Page 113 of Mad About You

If you want me to accept we’re over for good, maybe it’s time to stop sleeping with me? Just a thought

Cal

??? Are you confusing me with someone else?

Kit

LOOLLLLLLL. Lock screen fun. I can tell you’re keen on that photographer girl and now I bet she’s seen this and you have to work out how to explain it, without showing her THIS messageHEY CAL WANTS TO POUND YOU UNTIL YOU SQUEAK FOR MERCY

Seriously – she’s a bit straight-edged for you, somehow, don’t you think? A bit ‘bean bag lap tray supper in front of Countryfile’? You do you, though

‘Woah. I don’t always watchCountryfile.’ Harriet was stung, while sensing it was, as Cal said, jealousy.

‘Is she moving to Qatar with Seb, or to a hidden island lair to develop a deadly bioweapon?’ Cal said, grimacing.

Harriet laughed, nervously. She had leapt, without a landing – she felt certain that Cal accounting for where she fitted into his furtive tomcatting would create a breathing space.

It would’ve been for him to describe what he thought was going on, here. Instead, she looked like she kept a running tally of rivals. Which she did.

‘You’re not seeing anyone?’ Cal said.

‘Hah. Nope.’

‘If those questions about me were security checks on whether it’s unethical for anything to happen between us, it’s not.’

‘OK,’ said Harriet, blushing and feeling like a total, total idiot, as adrenaline gushed through her veins. ‘Uhm … so …’

She hesitated, at a point of no return.

‘Say it,’ Cal said. ‘Whatever it is.’

‘… Was what Kit said true? About your wishes.’

Cal took a second to comprehend what she meant.

‘For once, what she said was one hundred per cent true. Yes. Every word.’ He paused, while Harriet silently dissolved. ‘You did say I have a lovely face, which is similar?’ Cal added.

‘It was exactly that sentiment, in code.’

‘Really worrying that my gran once said the same, then.’

Harriet shrieked with laughter, and in the moment of dropping her guard, Cal leaned forward and kissed her.

Crossing that line had seemed so difficult, and then so easy.

All the cagey dance steps leading up to it, the card game of choosing what to reveal, then Harriet’s body language trashed it entirely and left him in no doubt. She put her hands in Cal’s hair, pulled his mouth to hers, harder. Cal responded to her with as much enthusiasm, his hand gripping her denim-clad upper leg as they tipped backwards on the sofa. They laughed at the intensity of the scramble for each other, of the pure joy of it, when they came up for air.

Harriet found her fantasies had been a poor relation to the sensory reality of grappling with Cal, and she’d been quite optimistic in her fantasies. She’d been right that having his undivided attention was a high like no other.

Until this moment,chemistrywas a concept she’d scoffed at a little because she’d never encountered it. Maybe he had the gift of making everyone feel this way, but she’d neverbeen kissed like this before: with exactly the right degree of pressure and intent. It was like being with a dance partner who raised your game. Harriet felt like he’d done something to herspine, her whole posture changed.

She started unbuttoning his shirt, like she’d only been waiting for permission.

54

‘Sleeping with your landlord the night before you move out. It’s one way to get your deposit back,’ Lorna said, when Harriet called her to brag about the best time of her life, and Harriet screamed.

‘I knew I shouldn’t have told you!’

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