He isn’t here.
Siobhan breathes out slowly through her nose. She’s aiming for calm, but it reads more angry bull than zen.
She cancelled breakfast with a friend for this. She curled her hair and wore lipstick and shaved her legs (not just to the knee, all the way up, in case he fancied running a hand up her thigh under the table).
And he isn’t bloody here.
‘I’m not angry,’ she tells Fiona. They’re video calling. They always video call – Siobhan is a big believer in the power of eye contact. Also, she’d quite like someone to see how fabulous she looks today, even if it is only her flatmate.
‘I’m resigned. He’s a man, ergo, he let me down. What did I expect?’
‘You’re wearing sex make-up,’ Fiona says, squinting at the screen. ‘It’s not even nine in the morning yet, Shiv.’
Siobhan shrugs. She’s sitting in one of those cafés that prides itself on its quirkiness, a quality she always finds deeply irritating in anything or anyone, and there’s a half-drunk double-shot oat milk latte on the table in front of her. If she’d known she was going to be stood up on Valentine’s Day, she’d have got proper milk. Siobhan is only vegan when she’s in a good mood.
‘Sex is what we do,’ she says.
‘Even on a breakfast date?’
They’ve never actually had a breakfast date before. But when she’d told him she was on a flying visit to London, he’d said, Fancy having breakfast with me tomorrow morning, by any chance . . . ? Asking for a breakfast date was definitely significant – and on V-Day, no less. Generally speaking, their dates happen in her hotel room, usually after eleven p.m.; they see each other on the first Friday of the month, plus the odd bonus day if she happens to be in London.
That’s fine. That’s plenty. Siobhan doesn’t want more than that – he lives in England, she lives in Ireland; they’re both busy people. Their arrangement works perfectly.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to give it another five?’ Fiona says, lifting a dainty hand to her lips as she swallows a mouthful of cornflakes. She’s sitting at their kitchen table, her hair still in its overnight plait. ‘He’s maybe just late?’
Siobhan feels a pang of homesickness for her flat, though she’s only been gone a day. She misses the familiar lemony smell of their kitchen, the peace of her walk-in-wardrobe. She misses the version of herself that had not yet made the mistake of hoping her favourite hook-up might actually want to be something more…
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