Page 41 of Cover Story

Connor turned to her as the fairy lit palm trees appeared in the distance.

‘We’ll be fine.’

He took her hand, and having not anticipated this whatsoever, Bel felt self-conscious at it revealing she was sweating. She was having a bout of extremely ill-timed stage fright.

They joined the hubbub of the bar and immediately got: ‘Andwho are you?’ from not only the door police, but other guests.

‘Hi! We’re the “first day at school” ones here– we only metAmber a fortnight ago. Well, my girlfriend did, I’ll let her tell the story,’ Connor said, ‘Connor and Bella … A Peroni is great, thanks … One of these?’

He lifted a Prosecco from a passing tray and handed it to her, clinked.

‘Amber’s popular, huh? I’d not get a third of this turnout.’ He paused to gently and affectionately brush an artful wisp of Bel’s sweepy fringe out of her eyes. ‘You look really great, by the way.’

Bel was a mixture of piteously thankful and completely stunned. Where had Connor been hiding this easy-going lookalike, the whole time?

24

Connor was so sad. He could try to find a more macho word, a face-saving alibi, but his counsellor told him to name and sit with his feelings more often. He was sad, and knowing he and Jennifer had run their course and were better off apart, did not stop him being sad.

Yesterday evening, probably steeped in Friday rosé, she’d sent him one of those long-ass messages it took three full-screen-length scrolls to read, starting: ‘Connor we can’t leave it like this,’ which it turned out translated as,‘I won’t be dumped like this.’

He didn’t want to send a reply that could be misread (or read aloud to Libby while doing A Voice) so he called Jen up and said, using purest Stoke Newington self-help speak: it’s honestly better if we shift into the acceptance phase and accept bargaining is over, or we are re-traumatising ourselves. She cried again, but conceded. He cried once they’d rung off.

If Connor was going to sit with his feelings, he was also going to sit with a drink, and he got to the pleasantly lo-fi Didsbury dad pub Bel had nominated early enough for a sly pre-pint, returning his empty and replacing it with a second drink before she arrived.

Bel Macauley walked in looking like something from a 1980s advert for dark chocolate. This was not a derogatory thought: he could hear his brother Shaun reviewing her appearance with: ‘WOOF.’ It was a power move, in Connor’s grudging opinion, to scrub up that well and mostly choose not to. Maybe the Aarons of this world irritated her too much, which was understandable.

He couldn’t tell her he was having a low day, or why. Connor knew that false friend, alcohol, was soothing it and possibly soon going to make it worse. But tonight he had to pretend to be a sociable, happy person with a girlfriend in front of strangers, so needs must.

He’d been expecting to coast on Bel’s buoyant, can-do Belness, but she was unlike herself: preoccupied and agitated. It seemed to peak as they got up to leave, and she started fretting they weren’t going to fool anyone.

With a jarring lack of timing, she apparently thought this was the moment to point out they didn’t like each other very much, and Connor bit down his indignation.She’dasked him to do this,soWTF? Now, really?

It got worse when she announced they needed to ‘break down barriers’ and Connor tuned in to a description of … oh God, herself unclothed, and during sex, what?

He had to quickly arrange his face to convey a defensive ‘yuck’ because, in fact, he was ashamed to discover he didn’t feel nonchalant. Blame the beer, perhaps, or how good her exposed, China white collarbones looked in that dress, but Connor’s mind’s eye reflexively served him an image he hadabsolutely not asked for and did not wantof her astride him, him clasping her bare hips. Her attitude towards him would becompletely altered when he thrust … NOPE! No. There will be no fantasising thrusting, stop right there.

He’d thought he was currently out of commission in this regard, and he’d never spent a second considering what Bel Macauley was like in the sack. Yet with her making that ‘experiencing pleasure’ face, an unmistakeable lightning had gone right through him, with a particular and shaming emphasis in his groin. Fuck’s sake, men were simple creatures. He didn’t even find her attractive. Well, objectively … yes, she was attractive, not remotely his taste, though. Too … toomuch.

As she tilted at asking for a description of his junk, he emphatically shut her down. As if visualising hate-sex with Bel was going to help anything whatsoever here, except the rate his therapist could charge when he went back to London.

She fell quiet again and Connor felt guilty. He’d said he’d help, he should help.

He took her hand. It was very soft and slightly damp, and he realised he’d been unfair: never thinking for a moment Bel would be nervous. The previous eight minutes of conversation suddenly made sense. They’d been transmitting on different wavelengths ever since they met, he might’ve at last tuned in to a signal he understood: she wanted looking after.

That much he could manage.

He led her into the bar with an air of assertiveness, getting them drinks, fielding inquiries about their identity with a lively confidence. Bel was staring at him as if he’d produced a turtle dove from a top hat.

Had she honestly never worked out that her and Aaron treating him like an unwanted nuisance, laughing about him tobond, might not have brought out the best in him? That you might get back what you give out? Clearly not.

He’d seen a glimpse of a different side to Bel Macauley with the strange episode of the former colleague calling in at Deansgate, a man she evidently couldn’t face.

If she had a stalker– he had to assume it was too great a coincidence that it was part of her invented persona– it didn’t seem at all Bel not to despatch him with some salty home truths.

Ci Vediamo was awash with a kind of hedonism that Connor rarely dipped his toe into anymore, he didn’t doubt there werefrequent trips to the restroomsgoing on. The volume of the music, the units consumed, and the clearly maxed capacity, meant he and Bel were more clinging to each other as if aboard a ship in a storm, than chatting.

‘I’m going to get us a couple of those things,’ Bel said to him, and gestured to a row of dangerously red lowball drinks in the distance, with wedges of watermelon on the rim. These cocktails were on the right hand side of the bar, by the till, and he intuited what Bel meant was ‘getting eyeballs on the iPad area’.

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