I laughed. ‘I’m living with my mum in a one-bedroomed flat, interviewing old couples about the secrets of their sixty-year marriages. So enviable.’
The cook shouted ‘Five’ from the kitchen, handing a plate to the waitress.
‘Fours,’ I said, out loud.
Jamila said nothing, having just taken a large bite of her scone, but the lines of confusion on her brow said it all.
‘Sorry.’ I coughed. ‘Nothing.’
Damn Joss and his perversions. Damn him to hell.
The phone rang. It was Kai at yet another summer fete, asking me where I was.
‘Shit. Sorry. Forgot all about that one.’
I stood, apologising to Jamila about having to rush off.
‘There’s a nettle-eating contest at this one,’ I told her. ‘Can’t be missed.’
‘Right. Well, have fun. Maybe the man of your dreams will be there.’
No, he won’t. I know exactly where he is.
* * *
Joss was in the garden when I went to the house on Sunday afternoon.
Nobody answered the door, so I wandered around the edge of the building, drawn to the chug of a motor-mower somewhere close by.
Joss was riding it across the lawns. He wore nothing but a pair of cut-off shorts and some falling-to-pieces hi-tops. The spare flesh seemed to be less in evidence – the combination of hard physical work and laying off the booze was doing wonders for him. He was lightly tanned, his hair slick with perspiration and pushed back from his forehead. Both he and the gardens looked about 500 per cent better.
It was a good ten minutes before he saw me – ten minutes well spent on pop-eyed ogling.
He cut the engine and grinned broadly, waving over at me.
‘Fancy a ride?’
I walked down the path, no longer thick with weeds but neatly bordered by two spick and span verges.
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘You must have been hard at it all week.’
‘Oh, I have been,’ he said with a filthy look in his eye. ‘Hard at it. Very hard. Ever since you showed me your positions.’
I couldn’t stop myself giving him a blatantly lascivious look back.
‘I take it we’re talking gardening here?’ I said.
‘What else?’
He gave the steering wheel a suggestive stroke.
‘Hop on, then,’ he said. ‘You can finish me off. The lawn, I mean. Finish it off.’
‘I’m not getting on that thing,’ I said, but one appealing look later I was perched on the edge of the seat in front of him, feeling the engine rev up beneath me.
I was wearing shorts too, tight white tennis-style numbers, so my bare legs rubbed against his hairy ones and the back of my vest top was instantly damp with the sweat from his chest. He smelled of manly man and he felt like heaven.
He put his hands above mine on the steering wheel and we began to judder across what remained of the lawn.