The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl Read Free Page A

after quick breakfast and sex to see parents in Bournemouth. He didn’t invite me; I didn’t ask. Don’t want to impose when things are still relatively new. Every month in a long-distance affair is like a week in a normal one, so by that reckoning we’re not even at asking about each other’s careers yet.
    Also, I think I’ve learned my lesson from the Boy. Be the calm one, the collected one; be the cool girl. Don’t be the freaky oddball. When he says he’ll call, he’ll call. You have to trust a man sometimes.
    vendredi, le 17 septembre
    Dr C called late, to say he’d be back even later. I said fine, did he want someone to meet him at the train? That’s sweet, he said, but no, you keep the bed warm.
    I kept the bed warm reading, feeling very virtuous for not throwing a scene. We had so little time together, but what was more important was that we didn’t argue.
    Switched the light off some two hours after deciding that probably he couldn’t get to a phone to let me know he’d caught an even later train.
    Fell asleep certain he’d be home any minute.
    Just before dawn, heard someone try the door. I’d left it on the latch. Heard his soft steps on the stairs and rolled over in what I hoped was a sleepy yet sexy way.
    ‘I’m wiped,’ he said, throwing a black bag on the floor. ‘Absolute madness at my parents’. No wonder I left the country. You don’t mind if I crash for the next twelve hours, do you?’
    ‘Of course not, love,’ I said. Because it’s all about compromise.
    samedi, le 18 septembre
    A quiet day in. I asked Dr C if there was anywhere he wanted to go, maybe see some of the sights that have been built since he moved to America, like the London Eye?
    ‘Eugh, no thank you,’ he said. ‘Not really my sort of thing. I left the city for a reason, you know.’
    I didn’t know, not particularly. Sometimes he says things – nothing specific, just a way with a phrase – that make me think he’s been married once, maybe in London. But if so it probably wasn’t a good idea to ask. If he wanted to, he’d bring it up.
    Met N later for a meal. Chinese. Dr C made a flourish of picking up chopsticks instead of the fork. ‘No Chinese restaurant in California would even think of putting those on the table,’ he smirked. Unfortunately, it was a little lost on us, as N and I are both adepts. Particularly impressive in N, who had never even been to a Chinese before we met. You’d be surprised how motivated you can be to learn the correct method when you’re hungry.
    N and I chattered away about people we knew. Dr C turned to me and started a conversation about our mutual friend A2. Oh, yes, N knew him, too, and soon we were talking nineteen to the dozen. I noticed Dr C going quiet and pushing noodles round his plate.
    ‘Everything okay, darling?’ I asked when N went to the toilet.
    He squeezed my thigh under the table. ‘Just longing to get you home,’ he said. ‘I’m leaving tomorrow night.’
    He growled in my ear, a move that sent a shiver up my back. ‘We’ll make it quick,’ I said, squeezing his thigh, higher, harder.
    dimanche, le 19 septembre
    The morning was not spent, as I’d have preferred, nibbling on smoked salmon and enjoying the weekend papers. It was spent on an alarm set for stupid o’clock in the morning and an emergency shop for things he couldn’t get back in California (Marmite, and lime shower gel). But I was determined to enjoy every minute, smiling bravely as we negotiated the bus, Tube and then train to the airport. When he suggested – repeatedly – that maybe we should have arranged a car, I didn’t disagree. I waved him off (sexy embrace in front of security, check; goofy kissy faces from other side of barrier, check) and made my way home. It had been a good visit if a little brief.
    N came round, and as it was so late, I made supper for two. Nothing special – pasta, cream, mushrooms, asparagus. Wildly out of season but I find it so hard to resist,