Page 57

Six months later

Charlie

It’s too hot for this. It’s that sort of energy-sapping humidity where the air is thick and molten.

The sort of heat where it hurts to even eat.

All you want to do is drink and put your mouth under a slushy machine, to hell with the brain freeze.

I toy with the olives using a toothpick, watching as a lady next to us seems to have brought her own table fan.

Can we rob her? We should have sat inside.

Damn us thinking we needed to lap up the sunshine.

‘It’s too hot,’ Suzie tells me, returning to the table.

‘Why are you wet?’ I ask her.

‘I splashed some water on my face. I look like I’m sweating, don’t I?’

‘Like a very nervous tapas eater.’

‘Who should have talced her bra.’

‘That’s a super sexy image,’ I say, grinning. I exhale slowly as she sits down on the bench next to me and gently kisses my shoulder.

I pick up the last olive and put it in her mouth, my finger slowly trailing on her lip.

‘Yum.’ She takes a chunk of bread and dips it in the last of the oil.

I very much like summer Suzie. It could be because that’s how I first met her, but there is something very relaxed about her when the sun comes out to play.

Her smile seems brighter, she always has a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses perched on her head, and well, she’s always wearing less and that makes me very excitable.

‘Did you know that it is a well-known fact that no one actually knows where tapas actually came from?’ I tell her, finishing the last of the patatas bravas.

‘There are legends and rumours – the famous one is that back in the thirteenth century, the peasants were getting too drunk and rowdy so the king decreed that all drink should be sold with a plate of food.’

She smiles. I guess once a teacher, always a teacher.

She takes a long sip of her sangria. ‘I love how the origin stories always come from men,’ she adds.

‘I’m going to start a rumour that actually it was the women who created tapas.

One day, the women in Spain decided they were too bloody hot and fed up with cooking so they just said sod this, you’re all getting small plates. ’

I double up laughing. ‘Can I tell my students that then?’

‘I actively encourage that,’ she says, turning to smile at me. ‘It really is bloody boiling, isn’t it?’ she says, pulling her dress away from her skin. ‘This was not my best idea. We should’ve just stayed in and lain down on the floor.’

‘Naked.’

‘Mr Shaw, we’re in public. Super inappropriate.’

I grin. ‘Well, you can lie there with your clothes on and melt. I simply want to get naked so as not to overheat.’

‘Not even underwear on? ’

‘Nah,’ I say in all seriousness. ‘Possibly just a Cornetto in my hand.’

She laughs and I smile to hear that sound and the effect it has on me, the effect it’s always had on me. I love hearing her happy.

‘So if I joined you and lay down there naked too…’

‘A moment ago it was inappropriate…’ I note. ‘That’s totally fine but don’t come near me, I want to preserve my coolness. I can’t be doing anything else in this heat.’

‘I did not think that was on the cards at all. Please. You lie in your spot with your Cornetto. I’ll lie a good distance away from you. I think it’s prudent to avoid any bodily contact.’

‘Prudent indeed. It’d be far too sweaty. It’d border on indecent,’ I inform her.

‘Not good for our hydration needs in this heat.’

‘So sensible,’ I tell her.

‘You know me.’

‘Far too well.’

We sit there, both grinning giddily to ourselves.

‘We should go, shouldn’t we?’ she says. I reach for her hand under the table but as I do, I trace a finger along the edge of her thigh, lifting up her skirt slightly.

She puts a hand to her mouth and takes a very long sip of drink to compose herself.

I nod without saying a word, getting up from the bench, feeling the back of my thighs sticky with sweat.

I look up to the sun, letting it hit every part of my face and neck, feeling it recharge every cell.

I look at my watch. ‘Sam and Brooke get home in about an hour? Will that work?’

She smiles. ‘Hun, it’s thirty-five degrees. Straight in and out, no dilly-dallying.’

I laugh. ‘But you like my dilly-dallying.’

She plants a kiss on my shiny forehead. ‘Oh, I love it. Just not today,’ she whispers into my ear .

I take her hand and we vacate our table, out from the shade of the pub garden parasol and into the blinding brightness of the London sunlight.

There is something unparalleled about a British pub garden, it’s the feeling of the grass under your feet, drinking outside, when nine months of the year, we’re relegated to drinking inside, leaning on wonky tables or pressed up against other punters.

When Suzie moved in with us last month, this became our local, a ritual, the tapas is a hidden extra, like a nod to Carlos, to Mallorca, to all of it.

As we walk out on to the main street, a bus drives past, passengers packed on like prawns, a line of builders exit a mini-mart with cold drinks, no shirts but the all-important hi-vis vest just in case.

The sun is unrelenting as Suzie slips on her sunglasses and grabs my hand.

I feel her fingers wrap around mine and a thumb slowly stroke my palm.

Sometimes it’s these moments I hold on to the most, the ones of silence where I can walk and be in her company and just exist. We continue walking, turning into our street when a familiar sound sings through the air.

‘YES!’ I yell a little too enthusiastically. I watch as an ice-cream van whizzes by and stops to park about fifty yards in front of us. I pull at Suzie’s arm and she follows me, an excited look in her eye too that we may be the first ones in the queue.

‘Sometimes the universe just knows…’ Suzie says.

‘It does, doesn’t it?’ I smirk.

The music of the ice-cream van winds to a stop and the woman driver comes to the window.

‘I know you…’ she says, winking at me, with a touch too much familiarity.

Suzie smirks but looks mildly confused. Have I kept this a secret from her?

A secret love affair with an ice-cream lady called Madame Whippy?

How kinky. But at least I kept it on brand with something mildly French.

‘But not in a suit today? You disappoint me, lovely.’ She glances at Suzie and smiles broadly. ‘What can I get you two?’

‘Two 99s?’ Suzie says, looking at me. I won’t say no.

I turn watching as front doors open and people flood the street to come find her.

Oh, to be the most popular person at this time of year.

She gets our ice creams ready, looking down the street to see who may be coming her way. ‘Christ, it’s her again.’

I follow her gaze. ‘Mrs Murray, she lives three doors down from us.’

‘Always gets six Calippos.’

‘But she lives alone?’ I say.

‘Then you tell me where she’s putting them.’ We both laugh, trying not to clock her joining the queue. ‘Sauce?’

‘Chocolate. As much as you think I can take, please.’

She sticks her tongue out and turns to Suzie. ‘You the girlfriend?’

‘I am,’ she says, proudly. Hearing those words still make me beam from ear to ear.

She’s not just a girlfriend, she’s the other half of me.

It turns out all I ever wanted was someone to share in this life, someone to walk home with me, someone to buy ice creams with.

I won’t share that with Madame Whippy though. Not today.

‘You lucky little minx. Mwah, I’m here all week. Enjoy, enjoy. Right, who’s next?’

Suzie

‘What on earth is that on your face?’ I say, laughing at Charlie as the chocolate sauce seems to have formed a moustache on his lip.

I lick my thumb and help him wipe it off, giving him a kiss.

It’s that sort of day where ice creams are going to last about thirty seconds given the heat so Charlie licks at the sides of his furiously.

‘You alright there, senor?’ I ask him, trying to keep in my giggles as we walk back towards home.

‘I am trying to ensure no ice cream is wasted. You are just going to that place where it’s inappropriate again. ’

‘Me? I wasn’t talking to the ice-cream lady about taking on all of her sauce.’

‘It got me an extra Flake,’ he points out proudly.

‘Shameless,’ I tell him, as he bites into it, showing off.

He gives me half and he side-eyes me, grinning.

Is it strange that when I was married, I only saw the future.

I saw weddings, houses, kids – pictures of what life is supposed to look like.

Maybe the future is overrated. There’s something special about living in the now, in perfect smaller moments with someone who makes you laugh so hard your face hurts, for taking each beautifully sunny day as it comes.

Charlie puts the key to the door and we let the cool air of the hallway hit us, both collapsing into the house.

Charlie kicks off his flip flops and I line them up by the door, giving him a look.

He gives me a kiss on the cheek to get back in my good graces.

It always seems to work. We both slide our backs on to the wall in the hall, finding relief against the coolness of the brick, the floor, as he watches me lick ice cream out of the nooks and crannies of my fingers.

‘That’s what happens when you don’t lick quick enough,’ he says.

‘I prefer it messy,’ I say.

He laughs and nudges me with his elbow. ‘Alright then,’ he tells me, ‘What were we talking about in the pub?’ He gives me his ice cream and starts to strip off. He’s not wearing much anyways so it doesn’t take long to strip off his shirt and shorts.

‘That’s not naked,’ I tell him, eating my ice cream, trying not to care.

‘There’s a glass panel on that front door, that’s why.’