He squeezed her wrist, quickly, his thumb on the underside of her skin. ‘Yes.’ He turned back to the others. ‘Well, cheers,’ he said. ‘Great to see you both.’
They sat in silence again and drank their drinks, and Tess glanced at him, her mind racing.
‘Thanks, thanks a lot, bruv,’ she said, as they walked back down the high street later that evening. ‘I owe you.’
Adam stepped back and held his hand up. ‘No worries, g’friend,’ he said. ‘It’s his loss.’
Tess stared at him. ‘Are you drunk?’
Adam shrugged. ‘A bit, maybe. I did have four pints. I thought they were never going to leave! I’m sorry, I know he’s your ex.’
‘I know,’ Tess said, glaring down at the paving slabs, watching her feet step on each crack. ‘I know. He’s so different from me. He looks—’ she trailed off.
‘He looks like a member of the Bullingdon Club on his way to a reunion,’ said Adam, his tongue loosened by alcohol and release from stilted conversation. ‘I didn’t think people like that still existed.’
She wanted to be cross, but she couldn’t be. ‘You’re right,’ Tess said. ‘He was a bit like that. I don’t know, I just never saw that in him…’ She paused. ‘He wasn’t—I don’t know. He wasn’t a bad man. He isn’t a bad man.’
‘Never really knew what you saw in him, if I’m being honest,’ Adam said simply. ‘Sorry again. That’s rude.’
‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I…I think I was looking for something. Something that wasn’t there.’
‘I have known you for a while now, you know.’ Adam poked her in the arm. ‘He just never seemed—’ He shrugged. ‘Oh, well.’
There was silence; it was a chilly evening, and the high street was virtually deserted. ‘You coming back to ours?’ said Tess.
It was an obvious question—they were nearly home, and Adam’s house was the other end of the town. ‘Um, if that’s OK,’ said Adam.
‘Of course it’s OK,’ said Tess. She laughed. ‘I liked it when you told them we were going to a Sandals resort for our holidays. Will’s face.’
‘I liked it more when you told them you liked it when I spoke to you in a Russian accent,’ Adam replied. ‘God only knows what they think now.’
There was a silence again. Tess said in a small voice, ‘It was—good to see him. But…I don’t really care what they think.’
‘Good,’ Adam said. ‘Neither do I, Tess.’ They carried on walking for a little while. ‘Listen, T—’ he said.
But at the same time Tess suddenly burst out, ‘I don’t know why I went out with him.’
‘Right,’ said Adam. ‘I have to say…’ He trailed off.
‘Two years, too,’ Tess said, faltering. It seems like a dream now, she wanted to say. But it wasn’t, because a few drinks with him again and she could see now what that time with Will had done to her. He was so…oh, she’d never really seen it before, but he was a little pompous. So sure he was right and reluctant to hear her point of view, as though she was a stupid little girl. He spoke slowly, and when she tried to interrupt him, he simply carried on talking. And the sex—what sex. At first—and she cringed to think of it now—she’d rather liked his professorial, grown-up way of treating her, had found it rather a turn-on that he was so formal, reserved, buttoned up. Now, when she thought of how she’d tried to get him to want her more, tried to excite him, it made her want to disappear, as fast as possible, into the ground. And she’d begun to think that was normal, that it would always be like that…She looked down at herself with disgust. He just hadn’t fancied her, that was all, and why would he? He was hanging on in there till something better came along, something Ticky-shaped, with honey-coloured limbs and hair and friends in common and…Ugh.
‘Penny for your thoughts,’ came Adam’s voice in the darkness, startling her. Tess laughed, hollowly. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘What’s on your mind?’
‘You don’t want to know,’ Tess said bleakly.
‘Come on,’ said Adam. ‘It’s me, T. I’ve just spent the evening pretending to be your boyfriend.’ He said, in a thick Russian accent, ‘We have no secrets, Misha.’
Oh, I was just thinking about the last time I had sex with Will, and he stopped halfway through and said, ‘Can we just stop this? Let’s just go to sleep, shall we?’ and then picked up the FT while I lay there, naked, next to him…
‘Seriously,’ Tess said, kicking a dandelion out of the way as they turned into Lord’s Lane. ‘You really don’t want to know. And I don’t want to tell you.’
‘Is this the Dealbreaker that you won’t tell me about? You are turning into a bit of a librarian, I have to say,’ said Adam smugly.
Tess stared at him with loathing, all former understanding and maturity between them gone. ‘What?’ she practically cried.
‘Well, T. All that chat to Will about the course you’re teaching. And all that stuff about Ancient Rome. I mean, no one likes all that better than me, but when you started going on about how the hole in the roof of the Pantheon was twenty-seven feet in diameter—well. Even I was a bit bored. I thought Ticky was going to fall asleep.’
Tess took her hands out of her cardigan pockets. ‘What the hell, Adam?’ she yelled. ‘Not this again. Don’t you find that interesting?’ Adam shook his head, smiling at her. ‘Well, you should,’ Tess told him tartly. ‘The Pantheon, it’s the greatest building ever! They still don’t know how it was built! And—boring Ticky, it’s hardly a difficult subject, is it? She’s about as interesting as a—a slice of brown bread!’ She pointed over her shoulder, as if Ticky were there. ‘Before it’s even become bread!’ She cast around her. ‘Like—when it’s flour! No, when it’s wheat! She’s like a field of wheat! Even more boring than that, like a—a—!’ She ran out of steam and stared at him. ‘I can’t believe you said that.’
Adam opened the door; she wondered, in the back of her mind, why he now owned a set of keys. ‘Tessa. I’m not having a go at the person who built the Pantheon, OK? I’m just saying, there’s a time and a place,’ he said, smoothly, waving tacitly to Francesca, who was sprawled on the sofa clutching a box of toffees, her long brown hair glowing against the electric blue of the Chinese silk dressing gown. She raised her eyebrows, waved at them with one hand, and popped another toffee in her mouth with the other. Adam took off his coat. ‘And the time and the place were not necessarily then.’
‘Sup?’ Francesca mumbled indistinctly. ‘Howas the jink?’
‘Awful,’ said Tess, bitterly. ‘He’s an idiot, she’s an idiot, I can’t see any reason why I was with him all that time, and, by the way, according to Adam not only am I really boring, but I’m turning into a sodding librarian.’ She kicked off her shoes.
Francesca raised her eyebrows again, as Adam moved over to the sofa and took her hand; he flicked each of her fingers, gently, looking down at her, and kissed her gently on the lips.
‘Librarians are great, my mum’s a librarian,’ Francesca said. ‘It’s not that. I think it’s more that you’re turning into an old lady.’ She nodded, as if she was glad she’d found the point of what Adam was getting at. ‘Mmm.’
‘Yes,’ said Adam. ‘That’s it.’
Francesca slid a toffee into his mouth, her thumb catching his bottom lip. Adam’s eyes glazed over.
Tess, still standing by the door in her bare feet, felt as if she might have been a novelty act they were keeping in a cage, like a female Elephant Man. Elephant Lady. Who has some interesting