“I remembered you said it was your favorite. I had to make it after Charlie went to bed and then hide it. He’d have demolished the lot if I’d let him. But next time we’ll go out. My treat. Agreed?”
“Okay, if you insist. Agreed.”
They clinked glasses.
“So did Victoria mind baby-sitting tonight?”
Amy shook her head. “She’s got me on party food detail tomorrow. I’m doing the guacamole dip, the snapper and ginger wontons, and the tabbouleh.”
“God, do kids actually eat that stuff? What happened to sausages on sticks and fondant fancies?”
“Too much sugar, too much fat, too much gluten … Anyway, the quid pro quo is I have an overnight pass tonight if I want.”
“And do you want?”
“Oh, yes. I want very much.”
“Good.”
Sam’s flat above his office in Clapham wasn’t quite what she’d been expecting. He had led her not into a chic minimalist, high-tech space but a vast, paint-spattered artist’s studio. There were trestle tables covered in dirty rags, dried-up brushes, and palettes. Dozens of canvases—brightly colored abstracts, some half-finished—were propped up against the walls. One of the first things she’d noticed was the smell of oil paint and turpentine competing with the delicious Thai curry smell coming from the kitchen.
The kitchen wasn’t so much a room as an area at one end of the studio given over to a few ancient kitchen units and a fridge and a stove, which had to be fifteen years old. The glass dining table, where they were sitting now, was new but nothing fancy.
At the opposite end was the bedroom area. It contained a low double bed with a wooden headboard, a desk and computer, and one of those portable hanging rails on wheels, full of clothes. In the middle of the studio, things got smarter. There were two brown leather sofas, a giant plasma TV on a stand, and a couple of black monolithic speakers that looked like they had been nicked from the set of
2001
.
“I like this place,” she said as he served her another helping of green curry. “It’s nice. Sort of boho.”
“But I could tell by your face when you walked in that it wasn’t what you were expecting.”
She smiled. “I have to admit I did have something rather different in mind. You being an architect, I was thinking more white walls, marble floor tiles, glass walkways, swanky science lab kitchen full of gadgets. And it turns out your kitchen’s older than mine and one of your bathroom taps won’t turn off.”
“Oh, God, I meant to tell you about that. There’s a knack to it.”
“Don’t worry. I worked it out.” She paused. “So, why no edgy, designered space.”
“I’m working on it,” he said.
“You’re planning to renovate this place?”
He shook his head. “No. What I really want to do is build a house that I’ve designed. That’s if I can get the money together. I’ve been saving, rather than spending money doing up the flat.”
“That is such a wonderful idea. Where are you going to build it?”
“If
I build it. It’s still only a pipe dream.”
“Okay, where are you dreaming of building it?”
“Dunno. I was thinking maybe somewhere close to the sea. I’d love to wake up every morning to hear waves crashing on the beach.”
“And gulls. I love the sound of gulls.” She felt herself blush. Idiot. Now he was going to think she was planning their future and had ideas about living there, too. Okay, the thought may have crossed her mind, but only for a nanosecond, and there was no way she wanted Sam picking up on it.
“I thought maybe Cornwall,” he said. If he had any thoughts about the gulls remark, he was keeping them to himself. “Until she died, my gran lived in a cottage in a tiny seaside village called Trescothick Strand. After Dad left us, we couldn’t afford posh holidays, so my mum used to take us to stay with my gran. I still love it down there.”
“Omigod, that’s amazing. I can’t believe you know Trescothick Strand. It’s my all-time favorite place.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Uh-uh.” Amy told him how most summers she rented a place just a short walk from there. “Only for a week and it’s usually freezing or chucking it down, but Charlie and I fly kites, collect shells, or go fishing in rock pools. I get fat gorging on too many cream teas.”
Sam said he could still remember his first box kite. “Then one day it got attacked by a particularly vindictive seagull. I remember crying until my mum bought me a new one.”
“Tell me about it.” Amy laughed. “I must have bought Charlie dozens of kites … Sometimes Brian and Bel come down, too. In the evenings, if the weather’s good, we make a fire on the beach and cook fish. Of course Charlie refuses to eat it because of the bones, but I can’t tell you how much I love those times. I never ever want to come home.”
Sam said he was the same way.
She took a sip of champagne. “It can’t have been easy having your dad walk out when you were so young.”
Sam said it was particularly hard on his mother. Because she never received any child maintenance, she ended up doing two jobs to support him and his siblings. “But it wasn’t easy for us kids. I think we all grew up thinking we’d done something wrong, that we deserved to be abandoned.”
Amy said she could see that. “So have you had any contact with your dad since he left?”
“Not until a few years ago. I’d gotten to the stage where I wanted to hear his side of the story. We always knew where he was, so I phoned him. He and I went out for a pub lunch. He talked about his new wife and family. He wasn’t really interested in discussing the past. When I asked him why he’d left us, he said he and Mum weren’t getting along; he’d found somebody else and thought it was for the best to make a clean break.”
“What sort of a human being thinks it’s for the best to walk out on three kids and leave their mother penniless?”
“Oh, he’s a real piece of work, my dad. We got to the end of our lunch, and I realized he hadn’t once said sorry or expressed even slight regret. By the time we said goodbye I had decided that I never wanted to see him again. My brother and sister met him separately and came to the same conclusion, so we’re all agreed, which is something, at least. I think there could have been friction if one of us had wanted a relationship with him.”
“It must be awful not having a male role model. There’s nobody to show you how to be a good father.”
Sam fell silent. He sat running his finger over the rim of his glass.
“You okay?” Amy asked. “Did I say something to upset you?”
“No. Not at all.” He had cheered up now. “How about we make a start on your cake?”
“I’d rather see your paintings.”
They got up from the table. Sam had dozens of canvases stacked up against one wall. He worked in oils and acrylics. His abstracts were linear and geometric. Then there were the semiabstracts—industrialscapes, mostly. A particularly brutalist image of Battersea Power Station really appealed to her, not that she would have wanted it on her living room wall. The paintings she liked most were of house interiors. They didn’t depict smart, designered rooms, just run-of-the-mill bathrooms, kitchens, and living rooms. One kitchen was very like her own, pre–Victoria’s purge. There were open food packets left out on the counters, dishes piling up in the sink, a garbage can overflowing. Another showed a woman’s bedroom, the bed unmade, stockings and underwear strewn over the floor as if they’d been removed in a hurry. These paintings were about real-life muck and mess and sex. She adored them and told him so.
“I can see why these are selling,” she said, standing back to admire a painting of an open cupboard overflowing with coats and shoes. “They are just so original. You are so talented, but I don’t need to tell you that.”
“You’re very kind,” he said, a tad ill at ease with her praise. “Now, let’s have cake.”
They took their peppermint tea and Amy’s Victoria sponge to the sofa.
“So, have you done any sketches for this house of yours?”
“A few, but they’re incredibly rough.”
Despite his protests, she insisted he show her.
He went to his desk at the bedroom end of the room and returned with a folder full of architect’s drawings. He spread them out on the floor. Amy knelt down beside him.
“Like I said, these are very rough,” he said. “There’s still a long way to go.”
They didn’t look remotely rough to Amy. They looked meticulous. The house was a simple, unpretentious glass construction with a flat roof.
“Most of the glass walls slide back in the summer.”
She was examining the stairs. “I don’t get these. They seem to be hanging in midair.”
Sam explained that in a way they were. They were floating stairs, essentially platforms with space between them and a slender support in the middle that made them appear to float. “And upstairs you’ve got glass walkways. All the bedrooms have their own bathrooms, and like the living room, they have a glass wall that looks out over the garden.”
Amy carried on studying the drawings. “Umm, I’m not sure this bit is right.”
“Really? Why?”
“Well, to get from the living room to this smaller room next to the kitchen, you have to walk right around the house. You need to put in a connecting door.”
He studied the drawing for a few moments. “You are not wrong.” He grinned. “I have totally forgotten the door. I did tell you it was a rough draft.”
“And how’s about upstairs in the master bedroom, keeping the en suite loo and shower but putting the bath in the bedroom? I’ve seen these amazing stone resin baths.”
“That’s very sexy.”
“What, stone resin?”
“No.” He laughed. “Having the bath in the bedroom.”
“Of course you’d have to have one-way glass so that passersby couldn’t see in.”
“Of course.”
“And have you thought about self-cleaning glass? It’s expensive, but in the long run it has to work out cheaper than employing a window cleaner.”
“I’ll make a note.”
“And insulation. You have to think about insulation. And solar panels for heating.”
He was leaning back, smiling at her.
“What?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking how much I enjoy being with you.”
“Me, too,” she said.
He stood up, pulled her to her feet, and kissed her. The next thing she knew, she was unbuttoning his fly and he was doing the same to her shirt. In a few seconds they were standing naked in front of each other. She rested her head on his shoulder and ran her hand over his buttocks. He forced his hand between her legs and pushed his fingers hard inside her.
“You are so wet.”
“Please. Can we go to the bed?”
“Sure.”
Once they were on the bed, he made her bend her knees and spread her legs. The next moment, she felt him pushing something hard and cold inside her. It took her breath away. Her body gave a jolt.
“What the—?”
“You said you did stuff,” he whispered.
“I said I did
some
stuff.”
“No, if I remember rightly, you said you did stuff.”
“Yes, but I qualified it by saying ‘not all stuff.’”
“Do you like it?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Okay. Check this out.”
The dildo, which she assumed was metal, since it was so cold, started to vibrate hard inside her. “That is amazing.”
“And I’ve got this little tiny one that goes …”
“Omigod. Where?”
A second dildo was starting to vibrate.
“Here.”
As it touched her clitoris, she cried out in delight. “Omigod, you went to Dildo King and bought a clit stick.”
“I did. I thought it might be fun.”
“It is. It so is. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”
“You forget. You’re not the one in control here.”
He carried on like that for a minute or so, working on her with both dildos, and then, without warning, he removed them.
“No!”
“It’s okay, just wait.”
The next moment his tongue was circling her vulva. Then she experienced a sensation she had never experienced before. The tiny vibrator was pressing against her back passage. For a second, her eyes shot open and her body froze.
“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he said.
“I don’t know. I’ve never …”
“Try it for a bit.”
“K.”
She had no idea there were nerve endings there that could produce the sensation she was feeling. He probed gently, not too hard or deep, letting the vibrator do its work. “I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.”
She gasped.
“Just relax. Feel the sensation.”
And she did. He kept her relaxed by concentrating on her clitoris.
Another millimeter. Nerve endings were firing all over the place. She was gasping, fists clenched at her sides.
“Just let go,” he urged.
And when she did finally relax her pelvis and her arms and hands, it started to happen—a slow gentle buildup that ended in her entire body shaking and shuddering. Afterward she took his penis, which was still rod-hard, and guided it into her vagina, moving her hips toward him. His thrusts came hard and fast and then began to slow down and get deeper. When it was over, he lay beside her, trying to catch his breath.
“Sam, that was amazing.”
“You sure you didn’t mind? I wasn’t sure.”
“With anybody else it wouldn’t have been right, but with you it was just exploring something new together, and it
so
worked.”
DESPITE THE
amount they’d eaten at dinner, they both had the munchies.
A few minutes later, they were sitting at the dining table, drinking tea and eating sponge cake, discussing how Amy might dispose of her thousand-pound kill fee from
The Daily Post
. In the end she decided to spend it on having the floorboards professionally painted. She would also get a new lock for the front door. Whatever was left would go toward this summer’s Cornwall trip.
By eleven they decided they still weren’t sleepy, so they watched
Armageddon
on Sky, which Sam insisted was the best action movie of all time. “You’ve got romance, action, adventure, humor, drama, a ticking clock. Plus there is one of the greatest comedy lines ever: ‘Get off of the nuclear warhead. Now.’”
Amy kept insisting it wasn’t as good as the
When Harry Met Sally
line “I’ll have what she’s having.” They were still arguing as they fell asleep.