The Dish

by Stella Newman

  ‘You’re not going to say everything happens for a reason, are you, Adam?’

  ‘No . . . just that you don’t know what things are, sometimes, till you’re further down the line.’

  ‘What made you think of that poem?’

  He pauses, as if he’s about to say something else, then shakes his head. ‘I guess . . . being in Mum’s house. This view, this peace – seeing how she turned her life around.’

  But there’s more to it than that.

  ‘You couldn’t drive to the shops even if they were open on a Sunday night,’ I say, holding up the empty bottle of red wine.

  ‘Grab another,’ he says, pointing to a small wooden rack nestled in the corner of the living room. ‘I totally should have planned this whole trip better. I wanted to make you something with local ingredients. Not even a packet of pasta in the cupboard. Mum just buys everything fresh when she’s here . . . Hold on a minute – beans! One measly Tetra Pak of cannellini beans. All I’m ever going to make for you, Laura Parker, is beans,’ he says, laughing.

  While Adam is cooking, I pop upstairs for a shower. It feels mildly ridiculous to change into a little black dress if there’s just the two of us in the living room. Instead I put on my sexy underwear, a lower cut top and my jeans, and head back down to the kitchen when I hear Adam calling my name.

  ‘You look pretty,’ he says, kissing me. ‘Minty breath.’

  ‘Dinner smells amazing!’

  Laid out on the counter are two bowls, each filled with a perfect pile of creamy beans, flecked with little red dots of chilli and topped with tiny blue rosemary flowers.

  ‘It’s just beans, olive oil, chilli and rosemary,’ he says, leading the way again to the garden. ‘But actually the raw materials are pretty good quality.’

  Back on the deckchairs we sit and eat, looking out at the distant yellow and white lights shimmering over the endless horizon. Lavender still perfumes the air, and the night sky is crisp and clear. We gaze at the silver sliver of moon, and the constellations sprinkled across the vast black canvas, in wonder.

  ‘Are you sure the food was OK?’ he says, finally taking my bowl from my lap and placing it down on the grass, inside his.

  ‘I’d take that over dinner at Nobu any day – that was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.’

  ‘You say the sweetest things, Laura.’ He sighs contentedly and takes my hand again. ‘Oh dear! Your poor fingers feel like they’re getting a little cold.’

  ‘They are! They’re freezing!’

  ‘Then maybe we should go inside.’

  We move to the sofa and start kissing and before long I end up sitting on his lap, facing him. All I can think about is sex. I’m pretty sure the sex will be good – the kissing has been amazing – but as Adam’s hands reach down my lower back and gently pull me towards him, I find myself so turned on I actually feel almost sick with desire. As he pulls off his T-shirt and my top, I find myself having to lean back and take a deep breath to compose myself.

  ‘You OK?’ he says, stopping to look at me, and tracing his finger down the middle of my body.

  I put my hand down to touch his firm, flat stomach. ‘Good, yeah, I’m good. Keep going . . .’ I say, as he gently strokes my nipples with the tips of his fingers. ‘That feels so good . . .’

  Within minutes, he is down to his boxer shorts and I am in my knickers and I can feel him through my knickers, hard between my legs. I kiss his neck and I feel him push towards me, then suddenly stop.

  ‘Are you OK, Adam?’

  He blows out in frustration and looks at me with an embarrassed expression.

  ‘What’s wrong, Adam?’ He hasn’t lost his erection, I can feel it between the tops of my thighs.

  ‘I haven’t got any condoms,’ he says, looking pained. ‘I packed in such a rush. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Mmm . . .’ I say, kissing behind his ear. ‘That’s OK, we can do it anyway, I’m on the pill.’

  He takes his hands away from where they are, currently cupping my bottom, and puts them down by his side.

  ‘What’s wrong? You haven’t got any lurgies have you?’ I say.

  ‘It’s not that,’ he says, looking away awkwardly.

  ‘Well, I’m fine too . . .’ I say, kissing his neck and then his shoulder. I feel him straining against me, and I push myself harder against him. ‘Just do it . . . please, that feels so good, oh God I want you . . .’ I move to kiss his lips but he jerks his head to one side, recoiling, as if I’d just belched.

  That does not feel good at all.

  He pushes me gently but firmly off his lap and stands. ‘I’m sorry Laura . . . I can’t . . .’

  ‘Adam, I haven’t got anything, I even have the text from the clinic to prove it! Don’t put your jeans back on, Adam, what are you doing? Adam? Where are you going? Adam?’

  Is this the most humiliated I’ve ever felt, I wonder, as I sit on the side of the bed, fully clothed again, picking at my thumbnail? What has been worse than this? Food poisoning on the train from Delhi to Mumbai? Different sort of bad. Am I more mortified than humiliated? Mortified’s worse, isn’t it? Mortified’s probably the one.

  Three twenty-five a.m. He’s been gone for nearly three hours. Has he gone back to the airport to catch the first flight home? The car’s still here. Now what am I meant to do? Drink, clearly.

  I walk back down to the kitchen and pour myself a large glass of wine and take it out to the garden. I strain my ears for any sound of taxis: nothing but silence and my internal soundtrack of shame. After half an hour of imagining I can hear cars approaching, I pour another glass of wine, head back upstairs and lie down on the bed, fully clothed.

  I wake to the sound of the front door gently closing. I hold my breath and hear footsteps treading softly up the stairs. I do hope it’s not a serial killer because that would just make a perfect end to my perfect night.

  ‘Hello?’

  The door opens and Adam’s head pops round the side of it, looking thoroughly apologetic. ‘I didn’t think you’d still be awake.’

  I sit half up and rest on my elbows. ‘What time is it anyway?’ Outside it’s still dark, but the birds have started to tweet. ‘What happened, where did you go?’

  He comes and lies down next to me on the bed and puts his arm out for me to rest on.

  ‘It’s OK, Adam, we don’t have to have sex . . . I can be your friend, I think. If you don’t fancy me? If you don’t fancy girls?’

  ‘Don’t fancy you? Laura, you are so fucking sexy to me I just want to maul you.’

  ‘Then what the fuck was all that about?’

  ‘I just freaked out . . . I’m sorry.’

  ‘About what? Where did you even go?’

  ‘I went for a walk . . . to the nearest twenty-four hour chemist!’ He shakes his head, as if laughing at his own ridiculousness. ‘Forgive me?’

  He moves in to kiss me again and our lips touch and it feels as though I’ve been waiting not just the last four hours for him but my whole adult life. He pulls my top up and I yank his T-shirt over his head and he moves on top of me and with his other hand unbuttons his jeans and kicks them awkwardly from round his ankles as neither of us is willing to stop kissing. And now he is on top of me in his boxers and my top is ruched halfway up my chest and most of our skin is touching and he feels warm and strong and solid on top of me and then I feel him, hard again, through his pants, pressing against my thigh and we are still kissing and he reaches over to his jeans on the floor and takes from the pocket the biggest box of condoms, rips it open, tears one of the foils and in less than twenty seconds he is inside me and I want this moment, this exact moment to last forever and yet we are now both so breathless and turned on that we manage only seven minutes of urgent, life-depends-on-it shagging before he comes to rest on top of me, legs shaking slightly, his face buried in my neck.

  And perhaps it was just two bodies taking what they wanted, what bodies are programmed to do. And yet lying here with Adam, the soles
of my feet resting lightly on the tops of his, I find it almost impossible not to think that perhaps this sense of absolute rightness, this sense of belonging – that this might actually mean something.

  We spend the next twelve hours in bed, we miss breakfast, we miss lunch. At one point I must doze off and when I wake, Adam opens his eyes too. We smile, we kiss – and then he slowly takes his finger and points it to his eye, to his heart and then to me.

  On the plane home Adam dozes off and I find myself sitting with a dumb grin on my face, replaying my memories from earlier. Does everyone do this? I keep going back over certain bits, thinking maybe they’ll lose their charge if I play them too many times, but the thoughts still make me lose my breath. The look in Adam’s eyes when he was on top of me, that absolute lack of apology or shyness – it was the eye contact, not some lad-mag move, that was the greatest turn on of all. And that is how I now feel: turned on. Like the body I had yesterday is not the same body I have now. It is different – yes, currently a little spent, but it feels charged, revved up – reminded what it is capable of.

  How long does it take to fall in love? One breakfast, one lunch, two dinners? A month? Does it creep up on you, or hit you in the face? Was it yesterday, when he was singing show tunes in the car like his life depended on it? I think I loved him a little from the doughnut.

  Oh good lord, help me, I sound like a moony teenager. Sophie warned me this would happen – I’m lost in the hot sex cloud. It’s not love. It’s just hormones. Oxytocin. Nothing more. It’s not love, just sex. My mind swings back and forth like a metronome. Everything/nothing/everything/nothing.

  34

  On the coach back into London I rest my head on Adam’s shoulder as we drive along the darkened stretch of the M11, the occasional light twinkling in the distance. The coach is packed, but the stifling heat and the smell of other people’s salami sandwiches does nothing to dent my happiness.

  It’s been so peaceful not having phones on for the last two days. We should turn them off more, I think, as I reach into my bag and take mine out. I’m tempted to keep it off till tomorrow morning, but just in case Dad or Roger have tried to get hold of me, I switch it on.

  Nothing. Just a text from Amber asking if I can look after Annalex overnight; she’s forgotten I’d be back late. And one from Sophie, and one from Kiki too – did I even tell her I was off work today?

  Adam shifts his arm around me and kisses the top of my head. He’s really not that short. In fact our heights are perfectly compatible. I sigh contentedly. I’m almost looking forward to work tomorrow – I hope Roger likes the revised piece. I’m going to take him back to LuxEris maybe next payday – to thank him.

  My phone beeps. Kiki. Again? She’s probably out pissed with Azeem – her Monday nights are as messy as anyone else’s Fridays.

  Laura, have you seen what Azeem’s tweeting?!?

  She must be looking at photos of baby turkeys, in the pub. Kiki in the pub, not the baby turkeys.

  Hope he used the picture I found for him, I christened him Chick Norris!

  WTF are you talking about?

  She must be three Jägers down and too young to know who Chuck Norris is. I wonder if I can get the turkey’s photo off Twitter and stick Chuck Norris’s head on it.

  ‘Adam? Do you know which App I can use to Photoshop from a Twitter photo?’

  ‘Huh?’ he says, lifting his head slowly – he must have been about to doze off.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ I’ll figure it out. Right, where are we . . . @TheDish_Online . . . here we go . . .

  Oh. My. God. That’s not right. I sit bolt upright and click the link through to our main website.

  Oh, that is not right at all. If this is an April Fool’s it’s a particularly unfunny one, and a day early at that.

  Ha ha Kiki, very funny. Tell him to take it down NOW please? X

  Ten seconds later my phone rings, Kiki. I press reject.

  Stuck on coach, please tell Azeem it has to come down NOW.

  Beside me, Adam yawns and sits up. My phone rings again. Kiki.

  ‘I can’t talk . . .’ I say, as quietly as possible.

  ‘Dude.’ She sounds extremely sober. ‘Did you brief Azeem before you left?’

  I reminded him about the turkey pics, did I forget to tell him about my own copy change?

  ‘I just thought you might have switched back to the original version at the last minute,’ she says. ‘He’s obviously picked the wrong one off the system.’

  ‘Could you give him a call, ask him to switch it, and let me know? Thank you.’

  ‘Everything OK?’ says Adam.

  ‘It’s fine.’ Absolutely not, hell no. Azeem is an idiot. He obviously didn’t see the second file had been loaded. Sloppy, just sloppy. ‘Are we still in Essex?’

  ‘No idea. Are you sure you’re OK?’

  ‘Fine, thanks . . . have a nap.’

  I’m an idiot too. I should have called him on Friday to warn him. Too busy literally painting my toenails.

  ‘I’m starving,’ says Adam, straightening up in his seat. ‘Do you fancy grabbing a bite when we get in? There’s an amazing Chinese near Victoria, should still be open.’

  Hurry up Kiki, text me back . . .

  ‘Checking your watch every minute won’t get us there any faster,’ he says. ‘Do you have a hot date when you get home?’

  ‘Huh? Oh, Amber’s left a message about the dog . . .’ Kiki. Hurry. Up.

  OK, think this through: Azeem’s stuck the original review up but Adam won’t see it. A few hundred readers might, but it can be replaced as soon as Azeem pulls the right one off the system.

  Ah, finally! The man himself. ‘Hiya!’ I say, forcing the jollity into my voice.

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘Yeah . . . the thing is the old thing . . . there’s a newer thing . . . just swap the things.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can’t talk, I’m on a coach but there are two, just take the bottom one.’

  ‘Your column?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘I matched the paper copy.’

  ‘No, there are two,’ I say, trying to keep my voice light. Azeem is such an idiot! ‘One has three bits, one is a big long one . . .’

  ‘One long review, yes.’

  ‘There’s a newer one.’

  ‘The big one’s running in the mag.’

  ‘Was. Isn’t.’ What is wrong with him? ‘It’s fine, just switch them now, could you?’

  ‘Let me go and check.’

  For goodness’ sake!

  ‘Problem?’ says Adam.

  ‘Urgh . . . Amber . . . dog stuff . . . dog kit . . . you know, the dog has all these toys and stuff . . . Amber doesn’t know how to use them and she’s using the old . . . dog . . . thingy you know . . . what’s that thing called? Anyway, the thing the dog uses.’

  He laughs. ‘I can’t wait to meet Amber properly. What’s the dog’s name?’

  ‘Annalex.’ CALL ME BACK! ‘Very cute eyebrows, tufty . . . Ah, here she is again!’

  ‘Sorted?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, I’m doing the right one.’

  ‘Thank you!’

  ‘One long list.’

  How many more times??

  ‘Laura: I’ve got April’s issue in my hand. It’s your ninety-nine problems . . .’

  Oh.

  Shit.

  Better make that a hundred.

  ‘I’m going to head home,’ I say, as Adam and I stand in the coach station and I try not to vomit.

  He puts his hands in the back of my jeans and pulls me towards him. ‘Stay at mine?’

  ‘I’m exhausted,’ I say, opening my mouth to fake a yawn, which turns into a real one.

  ‘We could just crash? I’ll make you breakfast in bed?’

  ‘That would be nice.’ But the possibility of waking up tomorrow and you reading the review while I’m in your house less so. ‘But I’ll see you later in the week.’ If I haven’t gone in to hiding
.

  He pauses and his gaze shifts from mine. ‘This week is impossible . . .’

  Oh God, we’re not back to this again? ‘You’re not blowing me out now you’ve had your wicked way with me are you?’ Might be ideal timing though.

  ‘No,’ he says, biting the inside of his cheek. ‘No, Laura. I had the most amazing time with you. Listen, I’ll call you tomorrow, shall I?’

  ‘Sure,’ I say, confused by his sudden change of mood. ‘Are you catching the Tube?’

  ‘I think I’ll get some fresh air while I still can. Big week . . .’ He pulls me towards him for one final kiss and I have no idea why but a thought goes through my head: this will be the last time you kiss him. I watch as he walks away and suddenly I feel like bursting into tears. The last thing I need is for Adam to go weird on me now – or go back to being weird.

  I have to call Roger. Not that there’s anything Roger or anyone else can do now, short of intercepting twenty-three lorries or buying up every copy of the magazine before six a.m. tomorrow. Roger’s phone is off, he must be in bed. Please let him be in tomorrow because I’m planning on hurling these Toffifees one at a time at Sandra’s head and I need someone to restrain me. This must be her fault. Either that or the printers picked up the old file – but my money’s on Sandra. How can she think she’d get away with this?

  In bed I churn over when to tell Adam the truth. If he can’t see me before Sunday, it’ll have to wait till then – telling him over the phone feels cowardly. How on earth did Tom live with me for a year carrying his secret morning and night? It feels like a burning rock I can’t wait to offload.

  Even though I keep reminding myself I’ve sort of done nothing wrong, I feel guilty and slightly sick. The last time I felt this way was twenty years ago; Jess had bought a brand new sheepskin jacket and hung it on the back of a dining-room chair. I’d been sneakily trying some of her Clinique Dramatically Different moisturiser and had managed to spill pale yellow cream all down the back of the jacket. Me pointing out she shouldn’t have left her moisturiser in the dining room, or her jacket on the back of a chair, didn’t wash well (ditto the jacket.) Jess threatened to do something dramatically different to my face.