CHAPTER 12
I was still awake at two in the morning, sore where it counted, Larinda pushed up against me making snuffling noises in her sleep. The bedding was seriously in need of laundering.

I couldn’t carry on like this. At some point Von would be bound to discover what I was doing, and that wouldn’t be fair on her. Then there was Larinda herself. The sex itself was the problem, but it wasn’t the old cliché of wearing me out, the failings of age; it was the simple fact that at some point the excitement of her presence would become overridden by my revulsion for what I was actually doing. What she seemed to adore was something I had never wanted to do anything with beyond losing it.

She had reacted to my clean shave with a raised eyebrow.

“Well, now. That makes a change, won’t tickle so much when you do the dirty down below, but you are going to have to make sure you have a good shave, not getting stubble burn down there!”

“Don’t worry, I’ll deal with that”

Indeed I would. I was already listing places for electrolysis. My internet browsing my mood swings: one moment I would be checking the pharmacopoeia, the next it was sites in London for hair removal. Terribly confusing, it sounds, but I had rationalised a sort of plan for my future. The exit plan remained, I would do all I could to get a clean and painless departure ready, but I would hold fire on it until I gave the medics a chance to show me as many alternatives as they could. If there was nothing that would work, then I still had the alternative doorway.

Larinda stirred in her sleep, and her hand went straight to that part of me. I had nothing left, just then, and I lay on my back in her warmth and smell. She woke me half an hour before the alarm, in her favourite way, and we enjoyed a moment of warmth and closeness, not speaking, just cuddling, until it went off.

I had laid in some bits and pieces on the way back from work, so I was able to give her some toast and cereal between showering and heading to the station. She inspected my face over breakfast.

“You’re going for it, aren’t you?”

I looked down at my plate. “Yes, I think so. I can’t carry on like this, pet. One way or another, it has to change"

“Looks like I’m going to have to get my money’s worth while I can, then!”

“Not this morning you won’t, got nowt left”

She reached across to take my hand. “No, silly, not just that, though I will be getting as much as you can give if…look, you don’t think I’m just here for the shagging, do you? Shit, you do want me here, yourself, you know, for me, and not just, well, IT?”

I gave her my best smile, and it came easily and naturally.

“Not at all. I mean, IT is all very nice, but you were right, the first time we met, we can talk, and I needed that. It’s all very odd; you know my deepest secret, and you just go ‘Yeah, and, whatever’ and carry on as normal. How could I not want that?”

“Well, you don’t do so bad yourself, Rob. Most blokes would get pissed off sharpish with me going on and on about my old feller, but you listen, and I know you listen cause you ask proper questions about it, yeah?”

“I’m not most blokes, though, am I? I’m not a bloke at all, really”

She actually smiled at that. “Yeah, more I talk to you, more I can see it. Slike what I said about me talking about the ex, a bloke would be different”

“What way?”

“Well, a man would go ‘yeah, I know what you mean, had a bird do that to me once’ and then tell his story. Like it’s a competition”

“Yes, but men don’t mean it like that, it’s their way of showing they understand”

“Oh, I get that, but sometimes all a girl really wants is ‘oh, poor you’ and a chance to get it off her whatsit, chest”

She looked hard at me again. “Is that what you want? Tits?”

I swallowed hard. “Yeah, for starters, I suppose so. It’s much more, I don’t know, all over than that. Look, it’s confusing, it’s frustrating; I watch a girl walk away from me and with one half of my mind I’m thinking ‘lovely arse’ and feeling randy, and with the other half I’m jealous as all hell. I don’t just want to shag her, I want to BE her”

“You are going to stop shagging me, though”

I squeezed her hand. Her tone was resigned rather than sad.

“No, pet, I don’t think I’m ever going to stop wanting to shag you. You are the most shaggable woman I have ever, well, shagged. It’s just, how I will want to do it that’s awkward. After a while, the bit that’s me, me in the core, yeah, it starts to shut out the sort of meat responses, and then it all sort of goes away. But that’s just , you know, that bit. There’s other things apart from that”

She suddenly grinned again. “Yeah, now the beard’s gone it’ll be twice as nice! Come on, time for the train soon. Ro…Jill, you got room among your dresses for some of mine? I know they’ll be safe, cause you is the wrong size!”

“Putting a marker down, like?”

“Sort of, but more common sense. If I am going to kip here on a regular basis I am going to need some basics, yeah? For example, I’m due on next weekend, and that’s one thing you ain’t ever going to need”

Once more, the serious face. “Look, Jill, Rob, I don’t know what the hell is going to happen here, right? I just know, well, it’s early days, yeah, we only just met, and we seem to have spent most of the time shagging, but the rest of the time’s been talk, real talk, and you just, I dunno, click with everything in me. If we end up nothing more than girlfriends, if that’s where you go, then fuck it, I’m still ahead on what I had, yeah? But…”

There was a pause, and then a pained expression. “Do you really have to get it cut off?”

“Well, I don’t believe they do that, it’s more taking the middle out and flipping it inside itself and”

“Ugh, too much info, not at breakfast! Come on, scrub my back and I’ll do yours”

Off we went, clean without and in my case empty within, and as I left her at the station I promised to call her with a date for a meeting with Rachel. I made sure I packed two spare tubes, and I took my bag and a padlock for the zip.

Two more visits that day, one an Indian corner shop where the daughter had to translate the more difficult concepts but they insisted that I had a plate of lamb samosas with the cup of tea that was more traditional. I smiled at the daughter, only seventeen years old.

“I don’t know why, but even though most people prefer tea, it’s almost always coffee they give me. This is good”

“Best Assam, Mister Carter, best tea in the world. Dad says it’s best thing to come out of India since the Raj did”

I caught the wink from her old man then, and it was just part of one of the best mornings I had ever spent at work. A pity about the afternoon trip, who turned out to want to lecture me at length on the wastefulness of employing armies of little men like me to interfere with his overwhelmingly important role in creating wealth for the nation. I had to bite my tongue several times, especially when I spotted the small dictation machine he slipped into a pocket, and I just contented myself by imagining him and MAC in the same car crusher. Then I realised what he was doing to his credit card bills.

“Mr Soames, why do you calculate your input tax in this way?”

“I will claim it how I choose”

“And if you do so, I will take a large part of it back, Mr Soames. You cannot simply take 17.5% of the total expenditure as it already includes VAT. This notice explains how to work it out. There are also items on the bill that are not for business, or do not include VAT, such as the interest”

“Why can I not reclaim the VAT on the interest?”

“Because there is no VAT on it. Also, just to take one example, what is this?”

“A conference”

“On what, Mr Soames? I tracked down the relevant purchase invoice. What sort of conference was held at a country hotel and involved a double room and spa treatments?”

“Can you keep your voice down, Mr Carter, my wife is in the next room”

“Ah. Can you pass me the tape from that machine in your pocket? Thank you. I will send you a letter detailing the queries I am raising, Mr Soames, so if I were you I would make sure you open your own mail. Happy wealth creating and good day”

Arsehole.

I caught Rachel in the kitchen again, and I realised she must watch for me as I came in.

“What did she say?”

“How do you know I spoke to her?”

“Oh come on, Jill, I can spot the shagged-to-death look on you from a mile off, yeah? She was all over you last night again, wasn’t she?”

“Er…”

“So did you ask her?”

“Aye, I did, and she’s up for a natter”

“OK, we’ll compare calendars. Where at?”

“Oh, probably up at Croydon. Look, I’m going to see about flying up to see Mam in a week or two. Leave it till after, aye?”

“Makes sense. You going to tell her?”

Deep breath, and then an answer that covered almost all of my life to date,

“Rach, I just don’t know”