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It is yesterday.

The man is wearing a navy overcoat with a lighter blue jacket beneath and has his hands caught deep in his coat pockets. His knees, in navy corduroy, are crimped together, legs angled away from the woman who is beside him on the sofa. His shoes are long and dark and glossy and seem ashamed to be set on the rug. The woman is also still dressed to cope with being out of doors — she’s in a charcoal skirt suit, rather dated, and a black trench coat.

The man gradually drops his head further and further forward, letting his torso follow after. He folds at the waist until he is resting along and over his own thighs. His forearms and hands reach up to wrap around his neck and the back of his skull. His posture suggests that he expects to be attacked soon, or that he is a passenger bracing himself to survive an emergency landing.

The woman leans back and covers her face with her palms.

They both stay like this for some time.

01:12

IT WASN’T THAT the kissing didn’t work. The problem was more that it did.

Oh.

The cab had swallowed them into its dim interior and the driver had been cheerfully silent while they …

Oh.

They were on their way.

Oh.

Meg opening her lips because of course, sure, this is the kind of stuff that happens and how you find out who he is when he does these things, these things which are what men, in the end, will always ask for.

Oh.

It’s beautiful, though. Being with him is beautiful and this, this, this stuff that you’re doing is beautiful, too — the kissing. He feels just the same as he is on paper and also different but not in bad ways. He is careful. The way he licks and flickers is careful, it’s delicate. But here he is, more of him, truly, and now here he is being with you in your mouth. His tongue is speaking to you in your mouth and he feels kind and funny and as if he’s making it up as he goes along — there are these pauses while maybe he does some thinking about what’s next. And he also seems pleased. You would say he felt happy.

You have to get used to him, but it’s OK.

He tastes serious, if that makes sense. He tastes like a person who means what he’s doing. And then his mouth tastes like your mouth which tastes like his.

You’re not scared. He doesn’t make you scared.

Oh.

And Jon is aware that he is breathing as if he is running, as if he is labouring along in mud and weather and making the long loop back to school with no cheering because he always was the straggling lad, left out at the end of the pack — this is, this is, she’s letting me and I’m allowed and — but no running is required. He is kissing her and hearing how it sounds, like eating peaches in sunshine, and this is so much the place to be.

She’s silk, glad silk, playing silk, but I can feel her being cautious, too. Jesus fucking Christ what did that man make her expect? Jesus, gentle Jesus. We have to be — me and Jesus, we have to be — the two J.C.s, we have to be careful of her, for her. We won’t hurt her.

And the heat of her is what will keep him warm for ever, this is a fact.

If she feels shy, if she feels worried, if there’s this … the absolute aim is to not hurt her.

And he slows and eases, almost shuts up shop and simply rests, puts small moments of his lips on the crown of her head, on her worry. But she tenses her spine, herself — sideways, the cab seat … it’s awkward, this is awkward, I’m awkward — and she finds his mouth and the opening shape of hers insists — but this isn’t what we should do, not for much longer, not yet, this is for in the house — and here is the flavour of her smile while she presses into him, laps and tickles — safe, so safe, so safe, be safe — and she breaks out a sweat on him, and she turns his head, turns him, lifts him.

But lifting is for when we’re in her house, her flat, with her bedroom, with her bed, Christ not yet. The place with her bed. But not her bed tonight. Jesus Christ, not yet. Not that.

She draws him in until the roots of his tongue are tensed and she’s lovely and she’s something else he can’t quite place, there’s this shivering sense of her, and — you taste of love.

Margaret Williams, you taste of love.

Oh.

The cab’s dark had bumped and jogged and leaned them fast against each other and then eased them just fractions apart — it moved them as it seemed to wish and they let it. And Jon had looked out once and seen Peckham High Street — regal magnificent fucking bloody gorgeous Peckham High Street — and Meg had tested the warm crook of his neck — licked so she could understand it — and rocked with him and with the journey. And the Queens Road Fire Station was oblivious as they passed. And Meg had told Jon, ‘We’re nearly here.’

Oh.

And his body had flinched at the news while he answered, ‘Oh. Not as far as I’d thought.’ And he’d withdrawn from her and sat straight-backed as a good schoolboy, slim as a heron, and looking ahead, looking about, as if he were anxious to remember his surroundings and take in the details offered by New Cross Gate, as if he should be visibly admiring every detail, because this might please her. He reached back to her and patted her thigh, elongated the touch, before he broke away and sat like a formal stranger on a midnight sightseeing trip.

Which I virtually am.

Fuck.

His hands hunched in his lap. ‘Thank you, Meg.’

‘What for?’

‘For, for …’ His voice blurred and small as a sleeper’s. ‘For being kind.’

‘I wasn’t. I’m not.’

The last few minutes of their journey had seemed to be wrong and emptying out and beginning to echo.

And when they’d reached the flat, it had resisted them. Meg’s key had been foxed by the lock and this didn’t seem amusing and Jon’s offer of help didn’t seem to be helpful. Meg snapped at him and when she’d finally made the lock’s levers work, she burst Jon and herself forward and into the hallway as if she was furious and she didn’t quite manage to prove to him that she wasn’t. ‘Sorry.’

She ushered Jon along too quickly. ‘Sorry.’ And as they went along she left the lights off because she knew her way and because the hall hadn’t been repainted and it had been an alcoholic’s hall so it didn’t look great. Still, the living room was cleaned up and sober and was really her best bet to impress him and was, anyway, the place you would offer a guest.

When she’d stood with him at her side, though, halted by the sofa and switched on the lamp — had his unease close up next to her and her sofa — then she understood that everything she had was past its best and a fresh coat of paint wouldn’t fix it, would only make it worse. ‘Sorry.’

‘Why? Don’t be sorry. What for?’

‘If I could afford a decorator … Someone who could paint, or … I kind of … It’s …’

‘No … Meg.’ Jon had examined the room, slow-footed about — like a visiting heron — and he’d sounded — maybe truthfully — as if his surroundings had somehow been less alarming than he’d thought and Meg couldn’t tell if that was to do with what he’d expected from a drunk and a drunk’s home.

After his over-laborious tour, Jon had returned to her and nodded, rubbed his ear. He then bent in and held her to him perhaps in the way an explorer might seize a colleague before they set off on an arduous ascent, some risk to life and limb.