Before

After she got dressed, Rebekah came out of the bathroom to find him making the bed. He had his back to her, leaning over the mattress, dressed in a white vest and grey tracksuit pants. He didn’t notice her to start with. For a moment, she stood in the doorway, uncertain what to do. She looked around at his place: it was nice, homely, photographs on the walls of old New York, the smell of coffee and bacon coming from the kitchen on their left, the living room, through a doorway ahead of them, flooded by early-morning sun. Behind the bed was a wall of red brick with an autographed soccer shirt, the name HENRY printed above a number 14, mounted on the wall in a frame.

‘You like football?’

He turned, surprised to find Rebekah there, and then his gaze followed hers to the frame. ‘Oh.’ He smiled. ‘Yeah, big fan. Thierry was my hero.’

She nodded, didn’t know what else to say.

She thought again how good-looking he was. She was thirty-nine, and he was at least fifteen years older, his hair and stubble flecked grey, but he looked good on it. He was fit, his body strong. He took care of himself.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’m really sorry again about …’ He faded out. About all of this: last night, getting so drunk we don’t remember anything, even each other’s names. ‘Maybe we should have a do-over,’ he added, smiling yet again, reaching out a hand to her, clearly hoping she would take it. ‘Hello, I’m Daniel.’

She hesitated for a moment.

But then she put her hand into his.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Rebekah.’

They stared at each other, unable to come up with anything else to fill the gap. And then he laughed sheepishly, and she did too, and it seemed to clear the air.

‘I feel I need to be honest with you,’ he said, and dread welled in her. ‘I do have someone else in my life, as I guess you do too?’

She grimaced. ‘It’s a bit more complicated than that.’

‘Okay,’ he said, and she appreciated that he didn’t ask a follow-up. She didn’t want to have to explain. ‘I meant what I said earlier, though. I don’t do stuff like this normally. It’s not who I am. She and I … I don’t know … I guess we’re in a weird place at the moment, but that’s not any kind of excuse. I didn’t go out looking for this last night, I promise you. I wouldn’t ever do that.’

For some reason, even though she knew barely anything about him but his name, she believed him. He seemed so sincere, so serious. She had the sudden compulsion to tell him about Gareth, about their split, because in a weird place at the moment was exactly the definition of their relationship too: they were split up, she was still hurting from his infidelity, but they’d reached an equilibrium where they didn’t talk about getting back together, but didn’t fight any more and weren’t looking to move things on.

What was that, other than weird?

‘I don’t think I’m going to tell her about this,’ Daniel admitted, his eyes creasing, as if the admission hurt him somehow.

She didn’t know what to say to that because she didn’t know which was better: admitting it or concealing it. She felt more comfortable with the second one, concealing it, burying it, but it would be a decision wreathed with aftershocks. She knew what type of person she was, so she knew already that every time she’d start to make some kind of peace with what had happened here – or as close to peace as she could get – a tremor would hit her. It was just how she was built. So she shook her head and said, ‘No, I won’t either. It’s just too …’ She couldn’t think of anything to define her situation other than the same word: complicated. It was so prosaic – but it summed it up perfectly.

He smiled, trying to lift the moment, and a clumsy, inelegant silence settled between them. They just looked at each other, unsure what else to say.

‘Well, I think I’d better be going, Daniel,’ Rebekah said.

‘You remember the movie Beverly Hills Cop?’

She frowned, thrown by the change of direction.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, holding up a hand, ‘there’s a point to this. What I mean is, that film, it was huge when I was at high school in the eighties. I was a teenager, and I thought I was so cool, and what was even cooler was that, not only could my friends and I quote all the best lines Eddie Murphy had, I actually shared the same surname as the character he played.’

She still didn’t get it. So what?

He saw her confusion and shook his head in apology. ‘Sorry. What I was just trying to say, very inelegantly, was that my name’s Daniel Foley if, down the line, things get … less complicated.’

He was saying he liked her.

And he wanted to get to know her.

She looked at him, how handsome he was, how polite and awkward he could be, how self-deprecating and apologetic, and she felt a momentary buzz.

There was something about him she liked too.

But then she shook the whole idea from her head. Her life was already a mess. This would just make it worse. She needed things to calm, not escalate.

‘Okay,’ she said.

‘Okay,’ he repeated, seemingly relieved she hadn’t balked and run for the door. He smiled again: it was a nice smile. ‘Well, you know where I live now.’

She nodded.

‘And you know my name.’

‘I do,’ she said. ‘Mr Daniel Foley.’

‘Axel Foley,’ he responded.

‘What?’

‘That was the name of Eddie Murphy’s character in Beverly Hills Cop,’ he said, ‘so that’s what everyone started calling me. It’s what friends call me.’

Rebekah just nodded again.

‘I’m not Daniel to most people,’ he said. ‘I’m Axel.’