The whole scene made Joy smile as she snapped image after image, even though the sight had set off a chain of thoughts that discomforted her. Seeing all these men interacting so tenderly contrasted sharply with Sean and the men he called his friends.
She saw them now, crashing through the door of her flat, drunk after a night at the pub. She used to scrabble out of bed, pulling on a jumper over her baby bump, knowing from experience she’d have to bring them beers and crisps while they swore and told lewd jokes around her dinner table, spreading out the bank notes and shuffling cards where earlier she’d been reading her baby books.
There was nothing friendly and tender about those men, and there was nothing she could do to prevent Sean turning up with them whenever he’d felt like it. Sometimes they stayed all weekend, sleeping where they fell, using her bathroom, jeering at the football, searching in her fridge. That was when her flat had stopped feeling like her own, around about the time she was realising she really was trapped.
She’d made the mistake of complaining after one of their post-pub nights ended in her cleaning up someone’s vomit. It was her flat, she’d insisted. Sean couldn’t just let them run riot in it, especially when she was pregnant and needed the place kept clean.
He’d been so shocked to hear her pushing back, he’d sent all his friends away immediately and she’d stood gulping and nervous, full of instant regret as the flat grew quieter.
He’d sat her down for a long lecture about how much he did for her, how ungrateful she was. How these men were important business friends and she’d embarrassed herself, and him, in front of them. It had lasted hours, the haranguing, and when she started to cry with exhaustion and bewilderment, he’d told her she had no business crying, not when she’d been the one hurtinghisfeelings. Then, to her amazement,he’dcried.
Flying into a frantic state, he’d asked her why she didn’t love him, and wasn’t she happy she was having his baby? It had rapidly descended into a desperate, overwrought scene from there; he’d wept on the floor, wondering why she didn’t want him when he gave her literally everything he had to give. He’d stumbled out the door in the early hours, leaving her gaping after him, begging him not to leave, convinced she really must have done something awful to hurt him, believing she was the ungrateful one.
He’d stayed away, not answering her calls, until she was unable to think straight. He’d turned up again three days later, only an hour after sending a text message where she’d told him if he really didn’t want her she understood and she was sorry it was over.
There’d been a ring at her doorbell, a huge bunch of red roses, and he’d swept back into her life with smiles and apologies and kisses. She’d been so relieved he was back and in a wonderful mood, like he had been at the start when they first met, she’d convinced herself she was happy he was home again, and the rollercoaster of emotions that was their relationship set off on another confusing, disorientating circuit, until she didn’t know what was pleasure and what was pain anymore.
By the end, he’d made sure he was so closely insinuated into every part of her life that she couldn’t see how to ever disentangle him.
He’d finally put off her own friends with his grouchy, put-upon behaviour, making them feel like inconsiderate intruders when they called round or rang (he always beat her to the phone and told them she was resting or she was in the bath – she wasn’t, of course), and it wasn’t worth the aggro of him discovering she’d replied to their emails on the sly, so she didn’t try that either.
She still tried to convince herself it wasn’t really all that bad. Sean would tell her so as well. She should loosen up, he’d complain, stop being so uptight. He loved her, didn’t he? He’d taken her to the big baby superstore and spent a fortune on the best buggy on the market, hadn’t he? He took her out if she ever needed anything. She didn’t even have to worry about bills, he was dealing with everything for her.
She was lucky, he’d tell her, but she wasn’t sure she actually felt lucky. Then for a long time, she hadn’t felt anything at all, other than a yearning to disappear entirely. If it hadn’t been for Radia maybe she would have done.
‘Joy, you have to pet something,’ a voice broke through to her. Monty’s. He was watching her with a little crease of concern between his brows. ‘You’re not allergic, are you?’
‘Hmm?Oh, no, not allergic,’ she said, blinking herself out of the vision of her lovely flat occupied by all those men who probably never even knew her name.
‘Try Wallace,’ Elliot threw in. ‘He’s great.’
Wallace, it turned out, was an enormous toad, who pulsed and gurgled on her lap. She patted his bumpy back, unsure exactly how you’re meant to pet a toad.
Radia, between animals of her own, took her mum’s phone and snapped pictures of her, giggling at the mock horror on Joy’s face.
‘Couldn’t I have the puppy?’ Joy said, and everyone had laughed, everyone except Monty who only smiled at her from across the chaotic circle, his eyes soft, his chest rising and dipping heavily as though he was holding himself fast to his spot, mastering self-control, trying not to get up and move beside her. Joy knew because she could feel it radiating out of him, an unmistakeable attraction, as strong as the moon pulls the tide, invisible and irresistible.
He’d sighed against her lips, her brain reminded her, and the whole time he’d kept his hands gripped tight around the doorframe of the Borrow-A-Bookshop, letting her wrap herself around him, and his breathing had turned ragged and urgent like the kiss was gnawing into his core like it was hers.
Her brain replayed it now as she watched him across the circle, everyone else’s heads lowered and fixed on the animals. Monty looked back, directly at her, his eyes alive.
He’d kissed her without grabbing at her, or darting his tongue about like some sloppy teen intent on claiming her, or making her want to pull back and find air. He’d kissed her like he really, really wanted her to like it. She tried to suppress the shudder the memory provoked.
He was still looking at her. Someone was going to notice. But even Radia was absorbed in the way the puppy was now tumbling around the circle looking for fusses and making the men sayawwand exclaim at his cuteness.
She tried to tell him, with nothing but an unequivocal stare, how much she’d liked him kissing her.
He’d loved it too, she was sure of that. He hadn’t released his grip on that doorframe the whole time. He’d held back. He’d not wanted to constrict her. The whole thing had been on her terms, and it had been her who’d broken away in the end, breathless and blinking, telling him she’d better go check on Rads, and he’d only smiled and slowly turned for home. There’d been zero pressure or expectation, nothing that left her feeling conflicted or coerced. It had been lovely.Hewas lovely.
The puppy tumbled onto Monty’s lap just as she was reaching that conclusion, and she watched helplessly as he booped his nose against the dog’s.
It was a kind of exquisite torture, being this close to him and having all her common sense failing her, and yet her imagination ran completely out of control for gentle, hot, respectful Montague Bickleigh.
Blushing, she was sure of it, she tried to concentrate on the toad and its bulgy throat. She could feel Monty’s amused eyes boring into her as he seemed to reflect all her feelings right back across the room, so strongly she wondered how the rest of the party couldn’t feel it too.
The hour passed quickly in a blur of animal facts, the gentlest cuddles, reminders about frequent hand washing, and one particularly exciting bit where nobody could locate Craig the stick insect and, after a lot of searching, he’d been found clinging to the back of Izaak’s T-shirt.
They’d all drunk craft Devonshire lager or orange squash from monkey cups and the whole buffet had disappeared right down to the last Pom-Bear crisp – again, Joy suspected the buffet had been planned with Radia in mind – and then Elliot had got a bit weepy when the puppy had to go back in the zoo lady’s van with the rest of the creatures.
