50

It was early evening. Sarah stood in her bedroom, despairing at her decision to meet Caroline and despairing equally at the choice of an outfit.

All the constituents of clothing – the details of stitching, the flare of a trouser leg, how colours were combined, their shades and qualities – all this seemed to Sarah to speak a language that was both incomprehensible and annoying. When was a colour bold? Was bold a good thing? The issue of the cut of a shirt, the stitching of a pocket seemed to lay a claim to her attention that every part of her wanted to refute.

Work clothes were easy. She had a formula: smart dark suits, good white shirts, smart flat shoes. These were clothes that she identified without much thought as a kind of respectful nothing. Function was the arbiter and the only meaning she wished to convey was ‘I am doing my job. You can trust me to concentrate on that and not on what I am wearing.’ This was a message, she felt, that stated her position accurately.

But now, with only twenty minutes left before Caroline arrived, clothes presented themselves suddenly – and unavoidably – as an altogether more compelling matter. Each choice carried possible intimations, intimations that were alarming but that she realized she needed to dare to reveal. A disclosure of longing might perhaps be made by the height of a waist or the fabric of a shirt.

She would not allow herself even to think that underwear might be important, but she broke out, as disinterestedly as possible, brand-new cotton pants from unblemished cellophane. They sat flatly inviting across her hips – this is here, they seemed to say, if you want it – and left a plateau of unmarked skin between their straight hemline and her plain bra.

Then, in spite of her best intentions, she found herself speeding up, impulsively spinning her wardrobe and drawers as thoroughly as any search team, trying on outfits and discarding them onto a groaning pile on the bed. Stretch trousers – a glance in the mirror: too desperate. A linen dress – too frumpy. A short dark cotton skirt with a side-buttoned stripy jacket – God, no, what on earth had she been thinking when she bought that? Finally, old jeans with a wide brown leather belt, a light-blue shirt with a snowflake print and shell buttons.

It was a lovely shirt, even she could see that. She had bought it on a rare expedition to the fancy shops near Covent Garden. The assistant, a gay man, had pooh-poohed her protests and held different fabrics against her face, pulled shirts and trousers from shelves and hangers, entered the changing room with no embarrassment at all at finding her in bra and pants. He’d insisted on the shirt and she’d swiped her plastic obediently but also with secret pleasure. It was ridiculously expensive. On the way out of the shop she had looked over her shoulder, and he had caught her eye and winked.

Sarah paused and looked at herself.

Well, maybe.

Maybe even pretty good.

She looked again and confirmed her first impression. She agonized for several minutes over a detail, buttoning and unbuttoning the shirt at the neck, and then, when she had finally settled on two buttons undone, revealing just a hint of her breasts beneath, she worried that with her fussing she had softened the expensive, crisp fabric.

Shoes? Five pairs on and off while the dog watched balefully from the bedroom chair. Trainers: too boring. Flat pumps: too boring. Heels: no, she couldn’t possibly . . . Finally, yes, perhaps – dark leather biker-style boots. She looked at Daisy.

‘Well, what do you think?’

The dog lifted her head from the chair where she was lying and made a stab at wagging her tail.

‘You don’t think a bit dykey perhaps?’

She looked and looked again in the mirror, swung her hips to one side.

‘But dykey in a good way, maybe?’

She glanced back to the spaniel, who responded by pushing her ears back in that expression that seemed to be a smile. Sarah returned to her reflection.

‘Hell, you’re right, Daisy girl. Why not?’

She smeared some red lipstick, applied some mascara. Not a lot of make-up, just enough to suggest she did this all the time and hadn’t dedicated her life to the job. Of course she didn’t spend her rest days in jogging trousers and old T-shirts. Only a fool would think that! She hoped the message was fine-tuned: she wasn’t trying . . .

There was a knocking at the door, Daisy running down the stairs and barking in the hallway. She sat on the bed. The dog barked again. After a minute, another tentative knock. Caroline saying her name. An impulse passed through her like a cold tide – let the dog bark, wait for Caroline to leave – and so, before she could give in to it, she opened the door to her bedroom and walked downstairs.

Daisy immediately began jumping up at her leg. Sarah remembered an old joke about the dyke on a blind date being the one with the removal van. Having Daisy there made it worse: not a removal van but a surrogate child, for God’s sake. It all felt so desperate. And she wasn’t desperate. That was the truth. She was fine on her own. Better even. Daisy looked up at her and wagged her tail. Sarah opened the door.

At first she couldn’t take in the fact of Caroline, could only feel the simple wash of excitement at her being there. Quickly, she made a nervous assessment of what Caroline had chosen to wear. Nothing that seemed to have been much of an effort: a light-blue scoop-neck T-shirt, low-cut jeans.

‘Hey,’ Caroline said and smiled. ‘You look great.’

‘You too.’

And she did, but she didn’t look as though she’d spent ages trying on different outfits. She seemed so in control, so normal.

Daisy was weaving around between them in endless figures of eight, like a happy blessing with a wagging tail. Caroline picked the dog up and stroked her behind the ears. Daisy tried to lick her face.

Sarah had an acute sensation of need, of urgency. She imagined in a rush her lips on Caroline’s mouth, her body against her. It made her cross and embarrassed, this longing. She felt a fool. She had a reckless urge to dispense with all this politeness and the meal that was in the oven. She wanted to show her hand, be rejected or accepted, put an end to her discomfort.

Caroline, still holding Daisy, smiled at her kindly. ‘What a lovely dog.’

It was a good meal. They talked about this and that – teaching, policing – and avoided the subjects that interested them: Farah’s death, Patti, sex.

Finally Sarah resorted to the bland question that had been lurking behind her talk of cuts in the policing service and the pressure on teachers in inner-city schools.

‘How’s Patti?’

Caroline paused with her spoon of chocolate mousse. ‘She’s still with her family in St Lucia.’

It was hard to think of a swift follow-up. She wanted to show a generous interest.

‘You two been together long?’

Caroline grinned. ‘You’re really not very good at this, are you?’

It was Caroline, of course, who bridged the gap, getting up and tracing a tender smear of chocolate mousse on Sarah’s lips, then licking it off with a slow and intending tongue. Sarah, still seated, nervously pulled away.

Caroline drew back and looked at her with a smile. ‘You do want this, don’t you?’

Although she was blushing, almost on the point of screaming with embarrassment, Sarah said hoarsely, ‘Yes. Christ, yes, of course I do.’

And so Daisy was shut away somewhere upstairs and Caroline returned. She kissed Sarah again, first on the mouth and then moving down her neck. Sarah stood and pressed her body into Caroline’s. It was easy after all: you just did at last what you had longed so badly to do. She kissed her on the mouth and then moved her hands down her back, beginning to kiss down her neck. Each touch was so perfect, so exhilarating. Suddenly they were both impatient. They began to struggle out of their clothes, laughing at their own desperation. There was a hiatus: the buttons on the new shirt were awkward. The impulse was to rip them off but instead Sarah stood still and solemn while Caroline carefully and slowly unbuttoned her fancy shirt and then moved deliberately down her body.

When it was done, they lay together in Sarah’s bed. Sarah, hungry again, stroked her finger slowly down Caroline’s belly towards the V of her legs.

‘With my body I thee worship,’ she said.

Caroline kissed her and laughed. ‘Don’t give me that! If it had been left to you, we would never have got here.’

Sarah’s mobile was ringing.

Caroline said, ‘Are you going to switch the damn thing off, or do you need to answer it?’

Sarah stroked Caroline’s hair away from her face.

‘I’m going to switch the damn thing off.’