‘Then I really shouldn’t have started this story but now I have, I’ll finish it, because strictly speaking I didn’t reach for the whisky bottle to soothe my pain. At two p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon.’
‘Oh, excellent. There’s more.’
‘There is. And you’re going to think I need locking up for my own safety at this rate. Praise the heavens that I don’t have the responsibility of small children or dependent elderly parents.’ Hmmm, no children. Is that a hint that he is single and fancy-free? I rather hope so. No man other than Kevin, oh and Dan, has made me laugh like this for ages.
‘Okay, so I was aware that I smelt like a teenager on his first date. You know, the one in school you can smell as the aftershave comes around the corner a full five minutes before he does. So after risking life and limb once again with another shower, I was desperate and googled how to minimise the smell of too much aftershave, and it said alcohol. The only thing I have in the house was some whisky I’d been given for Christmas so knowing I was coming here this afternoon, I lost all rationality and started to dab the whisky on, then a bit more, and before you know it I was smelling like the love child of Oliver Reed and Gianni Versace.’
‘Oh my God.’ I’m gasping for breath now, scared if I laugh more, I may stop breathing.
‘Aha, I was desperate, but I absolutely couldn’t miss this afternoon – personal reasons which are way too intimate for me to confide in you despite all the hideousness I have just listed, but three showers and I still couldn’t get rid of the smell completely. I was terrified I was going to be late for here and thought a swim may help, but it seems the sauna has only intensified it. Still, trust me when I say it’s better than it was, and I don’t think that it’s just that my nose has adjusted to the hideousness of it.’
As I realise I have unwittingly moved closer to this man, leaning in to listen, a young woman pushes the glass door to the sauna open, interrupting the spell that has been cast, intimacy woven around the two of us as his story pulls us together. And boy, do I want to be pulled together with this man. She is another new face and I feel a spike of resentment about her interruption.
‘Ah, there you are, Jay. Sorry I’m late. You know I can’t do the heat in here, come join me in the hot tub instead.’ She motions with her hand at the man I’ve been talking to and his whole face lights up. You know all those memes about someone looking at you like Elon Musk looks at his rockets or dogs look at food? That is exactly how he looks at her. Pure love. And I immediately see why it was so important to him to be here.
‘You made it! Right, coming now.’ He bounds down the sauna tiers and throws a quick look up at me as he does so. ‘Pleasure to meet you. Hope my stories and my smell haven’t scarred you for life.’
‘I reckon I’ll survive. It’s been nice meeting you.’ I give him a quick smile, one that doesn’t show my flash of envy for what these two have. An envy I am usuallyutterlylacking.
‘Glad to hear it and it really has. See you around.’ And with that he bounds after the young woman and I watch him comfortably slip his arm around her shoulders as they walk towards the hot tub.
Chapter Six
Jay
Ifollow Cass down the steps and into the hot tub, noticing that she’s carrying her phone with her but concentrating more on the fact that I have just been talking at length to some woman, a complete stranger, about my balls.
Oh.
My.
God.
What had I been thinking? My first trip to the lido with the membership Malcolm and Sue have transferred to me and Cass, giving us the chance to have access to this bougie bit of Bristol and as part of my create-lovely-spaces-for-Cass plan, and I am going to be met at the door by a burly policeman and a restraining order and politely escorted from the premises. And rightfully so.
Brilliant way to repay all the care, love and respect they have shown me and Cass from the very minute they fostered us all those years ago.
I spend my life at work talking about appropriate behaviour, respect, boundaries and the consequences of not following such rules and I’ve just cornered some woman in a small, contained space and banged on about me being naked. What is wrong with me? I’d been so aware that I had a severe case of aftershave overkill after my hideous morning that I’d just started to explain, and before I knew it my mouth ran away with me. I felt so comfortable in her company that I babbled on as if she were an old friend. But I’ve never met her before, I don’t even know her name and she knows more about me than any human ever needs to. All she’s done is come into the sauna, presumably for a bit of peace and quiet, and there she was face to face with me and my story.
I am so cross with myself. I am literally heading up a task force for safe spaces for young women at work at the moment as well!
Cass and I sink into the hot tub, Cass carefully placing her phone on the side, and I let out a sigh. The water is warm, the sun shining through a canopy of jasmine and honeysuckle. I need to put my embarrassment from my mind and concentrate on how nice it is to be here with my sister, just the two of us for a change.
‘It’s lovely to see you...’ Cass grins across at me and I’m filled with love for this chaotic, wild little scruffball, a unique combination of feisty and vulnerable. I would set this world on fire for her. ‘But you’re a little bit pungent. What the hell happened? On family Skype you swore you were going to take a step back from dating so what is this? She scrunches her eyes and inhales deeply, and then sniffs a bit ‘– is this your way of making sure you put everyone in a two-mile radius right off.’ Cassie giggles and I narrow my eyes.
‘Rude. I’ll have you know that this, this would be very easy to blame on you!’
‘Me. Hah. I didn’t tip half the counter at Boots on you.’
‘No but you did put all those bastard cacti in my bathroom...’ I launch into the tale again but with a few choicer words and grin as I watch my little sister cough as she laughs so much, tears streaming from her eyes.
‘I’m glad you think it’s funny, but unfortunately not only have I had to suffer this indignity this morning, I’ve also just told some poor woman in the sauna all my woes.’
‘No! No, you didn’t? That woman you were flirting with in there when I arrived?’
‘Um, not flirting. We made a deal on family Skype, remember?’ The deal is step two in my Help Cass plan so I really wasn’t flirting, although I couldn’t help but notice that the woman I have been giggling withwasattractive. About my age, blonde hair scraped back into a tight bun, cheekbones that models would kill for and a face free from make-up, her eyes blue as the sky above Cass and me right now, shining. She had a little snub nose and a smile that took over her face, you know like that actress in the perfume ads, um ... Julia Roberts.
Her laugh, the way she made you want to talk to her, the way she listened and didn’t hold back in her answers, nor flinch at my outrageous over-sharing. There was a warmth to her that was genuine. As I say, very attractive.
