Gigi

There was a terrible, vulgar expression – one she knew but never used. Gigi couldn’t get it out of her head. She didn’t even know where she’d last heard it, and she certainly didn’t know anyone who regularly said it, but it kept saying itself aloud in her brain. Don’t shit where you live.

She knew exactly what her subconscious meant, though, with its mantra. What it was really trying to say was ‘Don’t have sex where you sleep.’ Or maybe ‘Don’t sleep with your landlord.’ Either of those would apply: they both worked.

The thing was – he knew where she was. When she left for work. When she got home. Whether she’d taken the car or the bus … who visited her … Adam didn’t have to snoop to know it – no stalking required. She was right there. He was right there …

Like she watched the family across the road without meaning to, he watched her. She hadn’t thought it through. There was no opportunity for things to grow organically – this embryonic relationship was on a faster track than she could probably cope with, simply by dint of topography. He was omnipresent.

And she knew he was trying so hard not to be – to be cool, and easy-breezy. No pressure. Hadn’t he been that way from the start?

He just wasn’t as good at it as she had thought he might be, back at the very beginning. It didn’t matter – he couldn’t help being there – it was his house.

She hadn’t told anyone what had happened between them. Not even impartial, non-judging Kate. So far as her friend knew, nothing beyond flirting had gone on. She could have told Oliver but something stopped her. She wasn’t so much ashamed as completely unable to frame the facts with her own opinion. She didn’t know how she felt. About Adam. About it. About anything. Not even Richard. There were things that she missed … there were lots of things that she missed.

And she really liked Adam. The sex had been good. It had been great. Thank God for the wine, because, sober, she almost couldn’t remember or comprehend how unselfconscious and relaxed she’d been about it. The getting naked, and the rest … He’d felt wonderful under her hands, against her body. It had been a long, long time, since she’d felt some of the sensations he’d made her feel. Desirable, attractive, appreciated.

But there was no plan, and she didn’t know the rules of this game because it had been decades since she’d played it. Let’s face it – when she’d last played it the rules were completely different anyway. She knew it wasn’t that she’d used him. She liked him. Cared about him, even. When had that happened? Wine or no wine, she’d gone into it knowing exactly what she was doing, wanted what had happened to happen … It was the feelings that swelled, afterwards, that she didn’t know what to do with.

He must have sensed her distress. Which, of course, was one of the things she liked about him. The next thing he suggested they do together was brunch, and not at all in a ‘How do you like your eggs in the morning’ kind of way. An unthreatening, easy-going meal on a day when he knew she was most likely working in the afternoon. She went because she couldn’t think of how or why to say no, and she went because she wanted to go. In equal measure. He’d made a full English, and been out to get all the Sunday papers. There was even freshly squeezed orange juice.

‘Trying too hard?’ He smiled when she commented on it.

‘It’s delicious …’

She liked his space. It was maximalist, whereas hers was decidedly minimalist. Bookshelves ran all along one wall, filled with novels and large-format art books. There were interesting pictures on the walls – ‘Ah, my Affordable Art Fair retail problem’ – vivid still lifes and modern landscapes. Deep, worn, leather armchairs and bare floorboards. It was male, but comfortable. Lived in. Like Adam. The radio was on in the background, and she’d ended up sitting on an old kilim cushion on the floor, her back against the sofa, him in the tan armchair across the room, reading the paper. Reading little snippets out loud to each other when something was interesting or funny, and it was almost like they’d been doing this for years.

He made an easy listener. He had that knack of letting you know he was listening and interested without speaking back to you much. She talked to him about Meg, how nervous she got before exams. And about Oliver, and how glad she was Caitlin had let him go. And it felt natural. He didn’t offer solutions to any of the issues, as Richard would have done, and she liked that. Then again, Richard was invested in the kids, and Adam had no need to be. But it was nice. And there was no sex, because she was going to work. Which, in the end, she sort of wished she wasn’t. But there was a kiss, before she left, that could easily have led to it if there was time, and left her feeling on edge in the sexiest possible way for the rest of her shift, remembering his hands on her face, and his mouth on hers.

Which was why she agreed to a cinema date a few days later, heavy though it felt with the expectation of sex at the end of it. (Did it, though? Maybe she was putting that there …) He put his hand on her knee in the film, which created a small tremor of – was it? – desire, but they were too old for snogging in the back row. They both needed glasses to see the screen clearly. And it was a good film, a complicated, well-crafted political thriller, so they concentrated. His glasses made him look intellectual. Afterwards they had coffee and cake in a place near the cinema, and talked, about the film and other stuff, close together on a sofa.

It was easy, and natural, to go into one home, when they got back, into one bed. She opened her eyes more this time, watching him loving her, and it was because it made it sexier, and not at all because she was trying to keep an image of Richard out of her head. It wasn’t until they’d finished that the fear of what feelings would come next encroached. But, almost as if he knew she had lied the first time about being okay with him staying, after he had held her for a time, he said he had an early start and didn’t want to wake her when he knew she had a day off and surely deserved a lie-in. He left to go back to his place. She was incredibly grateful. And even a little bereft, after he’d gone.

If he was biding his time, he was doing it very well, and maybe it was even starting to work. And maybe it could have …

Until he asked her to go with him to the garden centre.

And she went, because she had nothing else to do, aware that Megan would laugh and call it an old people’s outing, and because she liked being with him, even though Megan was probably right.

And it was okay until he asked her whether she would prefer a clematis or a wisteria in the front bed of the house.

He wasn’t watching her, when he asked. He was unselfconsciously reading the labels attached to the plants in the climber section. A wisteria could take three or four years to flower, whereas a clematis would flower in its first year. Both liked a sunny aspect, the tags said. Both could be purple or white, although he thought perhaps the white wisteria was a bit yellowy. And both would suit the soil and be suitable for planting now, although it was a bit late for both. It was more a question of which flower one preferred. She preferred. And there it was.

Maybe it was because he read out ‘sunny aspect’ and conjured up Richard, laughing at estate-agent speak. Maybe it reminded her of the wisteria they’d planted when Megan was a baby, which had grown lush and green but never flowered, and become a comforting, infuriating conversation she and Richard had on a loop every year afterwards. Was it too close to the wall? Could a wisteria be blind?

Maybe he meant nothing by it. But, because he wanted her to choose, that made her very afraid, suddenly, as she stood amongst the plants and the tools and the weird books no one wanted to buy, that he was planning a future with her. That if she chose the wisteria, she’d still be there in three or four years when it flowered.

He looked up at her face for a verdict and read there instead the fear of hurting him, and she was too late to rearrange her features into something less honest. And it was too late for him not to have asked her. And they both regretted it.

In the car on the way home, he tried chatting, but she knew her answers were rubbish. He turned on the radio. The mood had changed. Not quite clouds coming over the sun, or the heavens opening with hard rain. But a shift in the quality of the light. Bruce Springsteen was singing about hungry hearts. Of course everyone had one. She did. Adam did. Richard did. Every one of them could be hurt. She didn’t want to be hurt any more, but she also very badly didn’t want to do any more hurting.