the woman at the next table
‘I was surprised,’ he says. ‘When you texted.’
His date is defensive. ‘Why were you surprised?’
He takes a moment to answer. The woman at the next table listens, half watching, as she waits for her own date. A date who is keeping her waiting.
‘I thought I’d been too forward,’ he says, eventually. ‘I assumed you’d throw my number away.’
‘I admire your humility.’ His date takes a sip of her gin and tonic. ‘It’s refreshing, in an actor.’
‘I shouldn’t have told you I’m an actor.’
‘You shouldn’t have,’ she says. ‘It might have put me off.’ She observes him for a moment. ‘You don’t exactly seem the type.’
The young man considers this. ‘Why?’
Why? A one-word question which lingers in the thick air of the busy pub on Kingsland Road. On the other side of the stained glass, proto-hipsters light cigarettes pulled from behind their ears. In here, the dark wood interior is a welcome relief from an evening which is still stiflingly hot. The girl had arrived like a thundercloud of anxiety, denim shorts over black tights scribbled with ladders, bleached hair swishing this way and thatas she glanced around at each unfamiliar face in turn. When she’d selected a table, she’d slid a sketchbook from her bag and begun to draw the people at the bar, one by one. A hobby or a nervous tic? She’d hidden the sketchbook away when her date had arrived, had assembled an aura of calm and composure. The boy is tall and tanned, curly black hair over eyes like olive pits. He’s wearing a shirt, and he looks uncomfortable in it. The sleeves are rolled up over tattooed forearms, a thick tangle of chest hair emerging from the open collar. He isn’t a boy at all. Young man. Young woman. First date.
‘Seb,’ the young woman had called.
‘Clara,’ the young man had said in response, suppressing a smile.
Now they’re talking over first drinks, his stance guarded, eyes straying every so often to her restive hands and the distance between them and his own. They’ve already talked about his dog, about how he’s left the dog with his flatmate, about how she’s disappointed because it was the dog she’d really wanted to see. Now they talk about acting.
‘You don’t have the…’
‘Charisma?’
‘Arrogance,’ Clara says, with a smile. ‘I can’t imagine you wanting the attention.’
‘I usually do modelling.’ Seb winces. ‘I definitely shouldn’t have told you that.’
‘You definitely shouldn’t,’ Clara says. ‘And youdefinitelydon’t seem the type.’
‘I don’t look the type?’
She grins. ‘I didn’t say that.’
‘I fell into it,’ he says. ‘Not that I don’t like it. It’s more fun than sitting at a desk.’
They don’t seem like an obvious match, these two. Seb seems the type to hold back, Clara more inclined to put everything on the table. If she’s a barrage of waves, he’s a cliff face. A rock. What does he see in her? Her eyes are the blue of the Arctic Ocean, and they haven’t once left him. The woman next to them heads to the bar for another drink. When she returns to her table, Seb has changed the subject.
‘What about you?’ he says.
‘I sit at a desk,’ Clara says. ‘Adverts. Production. It’s not what I want to do.’ She waves a dismissive hand. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says. ‘I’m kind of in between jobs, anyway.’
‘And you draw strangers,’ Seb says. ‘In public.’
Clara seems aware that she’s being teased. ‘You make me sound like a pervert.’
Seb leans back, more relaxed now he isn’t under the microscope. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I thought you might ask me to life model next.’
The joke hangs in the air for a little too long. Seb looks down, then up again, as if worried he’s overstepped the mark. The woman at the next table looks away. She’s older than the two of them. She remembers what it was like to flirt without shame. Her date will not go like this. Her date may not happen at all. When she glances back, Clara is trying to hide her expression by finishing her drink. She places the glass down carefully, licks her lips.
‘Did you just lick your lips?’
‘No!’ Clara says. ‘No.’ She screws up her face. ‘My lips were dry,’ she says. ‘So I licked them.’
