Page 26 of Mad About You

She checked her reflection: pale, bug-eyed and tired. Some people looked older in fatigue, Harriet worried she resembled an angry baby in glasses, like an internet meme.

It was a muggy summer day with the smell of smouldering charcoal briquettes and sputtering sausages on the air, the heaviness of the heat making Harriet long for a chilled drink with condensation on the glass.

She didn’t want to make a poor first impression as a hobo clutching a bin bag and decided to make her introductions before unloading. Especially as the foliage-clad house was even more enchanting in person: imagine actually owning a placelike this. She belatedly wondered how a newspaper reporter afforded it. She pressed the old-fashioned brass bell, and the door opened, held by a young man in white t-shirt, washed-out grey jeans and navy Converse boots. He looked younger than thirty-two, so maybe he wasn’t the owner. He looked like the lad you’d call from TaskRabbit to put your shelves up, who’d arrive on a skateboard. (Lorna had shagged a TaskRabbit helper of this precise description. ‘It was a task I needed help with, and we were like rabbits.’)

‘Harriet? Hello,’ he said, extending a hand for her to shake.

‘Cal?’ she said, uncertainly, and was taken aback when he nodded. This somehow wasn’t the Cal Clarke she had built in her head, who she didn’t even know was there until this second.

The real version was average height and medium build and had short, dirty-blond hair, the volume on top teased upwards like it was thinking about becoming a quiff, and a neat beard, a shade darker than the hair on his head. His pale green eyes were sharp and intense, and he was unarguably good-looking in an ‘actor in a cop movie playing the fresh-faced recruit from Quantico who’d soon learn what the job wasreallylike’ way. Harriet was somewhat dismayed by this. She didn’t need the weird tension of a Prom King preening and imagining himself being crushed on. Zero sexual psychodrama with an on-premises landlord, please. The same way you didn’t want a hot doctor for a smear.

‘Did you drive here?’ Cal said, craning to look.

‘Yeah.’

‘Feel free to park outside the house, I don’t have a car.’

‘Oh, thanks!’

He ushered her indoors. The house smelled of berry-scented cleaning products so he must’ve made an effort; then she recalled he had a cleaner.

‘Your quarters are at the end of the landing upstairs, but maybe you want to have a look round first?’ he said, gesturing for her to step into the front room.

‘Sure. Thank you,’ she said. The look was old-meets-new, preserved period features, copper lightshade and crayon-bright furniture in front of an old, tiled fireplace. An immaculate, oyster-coloured carpet said: ‘we don’t have kids or pets’.

‘You have really good taste,’ Harriet said, taking in the gilt mirror on the mantelpiece and a velvet sofa, the colour of the inside of a pomegranate. It was nice to be somewhere where everything wasn’t box-shaped, up-lit and a shade of pebble or mud.

‘Ah I don’t deserve the credit, mostly my ex’s efforts,’ Cal said, and Harriet thought:aha.

‘Have you been here a while?’

‘Two and a half years. Where have you come from?’ Cal said. ‘Today, I mean.’

‘Roundhay.’

‘Ooh la la,’ he grinned.

‘Ooh la no,’ Harriet said, smiling back. ‘Break-up. It wasn’t my house.’

‘Ah. Sorry.’

There was a clunky pause and Harriet considered it might have been rash of them not to meet beforehand. This felt like a lot of pressure, now they were committed.

The doorbell rang and Cal went to answer it, Harriet glad of the interruption.

She heard a jocular male voice, offstage. He apparently knew Cal well enough not to do hellos.

‘Fuck’s sake, get rid of the apocalypse beard. It makes you look guilty.’

‘How can a beard look guilty?’

‘I don’t know but you’ve managed it. Real “arrested on the border stating your intention to join the insurgency” sensations.’

Harriet laughed, quietly.

‘Come and meet my new lodger,’ Cal said, mainly to warn his friend they weren’t alone, she thought.

A tall man with a springing mass of curly hair walked in. Harriet had a moment ofoh he looks exactly like … wait – he IS him?

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