Queenie(61)

I’d finally got off to sleep around three-thirty, when my bedroom door opened. “It’s too cold down there, I can’t sleep.” Guy, almost naked but for his boxers, climbed into my bed.

“Are you joking?” I hissed at him. “You can’t sleep? I’ve been hearing your snoring through the floor!” He moved closer and pressed himself into me. He slid my T-shirt sleeve up and kissed my neck. “And when did you take your clothes off? Why are all your clothes off?” I slid away.

“Shhh, stop talking,” he said in response.

“Guy. No.” I turned to face him. The moonlight shone on his face. “If you have to stay in here, please, can you just go to sleep? I’m up early. I don’t want to have sex with you,” I said in my sternest voice. “That is my final word. If you push it again, I’ll order you an Uber home. And I’ll go through your phone and find your postcode.”

“Fine. Spoilsport.” He hiccupped, turned away from me, and began to snore 0.3 seconds later.



* * *



I’ve no idea how I got to sleep, but I woke up teetering off the edge of my bed to the sound of the doorbell. Again. I looked over at the sleeper who had taken over most of my bed. Guy was still out cold. I pulled a sweater on and went downstairs.

“Sorry, I’m not prepared for you at all,” I said as Cassandra stepped into the hallway and shook rain off her umbrella and onto my legs.

“Shall we go out instead?” Cassandra suggested, looking me up and down. “I don’t like the smell of this place. Plus, it’ll be nice for you to get fresh air. You look knackered. Those bags!” She reached out and patted the area under my eyes.

“Thanks, Cassandra. Always thinking of me, aren’t you?” I smiled, wiping water from my shins. I’m sure she used to say some nice things to me.

“I am, actually. I transferred another hundred pounds to you yesterday because I knew that if we went out to eat, you’d ask me for money.”

“I will pay you back, and soon,” I promised.

“It’s my dad’s money, really. He wouldn’t mind if he knew.”

“Thanks, Cassandra.” I wondered why I wasn’t lucky enough to have a father like Jacob. “I’ve got company,” I said quietly, leading her down the hallway. “Come into the kitchen, I don’t want to wake him up.”

“Oh my God, another one? How many is it now?” Cassandra snorted.

It was too early for this. “There you go with the judgment again!” I sighed. “That’s not a very feminist question. Besides, it’s not like that.” I poured Cassandra a glass of water. “It’s this inconsequential man that I used to sleep with loads, the Welsh one. I must have mentioned him?” I shrugged. “I actually got bored of sleeping with him because the sex was so rough, and unconnected. I mean, it was quite good, but just making me feel bad. Like everything else at the moment,” I confessed, hopeful that she’d pick up on it and ask what was wrong. She didn’t. “Anyway, last night he turned up off his face at two in the morning. He’d been at the White Horse and was so battered he didn’t know where he lived.”

“That’s a coincidence—” Cassandra started.

“Hold on, let me just run upstairs and get ready. I can’t stop thinking about croissants.”

I got dressed silently as Guy continued to sleep soundly, a gigantic human starfish stretched to all four corners of my entire bed now that I wasn’t occupying a sliver of it. I left him a note telling him to let himself out the minute he woke up; then Cassandra and I made our way to BE/AN, another of Brixton’s newest and more minimalist coffee shops. When we got there and I saw how full it was of white middle-class young people with MacBook Airs, I suggested that we go somewhere that was run by Brixton locals. “You mean black people, don’t you?” Cassandra asked flatly.

“I do, yes,” I said, leading her to the market. As we walked, she talked and I listened as she told me that she’d applied to do a master’s in psychiatry. I wondered if she’d use me as a case study. We found a coffee and cake stall run by an old Jamaican woman in a black, green, and yellow bandanna.

“Black enough for you?” Cassandra asked.

“Yes.” I flashed a mocking smile. “It is.”

When we sat down, Cassandra enumerated the academic and financial pros and cons of her new career at me for half an hour; then, before I could try to talk to her about Ted, she announced that she had to head back north because she had plans with her “gorgeous guy.”

I wondered how gorgeous he could actually be; nobody ever describes their partner as gorgeous unless they’re trying to convince themselves of it. We left the coffee shop and hugged good-bye, and I headed home. I pulled my headphones on and started listening to the latest installment of my favorite podcast, The Read, in some attempt to lift my mood slightly, hoping that Guy wouldn’t be there when I got back. Being alone probably wasn’t the best thing for me, but I didn’t feel like I could face anyone.

I was almost home when I felt a hand on my elbow. I pulled my headphones off and turned around.

“Didn’t you hear me? I’ve been shouting after you for ages.” Cassandra bent over and clutched her side as she caught her breath. “I didn’t realize how fast I could run in heels!”