Because She Loves Me Read Free Page A

mate,’ Charlie said, ‘you might be interested to learn that while you were in the loo, your bird here had a good look through your phone. Checking your texts, by the look of it. Doesn’t trust you – and who can blame her?’
    ‘You what?’
    The man and woman glared at each other.
    Charlie swallowed the dregs of her wine, grabbed my wrist and said, ‘Let’s go.’
    As we left the pub, she turned back. ‘You can stick your bloody table up your collective arse.’
    We ran out into the street, Charlie laughing and wiping her eyes. ‘ Collective arse ? What the hell was that?’
    ‘Oh my God,’ I said, panting. ‘Are you always like that?’
    It was freezing outside and she exhaled mist as she spoke. ‘No, I’m usually a pussy cat. I haven’t scared you off, have I?’
    The truth was, I’d found it mortifyingly embarrassing, but also exciting. ‘No.’
    ‘Good. What do you want to do now? Actually, I want to get out of these clothes.’ She laughed. ‘You should see your face. I mean, I want to get changed, Andrew. These are Charlotte clothes. I need to get into some Charlie stuff.’
    She hailed a black cab and instructed the driver to take us to Oxford Street. She led me into the huge Top Shop and immediately started rummaging through the clothes racks.
    With arms full of tops and trousers and skirts, she strode over to the changing rooms. For a moment, I thought she was going to ask me to follow her in, but she looked me up and down and said, ‘Do you want to get some new stuff too? Have you got any money?’
    ‘Yeah. OK.’
    This was fun. I rode the escalator to the next floor and found a new pair of jeans and a party shirt. I paid for them then went into the changing room where I tore off the labels and put them on. With my scruffy old clothes in a carrier bag, I went back downstairs to find Charlie, who had done the same as me. Now, she was wearing a tight-fitting snakeskin dress that shimmered gold and green.
    ‘Not bad,’ she said, looking me up and down.
    ‘You look . . . amazing,’ I said.
    ‘Thanks. Actually, you look better than not bad, but I didn’t want to stroke your ego.’
    ‘I don’t have an ego.’
    She raised an eyebrow. ‘Everyone has an ego, Andrew.’
    She was right. It thrilled me to hear her say I looked good.
    She grabbed a bottle of perfume and gave herself, and me, a quick squirt as we left the shop. We headed up Oxford Street and into Soho. I wanted to take her hand but didn’t dare. Actually, what I really wanted to do was grab her and push her into a shop doorway, pull her against me and feel her mouth on mine.
    Instead, we went into a bar where we drank cocktails, then another bar, and then a walk through air so cold it almost sobered me up, to Leicester Square and a club, the name of which escapes me now but which was so loud it made my ears ring for a day afterwards, the drinks ludicrously expensive, the dance floor crowded and sticky underfoot, the toilets full of wankers snorting coke . . . But none of that mattered. I was drunk, I was high on Charlie’s company and I felt as if I was floating through the crowds of revellers.
    There was a moment on the dance floor that will stay with me forever. A Calvin Harris track was playing, and Charlie was dancing in front of me, holding my gaze and smiling as she swung her hips and shoulders, the lights pulsing and throbbing, and I was aware, even as I lived it, that this was going to be one of the highlights of my life. When I was old this song would come on the radio and I would be thrown back in time to this golden moment, when I was young and dancing with a beautiful woman in the greatest city in the world and all my troubles were behind me and my life stretching in front of me. Then I stopped analysing the moment and melted into it.
    We tumbled out of the club at two a.m. into the bitterly cold night. I put my arm around her and she didn’t protest. Her hip was bony and solid in my palm. I still hadn’t