فصل 22

22

Dear Ma,

Sorry it’s been a while since I’ve been in contact. We’re working round the clock on this Chinese deal here, and I’m often up all night coping with different time zones. If I sound a bit jaded, it’s because I feel it. I got the bonus, which was nice (am sending Georgina a chunk so she can buy that car she wants), but over the last few weeks I’ve realized ultimately I’m not really feeling it here any more.

It’s not that I don’t like the lifestyle – and you know I’ve never been afraid of hard work. I just miss so many things about England. I miss the humour. I miss Sunday lunch. I miss hearing English accents, at least the non-phoney kind (you would not believe how many people end up plummier than Her Maj). I like being able to pop across for weekends in Paris or Barcelona or Rome. And the expat thing is pretty tedious. In the goldfish bowl of finance here you just end up running into the same faces whether you’re in Nantucket or Manhattan. I know you think I have a type, but here it’s almost comical: blonde hair, size zero, identikit wardrobes, off to the same Pilates classes …

So here’s the thing: do you remember Rupe? My old friend from Churchill’s? He says there’s an opening at his firm. His boss is flying out in a couple of weeks and wants to meet me. If all goes well I might be back in England sooner than you think.

I’ve loved New York. But everything has its time, and I think I’ve had mine.

Love, W x

Over the next few days I rang up about numerous jobs on Craigslist, but the nice-sounding woman with the nanny job put the phone down on me when she heard I had no references, and the food-server jobs were already gone by the time I called. The shoe-shop assistant position was still available but the man I spoke to told me the wage would be two dollars an hour lower than advertised because of my lack of relevant retail experience, and I calculated that would barely leave me enough for travel. I spent my mornings in the diner, my afternoons in the library at Washington Heights, which was quiet and warm and, apart from that one security guard, nobody eyed me like they were waiting for me to start singing drunkenly or pee in a corner.

I would meet Josh for lunch in the noodle bar by his office every couple of days, update him on my job-hunting activities and try to ignore that, next to his immaculately dressed, go-getting presence, I felt increasingly like a grubby, sofa-hopping loser. ‘You’re going to be fine, Louisa. Just hang in there,’ he would say, and kiss me as he left, like somehow we had already agreed to be boyfriend and girlfriend. I couldn’t think about the significance of this along with everything else I had to think about so I just figured that it was not actually a bad thing, like so much in my life was, and could therefore be parked for now. Besides, he always tasted pleasingly minty.

I couldn’t stay in Nathan’s room much longer. The previous morning I had woken with his big arm slung over me and something hard pressing into the small of my back. The cushion wall had apparently gone awry, migrating to a chaotic heap at our feet. I froze, attempted to wriggle discreetly out of his sleeping grasp and he had opened his eyes, looked at me, then leapt out of bed as if he had been stung, a pillow clutched in front of his groin. ‘Mate. I didn’t mean – I wasn’t trying to –’

‘No idea what you’re talking about!’ I insisted, pulling a sweatshirt over my head. I couldn’t look at him in case it –

He hopped from foot to foot. ‘I was just – I didn’t realize I … Ah, mate. Ah, Jeez.’

‘It’s fine! I needed to get up anyway!’ I bolted and hid in the tiny bathroom for ten minutes, my cheeks burning, while I listened to him crashing around and getting dressed. He was gone before I came out.

What was the point in trying to stay after all? I could only sleep in Nathan’s room for a night or two more at most. It looked like the best I could expect elsewhere, even if I was lucky enough to find alternative employment, was a minimum-wage job and a cockroach- and bedbug-infested flat-share. At least if I went home I could sleep on my own sofa. Perhaps Treen and Eddie were besotted enough with each other that they would move in together and then I could have my flat back. I tried not to think about how that would feel – the empty rooms and the return to where I had been six months earlier, not to mention the proximity to Sam’s workplace. Every siren I heard passing would be a bitter reminder of what I had lost.

It had started to rain, but I slowed as I approached the building and glanced up at the Gopniks’ windows from under my woollen hat, registering that the lights were still on, even though Nathan had told me they were out at some gala event. Life had moved on for them as smoothly as if I had never existed. Perhaps Ilaria was up there now, vacuuming, or tutting at Agnes’s magazines scattered over the sofa cushions. The Gopniks – and this city – had sucked me in and spat me right out. Despite all her fond words, Agnes had discarded me as comprehensively and completely as a lizard sheds its skin – and not cast a backward look.

If I had never come, I thought angrily, I might still have a home. And a job.

If I had never come, I would still have Sam.

The thought caused my mood to darken further and I hunched my shoulders and thrust my freezing hands into my pockets, prepared to head back to my temporary accommodation, a room I had to sneak into, and a bed I had to share with someone who was terrified of touching me. My life had become ridiculous, a looping bad joke. I rubbed my eyes, feeling the cold rain on my skin. I would book my ticket tonight and I would go home on the next available flight. I would suck it up and start again. I didn’t really have a choice.

Everything has its time.

It was then that I spotted Dean Martin. He was standing on the covered carpet that led up to the apartment building, shivering without his coat on and glancing around as if deciding where to go next. I took a step closer, peering into the lobby, but the night man was busy sorting through some packages and hadn’t seen him. I couldn’t see Mrs De Witt anywhere. I moved swiftly, leant down and scooped him up before he had time to grasp what I was doing. Holding his wriggling body at arms’ length, I ran in and swiftly up the back stairs to take him back to her, nodding at the night man as I went.

It was a valid reason for being there, but I emerged from the stairs onto the Gopniks’ corridor with trepidation: if they returned unexpectedly and saw me, would Mr Gopnik conclude I was up to no good? Would he accuse me of trespass? Did it count if I was on their corridor? These questions buzzed around my head as Dean Martin writhed furiously and snapped at my arms.

‘Mrs De Witt?’ I called softly, peering behind me. Her front door was ajar again and I stepped inside, lifting my voice. ‘Mrs De Witt? Your dog got out again.’ I could hear the television blaring down the corridor and took a few steps further inside.

‘Mrs De Witt?’

When no answer came, I closed the door gently behind me and put Dean Martin on the floor, keen not to hold him for any longer than I had to. He immediately trotted off towards the living room.

‘Mrs De Witt?’

I saw her leg first, sticking out on the floor beside the upright chair. It took me a second to register what I was seeing. Then I ran round to the front of the chair and threw myself to the floor, my ear to her mouth. ‘Mrs De Witt?’ I said. ‘Can you hear me?’

She was breathing. But her face was the blue-white of marble. I wondered briefly how long she had been there.

‘Mrs De Witt? Wake up! Oh, God … wake up!’

I ran around the apartment, looking for the phone. It was in the hallway, situated on a table that also housed several phone books. I rang 911 and explained what I had found.

‘There’s a team on its way, ma’am,’ came the voice. ‘Can you stay with the patient and let them in?’

‘Yes, yes, yes. But she’s really old and frail and she looks like she’s out cold. Please come quickly.’ I ran and fetched a quilt from her bedroom and placed it over her, trying to remember what Sam had told me about treating the elderly who had taken a fall. One of the biggest risks was their growing chilled from lying undiscovered for hours. And she felt so cold, even with the full blast of the building’s central heating. I sat on the floor beside her and took her icy hand in mine, stroking it gently, trying to let her know somebody was there. A sudden thought crossed my mind: if she died, would they blame me? Mr Gopnik would testify that I was a criminal, after all. I wondered briefly about whether to run, but I couldn’t leave her.

It was during this tortured train of thought that she opened an eye.

‘Mrs De Witt?’

She blinked at me, as if trying to work out what had happened.

‘It’s Louisa. From across the corridor. Are you in pain?’

‘I don’t know … My … my wrist …’ she said weakly.

‘The ambulance is coming. You’re going to be okay. It’s all going to be okay.’

She looked blankly at me, as if trying to piece together who I was, whether what I was saying made any sense. And then her brow furrowed. ‘Where is he? Dean Martin? Where’s my dog?’

I scanned the room. Over in the corner the little dog was parked on his backside, noisily investigating his genitals. He looked up when he heard his name and adjusted himself back into a standing position. ‘He’s right here. He’s okay.’

She closed her eyes again, relieved. ‘Will you look after him? If I have to go to the hospital? I am going to the hospital, aren’t I?’

‘Yes. And of course.’

‘There’s a folder in my bedroom that you need to give them. On my bedside table.’

‘No problem. I’ll do that.’

I closed my hands around hers, and while Dean Martin eyed me warily from the doorway – well, me and the fireplace – we waited in silence for the paramedics to come.

I travelled to the hospital with Mrs De Witt, leaving Dean Martin in the apartment as he wasn’t allowed in the ambulance. Once her paperwork was done and she was settled, I headed for the Lavery, reassuring her that I would look after the dog. I would be back in the morning to let her know how he was doing. Her tiny blue eyes filled with tears as she issued croaking instructions as to his food, his walks, his various likes and dislikes, until the paramedic shushed her, insisting that she needed to rest.

I caught the subway back to Fifth Avenue, simultaneously bone-weary and buzzing with adrenalin. I let myself in, using the key Mrs De Witt had given me. Dean Martin was waiting in the hallway, standing four-square in the middle of the floor, his compact body radiating suspicion.

‘Good evening, young man! Would you like some supper?’ I said, as if I were his old friend and not someone vaguely expecting to lose a chunk out of one of my lower legs. I walked past him with simulated confidence to the kitchen, where I tried to decipher the instructions as to the correct amount of cooked chicken and kibble that I had scribbled on the back of my hand.

I placed the food in his dish and pushed it towards him with my foot.

‘There you go! Enjoy!’

He stared at me, his bulbous eyes sullen and mutinous, forehead rippling with wrinkles of concern.

‘Food! Yum!’

Still he stared.

‘Not hungry yet, huh?’ I said. I edged my way out of the kitchen. I needed to work out where I was going to sleep.

Mrs De Witt’s apartment was approximately half the square footage of the Gopniks’, but that wasn’t to say it was small. It comprised a vast living room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Central Park, its interior decorated in bronze and smoked glass, as if it had last been done some time around the days of Studio 54. There was a more traditional dining room, packed with antiques sporting a layer of dust, which suggested it hadn’t been used in generations, a melamine and Formica kitchen, a utility room, and four bedrooms, including the main bedroom, which had a bathroom and sizeable dressing room leading off it. The bathrooms were even older than the Gopniks’ and let loose unpredictable torrents of spluttering water. I walked round the apartment with the peculiar silent reverence that comes with being in the uninhabited house of a person you don’t know very well.

When I reached the main bedroom, I drew a breath. It was filled, three and a half walls of it, with clothes neatly stacked on racks, hanging in plastic from cushioned hangers. The dressing room was a riot of colour and fabric, punctuated above and below by shelves with piles of handbags, boxed hats and matching shoes. I walked slowly around the perimeter, running my fingertips along the materials, pausing occasionally to tug gently at a sleeve or push back a hanger to see each outfit better.

And it wasn’t just these two rooms. As the little pug trotted suspiciously after me, I walked through two of the other bedrooms and found more – row upon row of dresses, trouser suits, coats and boas, in long, air-conditioned cupboards. There were labels from Givenchy, Biba, Harrods and Macy’s, shoes from Saks Fifth Avenue and Chanel. There were labels I had never heard – French, Italian, even Russian – clothes from multiple eras: neat little Kennedy-esque boxy suits, flowing kaftans, sharp-shouldered jackets. I peered into boxes and found pillbox hats and turbans, huge jade-framed sunglasses and delicate strings of pearls. They were not arranged in any particular order so I simply dived in, pulling things out at random, unfolding tissue paper, feeling the cloth, the weight, the musty scent of old perfume, lifting them out to admire cut and pattern.

On what wall space was still visible above the shelves I could just make out framed clothes designs, magazine covers from the fifties and sixties with beaming, angular models in psychedelic shift dresses, or impossibly trim shirt-waisters. I must have been there an hour before I realized I hadn’t located another bed. But in the fourth bedroom there it was, covered with discarded items of clothing – a narrow single, possibly dating back to the fifties, with an ornate walnut headboard, a matching wardrobe and chest of drawers. And there were four more racks, of the more basic kind you would find in a changing room, and alongside them, boxes and boxes of accessories – costume jewellery, belts and scarves. I moved some carefully from the bed and lay down, feeling the mattress give immediately as exhausted mattresses do, but I didn’t care. I would basically be sleeping in a wardrobe. For the first time in days I forgot to be depressed.

For one night at least, I was in Wonderland.

The following morning I fed and walked Dean Martin, trying not to be offended by the way he travelled the whole way down Fifth Avenue at an angle, one eye permanently trained on me as if waiting for some transgression, and then I left for the hospital, keen to reassure Mrs De Witt that her baby was fine, if permanently braced for savagery. I decided I probably wouldn’t tell her that the only way I’d been able to persuade him to eat was to grate Parmigiano-Reggiano onto his breakfast.

When I arrived at the hospital I was relieved to find her a more human pink, although oddly unformed without her familiar make-up and set hair. She had indeed fractured her wrist and was scheduled for surgery, after which she would be in the hospital for another week, due to what they called ‘complicating factors’. When I revealed that I wasn’t a member of her family they declined to say more.

‘Can you look after Dean Martin?’ she said, her face creased with anxiety. He had plainly been her main concern in the hours I had been gone. ‘Perhaps they could let you pop in and out to see him in the day? Do you think Ashok could take him for walks? He’ll be terribly lonely. He’s not used to being without me.’

I had wondered whether it was wise to tell her the truth. But truth had been in short supply in our building lately and I wanted everything out in the open.

‘Mrs De Witt,’ I began, ‘I have to tell you something. I – I don’t work for the Gopniks any more. They fired me.’

Her head moved back against her pillow a little. She mouthed the word as if it were unfamiliar. ‘Fired?’

I swallowed. ‘They thought I had stolen money from them. All I can tell you is that I didn’t. But I feel it’s only right to tell you because you may decide that you don’t want my help.’

‘Well,’ she said weakly. And again. ‘Well.’

We sat there in silence for a while.

Then she narrowed her eyes. ‘But you didn’t do it.’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘Do you have another job?’

‘No, ma’am. I’m trying to find one.’

She shook her head. ‘Gopnik is a fool. Where are you living?’

I looked sideways. ‘Uh … I’m … well, I’m actually staying in Nathan’s room for now. But it’s not ideal. We’re not – you know – romantically involved. And obviously the Gopniks don’t exactly know …’

‘Well, it sounds like an arrangement that might suit us both rather well. Would you look after my dog? And perhaps conduct your job-hunting from my side of the corridor? Just till I come home?’

‘Mrs De Witt, I’d be delighted.’ I couldn’t hide my smile.

‘You’ll have to look after him better than you did before, of course. I’m going to give you notes. I’m sure he’s terribly unsettled.’

‘I’ll do whatever you say.’

‘And I’ll need you to come here daily to let me know how he is. That’s very important.’

‘Of course.’

With that decided, she seemed to subside a little with relief. She closed her eyes. ‘No fool like an old fool,’ she murmured. I wasn’t sure if she was talking about Mr Gopnik, herself or someone else entirely, so I waited until she had fallen asleep, then headed back to her apartment.

All that week I devoted myself to the care of a boggle-eyed, suspicious, cranky, six-year-old pug. We walked four times a day, I grated Parmesan onto his breakfast, and several days in, he ceased his habit of standing in any room I was in and staring at me with his brow furrowed, as if waiting for me to do something unmentionable, and simply lay down a few feet away, panting gently. I was still a little wary of him but I felt sorry for him too – the only person he loved had vanished abruptly and there was nothing I could do to reassure him that she would be coming home again.

And, besides, it was kind of nice to be in the building without feeling like a criminal. Ashok, who had been away for a few days, listened to my description of this turn of events with shock, outrage, then delight. ‘Man, it’s lucky you found him! He could have just wandered off and then nobody would have known she was even on the floor!’ He shuddered theatrically. ‘When she’s back I’m gonna start checking in on her every day, making sure she’s okay.’

We looked at each other.

‘Nothing would make her more furious,’ I said.

‘Yup, she’d hate it,’ he said, and went back to work.

Nathan pretended to be sad that he had his room back to himself, and brought my stuff over with almost unseemly haste to ‘save me a journey’ of approximately six yards. I think he just wanted to be sure I was really going. He dropped my bags and peered around the apartment, gazing in amazement at the walls of clothes. ‘What a load of junk!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s like the world’s biggest Oxfam shop. Boy, I’d hate to be the house-clearance company having to go through this lot when the old lady pops her clogs.’ I kept my smile fixed and level.

He told Ilaria, who knocked on my door the next day for news of Mrs De Witt, then asked me to take her some muffins she had baked. ‘The food in these hospitals would make you sick,’ she said, patted my arm, and left at a brisk trot before Dean Martin could bite her.

I heard Agnes playing the piano from across the hall, once a beautiful piece that sounded relaxed and melancholy, once something impassioned and anguished. I thought of the many times Mrs De Witt had hobbled across and furiously demanded an end to the noise. This time the music ended abruptly without her intervention, Agnes seemingly slamming her hands down on the keys. Occasionally I would hear raised voices, and it took me a few days to convince my body that my own adrenalin didn’t need to rise with them, that they no longer had anything to do with me.

I passed Mr Gopnik just once, in the main lobby. He didn’t see me, then performed a double-take, apparently primed to object to my presence there. I lifted my chin and held up the end of Dean Martin’s lead. ‘I’m helping Mrs De Witt with her dog,’ I said, with as much dignity as I could manage. He glanced down at Dean Martin, set his jaw, then turned away as if he hadn’t heard me. Michael, at his side, glanced at me, then turned back to his mobile phone.

Josh came on Friday night after work, bringing takeout and a bottle of wine. He was still in his suit – working late all week, he said. He and a colleague were competing for a promotion so he was there for fourteen hours a day, and planned to go in on Saturday too. He peered around the apartment, raising his eyebrows at the décor. ‘Well, dog-sitting was one job opening I certainly hadn’t considered,’ he observed, as Dean Martin trailed suspiciously at his heels. He walked around the living room slowly, picking up the onyx ashtray and the sinuous African-woman sculpture, putting them down, peering intently at the gilded artwork on the walls.

‘It wasn’t top of my list either.’ I laid a trail of doggy treats to the main bedroom and shut the little dog in until he’d calmed down. ‘But I’m really okay with it.’

‘So how you doing?’

‘Better!’ I said, heading to the kitchen. I had wanted to show Josh I was more than the scruffy, intermittently drunk jobseeker he had been meeting the past week so I had dressed up in my black Chanel-style dress with the white collar and cuffs and my emerald fake-crocodile Mary Janes, my hair sleek and blow-dried into a neat bob.

‘Well, you look cute,’ he said, following me. He put his bottle and bag on the side in the kitchen, then walked over to me, standing just a couple of inches away, so that his face filled my vision. ‘And, you know, not homeless. Which is always a good look.’

‘Temporarily, anyway.’

‘So does this mean you’ll be sticking around a little longer?’

‘Who knows?’

He was mere inches from me. I had a sudden sensory memory of burying my face in his neck a week previously.

‘You’re going pink, Louisa Clark.’

‘That’s because you’re extremely close to me.’

‘I do that to you?’ His voice dropped, his eyebrow lifted. He took a step closer, then put his hands on the worktop, at either side of my hips.

‘Apparently,’ I said, but it came out as almost a cough. And then he dropped his lips to mine and kissed me. He kissed me and I leant back against the kitchen units and closed my eyes, absorbing the mint taste of his mouth, the slightly strange feel of his body against mine, the unfamiliar hands closing over my own. I wondered if this was what it would have been like to kiss Will before his accident. And then I thought that I would never kiss Sam again. And then I thought that it was probably quite bad form to think about kissing other men when you had a perfectly nice one kissing you at that very moment. And I pulled my head back a little, and he stopped and looked into my eyes, trying to gauge what it meant.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s – it’s just all kind of soon. I really like you but –’

‘But you only just broke up with the other guy.’

‘Sam.’

‘Who is clearly an idiot. And not good enough for you.’

‘Josh …’

He let his forehead tip forward so that it rested against mine. I didn’t let go of his hand.

‘It just all feels a bit complicated still. I’m sorry.’

He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. ‘Would you tell me if I was wasting my time?’ he said.

‘You’re not wasting your time. It’s just … it was barely two weeks ago.’

‘There’s a lot that’s happened in those two weeks.’

‘Well, then, who knows where we’ll be in another two weeks?’

‘You said “we”.’

‘I suppose I did.’

He nodded, as if this were a satisfactory answer. ‘You know,’ he said, almost to himself, ‘I have a feeling about us, Louisa Clark. And I’m never wrong about these things.’

And then, before I could respond, he let go of my hand and walked over to the cupboards, opening and closing them in search of plates. When he turned round, his smile was brilliant. ‘Shall we eat?’

I learnt a lot about Josh that evening. I learnt about his Boston upbringing, the baseball career his half-Irish businessman father had made him give up because he felt that sport would not secure a long-lasting income. His mother, unusually among her peers, was an attorney who had held on to her job throughout his childhood and, in their retirement years, both his parents were adjusting to being in the house together. It was, apparently, driving them completely nuts. ‘We’re a family of doers, you know? So Dad has already taken on some executive role at the golf club and Mom is mentoring kids at the local high school. Anything so they don’t have to sit there looking at each other.’ He had two brothers, both older, one who ran a Mercedes dealership just outside Weymouth, Massachusetts, and another who was an accountant, like my sister. They were a close family, and competitive, and he had hated his brothers with the impotent fury of a tortured youngest sibling until they left home, after which he found he missed them with a gnawing and unexpected pain. ‘Mom says it was because I lost my yardstick, the thing I judged everything by.’

Both brothers were now married and settled with two kids apiece. The family converged for holidays and every summer rented the same house in Nantucket. In his teens he had resented it, but now it was a week he looked forward to more each year.

‘It’s great. The kids and the hanging out and the boat … You should come,’ he said, casually helping himself to more char siu bau. He talked without self-consciousness, a man used to things working out the way he wanted them to.

‘To a family thing? I thought men in New York were all about casual dating.’

‘Yeah, well, I’ve done all that. And, besides, I’m not from New York.’

He was a man who seemingly threw himself at everything. He worked a million hours a week, was hungry for promotion, and went to the gym before six a.m. He played baseball with the office team, and was thinking about volunteering to mentor at a local high school, like his mother did, but was worried that his work schedule meant he couldn’t commit to a regular time. He was shot through with the American dream, like a stick of rock – you worked hard, you succeeded and then you gave back. I tried not to keep drawing comparisons with Will. I listened to him and felt half admiring, half exhausted.

He drew a picture of his future in the air between us – an apartment in the Village, maybe a weekend place in the Hamptons if he could get his bonuses to the right level. He wanted a boat. He wanted kids. He wanted to retire early. He wanted to make a million dollars before he was thirty. He punctuated much of this talk with the waving of chopsticks and the phrase ‘You should come!’ or ‘You’d love it!’ and I was partly flattered, but mostly grateful that this implied he wasn’t offended by my earlier reticence.

He left at ten thirty, since he planned to get up at five, and we stood in the hallway by the front door, with Dean Martin on guard a few feet away.

‘So, are we going to be able to squeeze in lunch? What with the whole dog-and-hospital thing?’

‘We could perhaps see each other one evening?’

‘ “We could perhaps see each other one evening,” ’ he mimicked softly. ‘I love your English accent.’

‘I haven’t got an accent,’ I said. ‘You have.’

‘And you make me laugh. Not many girls make me laugh.’

‘Ah. Then you’ve just not met the right girls.’

‘Oh, I think I have.’ He stopped talking then, and looked up at the heavens, as if he were trying to prevent himself doing something. And then he smiled, as if acknowledging the slight ridiculousness of two adults nearing their thirties trying not to kiss in a doorway. And it was the smile that did it for me.

I reached up and touched the back of his neck, very lightly. And then I went up on tiptoe and kissed him. I told myself there was no point in dwelling on something that was gone. I told myself two weeks was certainly long enough to make a decision, especially when you had barely seen that other person for months beforehand and had pretty much been single anyway. I told myself I had to move on.

Josh didn’t hesitate. He kissed me back, his hands sliding slowly up my spine, manoeuvring me against the wall, so that I was pinned, pleasurably, against him. He kissed me and I made myself stop thinking and just give in to sensation, his unfamiliar body, narrower and slightly harder than the one I had known, the intensity of his mouth on mine. This handsome American. We were both a little dazed when we came up for air.

‘If I don’t go now …’ he said, stepping back, and blinked hard, raising his hand to the back of his neck.

I grinned. I suspected my lipstick was halfway across my face. ‘You have an early start. I’ll speak to you tomorrow.’ I opened the door and, with a last kiss on my cheek, he stepped out into the main corridor.

When I closed it, Dean Martin was still staring at me. ‘What?’ I said. ‘What? I’m single.’

He lowered his head in disgust, turned, and pottered towards the kitchen