50 Ways to Find a Lover (37 page)

‘OK.’

‘Text me the address. I’m on my way. Thank you so much for calling.’ He hangs up. I text him the address and stand in the hotel foyer for a while just staring at my mobile phone. I’m so excited that butterflies and moths and daddy-long-legses are doing the ‘YMCA’ in my stomach. However, I seem to have forgotten something quite major. He humiliated me in front of my entire family on what was the best day of my life. What am I doing? I will have to ask him all about that bloody phone call before I so much as kiss him.

I lift my head. I catch sight of myself in the mirror above the reception desk. I look unhinged. I am unhinged. I would get turned away as an extra on the ‘Thriller’ video for going over the top. I spend five minutes in the toilets attempting to make myself look less like a rhino’s foreskin. Then I sit in an armchair and wait for Paul. There is a computer in the foyer. The sign above the computer says
FREE HIGH-SPEED INTERNET
. Within ten seconds I am sitting in front of the screen writing a blog post.

I am just on my way back to the armchair when Paul walks through the swing door. He’s wearing his pink shirt. The same shirt he’s been wearing in my thoughts for weeks. We both stop when we see each other. I bite my lip. He rushes towards me. Then he stops and just looks at me. I consider asking him about the phone call on marathon day but then his lips touch mine and his hands are in my hair and we are kissing. And it’s a dirty kiss. It’s the sort of kiss that demands an imminent taxi ride to a bed. We come up for air after a few minutes, lips slightly wet and swollen. We take a five-second rest to smile stupidly at each other and then we start kissing again. But I will ask him about that phone call at some point. I will.

‘Ello ello ello!’ Simon’s deep voice. He’s walking down the sweeping staircase with Julia. Paul looks briefly uncomfortable, then puffs up his chest and holds out his hand.

‘How are you, Simon?’ he says without smiling. Simon looks at the proffered hand, Paul’s face and then my face. He nods slowly and shakes his hand.

‘Yeah, all right mate, thanks,’ he says. ‘You?’

‘Pretty great actually.’ Paul smiles. Paul’s smile is like the flu. I catch it instantly.

‘Julia, you remember Paul?’ I ask, in the hope that Julia will close her gaping mouth and enter the conversation.

‘Hi,’ she says with caution.

We all walk outside. Julia takes the one waiting taxi. That leaves the three of us.

‘Er . . .’ I start.

‘Shall I come back with you?’ Paul asks delicately.

‘Um, yeah,’ I say, looking into his eyes. He puts his hand in the small of my back.

forty-eight

London: the place where everyone below a certain earning threshold listens daily to another person’s toilet sounds. Simon and I should put a sign up in the loo:
ALL NOISES
HEARD IN ALL ROOMS
.

I’m used to Si. He coughs, sings or talks over plops and poops. He’ll perform all three together if it’s a big one. It’s odd hearing another man in there. Paul doesn’t sing. I can hear everything he’s doing. It’s amplified by the tiles. He’s just emptied a very full bladder. Now he’s washing his hands. A good sign.

He’s just started the shower. If he’s going to have a shower I can quickly check my blog. I wonder if anyone has read my last post yet. Loveless and Crazy will be so chuffed. I click on my
Spinster’s Quest
bookmark. There must be an error somewhere. The screen is showing me a Viagra advertisement. I hope it’s not a sign from God about Paul’s sexual prowess. I type in my website address very carefully. The Viagra advert again. I type it in a second time. I am being so careful my nose Eskimo-kisses each key. The same. Where has my blog gone?

‘SIMON!’ I yell as though my lungs are the size of Lewisham. ‘SIMON!!!!!’ I yell again, quite impressed by the volume I created and wanting to exercise it again. I spring up, holding the laptop with the error page displayed. ‘WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY BLOG?!’

Simon’s face appears at his door as I reach it.

‘Jesus, Sare, keep it down, I’m trying to get to sleep!’ he yawns. He’s standing there in just his Calvin Klein pants. I wish I wasn’t finding Simon so attractive today.

‘I can’t believe you did it,’ I say sadly.

‘Sare, have you lost the plot?’

‘No, but you have. Look, my blog’s gone. You’ve put a frigging Viagra ad in its place, you arse.’ I shake my head. I’m not even angry. I’m sad. I am sad that I have no blog. I am sadder that one of my favourite people in the universe would do this to me.

‘Sare, don’t be stupid, of course I haven’t!’

‘This is so playground! That night after I met the Goth you said if I got in touch with Paul you’d do something! Remember! And now look what’s happened! My blog is now linked to a sodding Viagra page. It’s not rocket science, Si!’

‘For fuck’s sake, Sare! I came back and went to bed, I haven’t even been online.’

The shower stops. I walk back to my room and slam the door.

I sit on my bed, head in hands, and make a humphing sound. Simon has been very vocal about loathing my blog. He’s been harping on for ages about how unhealthy it is. He threatened to do ‘something’. He could just own up to it. I hear Paul struggling with the dodgy bathroom lock before vigorously wrenching it open. I look up and there he is. Wow. Wow again. Wet torso, dripping chest hair, phenomenal calves, tiny towel. I want to take a Polaroid. My mouth drops open. I stand up and walk towards him. I reach out a hand and run it across his chest. I love the feeling of wet hair on firm chest. It’s like seaweed on rock.

‘You are gorgeous!’ I tell him and put my hands around his neck and kiss him on the lips. I want to explore every inch of him in my single bed. Although I was supposed to ask him about that horrible day at the marathon. I think I’ll do that after.

‘Ditto.’ He grins back at me. ‘Now then, are you going for a shower?’

‘Oh God, am I really honky?’ I exclaim. I press my nose to my armpit and feign passing out.

‘No, I didn’t mean that,’ he says hurriedly.

‘Stop being sweet. I stink.’ I grab a towel from the back of the door and turn to look at Paul’s wet torso again. This time I get his glistening wet back. He has two small downy patches of back-hair on each shoulderblade. It will have to go. A quick wax strip when he’s asleep one night should do the trick. I like him a little bit more now that I’ve seen his back-hair and I know he’s not perfect. I am still gazing at his back when he turns to me and gestures towards my laptop on the bed.

‘Can I quickly check my emails while you’re in the shower? My crackberry died this afternoon.’

‘Yeah, of course,’ I say.

They say that ideas of genius and moments of clarity happen in the shower. They are right. While I am washing pungent places with industrial vigour I realize who brought the blog down. Eamonn bloody Nigels. He wants all evidence of his son’s sexuality wiped from the World Wide Web. He is my second suspect after Simon. How would Miss Marple investigate this? She would invite all the suspects around for tea and crumpets. I’ll be a modern-day Miss Marple. I’ll have hot sex with a gorgeous man and deal with the problem tomorrow. Actually I don’t want to have actual sex with Paul. I want to wait for that bit. But naked kissing would be just fine. Oh yes! Naked kissing and writhing! Then when we’re all reacquainted and relaxed with each other I will ask him about the marathon day.

Paul sits on my bed. A gorgeous towel-clad man, who looks as though he should sell aftershave (purely from the front though, until we’ve had the waxing session). When I fantasized about Paul in my bed, I didn’t have the Holly Hobbie sheets on. And my teddy wasn’t on the pillow. How old am I, six? Perhaps unsurprisingly, Paul looks at me with a pained expression.

‘Are you all right?’ I ask, walking towards him.

‘Sarah, your blog’s disappeared! There’s something on here about Viagra instead.’ There’s panic in his voice.

‘I know. Anyway, you don’t need to read my blog tonight. I am here. I’ll tell you anything you need to know.’

‘But Sarah, what’s happened to it?’ he says urgently.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Think, think. Who could have done this?’

I stand there with my mouth open while he does the antithesis of what he should. He picks up his jeans and jumps like a British man on Bognor beach until they’re on. And, as though his fingers are Fred Astaire’s feet, he starts tapping on the keyboard of my laptop.

forty-nine

Paul’s erection is pressed into my back. I can’t play with it because I need to do two things. Desperately.

I never need to fart when I wake up alone. Yet on the rare occasions when I’ve woken up with a man I might as well have a trumpet up my bottom. I have to contort myself like a Chinese circus performer in order to control fierce flatulence. I am clenching hard. It’s starting to hurt. I have to get up, have a discreet fart and brush my teeth. I open my eyes. I hear Paul’s voice coming from the hallway. If Paul’s in the hallway then unless something is very biologically amiss his erection can’t be pressed into my back. I look behind. It’s not an erection. It’s my laptop. We fell asleep clothed with the laptop in the bed. I release my bottom muscles. The words coming from the hallway are getting louder. Please God, don’t let Simon and Paul be fighting again.