I widen my eyes. I can’t imagine not knowing any more than that about my father, but Leon says it like it’s nothing. He clocks my expression and shrugs.

‘It’s just never been a thing for me. Finding out more about him. It bothered Richie in his teens, but don’t know where he got with it – we don’t talk about it.’

It feels like there’s more to be said there, but I don’t want to push him and ruin the evening. I reach across and lay my hand on his wrist for a moment; he shoots me another surprised, curious look. The waiter drifts closer, perhaps sensing that our aimless conversation is unlikely to move anywhere else if he doesn’t do something to nudge things along. He starts clearing the last bits and pieces from our table; I belatedly take my hand from Leon’s wrist.

‘We should go to bed, shouldn’t we?’ I say.

‘Probably,’ Leon says. ‘Is Babs still about?’ he asks the waiter.

He shakes his head. ‘She went home.’

‘Ah. Did she say which room was mine? She said Tiffy and I could stay over.’

The waiter looks at me, then Leon, then me again.

‘Err,’ he says. ‘I think . . . she assumed . . . you were . . .’

It takes Leon a while to clock the issue. When he realises, he groans and facepalms.

‘It’s all right,’ I say, getting the giggles again, ‘we’re used to sharing a bed.’

‘Right,’ says the waiter, looking between us again, more puzzled than ever. ‘Well. That’s good then?’

‘Not at the same time,’ Leon tells him. ‘We share a bed at different times.’

‘Right,’ the waiter repeats. ‘Well, err, shall I . . .? Do you need me to do something?’

Leon waves a hand good-naturedly. ‘No, you go home,’ he says. ‘I’ll just sleep on the floor.’

‘It’s a big bed,’ I tell him. ‘It’s fine – we can just share.’

I let out a yelp – I’d been way too ambitious with trying to put weight on my sprained ankle as I get up from the table. Leon is at my side in an instant. He has very fast reactions for a man who has consumed quite a lot of whisky.

‘I’m OK,’ I tell him, but I let him put his arm around me to help support me as I hop-walk. After a certain amount of that, when we get to the stairs, he says, ‘Feck it,’ and picks me up again to carry me.

I shriek in surprise and then burst out laughing. I don’t tell him to put me down – I don’t want him to. Again I see the polished bannister and quirky pictures in their curly gilt frames sliding by as he jogs me up the stairs; again he opens the door to my room – our room – with his elbow and carries me through the doorway, kicking the door shut again behind him.

He lays me on the bed. The room is almost dark, the light from the streetlamp outside the window casting soft yellow triangles across the duvet and running gold through Leon’s hair. His big, brown eyes stare down at me, his face only inches from mine as he gently takes his arm from underneath me to settle my head on the pillows.

He doesn’t move. We stare at one another, our gazes locked, just a breath or two between us. The moment hangs taut, charged with possibility. A little flicker of panic sparks somewhere in the back of my mind – what if I can’t do this without freaking out? – but I’m aching for him to kiss me, and the panic flickers out again, blissfully forgotten. I can feel Leon’s breath on my lips, see his eyelashes in the half-light.

Then he closes his eyes and pulls back, turning his head aside with a quick sigh as if he was holding his breath.

Oof. I pull back too, suddenly uncertain, and that taut silence between us breaks. Did I . . . misread that whole gazes-locked, staring-at-each-other, lips-almost-touching thing?

My skin’s hot, my pulse fluttering. He glances back at me; there’s still heat in his eyes and a little frown between his eyebrows. I’m sure he was thinking about kissing me. Maybe I did something wrong – I’m a little out of practice with all this, after all. Or maybe the Justin curse has stretched to ruining kisses before they even begin.

Leon lies back on the bed; he’s looking miserably awkward, and as he fidgets with his shirt I wonder if I should take the lead and kiss him, just press myself up beside him and turn his face towards mine. But what if I’ve misunderstood the situation and this is one of those times when I should just let things drop?

I lie down carefully beside him. ‘We should probably go to sleep?’ I say.

‘Yeah.’ His voice is low and quiet.

I clear my throat. Well, I guess that’s that then.

He shifts a little. His arm brushes mine; my skin turns goosebumpy. I hear him breathe in as we touch, just a quiet huff of startlement, and then he’s up, heading for the bathroom, and I’m left here with my goosebumps and my heart fluttering, staring at the ceiling.

44

   Leon

Her breathing slows. Risk a sideways glance at her; can just make out the soft fluttering of her eyelids as she dreams. She’s asleep, then. I breathe out slowly, trying to relax.

Really, really hope I have not messed this up.

It was very out of character for me, picking her up like that, lying her down on the bed. It just seemed like . . . I don’t know. Tiffy is so impulsive it’s contagious. But then, of course, am still me, so impulsiveness ran out at potentially crucial moment, to be replaced by familiar, panicked indecision. She’s drunk and injured – you don’t kiss drunk injured women. Do you? Maybe you do. Maybe she wanted that?

Richie gets the reputation for being the romantic, but it’s always been me. He used to call me a pussy when we were teenagers, him chasing anything that’d give him so much as a look, me pining after the girl I’d fancied since primary school and been too scared to talk to. I’ve always been the one who thinks before they fall – though both of us fall just as hard.

I swallow. Think of the feeling of Tiffy’s arm pressed against mine, how the hairs on my forearm stood on end at the merest brush of her skin. Stare at the ceiling. Realise belatedly that curtains are still open, streetlight streaming in to light our room in ribbons.

As I lie there, thinking, watching the light move across the floor, it comes to me slowly that I haven’t been in love with Kay for a very long time. Loved her, felt close to her, liked her being part of my life. That was safe and easy. But I had forgotten the blazing can’t-think-of-anything-else madness of these early days of meeting someone. There wasn’t even a spark of that left with Kay for the last . . . year, maybe, even?

I look across at Tiffy again, her eyelashes casting shadows on her cheeks, and think back to what she’s told me about Justin. Notes made me feel he wasn’t especially good to her – why did she have to pay back that money all of a sudden? But nothing as alarming as what she’d said on the train. But then, as much as they were significant to me, they were just notes. Easier to lie to yourself in writing and for nobody to spot it.