The Reunion

this sense of being closer to him than all the others had started. It crept up on her, barely noticeable at first, and then there was that night out with the girls when they were teasing her about him and she got so angry, and suddenly it was all she could think about, these feelings she was having that she shouldn’t be having.
    If only he hadn’t come to stay. Being around him all the time, that was what did it. Seeing him first thing in the morning, his hair sticking up and his pale skin still creased with sleep, tall and skinny with big, mournful grey eyes, eyes alive with light when he looked at her. It was his hopelessness, his general crapness, the fact that he couldn’t boil an egg, that if it weren’t for her he’d live on takeaways and Pot Noodles. It was all those long nights on the sofa talking, when he told her about how it had been for him, growing up, motherless and then fatherless, when she realised how hard he’d had it and how, compared to him, the rest of them were blessed, spoiled. He’d had to struggle so much, and yet here he was, funny and kind and when he looked at her a certain way it gave her butterflies.
    She didn’t like thinking about it, didn’t like arriving home at night and looking sadly at the spot on the sofa where he always sat, one leg crossed over the other (surprisingly elegant), cigarette in hand, laughing at something on the television. She didn’t like how much she thought about him. She especially didn’t like the way in which she’d come to make comparisons between him and Conor.
    She knew that it was a bad idea to call him. She dialled his number. She put the phone down. Then she dialled it again.
    He was on the train within the hour and she met him at Liverpool Street at midday. They had lunch in Shoreditch, went to White Cube on Hoxton Square, wandered down Commercial Street and had a couple of drinks at the Golden Heart. They hopped on the tube and went to the Barbican where they saw an incomprehensible and highly erotic Japanese film. They went back to the flat. There were three messages on the voicemail. She didn’t listen to them. She and Dan sat, facing each other on the sofa, feet almost but not quite touching, drinking red wine.

Chapter Thirty-three

    HER TOENAILS WERE painted dark red. Almost black. She had perfect, pale, neat little feet, the kind a fetishist might get excited about. Not that he was one. But Dan did realise that when he was with her, he focused on the small things. He thought about how she would look on camera; he looked for her best angles. He’d yet to find a bad one.
    He wanted her so badly, he’d never wanted anyone like this. You could write songs about this girl, you could make a film about her face, about her laugh, and her long, elegant neck and the contour of her lips. His blood was rising, he had to stop it, he bit his lip, hard.
    It wasn’t new, this thing with her, but it was getting worse, so much worse, every time he saw her, spoke to her. Kissing her hello was the most exquisite agony he had ever felt. It wasn’t new, but he’d allowed it to escalate, he indulged himself now, with thoughts of her, he thought about her in a way he hadn’t permitted himself to do for years, not since they’d first met and he’d realised, within a short space of time, that she would never look at him the way she did at Conor.
    Only lately, he wasn’t so sure. It wasn’t exactly that she’d given him reason to hope. She hadn’t really encouraged him. Not until now anyway, if you considered inviting him to stay with her while her boyfriend was away as encouragement. Which it was, surely? Only he couldn’t be sure. He’d been in love with her so long he could no longer tell whether he was simply inventing motives for her, putting meaning that wasn’t there into her words and the way she looked at him.
    Thinking about it led to writing about it. Not that Jen knew what it was really about. The girl in the story, the one the boy loves but can’t have, was well disguised. Dan had let Jen believe that it was based on a girl from college called Cara Nicholson who’d left him for an Old Harrovian with a trust fund and a family chalet in Chamonix. Jen wasn’t to know that he didn’t give a toss about Cara Nicholson; that there wasn’t a single one of his girlfriends or casual flings at college for whom he felt one tenth of what he felt for her.
    He wanted to talk to Jen about the screenplay, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able