She was off again. I picked up a bin liner and started flinging cans into it.

Later, in bed, I thought about Troy. I’d been surprised, indeed almost put out, when he’d touched my leg. But now I thought about it differently. I savoured the memory, replaying it again and again. The heat of his hand running up my bare skin, the leap of desire at the moment his finger had reached the top of my thigh and turned inwards. Again. His finger reaching the top of my thigh and turning inwards, his finger reaching the top of my thigh and turning inwards…

A dreamy weakness began to steal through me. I’ll take my chances, I thought. I’ve played it safe for too long. I will fall in love with him and he’s welcome to break my heart.

In that halfway state between waking and sleeping, my defences slipped for a moment and in rushed thoughts of Garv and Truffle Woman and their public displays of affection.

Immediately I thought of Troy.

‘Ha!’ I said to myself, with sleepy defiance.

19

It must have been all that talk of falling in love, because that night I had The Dream. I’d had it on and off since I’d been eighteen: maybe once a year, perhaps not even that often, and it was nearly always the same. I’d spot Shay Delaney in a crowded street and I’d start running and pushing, trying to catch up with him. Above the January-sales throng I’d see the back of his head, moving further and faster away from me, and I’d try to go quicker, but more and more people would get in the way, tangling themselves in my legs, tripping me up, blocking my path, until he was gone.

I used to wake up swollen with longing, dreamy with remembered love, irritable and snappy with Garv. For the entire day following the dream, these feelings would wrap themselves around me like a hangover, and it was only once they’d worn off that I worried about them. I hardly thought about Shay from one end of the year to the next, but did these dreams mean that I still loved him? That I didn’t love Garv?

Consolation came via an unexpected route: a science programme I watched one bored Sunday evening, maybe eight or nine years ago. It was about the earth’s relationship with the sun. The commentary said that even in the depths of winter, when our side of the earth is facing away from the sun, its draw is so powerful that we’re still pulled to it. Once in a while the cold side of the earth gets its way, which is why we sometimes get days of bizarre warmth and sunniness in the middle of February.

Maybe I’d misheard it, because when I thought about it properly it didn’t really make much sense, but it still operated as a consolation: a weight lifted from me and I understood that of course I loved Garv, but that there were times when I’d still be drawn back to Shay. It didn’t mean anything.

But this night the dream was different, because when it started it was Shay I was running after, but at some stage he became Garv. I ran as hard after Garv as I ever had done after Shay. It was so important to catch up with him, I was tender, sore with love for him – that giddy, lifting wonder of when we’d first fallen in love. I remembered, I felt it with such clarity. But he slipped through the crowds and my legs wouldn’t go fast enough, then he was gone. And I awoke with tears on my lashes, carrying years’ worth of loss.

In the sunny kitchen, Emily was already up and hyper with it. ‘I’ve been awake since six,’ she announced. ‘Waiting for that phone to ring!’

Oh, right, news of her pitch. The dream was still with me, so I was finding it hard to be present in the here and now. I was like a badly tuned radio which was picking up two frequencies. One in the foreground, another more ghostly one fading in and out in the background.

‘But it’s only nine now,’ seemed to be the right thing to say. ‘They’re hardly likely to be at work.’

‘Lazy, LAZY bastards! Anyway, Mort has David’s home number – he could have called him last night or early this morning, if he was very keen. Every second that passes without news is another nail in the coffin.’

‘You’re being overdramatic. Is there any coffee?’

Two mugs of muscular coffee managed to shake away some of the wraiths that were wrapped around my mood, and life came into clearer focus.

‘This place doesn’t look bad, considering we had thirty people here last night, drinking their heads off. You’d hardly know.’

‘Yeah,’ said Emily. ‘Apart from the souvenir on our couch.’

Oh cripes! A cigarette burn? Or had someone puked? Had anyone been that drunk? Could have been a bulimic, mind you.

‘Worse,’ Emily said. ‘It’s Ethan. I don’t know how we missed him last night. I’ve already tried waking him up and he growled at me like a dog. Little prick.’

Sure enough, Ethan was curled up on the couch, clutching his penknife between his paw-like hands, five o’clock shadow bristling on his skull. In slumber his goateed, bemetalled face was sweet.

‘That boy needs to get home to shave his head. Give him a kick,’ Emily urged.

‘Couldn’t we just shake him?’

‘More fun to kick him.’

‘OK.’ I tried a tentative jab on his shin, but he shifted and muttered something about nailing my motherfucking head to the table.

I looked enquiringly at Emily. ‘Best leave him for a while,’ we agreed over-enthusiastically. ‘A young man needs his sleep. More coffee.’ We headed back to the kitchen.

On top of the fridge was an open bottle of white wine that we’d missed in last night’s clear-up. I noticed that a cork was still wound around the corkscrew. That could be used to seal the bottle for later.

‘Pass me the sesame,’ I said to Emily.

A long stare from Emily, and a bottle of sesame oil arrived in front of me. I looked at it, realized what I’d done, and saw that she was already subjecting me to an are-you-quite-sane examination.

‘What d’you want sesame oil for? To stir-fry your raisin bran?’

‘Ah no, I meant can you pass me the corkscrew.’

‘That’s not what you said. You said “sesame”. Unless I’m going mad, and I’m really not in the mood for that.’

I contemplated lying – it’d be easy enough to convince her she was halfway around the bend – but saw how unkind that would be. ‘It’s just a word. That Garv and I used to say,’ I explained, awkwardly. ‘When we opened a bottle of wine, we’d say “Open Sesame”. So the corkscrew got called “sesame”. I’m sorry, I forgot.’