by Hannah Tovey
‘Think of a thing or a person that means the world to you,’ I said. ‘That makes your heart sing.’
‘Your heart can’t sing!’ said Jamar.
‘My heart certainly isn’t singing today,’ I said, under my breath.
Horatio painted a gorilla, because he said his sister reminded him of one. Nancy painted cat ears in orange, to represent her beloved ginger beast, and Jamar painted a picture of Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. With them being four, none of the pictures looked anything like they were supposed to, but I’d come to realise how important it was to express encouragement and empathy at all times – especially when it came to the children’s artistic pursuits.
‘I loved today, Miss,’ said Horatio.
Lots of tiny heads were nodding in agreement.
‘Thank you, everyone, I loved today too.’
Mr Reid came back into the classroom, surprised to see the children so quiet and engaged in a task.
‘This is such a positive way to end the week, Ivy.’
‘I’m so proud of them.’
‘Were you thinking of anyone in particular when you set out this exercise?’
I felt the colour rush to my cheeks.
I caught his eye. He was smiling.
‘I know what you’re doing,’ I said.
He gave me a little nudge.
‘It’s good to be happy,’ he said, as he walked back to his desk.
‘I’M HAPPY!’ Nancy said.
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Me too.’
22
Scott suggested we meet south of the river, but I desperately wanted him to stay the night at mine, so I did all I could to sell my side of town. Far from being the edgy, hip part of London it was lauded as, Shoreditch had recently become a playground for sixteen-year-olds from north-west London, who used their fake IDs to buy drinks with Daddy’s bank card. This might not be a wholly accurate reflection of how the district had changed – I might have just aged a little – but either way, everyone looked like teenagers, which wasn’t quite the second-date vibe I was going for. I asked Dan to get us a table at a new restaurant in Haggerston. I wanted Scott to think I was the sort of person who knew about trendy new restaurant openings, whereas in reality, I’d be happy eating Twiglets for dinner. Dating, as I had come to realise, is about making the other person think you’re much more compelling than you are.
I spotted him at the bar. As I walked over to him, I tried to resist the urge to snog his face off.
He got up to hug me. I almost went in for a kiss but when he didn’t, I changed my mind. I took my coat off and put it on the rack beside him. I had a sudden panic that maybe he didn’t fancy me as much as I fancied him. Maybe I was reading too much into this? Maybe he was like this with everyone? I banished the thought to the back of my mind and sat down beside him. He was sporting a wide mischievous grin.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Would you mind if I kissed you?’
He was going to be the end of me.
‘No, I wouldn’t mind.’
His hands went to the back of my neck, and we stood up together and snogged like it was the last snog of our life.
A frustrated waiter pushed past us, a man on his way to the bathroom said, ‘Go for it, mate,’ and a small dog started to get a little over-zealous on my leg. But we didn’t care. I was so happy my face hurt. Or maybe that was because of all the snogging.
‘I’m sorry I made you come east,’ I said as we sat back down. ‘I went to see Maude at the care home today and it would’ve taken me ages to get down south.’
‘You’re a terrible liar,’ he said, with a smile. ‘I know full well you’ve brought me here to lure me back to your abode.’
I licked my thumb and rubbed my lipstick off his lips.
‘I have not.’
‘Shall we call a spade a spade and go back to yours now?’
‘No. We’re having a proper date.’
All I wanted was to take him back to mine and have uninhibited, electric sex for the foreseeable future. Or at least until we ran out of condoms.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Let’s be adults. Now, what are you drinking?’
He told me about his week at work. He was project managing the launch of a new whisky campaign that a ‘famous artist’ was fronting and they were scheduled to do some paid appearances in swanky bars across London. The artist had been hooked on a cocktail of whisky and dodgy back-alley pills since the breakdown of his marriage to a French supermodel, so Scott had spent most of the campaign being a shoulder to cry on, all while begging the artist to attend just one of the several appearances they were paying him a fortune to make.
‘Who’s the artist?’ I asked.
‘I can’t tell you that. You’ll tell everyone, and I’ll get sued.’
‘What’s the point of working with celebrities if you’re not even allowed to air their dirty secrets?’
‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘How’s your week been?’
‘Um, let me see. The children like to play a little game with me, whereby every time your uncle leaves the room, they act like savage animals. I was fifteen minutes late for my lecture yesterday, and my tutor spent the whole session scowling at me. Oh, and she said in front of the entire class that I was distracted and must learn to focus better. I was so stressed that, when I got home, I drank a bottle of wine and cried into my copy of the school handbook for a couple of hours. So, yeah, similar type of week to yours.’
He laughed.
‘I really like you,’ he said.
‘Good, because I really like you too.’
I sat across from him as he told me about his childhood summers in Wales. My mind raced forward to five years from now, and I pictured myself carrying his child. I hadn’t pictured myself carrying someone’s child since Jamie, and I felt a hot flush come over me. I escaped to the bathroom and tried to recover my senses.
‘I’d be concerned, too,’ Dilys said.
‘I’m not concerned. I’m alluring.’
‘It’s only a matter of time before you say something wildly idiotic and humiliate yourself.’
‘Dilys, I’m killing this. Fuck off, please.’
I rearranged my bra so that my breasts looked perkier, before giving myself a final look-over.
‘Fabulous,’ I said, forcing myself to believe it.
‘Tell me about your family,’ Scott said, when I was sitting back down at the table.
‘Suffocating, incredibly loving – the kindest people you’ll ever meet. What about you?’
His body language shifted.
‘My parents are divorced, which complicates the family dynamics somewhat.’
‘I’m sorry. Do you have many siblings?’
‘Just my brother. He’s not around much.’
‘What does he do?’
He hesitated.
‘He’s a foreign diplomat.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means he works all over.’
‘All over?’
‘Yes. All over.’
I contemplated this for a moment.
‘Is he a spy?’ I asked.
He stirred in his seat.
‘No.’
‘He’s a spy!’ I said.
‘No, he’s a foreign diplomat.’
‘You can’t even say it with a straight face!’
‘Yes, I can.’
He couldn’t.
‘He’s so a spy,’ I said.
He changed the subject.
‘What about your sister?’
‘She’s my best friend but … she’s just had a baby – my niece, Eleanor – she’s almost three months. Things are a bit different now. I didn’t think they would be, but maybe that was me being naïve.’
‘I don’t think you’re being naïve.’
I grazed his lips with my fingers. They were so soft to touch.
‘Do you want to go dancing tonight?’ Scott asked.
‘I would love to go
dancing.’
‘There’s this working men’s club in Stoke Newington; my grandad used to take me there.’
‘You mean the one by Clissold House?’
‘Yes.’
‘I used to go there!’
‘What? When?’
‘When Mia and I lived in Stoke Newington, we went there all the time. Who was that woman who used to work on the front door?’
‘Shelley! My grandad was secretly in love with her. Hang on – were you there for her sixtieth, when they had the stripper from Dallas?’
‘Micky!’ I cried.
‘You know Micky?’
‘My mate Dan got a lap dance from him, before we got kicked out. Dan got so drunk that he went into the DJ booth and started ranting that the songs were shit. He tried to steal the mic from the DJ but fell off the side of the stage instead.’
‘I remember that guy!’
‘Hard to forget, isn’t he?’
‘Isn’t that weird? We must have met that night.’
‘How did I miss you?’
‘How did I miss you?’
He leant towards me and kissed me so fiercely that I almost fell off my seat.
‘I want to go dancing with you,’ I said.
‘Then let’s go dancing.’
I realised then that I was in big trouble. I was falling for him, and there was nothing I could do about it.
*
We arrived at the working men’s club and, as expected, Shelley was on the front door, draped in diamanté jewellery with long stiletto nails and perfectly coiffed hair. She eyed me up and down as she tried to place me.
‘This is Ivy, you’ve met before,’ Scott said.
‘It’s been a long time,’ she said.
‘Your sixtieth.’
‘I remember your friend – what’s his name?’
‘Dan. I apologise unreservedly for his behaviour.’
‘He tore the curtains down when he fell off stage.’
‘Yes, sorry … ’
‘And he broke the toilet seat. He stood on it and tried to get everyone to join in on a Queen medley.’
‘Again, so sorry—’
‘Then he wet himself on the sofa.’
‘Christ, I didn’t realise.’
‘He isn’t coming tonight, is he?’
‘No, he isn’t.’
‘So, you two are together then, are you?’ she asked.
Scott and I looked at each other and grinned. She told us to behave and let us inside. Thanks to Scott’s charm, she even waived the entrance fee.
The clientele was exactly how I remembered it. Old East End cockney types who’d been coming there since they were boys, with their wives in tow, dressed up to the nines, cackling away in the corner. There was a patio outside for all the smokers, with rattan wicker furniture and fifty-year-old ash trays that had probably been used to batter someone to death. There were broken lampshades, stained velvet furnishings and sticky carpets throughout – it had the most electric atmosphere. Everyone in there made up part of a wonderfully eccentric community.
It made me think of Gramps’ old club, where he used to take me for a pint of lemonade and a bag of Skips. I’m not sure I was even allowed in there, but nobody dared question Gramps. We’d sit in the corner of the room, him with his paper, me with my colouring book. We’d always bump into my primary school teacher, or doctor, or father’s second cousin once removed. I’d listen in as they came to sit next to Gramps and gossip about the locals. The last time I was there with him, we spoke to not one but six Dai’s: Dai Milk (milkman); Dai Brains (brain surgeon); Dai Twice (his full name is David Davis); Dai Sinus (likes to get up people’s noses); Dai FT (‘fucking tight’); Dai Bulb (‘big ugly lazy bastard’). We had some of our best days together in that club.
We ordered two shots of tequila and two double vodka sodas before making our way to the dance floor. There was Diana Ross, the Temptations, Jackson 5 – hit after hit played and Scott and I danced like there was nobody watching. When Four Tops’ ‘Baby I Need Your Loving’ came on, Scott shouted, ‘I fucking love this song!’ and swung me around the dance floor, singing every word directly to me. When the song finished he lifted me off the floor.
‘I want to go home with you,’ he said, when he finally put me down.
I said nothing. I just took his hand and led him out the door.
23
In the back of the taxi, my hand rubbed his crotch as he felt my breasts under my shirt. I no longer cared about my Uber rating; I wanted to have above-average sex with a man I fancied the pants off. I was close to straddling him when the car stopped, and we were outside my flat.
When we got into the lift he pressed me up against the wall and I started unbuttoning his shirt. When we got to my floor, I sped down the corridor and he tried to catch me up, his shirt half open and the buckle of his jeans undone, revealing his grey boxers. I fumbled with the door keys as he came up behind me.
‘I want you so much, Ivy,’ he said, biting my ear.
He reached in front of me and put his hand to my crotch. I turned around to face him, kissing him so violently that the door flung open behind me and we stumbled into the hallway.
I couldn’t believe that he was there, inside my flat. My only two sexual experiences over the past year were with Wyatt, a man with strangely long fingers – like Gru from Despicable Me, only with less of a belly – and Rob, who kissed me like a wet dog. I almost had sex with an Idris Elba lookalike, but I’d ruined my chances by getting blind drunk at his house party. Last year would not go down as my finest.
I went to lock the door behind us and struggled with the chain. By the time I’d turned back around again, Scott had taken off all his clothes, aside from his boxers.
I moved closer to him and put my hands on his chest. He was warm and strong, and his heart was beating as fast as mine.
‘I’m usually much cooler than this,’ he said.
‘I don’t believe you.’
His lips moved to my neck and I dropped my bag to the floor.
‘You’re lush, Miss Edwards,’ he said.
I led him to my bedroom and turned on one of the lamps. When I turned back around to face him, I noticed his boxers again, and laughed.
‘You’re not allowed to laugh at a naked man like this!’ he said.
‘Your boxers, they’re the wrong way around.’
‘Oh, are they? Shit, actually, these aren’t even my boxers.’
‘Whose are they?’
‘They’re my brother’s.’
‘That’s a coincidence, because I’m wearing my sister’s knickers.’
‘Are you?’
‘No! Of course I’m not, you weirdo.’
We fell onto the bed as he unclipped my bra.
‘You’re so beautiful.’
‘Stop it.’
He lay me down on the bed and took the rest of my clothes off. He grabbed the fleshy part of my thighs and took his time to kiss every part of me, from my forehead all the way down to my toes. He opened my legs and began to trace little circles on my clitoris with his tongue. I knew because of the alcohol that I wasn’t going to come, and I didn’t want to set a bad precedent and lie about it, so I grabbed his hair and moved him up towards me, so I could kiss his face again.
I asked him to get a condom.
He jumped off the bed and I heard his foot hit something.
‘Fuck!’ he shouted.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Fuck!’
He was doubled over on the floor, exhaling in a manner that reminded me of Anna during labour.
‘Fuck fuck fuck. I’ve stubbed my pinkie,’ he said.
I tried not to laugh.
‘Are you going to be OK?’I asked him.
‘You’re mocking me.’
‘I’m not.’
‘I lost my toenail earlier this year when I ran the London Marathon. It’s just growing back!’
‘What does that have to do with you stubbing your toe
?’
‘It’s extremely sensitive!’
He was still on the floor. I moved down to join him.
‘Do you want me to kiss it better?’ I asked.
‘Don’t speak to me like one of your four-year-olds.’
‘I’m sorry. Are you coming back to bed?’
‘Yes, give me a minute.’
I moved back onto the bed and waited.
A few moments later he crawled underneath the covers.
‘Sorry, I’ve gone … erm … ’
‘You’ve gone soft.’
He grabbed the pillow and covered his face with it.
‘This is a bit mortifying,’ he said.
I moved under the covers and down to his crotch.
He got hard quickly, which was surprising considering the amount of tequila in him.
It wasn’t how I expected the first blow job with Scott to be; not that I’d given it much thought, but it hadn’t involved me kissing his flaccid penis after he’d cried like a baby about stubbing his pinkie.
Life is so full of surprises.
I woke up an hour or so later with a crooked neck; we’d both fallen asleep and he’d not taken his condom off. A shrivelled condom on a flaccid penis is not something one wants to be faced with, especially not when one has an onset hangover. I didn’t want to take it off for him, so I went into the bathroom and tried to make a lot of noise, in the hope that he’d wake up.
When I walked back into the bedroom, Scott was sitting up in bed, the condom now enfolded in tissue paper on the bedside table. We both looked at it and laughed.
I climbed on top of him.
‘I want to do that again,’ I said.
‘Where did you come from?’ he asked.
‘Same place as you.’
In the morning, I lay beside him, studying his face as he slept. He had long eyelashes and dark stubble around his chin. My fingers were in his hair, admiring his few greys, when he stirred. I jumped, and pretended I was asleep, before I realised that he was actually asleep, so I decided to go and make some coffee.
Two more hours went by, and he still didn’t wake. I went back into the bedroom three times, going right up to his face to check he was still breathing. I was so scared that he’d wake with my face pressed up against his and think I was some weird stalker, like the woman in Misery, only thinner, and Welsh.