Butdating? Why touch a flame when you know it’s going to burn?
‘It’s time to get back on the horse, Fraser!’
Britney Spears pulls her audience closer with the conspiratorial body language of a practised raconteur. ‘I’m not sure I have the energy …’ My sentence drifts as I’m distracted by a peal of laughter from her fan club.
‘For horses?’ Zoe teases.
I snap my focus back to her. ‘For hilarious women.’
‘You don’t have to marry her, Frase! Just have a chat. Win her over with your scintillating intellectualism.’
This week’s atmospherics lecture springs to mind. A pencil case loudly hit the floor, knocked off the desk by the hypnagogic jerk of a sleeping student, who was obviously captivated. This is a woman who breaks up fights and is besties with a spy specialist.
‘I’ve no intention of marrying her.’Or anyone.I’m just struggling to take my eyes off her at present—a fact Zoe has clocked. ‘What’s her story, then?’ I ask, the question and Zoe’s reaction to it dislodging my equilibrium as she clasps her hands, tightens her black ponytail, and draws up a barstool, pulling me into a huddle.
‘Well, we met at the conservatorium. She was brilliant. Gifted, really. Infuriatingly talented but tortured, you know, the way composers can be?’
Stuffy visions of Beethoven and Mozart are kicked aside by this backyard vigilante in the preppy skirt, shirt tied at the waist, over-the-knee socks, Doc Martens, blonde wig, and wide-open smile.
‘Tortured and infuriating,’ I parrot, playing down my enthusiasm. ‘Got it.’
‘But then something awful happened …’ Zoe begins. ‘Hey!’ she calls across the room, wheeling her hand in the air to encourage her over.
‘Zoe, please don’t—’
And what awful thing happened?
But it’s too late. Ice Woman is on the move. Barrelling towards me while my heart hammers the way it should have done at the earlier mention of my ex-wife’s activity on the apps.
As she approaches, her face cycles through a range of emotions. Surprise. Confusion. By the time she reaches me, she seems incredulous, somehow, that I appear to be standing here at all.
I didn’t realise I’d made such an impression. She’d seemed so focused on Connor and Rachael. But then she speaks, and it takes just one shaky word for her startled expression to make complete sense.
‘Joshua?’
5
AUDREY
‘No, Audrey, this is Fraser,’ Zoe corrects me, as I backtrack instantly out of the mistake. ‘You know, my lovely academic friend? I’m sure I’ve mentioned him …’She hasn’t.‘Fraser—meet Audrey.’
Zoe shuffles us together as if she is an intimacy coordinator on a film set, while he stands here, familiar-looking brows arched into a thoughtful frown, intelligent brown eyes on mine, and it’s all I can do not to go to pieces.
This man isso likeJoshua Miller.
And now my heart is doing unnecessary cartwheels, ahead of the inevitable, imminent attack of nervous babbling. ‘Sorry! My mistake. It’s just you remind me very much of someone I used to know.’
It’s not just the light brown hair and the height and build. It’s the intellectual detachment, as if he’d rather be dreaming up some brilliant idea in the recording studio. Of course, my mind has snagged on a memory of that night in the studio with Josh. The way he lit the match that blew up my life …
Even after all this time, I can taste that toxic cocktail of deep disappointment and fierce disagreement andfury—
‘Josh is my brother,’ Fraser explains, coolly, the information scattering anxiety through my body.
Thisis the brother Josh used to talk about?
‘You’re the science student?’ I seem to be caught in a time warp.It’s been twelve years.Joshua’s brother is as much a pompous postgrad—Josh’s description, not mine—as I’m still a doctoral candidate.
In fact, now that I look at him properly, Fraser isn’t any sort of pompous.
