‘Actually, before you knocked on the door there was very little festering going on.’
‘Ten minutes,’ he repeats, making a trigger shape with his fingers as he stalks from the room.
‘Well, that’s obviously not going to happen.’ Josh leans into me again as soon as the door clicks shut, but, just as our lips meet, from downstairs someone else calls my name.
‘Why are we friends with these people?’ I groan, lying back on the mattress.
‘They were at the same party as us last night, right?’
‘Yeah. And they were drinking last-resort spirits. They should be worse than we are.’
‘It’s the kids,’ he realises. ‘All the adults feel like they’ve been dug up, but the kids have been bouncing off the walls since dawn.’
From downstairs, my name again, more urgent this time. Then, footsteps on the stairs.
‘Shit. Darren’s sent Polly up.’
‘Shit.’
I throw off the bed covers. ‘Come on.’
And so, for the second time in twelve hours, we find ourselves hiding from our friends. Only, this time, we’re squashed into a cupboard wearing just our underwear, surrounded by fur coats that I hope very much are synthetic.
‘This is all veryChronicles of Narnia,’ Josh says.
‘If it’s between the witch and a walk, I’ll take my chances.’
‘Happy New Year,’ he whispers, and I stifle a laugh against his bare shoulder as the bedroom door swings open.
To be sure there’s no chance of getting frogmarched through Kent, we remain cocooned in the wardrobe. Limbs tangled together, we are cramped but cosy in the gloom, albeit the mothballs are making my nose prickle.
We attempt a kiss, to reignite what we started in bed, but I pull away after a couple of seconds. ‘We can’t. Not in here.’
Josh smiles. ‘Come on. We’ve never done it inside a cupboard before.’
‘It’s full of clothes. They might be heirlooms or something. It feels disrespectful.’
‘More disrespectful than doing it in their wine cellar? And their bed?’
‘I think having sex in someone else’s wardrobe would be a new low.’
He laughs, pushes a hand through his dark muddle of hair. ‘Yeah, okay. That’s fair.’
I feel for his hand, wrap my fingers tightly in his. ‘Polly was saying last night we should try for a millennium baby. To sortof... mark the moment. You know – being a part of history, and everything.’
‘Yeah, I was just waiting to find out if the world’s nuclear reactors were still intact.’
‘But then Darren reminded us the millennium actually doesn’t begin untilnextyear.’
He smiles, rests his head against the back of the wardrobe. ‘Of course he did.’
‘It’s a nice idea, though.’
He turns to look at me, his expression gossamer-soft. ‘Yeah,’ he whispers. ‘It’s a really nice idea.’
We have always wanted a family of our own. To cultivate something good from the cindered remains of our childhoods. But Josh says – and his eyes say, now – not yet, not yet. And I know this makes sense. We’re still only twenty-nine. We both need to be ready.
In the darkness, I feel for the writer’s bump on his middle finger, the soft knot of flesh raised by years of pens pressed too hard. ‘You’re going to live a long and happy life, Josh. I promise. I’ll keep telling you that until you believe it.’
