The Wish List: Escape with the most hilarious and feel-good read of 2020!

by Sophia Money-Coutts

  ‘And I’ll have the bourguignon,’ said Rory. ‘Pomme purée and… some carrots, I think. Ah, hang on, the wine.’ He ran a finger down the wine list and hummed to himself for a few moments. ‘And a bottle of the Côte du Rhone, please.’

  ‘Absolument, monsieur.’

  ‘Ah no, sorry, hang on,’ Rory said, and the waiter turned back to him again. ‘We’re having oysters to start so what Sancerre do you have?’

  ‘We only ’ave one,’ he replied. ‘A very nice 2016.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Rory. ‘A bottle of that and then the Côte du Rhone, please.’

  My head was swimming with oysters and wine as Rory turned his attention back to me and rubbed his hands together. ‘I love the moment when you’ve just ordered and it’s all ahead of you, don’t you?’

  I burst out laughing. I wasn’t sure I’d ever met anyone so sure of himself.

  He cocked his head at me. ‘What?’

  ‘You! Your self-confidence. I wish I could be more like it.’

  ‘Really? You seem a cheerful sort.’

  ‘Do I? Good. I can be, sometimes.’

  ‘But not others?’

  I thought about the days that my brain seemed locked in battle against me, a small but angry voice telling me the exact opposite of what I wanted to hear. ‘If only you were a stone lighter,’ or ‘Why is your hair so crap?’

  ‘No, not always.’

  ‘Everyone has their moments but look at us now.’ He sat back in his seat and stretched out his arms. ‘Here I am in one of my favourite restaurants, opposite a very beautiful and intelligent woman, having just ordered oysters. Nothing much wrong with that, is there?’

  I laughed again. ‘Have you always been this positive?’

  He nodded. ‘Think so. Why not? It’s why I want to go into politics. More people should be like this. Could be like this, instead of moaning all the time. “Oh, the schools, the housing crisis, the health service.” Well, come on, if we all stopped being so downbeat, things could be better. Don’t you think?’ He leant forward, his elbows on the tablecloth, his blue eyes locked on mine.

  ‘Yeah, maybe. But I’m not sure it’s as easy for some people.’ Then I paused, and to indicate I was teasing, smiled across at him. ‘What’s the ultimate goal then – Prime Minister?’

  ‘Ideally,’ he said, as the waiter poured him a thimble of white wine to taste.

  ‘Seriously?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Marvellous,’ said Rory to the waiter, before grinning at me and leaning forward on the table again. ‘Why not? You have to dream big.’

  ‘Right, yeah, I guess,’ I replied, remembering that ‘ambitious’ was also on my list. I had a large mouthful of wine and was still mulling this over when another waiter staggered to the table with a large silver bowl.

  ‘Oh great stuff, the oysters,’ cried Rory. ‘Let’s make space.’ He moved the salt and pepper as the waiter lowered the bowl full of ice, lemon quarters and the oysters, wet and shiny in their shells like the contents of a sneeze in your palm.

  I reached for the smallest one and a slice of lemon.

  ‘Bottoms up,’ said Rory, as he lifted a shell to his own mouth and threw it back.

  I let mine slide down my throat without chewing. Was it supposed to be that creamy?

  ‘Mmm.’ I tried to sound appreciative.

  ‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Do you think you’ll always be in London?’

  ‘Not sure. It’s always been home but it doesn’t seem very adventurous, staying in the same place all your life.’

  ‘What about the country?’

  ‘Maybe. How come?’

  ‘I’m a country person,’ said Rory, seeing off another oyster. ‘I spend my life on a plane now, but ideally I’ll end up with a seat in Norfolk, near home. Do you like Norfolk?’

  ‘I’ve never been,’ I replied, poking at a shell with a teaspoon.

  ‘It’s wonderful. The sea, the beaches. The fish! The most outrageously delicious fish. And did you know that it’s the only British county without a motorway in it? Isn’t that a good fact?’

  I laughed again and nodded. And as he talked, I relaxed. I even thought I might be enjoying myself instead of worrying about the next thing that could go wrong. Lifting my glass, I finished it and felt suddenly high on the novelty of being in this restaurant and sitting across from him. A real-life date.

  ‘I think I could be very happy doing all sorts of constituency business up there,’ he went on. ‘There’s an excellent bookshop in a town called Holt. So you could just take over that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When you come and live with me in North Norfolk,’ he said happily, before draining the last oyster. ‘Goodness, they were smashing. Weren’t they smashing?’

  I was so taken aback by this casual mention of a future in Norfolk that I couldn’t focus on the oysters. It was quite the statement for a second date but I could sense that part of me found his certainty comforting. I often couldn’t decide whether I was going to have a good or a bad day until a certain number of blue or silver cars had passed me on the way to work, and yet here was a man who seemed to know that his entire life would pan out just as he wanted it.

  By the time the cheese trolley rolled up to the table after our main courses, I was drunk. We’d spent most of dinner having an increasingly impassioned debate about our favourite and least favourite writers. Rory declared he hated American novels. I’d always held romantic ideas about American writers and defended them. Then I bet that he liked the Scottish writer George MacDonald Fraser. There was a certain type of public school-educated man who loved the sexually depraved escapades of his hero, Harry Flashman. Rory replied that he did indeed and, just as the cheese trolley came to a halt beside our table, he leapt in the air to pull an imaginary sword from its scabbard, neatly smacking the cheese-pushing waiter in the face with his fist. The waiter staggered backwards clutching his nose; Rory started apologizing.

  ‘Ai! Quel imbecile!’ the waiter mumbled through his fist.

  ‘Look, I’m so sorry,’ followed up Rory, ‘it was an accident. I was trying to show my friend a scene from a book. Are you all right? Oh dear, I think you might need some tissues. Have you got any tissues?’ he shouted in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Or a drying-up cloth?’

  Other diners in the restaurant paused to watch this spectacle.

  ‘I think we’d better leave,’ said Rory, sitting down at the table minutes later, once the waiter had been helped off the restaurant floor with a fistful of kitchen roll held to his face.

  He asked for the bill and paid, silencing my offer to pay my half with a fierce stare.

  In return, emboldened by the wine and Rory’s own confidence, I asked if he wanted to come back to mine. It felt right. He’d made me feel secure enough to be brave and I couldn’t imagine that he’d vanish the following day without even a text message. I’ll admit, there was a small, buried piece of me that wanted to prove my family, Eugene and even Jaz wrong, to show that their jokes about my lack of love life were unfair. But it wasn’t just that. I wanted to do this. I wanted to remain in Rory’s hypnotic company.

  ‘I’d love to,’ he replied, so I ordered an Uber and collected my tote bag and coat. Rory apologized to the staff again and we stood on the pavement outside waiting for our Toyota Prius.

  ‘Good evening, my dear fellow,’ Rory said, falling into the car after I’d shuffled across the back seat. ‘We’re off to Kennington, I believe.’

  ‘He knows, it’s all right,’ I said, before letting out an enormous hiccup which made both the driver and Rory stare at me.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, but then came another one, loud as a frog’s croak.

  ‘Look at me, I’ve got a brilliant cure for this,’ Rory said as the car pulled out.

  I turned my head.

  ‘Bit closer,’ he said, so I slid towards him on the seat. Another hiccup. Practically a burp. But the champagne, and red wine on top of white wine, had left me t
oo drunk to be embarrassed.

  He stretched out his hands and cupped his fingers around my forehead, one thumb on each cheek, as if he was investing me with magical powers.

  ‘What the he—’

  ‘Shhhh,’ he commanded. ‘Concentrate. Look at me.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What’s this do?’

  ‘Shhhh, just stay quiet for two minutes.’

  He carried on staring into my eyes, his fingertips pressing into my head. It felt like a playground blinking competition, just more intense, and I wondered briefly what it would be like to have his face looking down on mine in bed.

  ‘Why are you blushing?’ he asked, fingers still in place.

  ‘I’m not!’

  ‘I think you’re cured,’ he said, dropping his hands. ‘See?’

  I sat back and waited for a hiccup. None came.

  ‘Hang on though, I’d better just check,’ said Rory, so I turned again and he raised his hand, only to scoop it round the back of my head and pull me into him for a kiss. A longer kiss than before, and no tongues because a Toyota Prius is an intimate space and we were only inches away from Aaron the Uber driver. But it made me feel as if I was floating all the same. I just prayed that my sisters would be in bed when we got back.

  They were, fortunately, and the house was black.

  ‘I’m right at the top,’ I whispered to Rory, closing the front door quietly. I didn’t want to risk making a noise and Mia or Ruby, or even Hugo, poking their head from their bedroom doors, so I led him straight upstairs.

  ‘Stay here,’ I whispered, once we’d reached my room. ‘Two minutes.’ I shut myself in my bathroom to pee and brush my teeth. I suspected my tongue tasted of garlic.

  I peed and wiped with extreme care, then kicked my tights off on the bathroom floor and went back bare-legged to find Rory stretched out on my bed.

  He extended an arm for me to lie down on his chest, on top of the duvet. We lay still for a few minutes before he rolled on to his side and looked at me.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, and then came a proper kiss, his mouth pressed hard against mine. His fingers dropped slowly from my face, down my neck, skimmed over my chest and down the length of my dress.

  He reached its hem and tugged. This panicked me. I was trying to concentrate on my kissing technique but, equally, how to get my dress over my head without flapping around like a trout on the deck of a trawler.

  ‘Stand up and take it off for me,’ he whispered, which made my stomach fizz. At least, I hoped it was fizzing because of Rory and not one of the oysters.

  I stood unsteadily and reached behind my neck for the zip while maintaining eye contact with him. This was hard to do alluringly; I felt like someone had just dared me to lick my elbow. The thought made me snicker.

  ‘What’s funny?’ Rory asked from the bed. His face – serious, intense – made something flare inside me again. Please could it not be an oyster.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said quickly, undoing the zip as far as I could before pulling it down my back with my other hand. Twirl it around my hand like a showgirl? I couldn’t. It seemed too silly. I laid the dress carefully on my bedroom chair.

  ‘Now those,’ Rory instructed, his eyes dropping to my knickers.

  I hooked my thumbs into the elastic either side of my hips and inched them down my legs. Was this seductive? It didn’t feel very seductive. My bottom stuck out behind me as I bent to slip them over my ankles and I decided I felt more like an elderly user of a public swimming pool, trying to maintain her balance while she peeled off her wet bathing costume.

  I dropped the knickers on the floor. Would worry about the mess later. But now I was standing on my bedroom carpet in front of him wearing only my bra. That felt weird. What sort of psychopath walks around their bedroom with just a bra on?

  Rory left me standing uncertainly in front of him as he pulled his braces off his shoulders and, with one hand, tugged his shirt over his head.

  ‘Come here,’ he said, so I knelt on the bed. But the bra was still worrying me. When should the bra come off? Should I do it?

  He slid a hand between my thighs and pulled one of them across his hips so I was straddling him, then he leant forward and expertly undid the bra with one hand. Dropping it to the carpet, he lowered his hands to cup my bottom, pulling me towards him so he could suck each nipple in turn.

  I sighed at this, closing my eyes and leaning into him, resting one hand over his shoulder on my bedroom wall. Rory’s tongue flicked my right nipple, then my left and made me want to howl with pleasure. What was I thinking, forgoing this for so long? Masturbating was all very well, and I had an alarmingly purple vibrator that I kept neatly tucked in a drawer under my bed, alongside a pack of wipes to clean it afterwards, but it wasn’t anything like this. If masturbating was a boring old piano scale, this already felt like a Chopin sonata.

  Rory pulled back his head to kiss me again and I felt an electric thrill at the warm sensation of his skin against mine. I ran a hand down the line of hair that spanned his chest, aching for him to do the same, for his hands to map every inch of my own body.

  Some years ago, I’d watched a Josh Hartnett film and snorted with disbelief at a scene where Josh made a woman orgasm simply by wafting an orchid across her body. It seemed unlikely. Wishful thinking, Josh. But now I understood. If Rory carried on kissing me while his hands skimmed my bare back, I was going to scream so loudly I might wake my sisters.

  Stop thinking about your sisters, Florence.

  His hands ran down my ribcage giving me goosebumps, but then he lifted me off him and stood up. I watched as he unbuckled his trousers and pulled them down with his boxers. My eyes flicked from his face to his penis, looming out at a pleasing angle towards me. Although I’d never been sent any dick pics, I’d always found the concept strange. Why would sending a picture of something that looked like a Cumberland sausage do it for anyone? But Rory’s penis didn’t look like a Cumberland sausage. It looked as well-groomed as the rest of him.

  ‘Lie down,’ he instructed.

  I lowered myself from my headboard, legs bent, and he knelt between them.

  ‘Please touch me,’ I said, surprising myself. I hadn’t planned that. It just came out.

  He grinned back and shook his head. ‘Not yet.’ Pushing my knees further apart with his hands, he knelt between them before gently kissing up each inner thigh in turn, his stubble tickling the softest, most sensitive parts of my legs.

  ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my GOD,’ I panted. The ache in between my legs had turned to throbbing. He had to touch me. Please could he touch me. Please could he just reach up and—

  ‘JesuSSSSSSS,’ I sighed, as I felt his mouth over my clitoris and his tongue flicking just below it and back up again. He’d repeated the pattern all of three times when I realized I was going to come. I couldn’t hold it. A heat spread from the arches of my feet and flooded my lower body until it reached the spot where Rory’s tongue was pushing harder and harder and harder and…

  ‘I’m going to come, I’m going to come, I’m going to come, I THINK I’M COMING,’ I gasped, grinding my hips into his mouth and gulping for another breath.

  Imagine actually choosing to be a nun and giving this up.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he said, raising himself up on his knees before falling forward, pinning his arms around my shoulders. Moving one hand so it held my chin, he stared seriously into my eyes and pushed into me. I gasped again and again while he slid in and out, kissing me on the neck, across my collarbones and then my mouth. His lips pressed against mine and his tongue thrust into my mouth with more urgency. And when he started groaning, I felt a deep, primeval pleasure that I was making him do this. He was making these sounds because of me. After such a period of abstinence, it made me feel more like a normal person, a normal functioning person who could have sex without panicking about the subsequent drama and heartache that it might create. Except this was much better than normal. It felt sublime, up there with my fifteenth b
irthday when I was given Marmalade.

  Stop thinking about your cat, Florence.

  I banished him from my mind as I ran my fingers up and down Rory’s back and he sped up. Back and forth, back and forth, while I congratulated myself on the perfect night, the perfect date, where we talked and talked and I didn’t say anything premature like ‘Where shall we go for our honeymoon?’ or ‘I can’t wait to meet your mum’.

  And now this: pretty perfect sex. No embarrassing fart noises. No awkward fumbling. No moment where he strayed near my bottom because I wasn’t into that.

  And it was just as I was daring to hope that there might be a second time, praying that he wouldn’t ghost me, that he thrust for the final time, froze on top of me and shouted ‘COWABUNGA!’ as he came.

  Oh, OK. So it was nearly perfect.

  I woke the next morning feeling polite again. ‘Morning,’ I said to Rory, in much the same way that I said it to Eugene every day.

  Rory reached over and kissed me on the head. ‘Morning, my little chou-fleur.’

  ‘You sleep all right?’ I asked, wondering how I was going to get out of bed without flashing my bottom. I’d slept on the wall side of the bed, which either meant climbing over Rory or shuffling down the mattress and walking around the foot of it.

  ‘Yes, this bed is outstanding,’ he replied, yawning and stretching his arms out, deliberately draping his forearm over my eyes.

  ‘Get off, you weirdo. I need a shower.’ I pushed his arm away and decided on the end of the bed route, wiggling down it with as much dignity as I could (not much) before heading to the bathroom. But he caught my wrist as I passed his side of the bed and pulled me in for a kiss. I held my breath but he held open his side of the duvet and pulled me down on top of him.

  ‘I’ve got to get in the shower,’ I said, trying to direct my breath away from his face.

  ‘Ten minutes? Come on, you have ten minutes,’ he insisted, before running his hand down my body. I sucked my stomach in and realized I needed to pee. But Rory was kissing down my neck and along my shoulder and I didn’t want to fight him. His hand pushed open my legs and I sighed through the corner of my mouth, directing my breath at the wall instead of his face. Nobody would die if they arrived at the bookshop and had to wait ten minutes for the new Stalin biography.