I am suddenly annoyed on his behalf. ‘Talk,’ I command. ‘I want to know it all.’
We sit there another half an hour, having gone through his work and then moved on to his family – he’s the eldest, has two sisters and five nieces and nephews, both parents living. And then he wants to know about mine.
‘My little sister is a lot younger,’ I say.‘Vilma, you met her. I was fifteen when she was born.’
‘Really? It must have been like being an only child. Was that lonely?’
‘No,’ I add thoughtfully. If this had been a date I would have stopped there, wary of sharing too much, but since we were doing the friend thing there was no need. It’s very freeing, thisfriend-without-benefits thing. There are no expectations.
‘My mum’s a bit unusual. When I was younger –’ I pause. ‘Do not laugh or snigger when I say this,’ I warn, ‘but our house was a sort of commune for a while.’
Finn’s mouth forms a lovely O.
‘And you a professor of history and everything,’ I said. ‘I thought you’d know about communes.’
‘I do know about communes, I’ve just never met anyone who was brought up in one.’
‘There is always the odd commune around if there are a couple of hippies. “When two hippies are joined together, there will always be some magical place with weed, a smelly blanket and anecdotes about how life was good when you could drive a VW combi van around Morocco and live the free life.” I don’t know the rest of the saying,’ I said. ‘But basically, how it works is that you get a few people who are completely broke and one of them has a house but no money, so they live together and cook horrible things with lentils. My entire childhood was spent farting.’
Finn laughs. ‘You do paint with words.’
‘Thank you,’ I say awkwardly, pleased.
‘We also made a lot of jam because we had gooseberry and blackberry bushes in the garden. You have no idea how good I am at making jam.’
He laughs again and we are off, joking, chatting. It’s funny and easy. In a way it’s like talking to Vilma and her friends: light, interesting, with no side. He’s not looking for anything from me except someone to have an enjoyable cup of coffee with.
‘Why are you finished with dating?’ I ask, and add at speed, ‘As a friend. And nothing else. This is not me asking for romantic purposes, OK?’
He nods. ‘Message received. I was in along-term relationship for a few years and we – this is going to sound so clichéd – we began to feel like brother and sister eventually.’
My turn to nod. I understand that one far better than he could know.
‘We met just a few years after college and we sort of grew up together, you know the way you’re still in your twenties and life’s still a big adventure with no plans. Then, somewhere along the way, it stopped working.’
He looks down into his coffee cup now and I’m pretty sure he’s not lying. But then, how to be sure?
‘Did she feel the same way?’
‘She ended it.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Mags.’
‘Are you still friends?’ I’m interested because I’ve only seen Marc once since, and even then it was by accident. When he left, he disappeared.
‘No.’ He shrugs. ‘We tried, honestly tried, but we couldn’t go back to that way. We’d messed with the dynamic. I don’t think you can date for that long and go back to being friends. Well,’ he amends, ‘you would if you had children, but not us. Hey, the human race is weird, right? What about you?’
‘I was with a guy called Marc for a long time. It ended a year ago.’
Suddenly, I feel anxious. I’ve talked enough about me. I can’t talk about Marc. It’s too revealing.
I take a glance at my phone and realise that over an hour has gone by.
‘I’m going to be late.’
Which is an absolute lie because I’m only going to be late to my own couch, which never complains either way.
