I’ve noticed her before, but have always avoided making eye contact – I mean, it would seem slightly odd to do anything else, in a group environment where you’re all semi-naked.
Piles of russet-coloured hair, damp from the shower. Green eyes, a full face of freckles. Mouth fluttering, a beguiling smile.
‘So,’ she says, resting a slim hand on my arm. ‘Are you a fully paid-up member of this wellness wankery, or do you fancy getting a drink?’
We find a quiet corner together in a nearby bar, which is musty, dark and dead. But there is something electric about Andrea. Her green eyes are almost cat-like, winged with dramatic sweeps of eyeliner. She has the kind of laugh that reaches into all four corners of the room. Every third word, a part of her body touches mine.
‘Teetotal?’ she asks, but not like she’s judging, just curious. She’s gone for cider; I’ve stuck to lemonade.
I shake my head. ‘Just taking a break.’
‘Good for you. Very disciplined. Nothing worse than a vice gone rogue.’ Sipping her cider, she makes searing eye contact over the rim of the glass. ‘So, tell me, Josh. How old are you?’
For a brief and startling moment I wonder if, somehow, she knows. Or whether my body has finally – incredibly – begunresponding to the passing decades while I’ve been looking the other way. ‘Why do you ask?’
She’s eyeing me as you might a piece of art you think you like but don’t quite get. ‘You seem like one of those people who looks an awful lot younger than they are. A kind of... British Paul Rudd. Plus, I quite fancy flirting with you, so I need to establish what I’m dealing with.’
I laugh for what feels like the first time in a while. And, for once, it isn’t forced. I am, unusually, quite up for being flirted with.
And something else feels new, too. The reassurance I draw from how perceptive she is. She reminds me a bit of Rachel in that way. Because, in my experience, enquiring minds also tend to be the most empathetic.
And so I do what I never do, and tell her. Everything. The whole story. The only bits I miss out are Wilf’s name, and what it did to my marriage.
Maybe telling her is a test. To see just how into me she is.
‘So how old are you, exactly?’ she asks, when I’m done. ‘Chronologically, I mean.’
‘Forty-two, just.’
‘Bloody hell. Lucky you.’
‘Well. Yes and no.’
For a while, I thought eternal youth might eventually lead me to enjoy birthdays. But if anything the dread of them only ever deepened. Time has turned now into an outgoing tide, from which I have become stranded, a barnacle on a reef.
Andrea tilts her head. ‘Why bother with yoga, then? I mean, I assume you don’t need to exercise or watch what you eat or panic about blood pressure like the rest of us. Or stress about death or disease or Viagra.’ She makes a little whooping sound. ‘What a bloody gift that must be.’
I can’t help smiling. Andrea told me, on our walk over here, that she’s not yet thirty-four. ‘Doyouhave to stress about Viagra?’
She smiles back. ‘From time to time. Anyway. It must be very liberating.’
‘Actually, the yoga’s more of a mental thing, really.’ I don’t tell her I’ve joined a gym and breathwork class lately, as well. That I’ve been taking my friends’ advice and trying to sort my shit out, focus on the future, stop thinking about Rachel. I’ve deleted her number from my phone, though this was a token act more than anything else, since of course I can recite it off by heart. I recently quit the needless nicotine too, have cut right back on booze, am getting into cold showers. And I’ve been spending a fair bit of time in my garden, with my mum. It’s been nice, actually, Mum and I tidying and pruning and chatting, planting the flowerbeds over for wildlife. I’ve even dug a pond, to attract the frogs and newts and bats. It’s a form of meditation, I guess. A way to self-improve, attempt to pursue a more peaceful life.
‘The never-ageing man,’ Andrea muses. ‘I could put you in a book.’
The term makes me flinch slightly, but curiosity overrides my discomfort. ‘You’re a novelist?’
‘I am.’
I tell her I’m an author too, ask what type of books she writes.
‘Experimental fiction, mostly,’ she says. ‘Themes of isolation, failure, deception. All the cheery stuff.’ She names her latest novel.
‘Wait – you’re Andrea Bewley?’
‘That’s me.’
‘Wow, you’re...’ Literary royalty, basically. She was shortlisted for the Booker, I think, the year before last. She also wroteIn Spite of Him, one of my top-ten books of all time. ‘I didn’t know you lived around here,’ I say, feeling more than alittle dazzled, and wishing I could take back around ninety per cent of the stuff I’ve said to her over the past half-hour.
