Emily Barr - The Sleeper

‘I found something that might be good,’ I tell him, ‘or that might be weird. We could try it later. It’s in an old public loo. The gents’.’

‘It sounds ravishing.’ We walk to the Lyceum pub and step in, out of the rain, and find an upstairs table.

Much later, we are in the underground bar a few metres away. It is, indeed, in the old men’s loos: according to the menu, these ones were frequented by the likes of Wilde, Orton and Gielgud, thanks to their West End location. Now they have been transformed into a cocktail and burlesque venue, and happily none of it is quite as tacky as it sounds.

The barman, who is blond and undiscriminatingly cheerful, greets us as if we were old friends, and says, ‘Look, there’s a table! Grab it quick. Gold dust!’

We sit at a tiny table, picking at free popcorn and drinking our way through the cocktail menu. The other customers are a random but presentable selection of travellers, couples and a group of women on what eavesdropping reveals to be a post-divorce celebration. The woman in question keeps bursting into tears, and then snogging her friends.

‘Let’s have one with absinthe,’ I decide. ‘I’ve never tried absinthe. Have you?’

‘Not me. I skipped the wild youth. Hey, they have snuff, too. That sounds odd. Did you ever do anything like that? Not snuff, I mean. They’re obviously selling it as the closest they can get to cocaine.’

‘Oh God, no,’ I tell him. ‘I never did anything like that.’

‘Me neither. Not really. Absinthe martini?’

‘Just the one. Then we’ll go.’

‘Deal.’

A woman is setting up in the corner of the room, ready to sing. She is wearing a black corset and tiny skirt and has a huge mane of black hair and bright red lipstick, and she is laughing with the divorce party at the table closest to her.

‘I wish we didn’t have work tomorrow,’ I remark.

He leans forward. ‘Could we maybe find a way of staying up for a weekend one day? Have a proper Friday and Saturday night?’

We could do that. We could do it by leaving our spouses and making our London life legitimate. I cannot say it. You cannot ask someone to leave his children.

I take his hand across the table. It is warm and reassuring, as it always is. I belong with you, I think, suddenly. I love you. It takes all my willpower not to say it.

The woman starts singing ‘Sex on Fire’, in an almost unrecognisable acoustic version. It is oddly lovely. Guy mouths something at me. I think, for a second, that it was ‘I love you’. Then I wonder if it might have been ‘Where’s the loo?’ I laugh at myself, move our drinks out of the way and lean across the popcorn to kiss him.

Later we stroll down Fleet Street to the hotel, hand in hand. I am drunk but not outrageously so, and happier than I deserve to be. I have been behaving terribly for weeks now, and I am going to do the right thing. This is where it ends, for me. It is time for me to destroy Sam’s world.

I rarely leave the building at lunchtime, unless it’s for a meeting. Nobody does: the days of the professional lunch hour are gone, and I generally like that. Today, however, I stand up at half past twelve.

‘I’m going to have to pop out for a second,’ I say quietly to Jeremy. ‘Got a dentist thing. Is that OK?’

He barely looks up. He is eating a pungent sandwich from a lunch box that he’s brought from home, and tapping at his laptop.

‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Whatever you need to do. As long as you’ll be back for the architects later. You’re right – get your teeth fixed up here, not down in Devon. Don’t want yokel teeth.’

‘Cornwall,’ I say, and I slip away to meet Leon for the quickest of lunches, and to tell him I am going to leave Sam.

We sit in one of those little cafés with wobbly metal tables and a deli counter, and drink coffee and water as we eat, because neither of us has time for a post-lunch caffeine hit, but we both need one. Leon looks at me over the top of his sandwich.

‘I can see that you need to do it, Lara,’ he says. ‘He’ll be fine, you know. As will you.’ I inhale deeply. This is the man who has bailed me out before, the only person I completely trust. ‘I’m not entirely sure,’ he adds, ‘what’s been holding you back.’

His voice is so familiar, so reassuring, that suddenly I feel ridiculous. I reach across the little table and take his hand, just for a second.

‘Thanks,’ I say quietly. Leon is a father figure in the most straightforward manner: he looks after me in a way my own parents never have. Since I’ve been an adult, there has been the finest thread of attraction there, never mentioned between us, and that adds an extra edge to it. It is the most subtle thing.

‘I’ll ruin his life,’ I say, with a sigh. ‘That’s been holding me back.’

Leon waves a hand, dismissing this fear.

‘Women love a man like Sam Finch. He’ll be swept off his feet by rescuers.’

I think about it. It is true. ‘But don’t dash into anything with Guy,’ Leon warns. ‘Seriously. Be by yourself for a while. Give yourself a chance. If he leaves his wife and children for you, your relationship will change completely. You’ll need to put the brakes on a little if you want any kind of long-term thing. Don’t you think?’

I shake my head. ‘The trouble is, I’m so wildly in love with him, I’m not sure I could cool it off. But anyway. I’m not going to make him do anything. I could never do that. I’m just going to see what he says when I tell him I’m leaving Sam. Maybe he’ll run for the hills.’

‘Maybe,’ Leon agrees, where I wanted him not to. ‘And if he does, Lara, you’ll be absolutely fine.’

I pretend to believe this.

After work on Friday, I walk quickly along Fleet Street to Covent Garden. The winter air is harsh and frozen on my cheeks, but the sun is shining, and everything is edged with ice. I adore London on a day like this. Cornwall is beautiful too, in its entirely other way, but I do not want to think about that yet.

Covent Garden is filled with people: they are in bars and restaurants and cafés, walking briskly down the street and ambling along looking at things and talking. The buzz is so strong you can almost feel it crackling in the air. This is what happens when the sun comes out, even in January. I try to smile, to look like a normal person.

Guy is already in the random bar he nominated for our pre-Paddington drink. It’s a half-seedy little place offering jugs of watery cocktails and endless happy hours. I see him at a table near the window as I approach, and almost run the last bit.

He has bought a bottle of Corona for each of us.

‘Hey, gorgeous,’ he says, and I stand next to him while he puts his arms around my waist and presses his head into me. I stroke his hair, which is more flecked with grey from this angle than it normally appears.

‘Hey.’

I sit opposite him.

‘Do we just drink alcohol all the time?’ I wonder. ‘Should we be worried?’

‘No. Well, yes. We drink alcohol all the time. But that’s because we go to work all day and home all weekend. We only have the evenings. Before I met you I’d rarely drink on a week night. But we only get utterly rat-arsed on Thursdays.’

‘That’s true. And on the train sometimes.’

He nods, his eyes crinkling. ‘And on the train sometimes. Yes. Now, next week I thought we could have a cinema week. You were saying how hard it is to get to the cinema in Cornwall. Well, it can be done, obviously, but one doesn’t really bother. What’s your schedule like? In my ideal world, we’d both be free in time to go to a screening at nine-ish, every night. Monday to Thursday. What do you think? We could see a bit of everything: a classic, an action film, a comedy, a romance.’