offal, if you were unlucky. I remembered a vile liver tagliatelle; he was roughly as good at cooking as he was at music.

On the upside, he was the most popular dog-walker in the area, not only because he was so charming, but also because he had a boyish face that appealed to women of a certain age. He was tall and blond but had soft, pink cheeks that looked like they’d never needed to be shaved and he was always dishevelled. Mismatched socks, shirts fastened with the wrong buttons, tufty hair poking up like straw from the head of a scarecrow. But he came off as endearing, rather than useless, and so he had successfully, if unintentionally, cornered the local bored wives market. They scrabbled to sign their dogs up with him and then appeared in very pink lipstick and tight lycra at the house each morning to drop off their pugs and French bulldogs.