And then a melancholy descended on her — as it always did when she thought of that boy and that girl. The thought of John Luther, twenty-two, slouching off without kissing her. And the lightness in her heart that night; how she couldn’t sleep and couldn’t believe herself: serious, level-headed, hard-working Zoe, who’d slept with two men in her entire life, one long-term school boyfriend, as a kind of parting gift, and one slightly older man she met on her gap year.
It wasn’t in her nature to lie in bed wondering what a boy might be doing right now, right this second. But she spent the whole night like that.
And she spent the next few days pretending she wasn’t trying to manufacture ways to bump into him in the corridor, the English department, the refectory.
Sprawled on that park bench, looking at the pigeons, Mark said, ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah,’ said Zoe. ‘Sorry. Miles away.’
He stretched his arms. ‘Best be getting back.’
‘I don’t want to go to work,’ she groaned, stretching her neck. ‘I want to take the day off. I’m tired.’
‘We could play hooky,’ said Mark. ‘Go to the pictures or something. I haven’t been to the pictures for ages. Especially not in the afternoon.’
‘Me neither.’
‘We should totally do it,’ he said. ‘Say we’re in a meeting. Go to the pictures. Grab a Chinese afterwards.’
‘I’d love to,’ she said. ‘But no.’
So he slipped his tobacco tin into his pocket and they strolled back to work.
In her memory they were arm in arm, although of course that can’t be right. Not yet. Not then.
That afternoon, she’d been distracted and clumsy. She spilled a cup of coffee over her desk.
Just by sitting there, laughing at the past, she’d felt that her John, that boy, was nothing more than a memory.
He’d catch her sometimes, after one glass of wine too many. She’d be tearful, going through their old photos again.
‘Look at my hair,’ she’d say. Or, ‘Christ, look at those boots. What was I thinking?’
Or she’d say, ‘God, remember that flat? The one on Victoria Road?’
And Luther would oblige her by flicking through the albums, unaware that the man looking at the photos was not the boy they pictured.
Somewhere along the line, that boy had joined the dead and Zoe had spent years waving to him from a far shore, trying to call him back.
And now it’s not even lunchtime on this strange day a year later and she lies naked on a hotel bed with Mark North in the warm afterglow of orgasm.
She nuzzles his neck, kisses him. He turns, kisses her.
She knows she’ll feel guilty. She’ll get up and walk naked to the shower and walk back and dry herself and Mark will watch; of course he will — he’s going to watch her do these everyday things because here and now everything she does is fascinating, vertiginous, magical. Just as everything he does is fascinating and magical to her.
She’ll towel herself in front of this man who has just come inside her, twice. And she’ll dress: underwear and tights and shirt and suit and shoes, and she’ll toy with her hair and reapply her make-up. She’ll make an appointment with the doctor to pick up the morning-after pill because neither of them had been planning this and neither had thought to pop into the chemist and buy condoms.
The morning-after pill may give her a headache and sore breasts and it may nauseate her; she’ll have to think of a good lie and practise it over and over again until she no longer thinks of it as untrue. That’s the only way to lie with any success to the man she married.
She’ll kiss Mark goodbye and because she knows now that their bodies fit, there’ll be no awkwardness between them. She likes his smell, the hint of fresh tobacco in his sweat; the few grey hairs on his chest, the scar on his upper arm.
She can feel it all, like the faint foreshadow of tomorrow’s hangover throbbing through the bright white glare of dancing drunk.
But all she feels right now is the satisfaction of being fascinated. And of being fascinating.
When, reluctantly, she gets out of bed and walks naked to the shower she doesn’t cry and she doesn’t laugh. She just washes herself and tries not to think.
Paula’s been on the game more than twelve years, during which time she’s sold pretty much all she has to sell. But she didn’t truly find her niche until she fell into the erotic lactation game. That was a few months after Alex was born.
Now she trades under the name Finesse. Compared to some of the crap she went through when she was younger, it’s easy money; she gets to spend her working hours in a clean little flat, and most of her lactophiliacs are long-term customers, middle-aged men who like to engage in what they call Adult Nursing Relationships. Sometimes they like to go the whole hog and assume the role of a breastfeeding infant, complete with nappies.
Some men like to have breast milk sprayed onto them as they masturbate. One or two like her to express into a manual pump as they watch and wank themselves off. They take the milk home to drink it or cook with it or do God knows what with it. Paula doesn’t really care; what harm can a little bit of milk do to anyone?
A very small minority of her clients are lesbian. She even has a lesbian couple. They like to latch on to a nipple each and nurse before doing their thing.
Paula doesn’t judge. She just gets on with it; takes her Domperidone, her Blessed Thistle, her red raspberry leaf, and counts her blessings.
So she’s surprised to see this sweet-looking young man standing in her doorway, telling her that Gary Braddon’s recommended her.
Braddon’s one of these tough-looking men, all tattoos and shaved heads, but he’s a gentle soul really, a softy. Loves his dogs, loves his milky boobs to kiss and nibble and suck.
Paula assesses the kid. He’s skinny, nervy. He smells not unpleasantly of fresh earth. She can see how he might be a friend of Gary’s. So she asks him in.
He looks at the prints she’s hung in the little hallway, faintly erotic Christian art showing the Lactation of St Bernard, in which the Saint receives milk from the breast of the Virgin Mary.
Paula paid her downstairs neighbour, who’s studying interior decorating, to do it for her at cost. He’s a nice straight boy, her Chris downstairs, so above the cost of materials she paid him in kind and everyone was happy.
Along with the subdued lighting, the prints add the right touch of reverence to the proceedings. Unlike most apartments providing related services, this is a place of nurture and worship.
Now this kid looks her up and down. His eyes can’t meet hers, but they never can at first. A lot of the younger ones never had a mum. The first time they look her in the eye is when they’re laid out on her lap, suckling away. Sometimes she strokes their hair and murmurs gentle words of encouragement. Sometimes they cry when they come, spunking all over her tummy.
Finesse doesn’t mind that. She’s pleased. It seems to help.
This kid digs into the pocket of his army surplus coat and brings out a wad of tenners. He tries to foist it on her — a fistful of greasy money in her lovely clean hands with their lovely manicure.
She says, ‘There’s no need to do that now, love.’
He blinks at her, embarrassed and confused.
She says, ‘Why don’t you come in for five minutes, take off your coat, sit down, have a little chat?’
But the kid won’t relax. He looks nervous, shifting his weight from foot to foot as if he needs the loo.
He follows her into the little front room. There’s a nice vibe in here, too, like a boutique hotel in earth tones and artificially aged wood. Paula does all right for herself, but that’s not the point of this display: the point is to suggest that she doesn’t need to do this — that she’s essentially an altruist, a therapist providing a service.
She invites the kid to sit.
He perches on the edge of a chair. Wipes his palms on his thighs. He jiggles his leg. He twists his hands in sweaty knots. He look at her, he looks away.