‘You’re a lifesaver.’
‘So what were you up to last night?’
Robbie leaned a snake-like hip against the stainless-steel worktop and ran his hand through his hair. It was dyed bright blue at the front and shaved into a careful fade at the sides, showing off his multiple piercings and ear tunnel.
‘Ah, nothing much.’ He ducked his head.
‘Go on! You know I need to live vicariously through you, since I have no social life of my own.’
‘I finished my shift here, and then I went home.’
I gave him my best hard stare. ‘And then…? Don’t tell me you were up watching box sets until four in the morning and getting shitfaced on your own.’
‘Oh, okay. So I had a new Grindr date over.’
‘What, someone you met on a dating app, over to your place? Just like that?’
‘Sure. My flatmates were asleep, they didn’t notice. And if they had, they’d have given zero fucks.’
‘So who was he? Someone you’ve met before?’
‘Never. And never will again. He was useless in the sack.’
Robbie peered into the oven. The kitchen was beginning to fill with the mouthwatering smell of cinnamon. Over the weeks I’d known him, I should have got used to Robbie’s casual attitude to relationships, but it still had the power to surprise me. The idea of inviting some stranger from the internet over to your home, having sex with them, and then hustling them out of the door while they were still putting their socks on shocked and impressed me in equal measure.
Also, although there were only about five or so years between us, Robbie had the ability to make me feel about a hundred years old.
‘I thought you Generation Z-ers were meant to be going through a sex recession,’ I said.
‘Yeah, well.’ Robbie flicked his hair out of his eyes. ‘You know the Keynesian theory of fiscal stimulus, right?’
‘Course I don’t. How do you know that stuff anyway?’
‘Did a GCSE in economics, didn’t I? I’m not just a pretty face.’
‘Okay, so hit me with it.’
‘Basically, I’m spending my way out of the sex recession. The way I see it, the more I shag, the more other people are shagging too. So in theory there should be more to go round. Supply and demand, right?’
‘Maybe. But none of it’s coming my way, that’s for sure.’
Robbie widened his huge green eyes, which were framed with lashes so long and dark, Bambi would have killed for them. ‘You poor woman. Why ever not?’
I sighed. The truth – which I certainly wasn’t going to share with Robbie, who was not only my colleague but, in theory at least, my junior – was that I’d had sex precisely twice in the past year, both times with Sean, my ex. And the last time had been well over eight months before. If anyone was in the grip of a sex recession, it was me – but my feelings for Joe had been so all-consuming I had barely noticed.
Until now.
‘That’s the trouble with being single, I guess,’ I said lamely.
‘Nonsense! Look at me. I’m single and I get more action than the Primark sale.’
‘But you’re—’ I stopped. Robbie was what? Gay? Twenty-two? Ridiculously pretty? Those things might be true, but they weren’t the real reason why he was meeting people and I wasn’t. The real reason was that Robbie put himself out there. He had a Grindr profile, he wasn’t scared to meet new people, and, if they were rubbish in bed, he’d move on without a backward glance and with a good story to tell his mates.
I, on the other hand, was about as far from out there as it was possible to get. Every night after work, I went back to my flat above the pub alone and stayed there, mooning over Joe. And now, if the strange feeling I’d woken up with that morning lasted and I truly was over him, I’d spend every night alone not mooning over Joe. Which was admittedly an improvement, but a pretty small one.
I remembered the cutting words my astrology app had sent me.
You know that emptiness you feel inside? You going to fill it with something, or let it suck you in?
It was a challenge, a reproof, and also a warning. I was only twenty-seven. But I wouldn’t always be. What if my life was still the same in a year, or five, or ten? In the past, when I’d found myself having a surge of existential angst, I’d responded by chucking whatever job I happened to have at the time and giving notice on wherever I happened to be living, and decamping to another part of the world or the country. I’d resisted the temptation to put down roots, have serious relationships, or even make friends, preferring to see myself as an unfettered free spirit, even though deep down I knew that the price of freedom was loneliness. Over the past five years, I’d worked in Glasgow, Sheffield, Cambridge, Madrid, Warsaw and – after one particularly acute attack of ‘what the fuck is my life even fucking for?’ – Seattle.
But I couldn’t do that any more, because now I had Frazzle. Just a few months before I’d started work at the Ginger Cat, the pub that was now named in his honour, as I’d headed home after my shift at a dodgy tapas bar in Croydon, I’d spotted what I thought was a fox: a furry ginger form trotting along the pavement, a chicken bone clutched determinedly in its jaws. But it didn’t melt into the shadows and dart away like a fox would have done. It stopped, turned towards me, dropped the bone and came over, mewing urgently.
And at that moment, in the dark street, drizzle falling and litter blowing in gusts around me, I knew I’d been chosen. I did all the right things, of course. I checked the cat for a collar. Even though I brought him home with me that night, the very next day I took him to the vet to be scanned for a microchip. I posted on local Facebook groups to see if anyone was missing a cat. And only then did I allow myself to accept, relieved, that Frazzle could be my cat and I could be his human.
So, now, I had him, I had a job I loved, I had my little flat above the pub. I had a life that was beginning to feel permanent. But, apart from Frazzle, I didn’t have a person who was mine, someone who I mattered to more than anyone else in the world, an other half.
The slam of the oven door, and an even more intense blast of hot, sweet-smelling air, brought me back to the present.
‘These bad boys are done now,’ Robbie said, ‘and quite frankly, if I don’t get a coffee soon, I’ll be done too. The place could’ve burned down without you noticing. It’s like you’re the hungover one, not me.’
‘Sorry, sorry, I’m on it.’
I made Robbie’s coffee and a chai latte for myself, and raided the fridge for a portion of the previous night’s veggie lasagne. Robbie’s cake wouldn’t be cool enough to taste for at least half an hour, I was hungry, and who doesn’t love cold lasagne eaten while standing next to the fridge? Just me then?
‘Robbie?’
‘That’s me.’
‘I’m going to die friendless and alone, surrounded by cats, aren’t I? At the rate I’m going.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ He shook his head.
‘No?’
‘You’ve only got the one cat, you see. Hard to be surrounded by one of them.’
I laughed. ‘I’m going to have to start dating again, aren’t I?’