My Fake Wedding(85)

And I’m not disappointed.

We sit on Highbury Fields, tucking into cod and chips and breathing in the scent of fresh cut grass, watching as the light fades and the kids all pack up their games of football to head home to bed—or to mug old ladies or whatever else they cite as their activity of choice when it starts to get dark. As we eat, it doesn’t take long to dawn on me that Nick and I have precious little in common. In fact, it could safely be said that we have precisely bugger all in common. But that just makes the thought of having sex with him all the more exciting. And he is gorgeous. All that cycling outside has given him the lean, sun-kissed body of a Greek god.

And those espresso eyes are nothing short of delectable.

I make an attempt at conversation. Something tells me there’s no point talking about art or books or interiors. So I try asking him questions about himself as he wodges in a last mouthful of chips and wipes at a dribble of grease on his chiselled jaw.

‘It must be so great doing your job,’ I blurt. ‘Not tied down to a desk all day. Outside, getting all that fresh air.’

‘Oxford Street air ain’t exactly fresh, innit?’ he points out.

‘Still, you know what I mean.’ I quiver with delight at his turn of phrase. ‘Sun on your back and all that.’

‘Yeah.’ He nods, scrumpling up his fish and chip wrapper and lobbing it over by a patch of trees. I feel slightly self-conscious about a) having jammed mine down way before he was finished and b) responsibly screwing my paper up and popping it into my bag till I find a bin.

‘Gets bloody cold in winter though. Goes right through you. Still I don’t ’ave to go in at all if I don’t want to. It’s like being that thing. You know. Wotsit.’

‘Wotsit?’

‘Hacks do it. And the paparrattzy. Working for yerself and gettin’ uvver people to pay you.’

‘Freelance?’

God, he’s even thicker than I thought. Which is fine by me. At least he’s decorative. It’s what’s inside his trousers, not his head, that interests me.

‘Thassit. Pedal Power’s a bit like that.’

‘So you don’t actually work for the bakery then?’

‘Nah. S’an agency. And if I don’t wanna go in, I work extra next day. And the money ain’t bad. Danger money, I s’pose. Fuckin’ take yer life into yer own ‘ands when you take to them streets on a pushbike.’

I laugh, telling him the last time I rode a bike, I slammed on the wrong brake when a fly went into my eye. I flew over the handlebars like shit off a spade, bruising my chin on the kerb and putting my tooth through my lip into the bargain. It’s a funny story now, although of course it wasn’t remotely amusing at the time, even though Sam nearly wet himself laughing once he’d made sure I wasn’t concussed. But Nick doesn’t seem to really be listening. In fact he doesn’t seem to want to talk much at all. Instead, he starts rubbing rather urgently at my leg, very much in the manner of a teenager on a first date. This is all a bit quick, even for me, so I still find the need to gabble like a goose.

‘What about when you start work?’ I ask, even though I really couldn’t care less. ‘Do you have to turn up at an office to begin with or what?’

‘Nah.’ Nick lets go of my thigh for a second, pushes a matted lump of hair behind his ear, puts his can of Stella to his pouty lips and shrugs. ‘I just radio control with me call sign when I’m ready to start. You know.’ He puts an imaginary radio to his mouth and crackles, ‘“One six, one six. I’ve ‘ad me flakes and I’m ready to go.” That sorter thing. Then they tell me where my first pick-up is.’

OK, so it’s not as glamorous as being a celebrity PA or working in TV, but having such freedom is great. Which is why I just have to cross my fingers and hope Neat Eats works out. I’m already, I realise, enjoying working for myself immensely. It’s so much better than having to sit in an office being nice to people I’d never so much as share air with in a lift if I had the choice, and having to pretend I never say the ‘C’ word or fart.

‘It ain’t bad,’ Nick says. ‘Me dad wanted me to join ’im in the trade.’

‘In the City?’

‘Nah. Buildin’ trade. They was both really young when they met, me mum and dad. Dead wild. But he buckled down and set up a buildin’ business. Made a fuckin’ mint.’

‘Good for him.’ I swig at my own can of Stella and cringe as I realise how ridiculously ‘jolly hockey sticks’ I sound.

‘Yeah.’ He shrugs. “E’s still really pissed off I couldn’t do it.’