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“Do you wish you had any brothers and sisters?”
I shrug. “I dunno really. Sometimes I think it would be cool to have that kind of close bond people can have with siblings. Friends but family at the same time. You must have that? You’re one of five, aren’t you?”
He takes a swig of wine and raises his eyebrows.
“Yes, one of five. I’m the fourth in the chain, and was the baby until my youngest sister came along when I was nearly seven. I thought I’d milked the toddler tantrums to the max. Everything from not liking broccoli and screaming about it, to knocking paints all over the dining room table. But then my final sibling arrived. She outdid me. She outdid all of us.”
“Are you close to them?”
“Some more than others. Emma is married, and she’s great, but her time is mainly taken up by Polly-Anne now. Her daughter. I’m closest to Sasha, who works in finance over in Canary Wharf. She lives with her girlfriend, Georgia, and they both have a wicked sense of humour. Then there’s Scott, who’s quite the online gamer, and we don’t have all that much in common. He keeps telling me to watch him on live feed and join in, but it bores me shitless.”
I try to keep track of the names. Emma, Sasha, Scott, Josh. Emma, Sasha, Scott, Josh.
“Then the youngest came along,” he says, and leans back in his seat. “Caroline. She’s great, but she’s barely twenty, and she can be such a pain in the ass. She hasn’t grown out of the look at me stage from when she was about five. Look at me, look at me, look at me.” He does an impression with a sassy wave of his hand, and I burst out laughing.
“She sounds quite something.”
“She is quite something.” He pauses. “No, honestly, she is cool. She’s just a bit of an attention seeker. Wants to be queen of the universe with a million adoring fans. Or on the arm of the king of the universe. Some rock star, or pop icon, or movie star. Right now it’s rock star. She’s been in a goth phase for a few years now, trying to outdo Tiff on the attention scale. It would be quite a hard climb for her to get there, but she’s trying her best.”
“A goth phase?” I grin. “Well, I’m still in one, so maybe we’d get on.”
“Hopefully you’ll never grow out of yours. It suits you too much.”
I get a round of butterflies.
“Yeah, well I hope you never get sick of your hot, purple streaked hair brilliance, either.”
“Don’t worry about that. The purple streak is staying, and so are the piercings. The clients love them too much for starters.”
And so will I.
Talking of starters, the time has been flying by. They arrive with a flourish.
We talk right through the meal, and it’s like starting from the beginning of a fairy tale. We talk about being kids, and what toys we used to like, through the challenges of family – where Josh has me laughing in hysterics at some of his antics with his siblings. We talk about school, and when I became goth, and what music I like, and what he likes. I tell him how I signed the rental agreement on my new apartment, and how incredible and modern and open plan it is, and gush about how I’ve been browsing online for furniture all day today, since I will barely have a single thing to put in it next week if I don’t get my butt into gear.
“The apartment sounds great,” he says. “So, where is it? North London?”
Oh no. Here it comes… the stalker moment.
“Belgravia,” I tell him, my heart pounding in my chest, but Josh doesn’t so much as raise an eyebrow, just smiles.
“One of the towers?”
“Yes.”
“Which one?”
“West wing,” I say, and he nods. “Great choice. Nice and handy, too. Just across the courtyard.”
Phew. What a relief.
And what a fucking pleasure. Stalker crisis averted.
We talk about so much. Laugh about so much. Grin about so much. But through all of it, not once throughout the conversation do we talk about the two big elephants in the room.
Work and exes.
I know he’s had his heart broken, just like I have. I know her name was Magpie and she was an entertainer, like me, and I know she went off with a client. But I don’t ask him about her. I don’t dive bomb enough to ask the obvious question. I’ve been skirting it on messenger for weeks.
