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  “Not... not quite.” I struggled over onto my back, and he reached underneath me deftly to fold up the towel. Making things nice for the client afterwards, I supposed, but he didn’t look businesslike. He was still trying to catch his breath. His hand shook slightly as he dropped the towel back into the holdall. I pushed up to rest against the headboard. “Are you okay?”

  “Do you know, I... think you might’ve killed me a bit.”

  “Oh, God. Was I awful?”

  He chuckled. “You idiot. No. I just don’t normally get into it that much with a—”

  I didn’t mind what he called me. I tried to sound urbane. “A john?”

  “With anyone, I was gonna say. So, come on, you—what do you like to do after a fuck? Sleep? Talk? Straight into the shower?”

  Something was wrong. He was avoiding my eyes, and the tremor hadn’t quite left his hand. “I definitely don’t want the shower,” I said, scrunching over so that he could sit beside me and share the headboard. “Don’t want to wash you off me just yet. And... what the hell do people generally talk about? Afterwards?”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised. The married ones usually have a good blast of guilt after we’re done, and I hear all about their lives and partners.”

  “I must be less married than you thought, then. I feel all kinds of things right now, but guilty’s not one of them.”

  “That’s good.” A huge yawn shook him. “And some guys just want to sleep.”

  “I bet. Must be a busy life.”

  “Mm. Yeah, I was up until all hours last night with a merry widow in Kensington. I think she must’ve screwed her first three husbands to death. Still, I’m fine. We can do anything you want.”

  I put an arm around his shoulder. He twitched in surprise, then leaned against me. “Let’s give it half an hour or so,” I said. “See if the dead can rise again.”

  “Oh, you’ll be up and at it before then, I bet, hot shot.”

  He laid his head on my shoulder. He was wiped out. Something had drained him—not me, not the Kensington widow. A tiredness deeper than that. My mind threw a couple of lurid scenarios at me: HIV, a brutal pimp behind the elegant Silver Fox logo. Quickly I dismissed these thoughts so that he wouldn’t hear the increased beat of my heart. I rested my chin on the top of his skull, and listened to his breathing deepen into sleep.

  Chapter Four

  In the morning, Andrew sent me a text. Silver was still sound asleep. My arm was trapped beneath his neck, and I had to reach round him to snag the phone off the bedside table. He groaned and rubbed his brow on my chest, and I lay still until my reactions—an aching swell of my cock, an absurd edge of tears—were under control. In daylight, I could see marks of age and weariness on him. Even more than his lamp-lit perfection, these signs made me want to hold on to him forever.

  Drew’s text was lacking its usual jaunty verve. He’d had a whole night to think about his birthday gift, I supposed. The reality of buying his brother a guy for hire. Morning, G. How’s it feel to be fifty? Hope you got your present. Is everything okay?

  A trolley rattled in the corridor outside, and Silver raised his head. “Bloody hell,” he said blearily. “What time is it?”

  “Just after seven.”

  “Oh, shit. I have never... never slept this long on a client’s time.”

  I grinned. “Must’ve been my enthralling company.”

  “Well, I...” He sat up, rubbing his eyes. “I’m still on your clock, and if that morning glory poking my thigh means business, we can still—”

  “Silver. Stop it. You needed the sleep.”

  His brow creased, as if this view of things would never have occurred to him. Then he focussed on my phone. “Did you get a call? Do you have to go?”

  “No. It’s just my brother. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I don’t know what to say to him.”

  He put a finger on the edge of the phone, drawing it down so he could read the screen. “You could just say thank you. If thanks are appropriate.”

  He wasn’t kidding. How could he possibly have doubts? “My only problem,” I said, thumbing the screen to reply, “is working out what to get him for his fiftieth in due course. Because it’s gonna have to be spectacular. A ride on the space shuttle at least.”

  “Really?” He brightened. “That’s good, even if I did sleep on the job. I tell you what, though—whatever you choose for him, do me a favour and don’t choose me. Because that would be weird.”

  I broke into laughter, trying to imagine sturdy, straight Andrew in the hands of this talented fox. Even that daft image gave me a twinge of jealousy, and that was no good, was it? Thank you, I texted, deadpan, and turned back to Silver. “There. Done.”

  “Okay. Let me up, handsome. I may have the figure of a young god, but my prostate is feeling its years. Gotta pee.”

  Reluctantly I released him. That was it, I supposed. Morning light in the room, scents of coffee and toast drifting in through the vents. The world beginning its daily dance again. I watched Silver’s comely naked back as he made his way to the bathroom door. I had a place in the non-birthday stream of existence. Proposals and blueprints to present at today’s round of seminars, a sandwich for lunch, back to Andrew’s tomorrow night, Regent’s Park Zoo with the kids at the weekend. I was lucky, I knew, to have my raft in the stream—family, somewhere to lay my head, a job.

  It was just that I’d been bloody lonely, and I hadn’t realised until Silver had filled up my holes. Wishing I hadn’t thought about it quite like that, I shifted uncomfortably. Well, I could think of one good way of hewing down morning wood. My laptop was within a long arm’s reach on the other bed. Silver was singing to himself with off-key cheerfulness while he had his pee and cleaned his teeth. Soon I’d hear the shower start, and I’d better be distracted by then. Water bouncing off broad shoulders, rolling down the channel of his spine...

  I opened the email from Melchior’s solicitor, then the attached PDF. And of course no ritual of perusal turned out to be required. The papers were simple. One set of lawyers had proposed a fifty-fifty split of our assets, the other had agreed. All I had to do was sign. I could see his signature already, in the weird electronic scrawl assigned to him by the computer.

  I chose a scrawl of my own. If I was lonely, Sabrina and Melchior didn’t have to be. In terms of a general reduction of loneliness in the world, this was the right thing to do. It sucked, and I was bitterly jealous—not of the girl, not of the baby, but just of the life, the sheer weird gift of a shared one. I hit send.

  The bathroom door creaked open. Silver’s handsome head appeared. “Well?” he enquired, his smile putting the early sunshine to shame.

  “Well what?”

  “Don’t you want to bang my brains out in the shower?”

  ***

  I’d had a bit of therapy after my first divorce, all that time ago. I’d done my best to dodge out on it, but the head of my department had insisted, if I wanted to keep my job.

  To my shame, after all my protests, the therapist had been great—a straightforward, kindly woman who hadn’t bothered with psychology as much as showing me handholds to grab, pits to avoid. I’d liked her. By the end of our sessions, I’d truly felt that we were friends, and I suggested we met up for coffee. She’d explained, in just the same friendly tones of all our previous sessions, that she didn’t meet with clients outside work. Not couldn’t or mustn’t, just didn’t, as if that was simply the nature of the world. I’d accepted with equal friendliness, for the sake of my dignity, but—weirdly, in the midst of everything else—the rebuff had cut deep.

  Deep enough for me to remember and think of it twenty-odd years later, watching Silver put his shoes on. My skin was tingling, my bones reverberant with wrung-out pleasure. He’d hung on to the handrail in the shower. He’d shuddered and lowered his head while I thudded into him, blind with spray from the jets, about ready to die from the unexpected joy of a stand-up, full-on morning fuck. Ah, man, he’d said. Ah, George. So d
eep into me, so hard. So good. And he’d come in a stormy rush, hauling me after him like a river over the edge of some depthless, rainbow-lit waterfall.

  He sat up, fastened his top button and his tie. Ran his fingers through his hair and glanced at me hopefully. “Don’t suppose you’ve got time to grab breakfast.”

  “Oh. Er... do you do that?”

  “What, for heaven’s sake?”

  “Socialise with clients. Outside work hours.”

  “Absolutely, if they want to. If they’re not wild-eyed stalkers biding their time to corner me in the gents’. You’re not, are you?”

  I wasn’t sure of any of my limitations, not after last night’s breakout. “Not to the best of my knowledge.”

  “Great. There’s a decent little caff down the road, does good croissants at this time of day. Come on.”

  ***

  And so I walked down the street with my escort. The world felt entirely unreal. The sun was too bright, painlessly blinding me: Silver had to steer me around a candied-peanut stall, and when I said I liked the smell he bought me a packet, even though we were on our way to breakfast in our business suits. I hadn’t eaten street food in years. The traffic moved by in coloured blocks. My feet seemed to skim the pavements, barely touching, and the nagging crick in my lower back was gone.

  Well fucked, well showered and a fresh set of clothes. Maybe it was nothing more than that. Silver was off the clock now, just a nice companion striding along at my side. I stopped myself from taking his arm, but in the doorway to the bustling little café on Duke Street, he snitched a couple of candied nuts from my packet, ate one himself, and popped the other into my astonished mouth. “Here we are,” he said, grinning at my discomposure. “Come on in and have some coffee before you fall down.”

  Why did I never find great cafés like this? Hand-painted tiles on the walls, trellises of climbing plants separating the tables, three or four languages flying through the air as the staff called to one another... Probably I’d have walked past the place if I’d been on my own, dismissing it as too hip for a square old bugger like me.

  Silver fitted right in. The waiting staff seemed to know him, and his easy aura extended to include me as I took up a place opposite him at the best window table. Before I knew it, a plate of eggs benedict had floated into being in front of me, a basket of croissants so fresh that their scent was like music, and a pot of deeply black coffee. “Looks lovely,” I said, pouring for both of us. Expensive, too. “You have to let me pay for this.”

  “All you’ve done is sniff it so far.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Listen, George. I wouldn’t ordinarily say this, and I don’t know how you’d feel, but... I had a great night with you, and I wondered...”

  My phone rang. At that moment I’d have ignored the siren for an incoming nuke, and I hit the cutoff button impatiently. Promptly it rang again.

  Melchior. He scarcely ever called. If I didn’t answer straight away, he left me alone, perhaps afraid of interrupting some meet-up I was having with a really great new man. Of course, on the one sodding occasion when he was right... “Sorry,” I said. “I think I’d better get this.”

  “Of course. Go ahead.”

  I picked up. For about thirty seconds, I just listened. Melchior was in full flow. I couldn’t have got a word in if I’d tried.

  Then rage and grief seized me. One night with Silver hadn’t been enough to heal me, make me see the world in sunlit colour again. Of course not. Okay, I’d got my head around Melchior’s choice—his girlfriend, his baby. I didn’t have to bloody help. Finally he ran out of steam, and I drew a breath. “Don’t be so fucking ridiculous, Melchior. Take her to hospital and let them take care of her there.”

  But he was crying. He hadn’t shed a tear for me in the twenty years I’d known him. Then, I’d never carried a child for him, or confronted the kind of pain that was making poor Sabrina shriek like a banshee in the background now. Melchior gave a choked wail in response. “She doesn’t want to get into the taxi, George. She says she’ll have the baby in the middle of Hampstead High Street or something.”

  “What? The Royal Free’s only round the corner.”

  “We’re not going there. She’s booked into some private clinic her mother recommended in Bloomsbury.”

  “Oh, my God. She sounds terrible. Just bung her into a cab and go.”

  “I can’t. It’s like persuading a tank.”

  I pressed the phone to my neck and blew out a breath. “All right, all right,” I said after a moment. “Give me twenty minutes. I’ll be there.”

  My hand not quite steady, I set the phone down. Silver was watching me over the top of his coffee cup. “That was your ex?”

  “Yeah. Melchior.”

  “Your ex, whose new girlfriend’s having his baby. Who’s panicking and asking for you.”

  “Please don’t say it. I’m a sap, I know. But I’m worried about Sabrina.”

  “I don’t think you’re a sap. You’re an... extraordinarily nice guy. How were you planning to get there in twenty minutes, though?”

  “I dunno. It just popped out.” I pushed upright from the table, grabbing my wallet and phone. “I’ve got to go jump on a Tube, right now.”

  “Or you can let me give you a lift.”

  “A lift? You’ve got a car?” That was the ultimate indulgence for inner London these days, with the congestion zone and a network of public transport everywhere for the asking. “Did you bring it here?”

  “Yes, like the idle beast I am. Still, I can get you where you’re going faster than the Tube.”

  “Really? In the rush hour?”

  “Try me.”

  “Okay. Er, thank you. Where are you parked?”

  “Just round the back. The staff let me use one of their spaces for all my... whenever I’m in Edgware.”

  For all my local jobs. He needn’t have hesitated. My pleasantly jealous, light-headed morning-after buzz had dissolved, along with any desire to find out how he might have finished the question Melchior had interrupted. I caught the waiter’s eye, and before Silver could protest, handed him my card. “Could you run that through for me quickly, please? No, the food looks great—we’ve just got to go. Family emergency.”

  ***

  Silver’s car was an exquisite E-type Jag. What else, I thought, settling into the passenger seat, trying not to gasp as he tooled us out into traffic and popped the beautiful vehicle through a wing-scraping gap between a lorry and a bus. My card was still in my hand, returned to me uncharged by the waiter, who’d said he knew all about families and assured me that the staff would eat our breakfasts. Families, he’d repeated as Silver had stepped past him, dropping him a wondering, outrageous wink.

  I slipped the card into my wallet and tried Melchior’s number again. The Jag’s bucket seat felt too small for my arse, and the belt was constricting. A year alone had left me overweight and out of touch, no longer suited to the elegant world of my ex. And for all I’d grieved in my solitary bed, I no longer wanted to be sucked back in.

  As if he’d read the thought, Silver spared me a glance from his neat manoeuvres through traffic. “You really think Melchior can’t manage this for himself?”

  “He might well have done by now. He’s not answering his phone. But a concert pianist and a model... They don’t have much parenting experience between them.”

  “And you do?”

  I was dialling again, visions assailing me of poor Sabrina giving birth in a taxi. “Do what?”

  “Have that kind of experience.”

  “Well, I did it once. That was why my first marriage broke down, I guess. Jess and I had been hanging on together for the sake of the baby, so we couldn’t see the point anymore when he...”

  Silver missed a gear. He shot out one hand and grabbed my wrist. “Jesus. When he what, George?”

  “When he died.” There. That had been easily said. Which was odd, because I’d never mentioned the death of my son to another living soul
in twenty years, not once the grim little funeral was done. Not even my therapist, though she’d tried. Not even Drew. “Mind the road, Silver.”

  He took back his hand. Then he leaned across me and opened the glove box, which contained a pair of deluxe padded handcuffs, a copy of Madame Bovary and a box of tissues. He put the box into my lap. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

  ***

  He dropped me off outside Melchior’s Knightsbridge fantasy castle, only a bare few minutes after my promised twenty. He’d sent the Jag nosing through byways and backstreets I’d never seen, keeping us out of the gridlock on the main routes.

  By that time I was back under control. If I couldn’t speak about Daniel, over the years I’d absorbed the impact of his loss, a slow-motion demolition ball that could swing in from any direction, any time of night or day. I don’t think Jess was spared a single one of its blows, for all she’d married again and had other kids. Daniel had been Daniel, her first and my only, an inexplicable cot death that had stolen into our home past baby monitors and vigilance, no-one to blame, no cause.

  I’d held one of Silver’s tissues to my face, and I’d breathed the scent of leather and his subtle, comforting cologne, and I’d listened to the E-type’s deep purr. Sunlight had flashed across my skin between the buildings, and I’d counted ten of these vein-patterned ruby bolts behind my eyelids. Then I’d wiped my eyes and told him where to stop. Had I thanked him? God, I hoped so. He’d given me a gallant blip of his hazards as he pulled away, like a fighter pilot dipping his wings, and then he’d turned the corner and was gone.

  He’d offered to stay and help, of course. He was that kind of guy. After twelve hours in his company, I’d be ready to swear on my life that he’d always be nice to hotel and restaurant staff, help little old ladies across the road, and make sure his partner came first. On top of that he was dashing, a bit of a handsome rake, and deeply kind. Fuck, I thought, dodging through traffic to the other side of the road and up the steps of the building. I wish I’d never met you. How can I see you again?