The Flatshare: A Novel

I stare up at the very distant, very spiderwebby ceiling. It’s absolutely bloody freezing in here, even under a duvet and three blankets, with Rachel’s body heat to the left of me like a person-shaped radiator.

Today has been an extremely frustrating day. It’s unusual you get to spend an entire eight hours staring at the person you fancy. If we’re honest, most of my day has been spent fantasising about all of the other people in this castle being vaporised, leaving just me and Leon, naked (the vaporiser also took our clothes), with many exciting places to have sex in.

I’m still clearly a mess about Justin, and as things progress with Leon I can feel nice-scary tilting towards scary-scary a little more often. When Leon started talking about making more time for each other, for instance, the panicky trapped feeling tightened right in again. But beneath that, when I’m thinking clearly, I have such a good feeling about Leon. He’s where my mind goes when I’m feeling my best. He makes me even more determined to get over what happened with Justin because I don’t want to be carrying the weight of that with Leon. I want to be light and footloose and fancy-free. And naked.

‘Stop it,’ Rachel mumbles into her pillow.

‘Stop what?’ I hadn’t realised she was awake, or I’d have had that whole little thought episode out loud.

‘Your sexual frustration is making me tense,’ Rachel says, turning over and dragging as much of the duvet as possible with her.

I cling on and yank it back an inch or two. ‘I’m not frustrated.’

‘Please. I bet you’ve just been waiting until I go to sleep so you can hump my leg.’

I poke her with a very cold foot. She yelps.

‘My sexual frustration cannot be stopping you sleeping,’ I say, conceding the point. ‘If that was possible, nobody would ever have been able to sleep in Victorian times.’

She turns over to squint at me. ‘You’re weird,’ she says, rolling away again. ‘Go sneak out and find your boyfriend.’

‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ I say automatically, the way you learn to from the age of eight.

‘Your special friend. Your beau. Your squeeze. Your—’

‘I’m going,’ I hiss at her, throwing back the duvet.

Hana is gently snoring on the other bed. She actually looks like quite a nice person while she’s sleeping, but then it’s hard to look bitchy when you’re drooling into your pillow.

Leon and I have come up with a plan to see each other tonight. Martin has for some irritating reason moved Leon into a double room, sharing with the cameraman, which means we can’t sneak into bed together. But, with Hana and the cameraman fast asleep, there’s no reason why we can’t slip out and go for a castle adventure. The idea was that we’d each get some rest, and then meet at three in the morning, but I’ve been too excited to sleep. Still, just-woken-up is nowhere near as good a look as Hollywood would have you believe, so it’s probably a good job I’ve been lying here awake for hours thinking inappropriate thoughts.

I hadn’t counted on it being this bloody freezing, though. I’d imagined I’d wear just my underwear and a dressing gown – I brought sexy negligee-style underwear and everything – but right now I’m in fleece pyjama bottoms, woolly socks, and three jumpers, and there’s no way I’m taking these off. So I just slick on some lip gloss, give my hair a ruffle, and ease the door open.

It creaks so much it borders on cliché, but Hana doesn’t wake. I slip out of the door as soon as it’s just about wide enough, and pull it closed behind me, wincing at all the groaning noises.

Leon and I are meeting in the kitchen, because if anyone finds us there we’ve got a good excuse (given the number of biscuits I consume at work, nobody will have trouble believing that I need a midnight snack). I powerwalk down the carpeted hall, keeping a close eye on the rooms that line the corridor in case anyone else is up and about to spot me.

Nobody. The powerwalking is warming me up a bit, so I take the stairs at a jog too, and by the time I arrive in the kitchen I’m slightly out of breath.

The kitchen is the only bit of the castle that looks loved. It’s been redone recently, and, to my absolute delight, there is an enormous Aga at the far end. I plaster my body against it like a girl who’s found a former One Direction member in a nightclub and doesn’t plan on leaving without him.

‘Should I be feeling this jealous?’ Leon says from behind me.

I look over my shoulder. He’s standing in the doorway, his hair freshly smoothed back, in a loose T-shirt and jogging bottoms.

‘If your body-heat is higher than this Aga’s temperature, I’m yours,’ I tell him, turning to warm my bum and the back of my legs, and to get a better look at him.

He closes the space between us, casual, unhurried. There’s this understated confidence to him sometimes – he doesn’t show it much, but when he does it’s impossibly sexy. He kisses me and I get even warmer.

‘Did you have any trouble sneaking out?’ I ask, breaking away to push my hair back over my shoulders.

‘Larry the cameraman is a very heavy sleeper,’ Leon says, finding my mouth again and kissing me slowly.

My heart is already thundering. I feel a little dizzy, as if all the blood that usually hangs around in my head has decided it has other places to be. Our lips barely parting, Leon lifts me up so I’m sitting on the Aga warming plate, and I wrap my legs around him, linking my ankles behind his body. He presses against me.

I become gradually aware of the heat from the Aga working its way through my flannel pyjama bottoms and beginning to scald my bum.

‘Ahh. Burny,’ I say, pushing forward so Leon takes my weight. He lifts me up, koala-bear style, and moves me to the sideboard instead, his lips slowly beginning to trace patterns all over me – neck and chest, lips again, neck, collarbone, lips. My head is starting to spin; I’m barely thinking. His hands find the narrow opening between my jumpers and pyjama bottoms, and then his hands are on my skin, and barely thinking becomes not thinking at all.

‘Is it bad to have sex on surface where other people prepare food?’ Leon asks, pulling away, breathless.

‘No! It’s just . . . clean! Hygienic,’ I say, pulling him back to me.

‘Good,’ he says, and suddenly all my jumpers are off in one go. I’m not cold at all any longer. In fact, I could do with wearing fewer clothes. Why the hell didn’t I wear the negligee?

I yank off Leon’s T-shirt and tug at the waistband of his jogging bottoms until he slips those off too. As I slide my body up against his he pauses for a moment.

‘OK?’ he asks hoarsely. I can see the control he’s taking to ask the question; I answer with another kiss. ‘Yes?’ he says, mouth against mine. ‘This means OK?’

‘Yes. Now stop talking,’ I tell him, and he does as he’s told.

We’re so close. I’m almost naked, he’s almost naked, my head is full of Leon. This is it. It’s happening. My inner, sexually frustrated Victorian almost weeps with gratitude as Leon pulls me towards him by the hips so I’m pressed up against him, his body back between my legs.

And then, there it is. The remembering.

I stiffen. He doesn’t clock it at first, and for three deeply horrible seconds his hands are still moving over my body, his lips still pressed hard against mine. It’s very hard to describe this feeling. Panic, perhaps, but I’m completely immobile and feel strangely passive. I’m frozen, trapped, and have the odd sensation that some crucial part of me has detached itself.

Leon’s hands slow, coming to a halt on either side of my face. He lifts my head gently to look at him.

‘Ah,’ he says. He disentangles himself from me just as I begin to shake all over.

I can’t seem to get that part of me back. I don’t know where this feeling came from – one moment I was about to have the sex I’d been fantasising over all week, and the next I was . . . remembering something. A body that wasn’t Leon’s, hands that were doing the same thing but I didn’t want them there.

‘You want space, or a hug?’ he asks simply, standing a foot away from me now.

‘Hug,’ I manage.

He gathers me to him, reaching for the heap of jumpers on the counter as he does so. He drapes one over my shoulder and cuddles me close, my head pressed against his chest. The only giveaway of how frustrated he must be feeling is the thud-thud of his heartbeat in my ear.

‘I’m sorry,’ I mutter into his chest.

‘You never should be that,’ he says. ‘Not sorry. OK?’

I smile shakily, pressing my lips to his skin. ‘OK.’