Once in her flat, Julia led him to the sofa, then disappeared only to reappear a few moments later with a bottle of champagne and two glasses. The place reeked of refined elegance: thick curtains hung luxuriously over the twin french windows facing out onto the street. Antique furniture – a beautiful dining table at one end of the room and two small console tables – stood beneath original artwork and a huge gilt mirror. Harry had never known anyone his age live in such style. ‘Cheers.’ She carefully chinked his glass and sat down next to him on the big sofa. He was conscious that the scene unfolding was perhaps just a bit contrived, the seductive champagne maybe a bit too planned. Quite flattering though. Carefully putting down his glass, he kissed her once more. Moments later, they lay full stretch, each grappling with the other’s belt and buttons. Harry marvelled at her wonderfully sleek and well-proportioned body. It felt good to be back in the fray at long last. As he kissed her all over, she murmured gently, her legs contentedly stretching out beneath him. Moving his arms behind her, she raised herself slightly, enabling him to neatly unclip her white lacy bra. With his hands and lips caressing her breasts, she began digging her fingers digging into his back. Suddenly, she pushed him up and, smiling mischievously, said, ‘Let’s go next door.’ Only her knickers lay between her and complete nakedness.
‘Now, where were we?’ She smiled once more, calmly pulling down his trousers and boxer shorts. ‘Ah, yes. You were about to fuck me, I think.’
Harry was slightly taken aback by her choice of words, especially as he’d never once heard her swear before, but was none the less happy enough to oblige. He hadn’t made love to anyone for over two years and, feeling incredibly aroused, was worried he might ruin everything by firing off in under thirty seconds. Desperately trying to think of anything non-sexual, he found the task slightly easier when Julia started repeating, ‘Fuck me, Harry, fuck me, Harry,’ quicker and quicker. What did she think he was doing? he thought, pummelling in and out of her.
‘Fuck HARDER,’ she yelled, and Harry, obeying her demands and pounding as hard as he could, tried desperately not to laugh. Still, he thought, if that was her kick, who was he to start objecting?
‘I hope you didn’t mind me shouting like that,’ Julia said afterwards. ‘I can’t help talking like that whenever I have sex.’
Harry shrugged and smiled. He couldn’t really think of an appropriate answer.
But it wasn’t the kinky sex talk that bothered Harry. It was something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He supposed he’d been worrying slightly about where he and Julia were heading, but this concern had taken a different turn over the past two days, ever since he’d seen Jenny at the theatre. Or at least, he was pretty sure it had been Jenny. During the interval, Julia and he had been chatting about the play, wedged in one corner of the bar with their pre-ordered drinks, when, over her shoulder, Harry had spotted two girls talking animatedly on the far side. Something about the back of the chestnut-haired one looked strangely familiar, and then she turned. She was quite a long way away, but he was certain it was Jenny. The way she smiled and brushed her hair from her face as she laughed was just so Jenny, it had to be her. When Julia asked him what the matter was, he said, Nothing, just someone he thought he recognized, but when he looked up again she’d gone. Vanished into the ether, as though she’d never been there at all.
He began sketching the outline of the Palladian bridge Anna had requested, between a lawn on one side and a row of poplars stretching away on the other. Perhaps Jenny hadn’t been there the other night. Perhaps he’d just seen a ghost of her. Every time he thought of her, a pang of regret came over him. Jenny had been lovely. Still, it had been a long time ago. He’d been eighteen then. They’d met, briefly, in Africa, where both had been spending six months before going on to university. But they would probably never have seen each other again had it not been for the fact that their parents lived quite close to each other in Suffolk. Sitting outside their tents watching the sun set over the Ngorongoro Crater, the world had never seemed bigger; discovering they lived barely fifteen miles apart back home struck them as a particularly strange piece of serendipity. On his return, he bravely called her up. Her father was in the RAF and they’d only been posted there a couple of years before, while Harry had lived in the same house in Polstead all his life. He was able to take her places she’d never been before – the best pubs, the prettiest spots. The relationship moved fast. Most of his other friends were still away, so he and Jenny spent almost all of the final couple of months before university together, totally wrapped up in their own little microcosm into which no one else was allowed or required to enter. They would meet up in the evenings and drive to a pub, or go to see a film. At weekends they took themselves off camping, walking for miles and miles and talking incessantly, so that in a short time Harry felt he knew more about Jenny than just about anyone he’d ever met. They even took a week off to go to Paris together, holding hands as they idled around Montmartre, gazing into each other’s eyes across café tables. Making love by night. Harry remembered feeling quite heady with the romance of it.
He felt he’d come of age during his time with her. What were his previous relationships compared with what he had with Jenny? Nothing. Merely insignificant teenage fumblings. Everything was different with her. They were just so right together, they laughed so much, had so much fun, and the summer days seemed so particularly summery: long, light and warm. Youth tasting the cup of adulthood without the weights of responsibility. When he wasn’t with her, he thought about her: the smell of her dark flowing hair; the long eyelashes that protected her hazel eyes. He would think of the delicate curve of her neck and the outline of her collar bone, so sensuous, feminine and alluring. Harry felt an intensity to his love, his feelings given added confidence by Jenny’s incredible love for him.
So how had he allowed her to melt away from his life? Everything had changed once he got to Cambridge. He was there, and Jenny was in London, beginning four years of teacher training at Roehampton. They were no longer half-an-hour apart and it was no longer summer. For a brief, blissful while, they had been flowing in the same wind, but with the flick of a switch, their lives were suddenly set on totally different courses. All around him at Cambridge, his fellow students were getting drunk, debating the meaning of life and sleeping with one another. Jenny sounded distant on the phone and hurt when he didn’t ring when he said he would. He began to feel resentful that she seemed to depend on him so much; the balance of their relationship had somehow shifted. When she came to visit him, early on in the term, he felt embarrassed: young freshers weren’t supposed to be involved in serious – and hence boring – relationships; they were meant to be young bucks, carefree, unshackled and irresponsible. By the Sunday afternoon, Harry was snapping at her irritably and she was looking at him with disbelieving pain. They went for a walk across the water meadows, but it was no good. The magic of the summer had gone. Then she asked him whether he’d slept with anyone else, and he admitted he had. He’d got drunk, ended up in some girl’s bed, screwing her while someone else was sick in the corridor outside. It hadn’t meant a thing and he hadn’t seen or spoken to her since. Jenny looked desolate. Without saying another word, she drove off in her cluttered Peugeot. It was the last time he saw her.
From rather enjoying thinking about the fun they’d had that summer, Harry now felt rather depressed. To make matters worse, he’d never really gone out with anyone else at Cambridge. All those pathetic plans to sleep around and be a ‘free agent’ – what a sham. He’d kissed quite a lot of people, slept with some of them, and then started seeing a girl called Katrina in his last two terms. Looking back on it now, he realized he had been fairly horrible to her too. He rarely saw her during the day, creeping round to her rooms last thing, spending the night with her, then drifting off the following morning. Once they’d left, the – the relationship, if it could be called that, ground to a halt. They liked each other, but not enough to make an effort any more.
Who came next? A year of being single and jealous of friends who had settled relationships, and then Jo, an old Cambridge friend. She had been single for a while too, so it became a pairing of convenience. They carried on being friends, only now they slept together. Harry wondered whether he might feel more for her once he knew every inch of her body. But he didn’t. Then she found someone to fall in love