We already know that our seats are next to each other and head towards the middle of the plane together.
On our way down the aisle, we pass Judith and Mike sitting next to each other.
‘I changed my flight to be on the same one as Judith.’ Mike places his hand on her knee in a very proprietorial-looking manner, while Judith beams up at us.
‘How very lovely,’ Flavia says.
‘We might have news,’ Judith says coyly.
‘You have to act fast when you get to a certain age,’ Mike says. ‘I’ve asked Judith to marry me.’
‘And I said yes,’ squeals Judith.
‘Oh mygoodness. That’s wonderful.’ Flavia bends over and envelops Judith in a big hug.
Mike and I shake hands.
‘You’re both invited to the wedding, of course,’ says Judith. Then she wiggles her eyebrows and looks between us. ‘Could you two have any news?’
‘Nope,’ Flavia says baldly. ‘Very much just friends.’ She sounds as though she’s choking slightly on the wordfriends. ‘Anyway,huge, huge congratulations again. I’m so pleased for you. We’d better sit down; we’re holding people up. Look forward to seeing you when we get off.’
And then we continue down the plane.
We sit down in our customary positions, Flavia at the window, me next to her, still in silence.
She withdraws physically from me, sitting as far away from me as she can within the constraints of our adjacent seats. I squeeze to the far side of my seat too, not wanting to annoy her any further.
I want to talk to her right now. Explain somehow that shewasn’tjust a holiday fling for me (even though she was in practice). Tell her how very much I care about her and how infinitely attractive I find her. But that I can’t see her again, and the reason for that is that I want to protect her from my relationship-wrecking. And point out that Vinny agrees.
‘Flavia.’ My voice sounds odd to my own ears, unusually tender.
‘Dominic.’ Flavia just sounds distant.
I lower my voice and begin, ‘You said that we should talk.’
‘And you said you needed a moment alone.’
‘Yes.’ I nod.
Flavia raises her eyebrows.
I plough on. ‘I like you. A lot.’ Then I stop to gather my thoughts because I don’t think either of us needs me to make things any worse with yet more stupid verbal diarrhoea.
‘Good to know,’ she says, when my thought-gathering persists.
‘So I really like you,’ I restart. ‘Very much indeed. But…’ I can’t work out what the words are.
‘Don’t worry,’ Flavia says. ‘Really. You don’t have to do this. We agreed in advance that what we were doing was just no-strings sex. You really don’t have to worry about hurting my feelings in any way. It’s all good. It was just excellent… fun. Between two adults who wanted nothing more than some holiday sex. That’s all it was. All good.’
‘Yeah,’ I say miserably.
And then I look at her face, the way she’s scrunching her nose very slightly, the way she does when she’s thinking, and at her hands, clasped too tightly around the bottle of water she just bought, and I kind of snap.
‘Actually, no,’ I say firmly. ‘I really like you. Very much. Like… properly.’ The actual L-word hovers in the air around us but I don’t use it. I don’t know why. ‘It didn’t feel like no-strings to me. I like you very, very much. Everything about you. The way you make everyone around you, including me, feel good about themselves. The way you sleep curled into a ball and can sleep throughanything. The fact that you actually like “Dance Monkey”. The way you brought a good twenty hair scrunchies on a four-day trip andstillcouldn’t find one this morning.’
I pause, wondering why I’m not coming straight out and telling her I love her. I suppose it’s because it feels like it would be too much, given that we aren’t going to continue this.
Flavia raises her eyebrows, her face otherwise expressionless.
