Page 57 of The One Plus One
She had seriously tiny feet. As in she bought child-sized shoes. (Apparently they were cheaper.) After she’d said this he had to stop himself sneaking looks at her feet like some kind of weirdo.
Before she’d had children she could drink four double vodkas in a row and still walk a straight line. ‘Yup, I could hold my drink. Obviously not enough to remember birth control.’ He believed her: they drank two bottles of wine and he thought she had twice as much as he did, and while she did relax a bit, there wasn’t a point at which he thought she was even a bit drunk.
She almost never drank at home. ‘When I’m working at the pub and someone offers me one I just take the cash. And when I’m at home I worry that something might happen to the kidsand I’ll need to be together.’ She stared out of the window. ‘Now I think about it, this is the closest thing I’ve had to a night out in…five months.’
‘A man who shut a door in your face, two bottles of rot-gut wine and a car park.’
‘I’m not knocking it.’
She didn’t explain what made her worry so much about the kids. He thought back to Nicky’s face and decided not to ask.
She had a scar under her chin from when she’d fallen off a bike and a piece of gravel had lodged in it for two whole weeks. She tried to show him but the light in the car wasn’t strong enough. She also had a tattoo on the base of her spine. ‘A proper tramp stamp, according to Marty. He wouldn’t talk to me for two whole days after I got it.’ She paused. ‘I think that’s probably why I got it.’
Her middle name was Rae. She had to spell it out every single time.
She didn’t mind cleaning but she really, really hated people treating her like she was ‘just’ a cleaner. (He had the grace to colour a little here.)
She hadn’t had a date in the two years since her ex had left.
‘You haven’t had sex for two and a half years?’
‘I said he left two years ago.’
‘It’s a reasonable calculation.’
She pushed herself upright, and gave him a sideways look. ‘Three and a half. If we’re counting. Apart from one – um – episode last year. And you don’t have to look so shocked.’
‘I’m not shocked,’ he said, and tried to rearrange his face. He shrugged. ‘Three and a half years. I mean, it’s only, what, a quarter of your adult life? No time at all.’
‘Yeah. Thanks for that.’ And then he wasn’t sure what happened, but something in the atmosphere changed. She mumbled something that he couldn’t make out, pulled her hair into another ponytail and said maybe it was really time for them to be getting some sleep.
Ed thought he would lie awake for ages. There was something oddly unsettling about being in a darkened car just arm’s length from an attractive woman you had just shared two bottles of wine with. Even if she was huddled under aSpongeBob SquarePantsduvet. He looked out of the sunroof at the stars, listened to the lorries rumbling past towards London, listened to the dog in the rear seats whimper in his sleep and thought that his real life – the one with his company and his office andthe never-ending hangover of Deanna Lewis – was now a million miles away.
‘Still awake?’
He turned his head, wondering if she’d been watching him. ‘No.’
‘Okay,’ came the murmur from the passenger seat. ‘Truth game.’
He raised his eyes to the roof.
‘Go on, then.’
‘You first.’
He couldn’t come up with anything.
