‘Actually, it is!’ Fury rears up in me. ‘I’d like to know, especially as you invited her to my flat.’
‘No I didn’t, I just?—’
‘Have you fucked her in my bed, Shane?’
‘Hey!’
‘If you have, would you strip the bedding and put a wash on? A hot wash, please. Ninety degrees with softener?—’
‘Stop it,’ he snaps. ‘No, I haven’t. What d’you think I am?’ Hmm, where to start? ‘It wasn’t meant like that,’ he goes on. ‘She’s just… a friend. It’s just a place to meet, with you being so close to the Tube?—’
‘In the middle of the night?’
‘It’s not that late?—’
‘It’s nearly midnight!’ I yell. ‘Hang on – is she there now?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Not yet.’
‘Josie, please,’ he says in a calmer voice. ‘Look… it’s nothing. Really. Just someone I see now and again. Just occasionally.’
‘What, like, all the time we’ve been together?’
‘No! Not really. I don’t know,’ he says hotly. ‘I’m sorry, I guess we should have talked about this…’
Something dawns on me now as an attractive, entwined young couple approach, their voices tumbling together. That even though there’s ‘only’ a decade between us, Lloyd and I view dating very differently. I mean, call me stupid, but I thought he was my boyfriend! I even took the fucker to Lanzarote last summer for a birthday treat! However, I realise now that, like Cora’s bewildering clean beauty routine compared to my ‘cakey’ powder, Lloyd and I are from different eras. For him, it’s all about talking to people on the apps and calling them horny minxes and apparently having sex with them. That’s how it is now. Why didn’t I know this?
‘Anyway, what about you?’ he counters.
I stop abruptly, realising I’ve arrived at The Black Bull pub where Shane and I were earlier. Now it’s firmly shut up for the night. ‘What about me?’ I ask.
Lloyd snorts. ‘Going on a little tour around the country with your old flame. Reigniting the spark.’
‘He’s not my old flame!’ I splutter. ‘There isn’t any spark…’
All right, your honour. All right. I won’t deny that I’ve experienced stirrings at certain points on this trip. When I had that panic attack, and Shane put his arm around me. I was still sweating like a horse and felt like I might vomit. But even then, a single thought – Don’t take your arm away! Keep it there forever! – ricocheted around my brain.
When his hand brushed against mine, as we examined a scale model of a liquorice factory at the museum, I wanted to hold it. People must think we’re a couple, I thought ridiculously (of course ‘people’ didn’t think anything). As he sat opposite me in that campsite café, sipping his hot chocolate with a fleck of cream on his lip, I wanted to kiss it right off him. I’ve tried to dampen it down and get a grip on myself. But the truth is, I’ve been a pan of milk on the verge of frothing over from the minute we pulled away from Back Alley Music.
‘Oh, come on,’ Lloyd scoffs, factory settings fully restored. ‘The two of you cosied up in a campervan together?’
‘I’m telling you, it’s not like that!’
‘Really.’
‘Yes, really.’
Lloyd sighs, as if trying to figure out where to go from here. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you, babe.’
I turn back towards the hotel. ‘I guess we didn’t have that conversation, did we?’ I say dryly.
‘What conversation?’ he asks.
‘The one I think you’re meant to have, where you decide that you’re going to be exclusive?’
I hear him clear his throat. ‘Um, no. We’ve never had that conversation.’
