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  I like a woman in charge and tell her to lead the way. She calls an Uber.

  The restaurant is small and dark; we have to take our shoes off and sit cross-legged on a sunken floor.

  ‘I’ll order for you if you like,’ she says, authoritatively. I smile.

  ‘I’ll take your lead then, seeing as though you sound like you know what you’re doing’. Rachel was the same, especially when it came to ordering food in restaurants. Some people might consider it bossy, but with Rach it came from a good place, a place of knowledge, and also because she knew I was a complete philistine when it came to food, although I learned a lot from her in the end. The end…

  She orders some saki and a beer for us both, along with some edamame and sashimi, katsu and ramen, nothing too adventurous. I’m secretly relieved. I’m not a massive sushi fan but I don’t tell her this. She sips her saki and smiles at me. She’s as pretty as I remembered her being, perhaps even more so, but in a different way to Rachel. Rachel’s beauty radiated from the inside as well as the outside, and as yet I don’t know Florence Williams well enough to assess if her beauty runs below the surface.

  ‘So, Daniel, how’s it going in the world of architecture?’

  I nod, guiltily, and think about telling the truth. I know I should really and I vow to – next time. If there is a next time.

  ‘Oh you know, busy.’

  Florence uncrosses her legs, affording me a brief flash of underwear. White. Cotton. I like white. ‘Tell me about your day, I’m interested.’

  I make it up: my day. I lie and say I’ve been to a potential building site, that ‘we’re’ – the company – thinking of applying for permission to build some social housing. The lies come so easily that I surprise myself. There’s a part of me that is actually quite enjoying being someone else – seeing the world through someone else’s eyes.

  ‘I don’t know much about buildings,’ she says, ‘perhaps you’ll teach me… take me to some of your favourites? What are your favourites?’ Luckily she doesn’t give me time to answer before she continues, ‘The Shard looks like a tampon, don’t you think? I wouldn’t mind if it had been designed by a woman! But it makes me think that men must be thinking about vaginas constantly…’

  The sashimi arrives.

  Her use of the word ‘vagina’ kind of startles me, though it shouldn’t. It’s just a word. I laugh.

  ‘Well, you’re probably right,’ I say, uncomfortably.

  ‘Only probably?’ she replies, taking a thin sliver of sashimi between two chopsticks and dipping it in soy.

  ‘The sashimi is good,’ I say, changing the subject, ‘tell me about your day.’

  She sighs.

  ‘It was pretty boring and uneventful actually, I couldn’t concentrate on anything much because I was too busy thinking about you, about tonight.’

  I admire her candour and only wish I could say the same thing. My day has been filled with thoughts of Nigel Baxter and his family, with CCTV footage and teddy bears.

  ‘I’m flattered, ‘ I say, ‘so why have you gone down the online dating route? You’re beautiful, young, no children – they’re queuing up for you, surely?’

  ‘Oh yeah, out the door,’ she says, and I can’t tell whether she’s joking or not. She props her elbows onto the low table and looks directly at me. ‘I don’t like bars – or boys,’ she does that nose-wrinkle thing again that I remembered liking on our first encounter, ‘which incidentally they’re all full of. I don’t like boys, I don’t do hook-ups and I’m not into meaningless sex. Sex, definitely, but not meaningless sex.’

  I nod, amused. Candour is clearly Florence’s ‘thing’.

  ‘Sashimi?’ She offers me some from her chopsticks, feeds it to me a little provocatively.

  ‘Tell me about Rachel,’ she says, ‘What was she like? What did she do? What did you love most about her? How did she die?’

  I exhale.

  ‘That’s a lot of questions,’ I say, bracing myself to answer her. Rachel’s my favourite subject, but I’m acutely aware of coming across as a grieving widower who’s obsessed with his dead girlfriend, which of course is exactly what I am.

  ‘Rach was,’ I pause, ‘Rachel was amazing; she was funny and bright and sassy and ambitious. She was beautiful and understated and lit up a room. Everyone who met her adored her. She was easy company, yet gregarious, opinionated but not arrogant, she was exciting yet homely, she was… well, she was everything to me.’

  She stares at me, doesn’t fill the pause, so I continue.

  ‘She was a chef, a bloody good one too. She was hoping to own her own restaurant one day and I’m in no doubt that she would’ve.’

  ‘How did she—’

  ‘Motorbike accident,’ I cut in quickly. ‘Hit by a car. A speeding car driven by a drunk driver. He ran her off the road and…’ I take a swig of saki and it burns my throat. ‘…And, well, that was that.’ I swallow back the small lump that’s formed in my throat. The one that is always there whenever I talk about her death to anyone, which incidentally isn’t that often. I try to avoid talking about it for that very reason. No less on a date with another woman.

  ‘Grief,’ she says wistfully, ‘is a funny thing.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agree, ‘yes it is.’

  ‘Both my parents are dead,’ she says matter-of-fact. ‘I have no living relatives. I am, quite literally, alone in the world.’ Florence says this with no self-pity, which I admire her for. She doesn’t say how they died and I don’t ask. We’ve talked about death enough already.

  ‘So, have you ever been married?’ I lower my head. ‘God, I’m sorry, is that too personal? I’m really out of practice with this dating malarkey.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, it’s a perfectly legitimate question,’ she dismisses my comment.

  ‘No… I’ve never been married, never really wanted to be, never was one of those girls who dreamed of a big white wedding.’

  ‘So what did you dream of, as a little girl I mean?’ I ask the question playfully. The death talk has demanded something lighter.

  Florence pauses for a moment, obviously considering her answer, and she adjusts her slim legs beneath her, popping some edamame between her lips. ‘Happiness,’ she says finally.

  I suppose it’s as good an answer as any.

  ‘Now I’m getting older, I’ve started to warm to the idea of sharing my life with someone. I suppose I’ve always been a bit of a commitment-phobe, I’ve turned down a couple of proposals in my time!’

  ‘I’ll bet,’ I say, smiling at her. ‘A real heartbreaker.’

  She laughs. ‘Not really,’ she says, modestly, ‘I suppose I’ve always been a little afraid of giving myself to one person, seems like such an enormous thing to do. But these days, well, now I feel like I’m ready for the whole commitment thing, companionship, maybe even starting a family, who knows.’ She digs into her sushi.

  I nod. ‘That’s what everyone wants isn’t it, companionship, to share their life with someone they love?’

  ‘No, Daniel,’ she replies, correcting me, ‘I don’t think everyone does. I think that there are people out there who are incapable of sharing their lives with others, or forming deep bonds with other human beings. Zombie people: the living dead.’

  ‘And I thought I was the professional cynic,’ I laugh, half expecting her to come back with the line, ‘but your heart’s not in it…’ I feel that familiar ache in my chest. The one where I begin to enjoy myself for a moment and then realise that Rachel’s gone and she’s never coming back. As much as I’m enjoying talking to Florence, she isn’t Rachel and she never will be.

  ‘Have you ever been to Japan?’ I ask, trying to lighten the conversation – and my mood. ‘You seem to know a bit about sushi and Japanese culture.’

  ‘No I haven’t, sadly. But it’s definitely on the bucket list.’

  ‘Ah yes, the bucket list! So, what else is on it?’

  She smiles at me a little provocatively I feel, though I could be w
rong, like I say, I’m out of practice.

  ‘You, Daniel.’

  We both laugh because I know she’s bantering with me. But there is something in the way she speaks that vaguely reminds me of Rachel: her directness, her strong spirit, the fact she doesn’t come across as needing to be rescued. A warrior woman. And yet somehow there’s a vulnerability to her as well, just like there was with my girl.

  ‘Have you ever cheated on anyone?’ She comes right out with it. The question throws me but I try not to show it. It’s probably some kind of test.

  I consider lying. ‘When I was a lot younger,’ I say, honestly. ‘But at my age now, I wouldn’t dream of it. I don’t understand cheating,’ which is true, I don’t. ‘I figure that if you want to cheat in a relationship then you can’t really love the person you’re with, not truly, not deeply, and you should have the courage to walk away. Integrity is important to me. When I met Rachel, after I met her, I never looked at another woman again, never even noticed them really.’

  I think this is the right answer because she holds my gaze intensely with a look that could be mistaken for being almost loving.

  Florence replies slowly, ‘I believe in monogamy within a relationship. I’ve made mistakes in the past. I stayed too long, didn’t want to hurt people, which of course, inevitably, was exactly what I ended up doing. Which is why,’ she explains with florid hand gestures between chopsticks, ‘these days I believe in total honesty. People are inherently dishonest in relationships, don’t you think? They encumber themselves with all the trappings – romantic notions, flowers, valentines’ cards, expensive meals and holidays – but really they don’t always feel the right things beneath the platitudes. They convince themselves that they’re happy and in love because they want to be, they feel that they should be, they project their desires onto the other person, like a mirror, even if that other person isn’t really the image they wish to see. So they become disappointed and despondent when that person comes up short, leaving them feeling like they’ve done something wrong even though they’ve probably done nothing differently, and then this opens them up to desiring others, running away from themselves and the pain they feel inside… They stay connected to someone they should’ve disconnected with a long time ago as a result. In a paradoxical way, they put the happiness of others before their own and lie to themselves, hurting everyone, unintentionally or otherwise.’ She takes a breath, ‘I prefer brutal honesty, me. Once the gleam comes off it’s always time to move on. Better to be left with a beautiful memory and accept that some things have a shelf life and aren’t meant to last.’

  I am, quite literally, stunned into silence by this eloquent but brutal confession.

  ‘No,’ I say, eventually, ‘please, tell it like it is, Florence, don’t hold back.’

  She laughs, a flicker of self-consciousness perhaps.

  ‘It’s the saki,’ she says, ‘but actually, seriously, I do really believe what I said.’

  Deep, I think, she’s deep. But that’s okay. Better than shallow I suppose, and at least she has opinions. Rach had those too. Plenty of them.

  ‘I agree, mostly,’ I reply, ‘the bit about projecting what you want the other person to be without them really being it… that’s quite an astute social observation.’

  Florence looks satisfied with my remark.

  ‘I think the initial gleam comes off everything in the end,’ I muse. ‘Muse’ is the right word because I’m still trying to digest what she’s just said. ‘It’s impossible to sustain the honeymoon period forever because life doesn’t work that way.’

  ‘But that’s just it,’ she interrupts, ‘life gets in the way, which is why I like to keep things simple. No expectations. No meeting of families, no sharing friends: meaningful sex with no strings. No making too many plans or promises I may not be able to keep, just living and enjoying the moment.’

  So far, Florence is proving to be nothing if not fascinating.

  ‘That’s very, well, New Age,’ I say and she shakes her head.

  ‘Not New Age, Daniel,’ she replies, mock-crossly, ‘just honest. I would rather a man tell me he no longer found me attractive and didn’t want to fuck me anymore than pretend to fake a future.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ I say, with what I hope is humour, because I feel as though the conversation could do with some.

  ‘Good,’ she says brightly, placing her chopsticks down on the square plate. ‘In that case do you want to get a hotel room?’

  I stare at her, wondering if I’ve just heard her correctly.

  ‘Too soon’ she asks, ‘after Rachel? Or are you not attracted to me?’

  I’m not a man who is easily silenced. I sometimes think I’ve seen and heard it all, horror stories of the most inhumane nature, sleaziness on a level so base as to make you need a shower, and yet I’m so shocked I’m not sure how to answer. She places a shoeless foot on top of mine and takes my hand across the table, placing it underneath her dress. I can feel the smoothness of her thigh against the tips of my fingers and I sense the stirrings of an erection. I don’t want an erection right here, right now, sitting cross-legged in a sushi restaurant, but Florence, it seems, has other ideas. She slides my hand further up her thigh until I feel the thin fabric of her underwear, the outline of her. I feel her stickiness between my fingers as she pulls on my hand, guiding my fingers inside her. She maintains eye contact with me for a few moments until I come back to reality and pull my hand away.

  I don’t do this kind of thing, finger-fuck women in sushi restaurants. Rach and me, we were adventurous sometimes, we made love in a field once following a boozy picnic, and on a beach – on a few beaches actually – but there’s something about this encounter that’s making me feel out of my depth.

  ‘Well,’ she says, ‘shall we get the bill?’

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  It’s a beautiful evening, there’s a soft, warm wind left over from a sunny day: ‘balmy’ I think the word is. I know a place. I know many places, but for some strange reason I’ve thought of this place. And we’re walking there, through the park, together. We’re drunk, or at least I definitely am and I’m pretty sure she is too because she’s taken her shoes off and keeps running ahead of me, forcing me to catch up with her. It’s nice to be with a woman again, a vibrant, fun woman who seems so alive and in love with life. It’s making me feel alive too, or maybe that’s the saki and beer, but I feel some sort of a release in her company that I haven’t felt since Rachel died, a trickle of hope that I might one day be happy again. And I’m getting the feeling that she might be the type of woman who could distract me; she’s clearly leading the way, in every sense, even though I suggested this particular hotel that we are heading to, but only at her request that we get one at all.

  I keep getting wafts of Florence’s perfume as she runs ahead of me, without self-awareness, like a girl half her age. She smells of summer and abandon. And I remember doing this, or something very similar, with Rachel when we first met. I don’t recall the exact moment I fell in love with Rachel, although looking back I think I loved her from the very beginning. The clear memory I have was of holding her hand and realising how much it would hurt to ever let it go.

  We’re arm in arm as we enter the Portobello Gold. I ask for the top room, the one with the private roof terrace, and luckily for us, the woman behind the bar says there has been a cancellation and it’s available. We order drinks to the room.

  The view from the room’s small roof terrace is one of my favourite London views. Don’t ask me why, I know there are millions of arguably better spots across the capital but there’s something about this particular point that gets me right in the chest and provokes an emotional response. Perhaps it’s the distant view across West London of mismatching urban buildings, the rich red of the low sunset bouncing off brickwork, the church spires, and the glorious Victorian homes juxtaposed with imposing tower blocks. Eclectic, non-uniform, all mixed in together, just like the city itself.

/>   Florence likes the roof terrace too, she says it’s quaint and quirky with its miniature, Astro-Turfed putting green and creative artisan furniture. She throws her body into mine and I wrap my arms around her small waist as we stare out across Portobello. She’s giggling and so am I, caught in the moment, like it’s unreal and happening to someone else.

  I try and stroke her hair, but she pulls away from me and runs back into the apartment, pulling her dress over her head as she does. It’s a clear invitation to follow her, and I do, into the bedroom, watching. She’s naked in seconds, discarding her clothes almost with disgust, like she shouldn’t have been wearing any in the first place. I undo my shirt and take it off, fall onto the bed with her. We’re kissing, her wet lips taste sweet, like cherries, and I feel the stirring of an erection. ‘Did you like the view,’ I ask between kisses and she says she does, but she prefers this one. And I laugh and reach over her to grab a swig of the Jack and coke I ordered up to the room.

  ‘Me… me…’ she says, opening and closing her mouth like a fish. She wants me to transfer the contents of my mouth into hers and I duly oblige, but it reminds me of Rachel because we often did that, shared drinks and chewing gum, shared everything. She squirms beneath me, though I dare not look down at her and I keep my eyes closed. I’m scared, I’m actually scared to look at her, to see her naked body beneath mine because she’s not Rachel, she’s not my girl and yet if I keep my eyes closed… She’s pulling at my belt now, opening it and the buttons of my fly. Her hands feel soft and warm, her body tight and silky smooth; the intimate, light scent of her reaches my nose. I pull away from her a little so she moves in closer, throwing her leg over my side, almost locking me into her. She starts kissing me again but senses my reluctance. The moment is broken and she rolls off me gently onto her back, the breeze coming in from the roof terrace covers us.

  I suddenly feel completely sober and with this sobriety comes the feeling that this is all wrong and I don’t want to be here. I feel wretched and make to speak but she stops me.