‘Divorce. I moved back.’
‘Oh,’ I say. Then, ‘Sorry.’
She shrugs. ‘No need. You could congratulate me, if anything. But what about you? Doesn’t your wife mind you meeting strange women for drinks?’
‘Ex-wife. So, no. Not really.’
She arches an eyebrow, nods down at my wedding ring.
I realise she’s ribbing me. ‘I’m kind of used to wearing it. It’s a bit tragic, I know.’
She agrees with a smile. ‘Okay, next question. Do you only go for women in their twenties now you’ve taken your youth elixir?’
I laugh uncomfortably, shake my head. ‘You literally couldn’t be more wrong.’
‘Oh. Good,’ she murmurs, and I feel her gaze ripple into me like a series of tiny tidal waves, one after the other.
59.
Josh
June 2012
We go back to Andrea’s place, a flat close to the river. It’s not dissimilar to mine, only hers is three storeys high, right up in the eaves. It is romantic in a way I imagine apartments in Paris to be, with creaking floorboards and crooked doorways and twinkling vistas of the skyline from the sloping windows.
‘I could have got somewhere bigger, after the divorce,’ she says, watching me as I take in the view, then examine her bookshelves – all the literary greats – and the awards gongs on her sideboard, the myriad photos of her grinning with a gang of women I assume to be her girlfriends. ‘But I’ve always dreamed of a writer’s garret.’
‘Yeah,’ I say with a smile, because I know exactly what she means.
She offers me coffee, and I go with her into the kitchen. We face each other as the kettle boils, talking the whole time. But then – as she’s measuring out the coffee, and I’m wondering if I should try to say something clever about T.S. Eliot – she says, ‘Oh, honestly, fuck this, don’t you think?’
She drops the spoon. Coffee granules scatter everywhere. She hooks a finger into my belt, tugs me towards her. Our lips do not so much meet as clamp together, our tongues colliding moments later. She tastes of cream soda, the flavour of the vape she was pulling on the whole way home. She moves closer, pressing me up against the worktop, hand grasping the back of my neck. No mercy, that’s Andrea.
After a few moments, she leads me out of the kitchen and into the bedroom. Keeping the lights off, she feels for my T-shirt, pulls it up and over my head. I tease the dress from her shoulders, let it fall in a twist to the floor. She moans a little, breathes out my name. She arches into my hands, her skin shimmer-warm. A groan passes from my mouth to hers. I kiss her harder.
We move on to the bed. Every part of my body is pulsing, straining, roaring with want. I can’t wait any longer. I reach for her hips, pull her on top of me.
Afterwards, she pushes the hair from her face, lets out an amusingly satisfied sigh. ‘Well, if that was being a cougar, I’ll take it.’
I can’t stand that word, as it goes, but right now Andrea could sling any kind of ageist slur my way and I probably wouldn’t object. So I just smile and shake my head.
It’s the novelty, I think. Of actually being with someone who knows the truth. Not feeling like I’m deceiving her somehow, or constantly trying to calculate whether the age gap I’ve concealed is too much.
‘God, you’re blushing!’ Andrea exclaims, with a nudge to my ribcage.
‘It’s hot in here, actually. Not sure if you’ve noticed.’ This isn’t a lie. It’s pretty stuffy up in the eaves, and I am spent now, slick with sweat.
‘Don’t worry,’ she says teasingly. ‘I like bashfulness. My husband was an outrageous exhibitionist. Which is actually incredibly boring.’
Out of nowhere, I find myself picturing Lawrence. ‘How so?’
‘Well. One-man shows usually are, aren’t they?’ She traces shapes against my skin with a fingertip, making me shiver all over again. ‘So, I take it you’re sure the pill has worked?’
I slide an arm behind my head. For many years, I was undecided. Hesitancy hovered in my mind like heat haze, the real answer never quite distinct. But recently, all doubt has evaporated entirely. I can see the truth in the mirror, without question – in my supple skin and bright eyes. My still-sharp jawline and stalled stubble, the going-nowhere ridges of my physique. ‘For a long time, I wasn’t sure. But now? Yeah. I’m pretty certain I haven’t aged a day in the past twelve years.’
Andrea talks a lot, but she’s good at listening too. So I tell her about the full-body MOTs I’ve been having again lately – and that, every time, my stats come back exactly the same. Identical, down to the decimal point. The doctors always seem surprised, congratulate me on being in prime physical condition for my age. I’m not sure if they know my history. There’s certainly no indication of it on any of the tests. It’s not as if the pill has sent my cholesterol skyrocketing, or obliterated my neutrophils, or whatever other bits of my bloodstream they like to skim off and quantify. Detectability-wise, that pill has transpired to be roughly on a par with ricin.
I confess that, for a long time, I was trying to find an antidote.
