Page 102 of The Man Upstairs

“Being public?” I happily ignored my shame bells for once in my life. “Yes. Absolutely.”

It felt as though she was dancing on the spot as we stepped into the park. Families were around, kids on swings, mums chatting and laughing. We got glances, and some elbow nudges between friends, but it was nothing as evil as I’d have expected. This wasn’t Oxford, after all. People had no illusions of me being a respectable head of the household, professionally lecturing college pupils in a high-end career. Here I was just a freak in an apartment block. Worth nothing but rumours.

Except for Rosie.

If I was worthy of Rosie, I must be blessed.

She knew the burger bar she wanted. I didn’t protest as she pointed it out once we reached the city, and it was a chain store slum of an eatery.

“They do great milkshakes. Strawberry, chocolate, vanilla.”

Her tone tickled me.

“Do I look like a vanilla man to you?”

“No.” She had a rush of childish humour. “But maybe you do to a load of other people.”

“I look stoic, you mean?”

“Suited, booted, posh.”

“Often the least vanilla of all.”

She grinned. “True. That’s what a load of books sing loudest about, isn’t it? Dirty, hot posh guys. They make addictive reads for a reason.”

I found I was laughing, easily. “Maybe I should be in one of them? Julian Lockley, the dirty, filthy posh guy. Can you imagine the movie version? I wonder who they’d cast for it.”

The doors were automatic. I felt her eyes on me as we stepped up to one of the self-service order machines.

“You could write a story like that, you know,” she said. “Seriously.”

I scoffed in good humour. “An autobiography of my seedy kinks? I can’t see it topping the bestseller lists. I hardly topped the thriller charts. They didn’t even see the light of day.”

I was waiting for her to select a burger choice onscreen, but she didn’t. Her eyes were still on me.

“You really could do it, you know,” she said. “I mean, your writing is amazing, and you know what you’re talking about, and you’re a knight in shining armour, and all of the things that could make a great story.”

“Rosie,” I laughed. “I’m not an author. It was a distant dream.”

“No, but you wanted to be. You could be.”

“Hardly.” I gestured to the screen again. “Come on, recommend me the most incredible burger on the menu. Make your choice and I’ll have the same.”

I could sense her brain whirring on more than food as she clicked through the options and added two to the virtual order, with fries, and sides, and two large vanilla milkshakes, most likely to take the piss. I swiped my card in an instant, not even giving her the chance to fumble in her bag.

She was quiet as we took our seats at a booth with the table number placard showing boldly between us. I looked at her freshly in these surroundings, with youngsters bustling and people grabbing takeouts after work.

“Why don’t you do it?” she kept pushing. “You could at least try, right? And I love those books. I could read it.”

“You could be my advisor.” I laughed, but she didn’t.

“Yeah, why not? I’ve read enough of them.”

I looked across the table at her as though we were in some kind of surreal dimension. Not only was I out in public with a girl who should be avoiding me at all costs, showing her off on my arm to anyone who’d be watching, but she was now suggesting I turned my seediness into print form.

But my heart wasn’t scoffing along with my brain.

I hadn’t felt creative urges in years. The manuscripts she’d had me dig out of my old laptop files had consumed me totally and utterly in the flow of words when I’d been writing them, but that was before my cock took hold of my mind. But what if the two energies could share it…