What Happens Now. Sophia Money-Coutts

of a certain age. He was tall and blond but had soft, pink cheeks that looked like they’d never needed to be shaved and he was always dishevelled. Mismatched socks, shirts fastened with the wrong buttons, tufty hair poking up like straw from the head of a scarecrow. But he came off as endearing, rather than useless, and so he had successfully, if unintentionally, cornered the local bored wives market. They scrabbled to sign their dogs up with him and then appeared in very pink lipstick and tight lycra at the house each morning to drop off their pugs and French bulldogs.

      Jess busied herself with mugs and milk while I remained with my head on the kitchen table, gazing at the TV in the corner where a politician whose name I should know was droning on about some scandal in the Sunday papers.

      ‘Walt was upstairs,’ Jess went on, ‘but I’ve sent him home.’

      Walt was an art dealer – full name Walter de Winter – who Jess had been dating for the past couple of months. Very English and very posh, he always wore corduroys and was ‘too fumbly’ in bed, Jess had told me a few weeks ago. But he took her to exhibitions and discussed painters with her.

      ‘Oh sorry,’ I said, sitting up. ‘I didn’t mean to crash your Sunday morning.’

      Jess shrugged in her dressing gown. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I want to know everything.’ Then she lowered her voice. ‘And I can’t spend all day with him again. Yesterday afternoon was too much but I’ll tell you about that in a minute. You first.’

      I wondered where to start. ‘OK, so we met at the pub, and it was total agony to begin with.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Just sticky. Couldn’t think of anything to say so made small talk about where we lived until a couple of drinks in.’

      ‘What happened then? Do you want sugar?’

      ‘Two please. And then it just got a bit easier. Talking, I mean. Then our respective relationship history came up.’

      She spun around from the kettle on the sideboard and raised her eyebrows at me. ‘Did it now?’

      ‘I didn’t bang on about it. Promise. And he mentioned his ex as well so we were equal.’

      ‘OK, go on.’

      I sat up from the table and leant back against my chair. ‘And then… we just stayed there getting more and more pissed, basically.’

      ‘Aaaaaaand?’

      ‘Then he suggested going back to his place.’

      ‘Aaaaaaaaand?’

      ‘And then, well, we had sex.’

      Jess put a mug down in front of me so hard that tea spilled over the edges on to the table. ‘I’m not cooking you breakfast for that pathetic recap. Come on, more details.’

      I heard the front door close in the hall and Clem appeared in the kitchen in his dog-walking kit: ancient green Barbour with plastic bags bursting from one pocket and a whistle hanging around his neck. ‘Lil, top of the morning.’ He bent down and kissed my head. ‘Bit early for you, isn’t it?’

      ‘Shhhh, Clem, she’s telling me about her date and she’s just got to the sex,’ said Jess.

      ‘Excellent,’ said Clem. ‘Can I join in? Is the kettle on?’

      ‘It’s just boiled,’ said Jess. ‘And I’m making bacon. Want some?’

      ‘Yes please.’

      ‘It was sort of… athletic,’ I started. ‘Because he’s a climber.’

      ‘A climber?’ said Clem. ‘What does he climb?’

      ‘Be quiet, Clem. He’s climbing Lil right now,’ said Jess, peeling rashers of bacon from a packet and laying them in a frying pan.

      ‘He sort of threw me around. Was quite… dominant. One minute I was underneath him, the next he was behind me.’ I stopped and thought. ‘It was like having sex with the Jolly Green Giant.’

      Jess threw her head back and laughed. ‘Ha, I’m so jealous. Did he have a jolly green penis?’

      Clem sat down heavily at the table. ‘Girls, it is the Sabbath, you know.’

      ‘Never mind Jesus, Clem,’ said Jess, then she looked back at me. ‘How have you left it?’

      ‘OK, this is the thing,’ I said. ‘When I woke up this morning, he was gone.’

      ‘Gone?’ they chorused.

      ‘Mmm. As in, gone from bed. His bed. Vanished. And I found a note in his kitchen that said he had “work”.’

      ‘Have you got the note?’ said Jess.

      ‘Yes, Miss Marple,’ I said, leaning forward in my chair and sliding it from my jeans pocket. ‘Here you go.’

      She smoothed it on the table and read it silently.

      ‘But yeah, I would like to see him again,’ I said, while Jess read. ‘It was the ideal date, after the first bit. We chatted for hours in the pub. And I did vaguely wonder whether I should play hard to get and not go to his place, but it just felt so natural, that I thought, why not?’

      Jess nodded while still looking at the note. ‘I’m not sure rules like that matter any more.’

      ‘I’m always thrilled if a girl comes home with me on a first date,’ added Clem.

      ‘Well that’s the other thing,’ I said. ‘I know it was just a first date, but it felt like there was more to it than that. That there was something, you know?’

      Jess looked up at me from the note. ‘Well it’s not Shakespeare. But it’s sweet. Polite. Good manners. Have you texted him?’

      ‘No, obviously not. I can hardly form proper sentences this morning, let alone compose a message.’

      ‘OK, let’s have breakfast and then think about it. You need to be casual yet sexy. Clem, you’re on toast duty. And can you get the ketchup out? And put the kettle on again. We all need more tea.’

      ‘Some people call Sunday the day of rest,’ he said. But he stood up anyway, winking at me as he did.

      An hour or so later, plates smeared with egg yolk and baked bean juice, Jess held her hand out and asked for my phone.

      ‘OK, but can you not send anything without checking first?’ I said, passing it over the table.

      ‘Obviously I won’t. But I’m very good at this.’

      I narrowed my eyes at her.

      ‘I am!’ she insisted. ‘Aren’t I, Clem? Didn’t I help you with whatshecalled last week? Milly? Philly? Jilly?’

      ‘Tilly,’ corrected Clem, who always had someone on the go. Mostly petite blonde girls who he wooed intently with Spotify playlists and by taking them for romantic walks along the river. They often disappeared shortly after he cooked for them, but Clem remained stoically unaffected and simply moved on, as if he were a Labrador looking ahead to its next breakfast.

      ‘Yes, Tilly, exactly,’ went on Jess. ‘How long is she going to last, by the way? I had to help her with the front door because she couldn’t work out how to open it.’

      ‘She’s very sweet and the door was probably double-locked,’ said Clem, ‘and anyway, at least she’s not boring. I had to hide in my bedroom last week because Walt was loitering downstairs and I couldn’t face another conversation about his latest artist. And he leaves terrible skid marks in the loo, if you hadn’t noticed.’

      ‘Clem!’ said Jess. The house echoed with cries of ‘Clem!’ several times a day. ‘At least he’s got a brain.’

      ‘Enough!’