Category: IST

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“Can I take you for a drink?” I typed. “Not a booking. No money, no agency. Just a drink. Like normal people.”

The dots went for a long time.

“Normal people who’ve seen each other in a doorway at 9pm with an envelope of cash?”

“Yes. Those normal people.”

“Saturday. The Marble Arch. 7pm. If you’re late I’m leaving.”

I was early. Forty minutes early. She was ten minutes late on purpose, she told me afterwards, because she’d wanted to see if I’d wait. She wore jeans and a green jumper and her curls were piled on her head, and she looked so like the girl from the barbecues and so unlike the woman on my doorstep that my brain kept short-circuiting.

We talked for four hours. About everything except the doorstep. Then, at last orders, with her third gin and my fourth pint, about the doorstep, and we laughed so loudly the barman looked over.

“I thought you’d never speak to me again,” she said.

“I thought you’d think I was a creep.”

“You booked a woman who likes old films and honest men.” She smiled into her glass. “That’s not creepy. That’s kind of adorable.”

Outside on the pavement it was raining. She stood under my umbrella, very close, and looked up at me.

“I’m literally two streets from here,” she said.

→ I kiss her under the umbrella

→ I walk her to her door and say goodnight

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“Maybe we should keep it professional,” I said. “For both our sakes. Otherwise it gets complicated. Gemma, Christmas, all of it.”

Tess nodded slowly. “That’s sensible.” She didn’t sound like she thought it was sensible. She sounded a tiny bit hurt, and was hiding it, and doing a very good job.

“Not because I don’t like you,” I added quickly. “Because I do.”

“Ben. Stop talking.” But she was smiling. She stood up, smoothed down her dress, and became somebody slightly different: straighter, more confident, the version of her I imagined other men got. “Right. Professional. Then here’s how professional works.”

She walked to the kitchen counter, picked up the envelope and weighed it in her palm. Then she put it down again without opening it.

“I’ll tell you what I’m comfortable with,” she said, “and you tell me what you’d like, and we meet in the middle. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“I’m comfortable with most things. Not kissing on the mouth, because that’s personal, and we’ve just agreed this isn’t.” Her eyes flicked to my lips and away. “Anything else, you can ask.”

My mouth was very dry.

The envelope sat between us on the counter like a third person in the room. I realised I had no idea whether she was going to take it.

→ I push the envelope towards her and insist she takes it

→ I ask her, very politely, for just her mouth

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“Promise me first,” I said. “That it stays between us. Not just Gemma. Everyone. I’ll promise too.”

Tess held out her little finger, completely seriously. “Pinky promise. Like when we were kids and you swore not to tell your mum I’d broken the greenhouse.”

I hooked my little finger round hers. “I never told.”

“I know. That’s why I trust you.” She didn’t let go of my finger. She used it to pull me closer. “Nobody. Not Gemma, not your mates, not my agency, not your diary.”

“I don’t have a diary.”

“Liar.” She kissed my jaw. “This is ours.”

Something about the word ours went straight through me. She felt it, I think. She smiled against my skin and slid her hands under my shirt, her palms cool on my stomach.

“Here’s a confession, since we’re doing secrets,” she murmured. “I’ve been thinking about this since I saw your face on the doorstep. Not the job. You.”

She stepped back and unzipped her dress and let it fall. Black lace, curves, a little tattoo of a swallow on her hip that I definitely hadn’t seen at any barbecue.

“Now,” she said, eyes sparkling. “I could just give you exactly what you paid for. Or I could make you wait for it. Really, really wait.”

→ I let her make me wait

→ I ask if I can see her again after tonight

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I took the plate. I said thank you. I said goodnight.

“Seriously?” Tess said.

“I just think it’s complicated. With Gemma. And the job. And the whole doorstep thing.”

She looked at me for a long moment, snow in her curls, red coat, pink nose. Then she nodded, slowly.

“Okay,” she said. “Your loss, Ben Hartley.”

She walked off down the corridor. I closed the door. I ate the leftovers standing up at the counter. They were delicious. Mum’s stuffing is always delicious. I didn’t taste any of it.

At New Year, Gemma had a party. Tess was there, in a silver dress that made every man in the room forget his own name. She was perfectly friendly to me. Perfectly polite. She danced with a tall guy called Viktor, thirty-four, who worked in finance and laughed at everything he said.

At midnight, when everyone kissed, she kissed Viktor.

At ten past midnight, she walked past me on the way to the kitchen, leaned in very close and whispered in my ear.

“For the record,” she said. “I’d have stayed the night.”

Then she went back to Viktor.

I went home at one. I ate the last of the cold trifle. I have never in my life regretted a plate of leftovers so much.

Ending 16 of 16: Cold Turkey. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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“I noticed you too,” I said. “At Gemma’s twenty-fifth. You wore a yellow dress and danced to Abba with my dad. I thought about you for a month. I told myself it was weird because you were Gemma’s friend.”

Tess put her wine down very carefully.

“Ben,” she said. “That’s not fair.”

“Why not?”

“Because now this isn’t a booking anymore.” She looked at the envelope on the counter, still sealed. “This is something else.”

I kissed her. Or she kissed me. It was hard to tell, afterwards. It was soft and then not soft at all, her hands in my hair, my hand on the warm curve of her waist, years of barbecue glances landing all at once. She pulled me down onto the sofa and climbed into my lap and kissed me like she’d been saving it up.

“I’m not charging you,” she breathed against my mouth. “Just so you know. Not for this.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it. If you try and give me that envelope I’ll hit you with it.”

I slid my hands up her thighs under the black dress. She moaned softly and rocked against me.

Then my phone buzzed on the coffee table. And again. And again.

GEMMA, said the screen. Then a message preview: “Are you up?? Need to tell you something about Tess.”

Tess saw it. We both froze.

→ I turn the phone face down and tell Tess it’s just us tonight

→ I pick up the phone and reply to Gemma

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I went and sat next to her on the sofa.

“Hi,” I said quietly, under the noise of Dad trying to work the karaoke machine.

“Hi,” she said. Her knee was touching mine. “Open yours first. Please. Before I die.”

I unwrapped the little box. Inside was a single business card, matte black, with nothing on it but a phone number and a hand-drawn little red heart.

On the back she’d written: This one doesn’t go to the agency. No envelope required. T x

I looked at her. She was bright pink.

“Your turn,” I managed.

She opened my present. It was a pair of fluffy socks. I had panic-bought them at a petrol station.

She burst out laughing. “Socks. Ben. I give you my private number and you give me socks.”

“They’re very good socks.”

“They’re hideous.” But she was smiling.

Later, while Gemma made everyone sing Fairytale of New York, Tess caught my eye and tilted her head towards the hallway. I followed her out. She pulled me into my parents’ utility room, pushed me against the tumble dryer, and kissed me hard, her hand sliding inside my jeans and stroking me until I had to bite my own fist.

“Merry Christmas,” she whispered, letting go.

She walked back to the living room wearing the hideous socks.

Ending 14 of 16: Secret Santa. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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“Come in,” I said. “Please.”

She came in. She put the plate of leftovers on my counter. Then she took her red coat off, and her scarf, and her jumper, and kept going, standing in my kitchen with snow melting in her hair, until she was down to a pair of Christmas pants with puddings on them.

“These were a joke present from Gemma,” she said, scarlet. “I did not plan this.”

I kissed her. She tasted of mulled wine and cold air. I picked her up and she wrapped her legs round me and I carried her to my bed, still in my dressing gown, both of us laughing.

There was no envelope. No rules except the important ones. She rolled a condom onto me herself and pulled me inside her, and we went slowly, so slowly, foreheads pressed together, the snow falling outside the window. She came with a soft cry and her nails in my back. I came with her.

Later we ate Mum’s leftover turkey in bed, cold, with our fingers. Then the trifle. She fed me a spoonful and licked the custard off my chin and that turned into round two, faster and messier and far louder.

At midnight Gemma texted us both. “Is he alive?”

Tess texted back from my pillow. “Very.”

“Good. Say happy Christmas from me x”

Tess put the phone down and grinned. “Happy Christmas, Ben.”

Ending 15 of 16: Leftovers. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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“I’d rather wait for Tess,” I typed.

There was a very long pause.

“Wait for her to do what?”

“Whatever she wants. Coffee. A walk. Nothing. I’m not paying Tess. I’ll wait for Tess.”

The dots appeared and disappeared six times.

“Okay,” she wrote at last. “That’s annoyingly lovely. Give me a while. I need to think about it, and I’m going to Lanzarote with Gemma for a week, and I can’t think about you while I’m lying next to your sister by a pool.”

“Fair.”

She went to Lanzarote. Gemma posted photos. Tess in a white bikini, laughing on a lilo. I looked at that photo far more than was reasonable.

On the last night of the holiday, at two in the morning, my phone buzzed. One photo, from Tess. Just her bare feet on a hotel balcony at sunset, and her painted toenails.

“Thinking,” she wrote.

The next night: a photo of a cocktail. “Still thinking.”

The night after that, back in Manchester: a photo of her front door, open. “Done thinking. Saturday. Bring wine. Do not bring an envelope.”

I read it twelve times.

I bought three bottles of wine, just in case. And on Saturday, at seven, I knocked on her door.

Ending 12 of 16: Rain Check. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I avoided her for the rest of Christmas. It was a feat of tactical engineering.

I volunteered to do all the washing up. I took the dog for a walk in the dark that lasted ninety minutes. I hid in the downstairs loo during charades. When Gemma made us all play Monopoly, I bankrupted myself on purpose in eleven minutes so I could go to bed.

Tess, to be fair, was doing the same. Every time I walked into a room she walked out of it. At one point we both tried to leave the kitchen through the same door at the same time and did a little dance for about ten seconds while my mum watched with narrowed eyes.

My Secret Santa present to her, which I’d bought in a panic, was a scented candle. Hers to me was a mug that said WORLD’S OKAYEST BROTHER. I didn’t know whether that was a dig.

On Boxing Day morning, as I was loading my bag into the car, Mum came out in her slippers.

“What did you do to that poor girl?” she said.

“Nothing!”

“She’s been looking at you all Christmas like a lost puppy, and you’ve been running away from her like she’s got the plague.” She folded her arms. “Your father and I met at his sister’s wedding, you know. She was my best friend.”

She went back inside.

I sat in the car for a long time.

Ending 13 of 16: Silent Night. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I walked her to her door. All two streets of it, under one umbrella, our shoulders bumping.

On her doorstep she turned round and looked up at me.

“You’re not going to kiss me, are you?” she said.

“I want to,” I said. “God, I want to. But I’ve had four pints and you’ve had three gins and you’re Gemma’s best friend and last week I tried to pay you. I want to do this properly. If we do it at all.”

She stared at me. Then she laughed and shook her head.

“Ben Hartley,” she said. “You are the most frustrating man in Manchester.”

“Is that a no?”

“It’s a goodnight.” She kissed me on the cheek, very close to the corner of my mouth, and let herself in.

We became friends. Proper friends. Pub quizzes on Tuesdays. Old films at hers on Sundays. She told me about her clients, anonymously, and they were mostly sweet and sad and occasionally hilarious. I told her about my dates, which were mostly disasters.

Gemma was delighted. “My two favourite people are mates!”

Every so often, on Tess’s sofa, during a black and white film, her head on my shoulder, she’ll look up at me with a question in her eyes.

One of these Sundays, I’m going to answer it.

Ending 10 of 16: Friend Zone. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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