He stood up and waited for the words to come. Gareth, I think it’s best if I found somewhere else to live …

But she said nothing. Just stared at him, biting her bottom lip.

Time stood still.

The song filled the room, seeming to grow louder as if an invisible hand were turning up the volume. ‘Should I stay or should I go now?’ Joe Strummer was belting out the lyrics from the stereo.

Eventually he had to speak. ‘You OK?’

Still nothing, she just nodded back.

And then she did it. She walked steadily over to him, determined and decisive. He wondered for one bizarre moment whether she was going to hit him.

But far from that, she reached her hands up to his face, closed her eyes and slowly kissed him. It took a couple of seconds for him to shut his eyes too and respond.

‘I just wanted to tell you,’ she whispered, ‘that no, you didn’t get it wrong.’

And she kissed him again, as The Clash continued singing in the background.

‘So come on and let me know, should I stay or should I go?’

28

Judith

That very first night they’d slept together was so intense she actually thought her entire body would expire with pleasure. She couldn’t even speak afterwards. Neither of them could. They just lay there, in a tangle of tired limbs, inhaling the sweet scent of each other’s skin, their breathing blissful and deep, and their eyes wide open, waiting for the sun to come tiptoeing in through the window. And she just knew that something gloriously irrevocable had happened to her. There was no going back.

‘What do we do now?’ she’d whispered eventually, breaking the silence.

‘Put the kettle on,’ he’d replied, and kissed her head before sliding out of bed.

He stretched – a contented stretch, like a sated cat – and she’d marvelled at the fact that what had taken place between them now gave her licence to blatantly stare at his body, and to take in the whole beauty of him. Because he was hers. And she was his. And they were each other’s.

They’d sat in bed sipping their tea, still dumbstruck, holding hands and staring ahead of them.

‘Jude, last night … that was …’ he struggled. ‘Well, I don’t think the words exist. It has never, ever felt like that before.’

‘I’m still buzzing,’ she said. ‘Like there’s this … I dunno, this … current running through me or something. A kind of deeply pleasant and continuous electric shock.’

They’d both had to go to work an hour later, and neither of them could concentrate, desperate just to get home, to see each other and repeat exactly what they’d done the night before. Almost to confirm that it had really happened. And this carried on for days and days. And all of it in secret. In fact, apart from work colleagues and the postman and the woman in the corner shop, they didn’t see another soul for weeks on end, hungering only for each other’s company and lost in the hedonistic, inward-looking world of new-found love. Catrin phoned and Lana wrote, but Judith ignored them both. The London School of Economics contacted her, asking if she intended taking up her place again in the autumn. She ignored them too, letting the time pass by, luxuriating in the heady haze of loved-upness. Only Gareth mattered, no one and nothing else.