impending date was the talk of the correspondence team for the rest of the week. On Wednesday, Uzo sent me a link to an article about depilation and advised me not to use expensive new face products in the run-up to the date in case they irritated my skin. ‘I’m not going to make that much of an effort,’ I told her. ‘I’m not desperate.’ Uzo gave me a look that clearly meant, ‘You should be.’
And as I was getting ready to leave on Friday, Owen decided to give me some first date advice. ‘Ask him which three bands sum up his taste in music,’ he said. ‘Or what his childhood nickname was. If you get him to talk about himself, he’ll think you’re a good listener.’
‘You Googled “conversation starters” before your first date with Laura, didn’t you?’ I asked.
‘No!’ he said. ‘I just happened to read an article about them in Men’s Health.’
The idea of Owen reading Men’s Health made Uzo snort so loudly that Smriti came out of her office to see if anything was wrong.
‘Text us and let us know how it’s going, yeah?’ said Uzo, as I shut down my computer.
‘I am not going to text you in the middle of my date,’ I said. ‘Unless it’s really bad and I need someone to come and rescue me.’
‘I hope you don’t,’ said Owen.
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Me too.’
I met Finn outside the BFI. It was my idea to go there; if he turned out to be incredibly unattractive or boring, at least I’d have seen one more Derek Jarman film, which would give me something to talk to my dad about.
I stood at the entrance, eavesdropping on a conversation between two women smoking at an outdoor table, coats clutched close against the cold.
‘Michelle did it with Joe last night.’
‘She never!’
‘I know! Apparently he asked her to piss on him.’
I felt a bit sick all of a sudden. Maybe the rules of sex had changed since my encounter with the twenty-one-year-old. What if Finn wanted me to piss on him, but I had performance anxiety or an empty bladder?
I took out my book, a collection of essays by Nora Ephron, but I couldn’t concentrate. I read the same sentence three or four times: Never marry a man you wouldn’t want to be divorced from.
I glanced up, looking for Finn. Would he recognize me? I was pretty certain I’d have no idea who he was. I tried to remember if he had any distinguishing characteristics. Nice reddish hair, according to Alice. Abrasive stubble. A distinctive unwashed smell.
I looked back down at my book. Never marry a man you wouldn’t want to be divorced from, I read again. I was getting a bit ahead of myself.
And then there he was, calling to me.
‘Julia!’
It felt like he was giving me a compliment just by saying my name in his malty, barrel-aged voice. He walked towards me, hands in his pockets, hips thrust forward, smiling. He leaned in to kiss me; he was wearing cologne. He’d made an effort. This was promising.
‘How are you, then?’ I said.
‘Not bad, not bad,’ he said, looking at me and smiling. ‘I’ve been thinking about you all week.’
‘Me too. You, I mean.’ I really was very bad at this.
He didn’t reply. He just grabbed my hand and led me into the cinema. It was so nice to feel that I belonged to someone.
We sat right at the back with our knees pressed up against the seats in front, like teenagers on the bus to school. I’d smuggled in a bag of Maltesers and he had a hip flask full of whisky – a delicious combination.
The film seemed to go on forever. I couldn’t follow the plot, which might have been because there wasn’t one, but I’m going to give Jarman the benefit of the doubt here. I couldn’t concentrate on anything except the fact that I was on a date with a man, a man who was sitting next to me, a man who had his actual hand on my actual knee. I’ve never been much good at mindfulness but I was fully present in that moment. I remember the way the seat fabric felt through my trousers; the sound of Finn’s breathing, so close to me; the musty, sweet smell of popcorn and other people’s perfume. My body seemed to be one throbbing nerve ending.
After about an hour, Finn looked across at me and said, ‘Is it me, like, or is this film a load of shite?’
‘I don’t think it’s you,’ I said. I smiled to myself: we agreed about something. We had something in common already.
Finn put his arm around me and pulled me closer. I put my head on his shoulder as an experiment. He put his head on mine. I began to get a crick in my neck. The film wasn’t any better from a ninety- degree angle.
On the screen, some punks were getting beaten up by the police, which was probably the most exciting bit of the whole film. I’m not sure, though, because by this point I was looking into Finn’s eyes, and he was staring into mine. His eyes were green when the light from the screen flashed bright across them, then brown. And then he closed them and I closed mine and we were all over each other, hands up each other’s T-shirts, leaning over the armrests to get closer, ignoring stares and disapproving tuts from the other cinemagoers.
We pulled apart and grinned at each other. ‘Want to get out of here?’ Finn said.
We practically ran back to the Tube station and stood all the way to Leyton, kissing messily. I felt reckless for the first time in ages – reckless, at least, in a way that didn’t just involve spending the last of my overdraft on two bottles of corner-shop wine and drinking them both myself.
The teenagers opposite us laughed at us openly. ‘Ooooh, you’re going to fuck. You haven’t fucked yet, have you?’
The youth of today are very observant, I thought. And yes, I fucking well hope I’m fucking going to fuck. I felt like I might explode. Nothing seemed to matter any more except coming, coming in the presence of another human being, being made to come by someone else.
We nearly missed our stop. We lurched out of the Tube carriage onto the platform and the abrupt change from warmth to cold made me self-conscious all of a sudden. It felt like coming down from MDMA and realizing you’re sitting in a cat basket, stroking a stranger’s face.
‘How far is it to yours?’ I asked, as we tapped our Oyster cards on the exit gates.
‘About fifteen minutes,’ he said.
I nodded. ‘Cool,’ I said.
He nodded back.
As we walked, I became increasingly aware of the echoing of our feet on the pavement and of Finn’s hand in mine, large, dry, unfamiliar. Increasingly aware that I knew nothing about this man other than his first name and that he had unpredictable grooming habits. I considered texting Alice to let her know where the police should look for me if I didn’t arrive home the next day, but I didn’t want to break what remained of the pre-sex atmosphere with the light from the screen. At last he slowed, stopping in front of an unremarkable Victorian terraced house.
‘This
