7 October
A bee buzzing around the room woke Laurie up with a start, then she realised that it was the alarm on her phone with its insistent drone. She had to shift Pete’s arm to roll towards it and the action woke him up too. His eyes told her that he’d been in as deep a sleep as she had.
Laurie pulled up the sheet to cover her nakedness.
‘Morning,’ she said meekly.
‘I don’t want it to be,’ he said and pulled her back against his chest, savouring the tickle of her hair, the scent of her faded perfume, sleep and sex.
‘I have never done that with anyone on the first date,’ she said.
‘I don’t care if you have or not, it’s not my business,’ he said and placed a kiss on her neck that seemed to ripple through her whole body.
‘I wish I had now, what have I been missing?’ she said in a New York accent and it made him laugh.
She didn’t want to move. She wanted to stay in this warm circle of his arms and replay the last twelve hours over and over. She’d recognised a desire in him to touch and be touched, to give and be given to in their lovemaking. It was gentle, intense, generous all at the same time.
Then the alarm on Pete’s phone, which was somewhere on the carpet, went off as well.
‘Nooo,’ he protested. ‘Go away.’
‘Day shift?’
‘Yep, first of four.’
‘I’ll get a quick shower. Time for a coffee?’ she asked him.
‘Last time I said yes, look what happened. Yes yes yes yes.’
She laughed again, reluctantly prised herself from him and darted out of the room, naked and self-conscious now.
By the time she had showered and dressed and gone downstairs, he had a mug of coffee waiting for her.
‘I didn’t know if you wanted me to make some toast for you or fry you some eggs but I didn’t want to go poking around in your cupboards,’ he said.
‘This is fine,’ she said, wondering if her smile would ever close. The muscles were starting to ache in her face.
Laurie was preened and perfumed and Pete was creased and smelled of bed and she thought he was perfect.
‘I didn’t plan to do that,’ he pointed upstairs.
‘I could tell.’
His eyes rounded. ‘Was my technique that bad?’
She threw back her head and laughed. ‘It was great.’
In reality Laurie had always thought sex a little overrated. It was nice, exciting sometimes but what they’d had last night felt like nothing she’d ever experienced before, not even in the early days with Alex – or in the post-his-affair days when sex had been something she craved on a primal, heightened, desperate level to prove that he was all hers. But last night there had been more hungers satisfied than mere bodily need.
‘I’ve written down my number for you, something which I should have done long before now,’ said Pete. ‘If you ring me, I’ll store yours.’ He handed her a page from the pad that sat by the telephone with his mobile written on it.
‘I’ll do that now.’
He heard the phone in his back pocket register her call. Even that refreshed his smile. ‘So I will see you again?’ He needed to ask once more, this time in the cold light of day.
‘I’d like that.’
They walked to their cars together. He kissed her goodbye. Held the back of her neck, his lips falling softly onto hers.
‘I’ll ring you and arrange something, after . . .’ he said.
‘. . . After your dad’s party.’ Laurie finished off his sentence. Pete’s brain was already starting to suggest places that he would take her.
But he wouldn’t. Because his dad’s party would be the end of them. Before they had even begun.