Come Together Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Authors

  Also by Josie Lloyd & Emlyn Rees

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  1 Jack

  2 Amy

  3 Jack

  4 Amy

  5 Jack

  6 Amy

  7 Jack

  8 Amy

  9 Jack

  10 Amy

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Meet Jack

  Jack Rossiter. I’m twenty-seven years old, single, and live with my best mate Matt. Matt and I started hanging out when we were eight. Life was simpler then. Our idea of fashion was polyester. I told him I wanted to be a spy and he asked me who I’d marry. I imagined falling in love with a girl so perfect I couldn’t even guess her name. Things have changed since then. I did fall in love for a while but it didn’t work out. And single is good, single is fun.

  Meet Amy

  Sometimes in my darker moments I’ve thought about applying to go on Blind Date. ‘She’s gorgeous, she’s from London, come in Amy Crosbie!’ (Wolf whistling and applause.) Actually it’s a bit of a worry. I think it’s my warped way of telling myself something’s got to change. It’s been six months since I last had sex. Six months! I mean, I’ve got my own flat, I’ve got A levels – so come on down Mr Right. At least it would get my mother off my back.

  Now find out what happens when they meet each other …

  About the Authors

  Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees each had novels of their own published before teaming up to write bestsellers together. Their work has been translated into twenty-six languages. They are married and live in London with their three daughters.

  Also by Josie Lloyd & Emlyn Rees

  The Boy Next Door

  Come Again

  Love Lives

  The Seven Year Itch

  The Three Day Rule

  We Are Family

  For our sisters, Catherine and Kirsti, with love.

  Acknowledgements

  HUGE THANKS TO Vivienne Schuster and Jonny Geller – the best agents in town. And to everyone else at Curtis Brown, for their invaluable support.

  To all at Random House, for being fantastic from the start. Special thanks to ‘The A Team’: Andy McKillop, our publisher, and Lynne Drew, our editor, for their friendship and professional advice, but most of all, for making this so much fun. Also to their back-up (Thomas and Jo). To Susan and Rachael, Mark and Grainne, Ron and the sales team and Glenn. And last, but not least, to Simon (you know who you are!) for sorting our heads out and helping us drink the mini-bar dry…

  To the one and only Dawn Fozard for being brilliant throughout.

  We’d also like to thank all our other mates for their various confessions, anecdotes and feedback. Especially: James & Helen, Paddy, Harriet & Matt, Lozza, Katy, Ruth, Lok, Tim & Danni, Mark & Charlie, Lucy, Emma, George, Daniel, ‘Barry’ C-G, Kirsti, Henny & Alan, Mands & Chas, Anna, Phil & the Mollster, Kate, Carol, Vicks, Ali, Jonny P, Lorna, Chris & Paula, Rupert & Toni, Ray & Anna, Simon & Caroline, and Lizzie.

  Thanks, as always, to our families who’ve never stopped spreading the word. Most of all, our wonderful parents for backing us up all the way.

  And to John Eminson and David Proudlock, for being the best English teachers ever.

  1

  Jack

  The Ideal

  SAY YOU’RE A girl. Say you’re a girl and you’re at a party, or in a pub, or in a club. Say you’re a girl and you’re at a party, or in a pub, or in a club, and I come up to you.

  Say you’ve never set eyes on me before.

  Some things you’ll know immediately. You’ll see that I’m just under six feet tall and of average build. If we shake hands, you’ll notice that my grip is strong and my fingernails clean. You’ll see that I have brown eyes which match my brown hair. And you’ll see that I have a scar across the centre of my left eyebrow. You’ll guess that I’m somewhere between twenty-five and thirty years old.

  Say you like what you see enough to talk to me.

  We’ll chat and, if things go well between us, you’ll find out more. I’ll tell you that my name’s Jack Rossiter. If you ask me about the scar, I’ll tell you that my best friend, Matt Davies, shot me with an air pistol when I was twelve years old. I’ll tell you that I was lucky not to lose an eye and my mother wouldn’t have Matt in the house for a year. I’ll tell you that Matt is less volatile these days and that I’m comfortable with the situation to the extent that I now consider it safe to live under the same roof as him. I’ll tell you that he works for a City law firm, but I won’t tell you that he owns the house and I pay him rent. You’ll ask me what the house is like and I’ll tell you that it’s a converted pub in west London and that, yes, we have kept the pool table and dartboard and bar, but, no, we haven’t given visiting rights to the violent alcoholic who used to sit scowling in the corner. I’ll also tell you that the garden is large and wild.

  You’ll ask me what I do for a living now and I’ll tell you that I’m an artist, which is true, and that I make a living from it, which isn’t. I won’t tell you that I work in a small art gallery in Mayfair three days a week to make ends meet. You’ll look at my clothes, which will probably be Matt’s clothes, and wrongly assume that I’m rich. As I won’t, throughout all this, mention a girlfriend, you’ll probably correctly assume that I’m single. I won’t ask you if you have a boyfriend, though I will check your finger to see if you’re engaged or married.

  Say we end up going back to your place or mine.

  We’ll have sex. If we’re lucky, we might even enjoy it. If we enjoy it, we might even do it again. And then we’ll sleep. The next morning, if it’s your place, I’ll probably slip away before you wake. I won’t leave a number. And if it’s my place, you’ll do the same. You won’t kiss me goodbye. Whoever’s left in the bed will finally wake up. And they’ll find that they’re alone. But this will be good, because this will be what they want.

  * * *

  Confessions: No.1 Contraception

  Place: the toilet between carriages B and C on the 2.45 p.m. Intercity train from Bristol Parkway to London Paddington.

  Time: 3.45 p.m. 15 May 1988.

  Behind the toilet door, a young man, aged seventeen, was standing in front of the mirror with his trousers and boxer shorts round his ankles, holding a curry-flavoured novelty condom in one hand and an erect penis – his penis – in the other.

  I can be accurate on this. Not because I was sitting in carriage C, staring at the TOILET IN USE sign, bladder threatening to burst, wondering what kind of person could be selfish enough to hog the bog for the best part of twenty minutes. And not because the track vibrations on the approach to Reading became so intense that I marched up to the toilet door and gave it a good kick and saw what was going on inside. But because that young man was me.

  OK, so right now it would be fair enough to assume that I could be any one, or possibly all, of the following:

  a) A pervert

  b) A curry-lover

  c) A lunatic

  And, on the information disclosed so far, these are fair enough assumptions. Any jury would probably have convicted me on all three counts. Though on the curry-loving charge, the fact that I could barely touch my knee with my mouth, let alone any other part of my anatomy, may have raised a reasonable doubt.

  So bring on the defence.

  Seventeen-year-old men, as any man who’s successfully, and no doubt gratefully, evolved beyond that age can vouch for, are strange creatures. Stretched between adolescence and maturity and doused with hormones by the bucketful, it’s an age of self-discovery, where questions are asked, answers are sought, and frequent masturbation
is indulged in on the side. It was no different for me. I asked the usual questions. Does God exist? Can there ever be world peace? Why does pubic hair have a finite length, thereby denying the possibility of pelvic topiary? And wouldn’t it be gross if boil-in-the-bag was just what it said? And I waited in vain for the answers. And, in between waiting, I jerked off.

  A lot.

  There were probably prize dairy cows whose yield was less than mine (but, considering the fact that they would only have been milked twice a day, this isn’t so astounding). On average – i.e. excluding fire, flood, earthquakes and other acts of God – I jerked off three times a day. And variety was the spice. I spanked the monkey over the bathroom basin. I strummed the banjo on the back of the bus. I choked the chicken under the duvet. I bashed the bishop during Songs of Praise. I jerked, I squirted, I wanked, I tossed, I tugged and I glopped. But throughout this period of onanistic experimentation, there was one thing I’d never tried: the Rich Man’s Wank.

  For anyone unfamiliar with this term, the RMW is simply performing the act of masturbation whilst wearing a condom. Precisely what this has to do with rich men, I’m not sure. I can only assume it’s a habit brought on by having too much time on their hands. (Too much something, anyway.) For me, though, on 15 May 1988, in the far from erotic environment of the British Rail toilet between carriages B and C, it served another purpose. It was the condom itself, not what it was designed to act as a barrier against, that interested me.

  The plain fact of the matter was that I’d never tried one on before. My contact with them had so far been restricted to watching with admiration as my school friend, Keith Rawlings, had performed his then legendary party trick of stretching a condom over the top half of his head and hyperventilating through his nose until the condom swelled up like a Zeppelin and finally went the way of the Hindenburg, exploding to a round of astounded applause. Now, whilst I could see the impressive theatricality of such a feat, it wasn’t a party audience I was planning to impress that day. It was Mary Rayner, a girl I’d met at a party at Matt’s parents’ house the weekend before, a girl who lived in London, and a girl who’d invited me to stay with her whilst her parents were away in Majorca. A girl, in other words, who I had high hopes would be charitable enough to relieve me of my virginity. Hence the curry-flavoured condom. In the toilet. On the train.

  In less than two hours, there was the possibility that I might be called upon to use one in earnest. The moment I’d mentally and physically prepared for, developing a wrestler’s grip in my right hand into the bargain, was almost upon me. So what did I do? I did what all red-blooded, self-confident seventeen-year-old men do: I panicked. Good and long. I sat there in carriage C, drumming my fingers on my wallet, thinking of the three sealed condoms that I’d hurriedly bought from a machine in a pub. What if they didn’t fit? What if they were too small, or – excruciating – too big? What if they split or fell off? I’d end up lying next to Mary, apologising profusely, that’s what. And if that happened, chances were Mary would never give me another chance. I’d remain a virgin. Christ, I might even die a virgin. I squirmed in my seat, visualising my epitaph: HE DIED AGED ONE HUNDRED WITHOUT A SINGLE SHAG TO HIS NAME. RIV – REST IN VIRGINITY. So I picked up my wallet and hurriedly walked up the aisle to the toilet for a dry run before the main event.

  And there the defence rests.

  Mary, however, I’m pleased to report, didn’t. Rest, that is. From the moment we reached her bedroom and stumbled across the floor and tumbled into bed, rest was the last thing on her mind. This was my first experience of the feeling I’d later come to call ‘In’. I was In with her. I was In bed. And soon I was In her, too. The feeling of In flooded me, right up to the point where it flooded out.

  * * *

  The Beginning

  It’s Friday morning, June 1998, and I have a problem.

  Worse, I can’t remember her name.

  She sighs and mutters something incomprehensible in her sleep, rolls over to face me and wraps her arm around my waist, leaves it there, sweating against my skin. I glance at the LCD display on my alarm clock on the bedside table: 07.31. Then I look at her: a tapestry of brown hair obscuring everything apart from her nose. It’s not a bad nose, as noses go. I stare back at the ceiling, caught in a crossfire of conflicting thoughts.

  On the one hand, this isn’t an altogether bad situation to be in. Here I am, heterosexual and single, lying in bed next to a naked woman, who, though the information at my disposal is limited to the shape of her nose and a collection of drunken memories, is reasonably good company and reasonably good in bed. To the best of my knowledge, nothing overly weird took place last night: no shacklings, break-downs or expressions of undying love. We met at a club, danced and flirted, and cabbed it back here in the early hours of the morning.

  The sex was good. A sweaty parcel of rolling eyes and heavy sighs. We moved well together, considering we hadn’t before. There was no speaking. Sometimes I like it like that. No voice contact. No mind contact. The situation was stripped as bare as we were. There was no pretence that what we were doing was anything other than physical. And afterwards, as we sat there sweating it off, drinking from the two pint glasses I’d filled up with water from the bathroom tap, The Ideal continued to hold true.

  Proof of this lay in the fact that she didn’t:

  a) Squeeze my hand

  b) Stare lingeringly into my eyes

  c) Ask me how come I didn’t get lonely not having a girlfriend

  d) Go for the intimate route by sharing my cigarette like a spliff

  e) Suggest we get together again soon

  Instead, she:

  a) Kept her hands to herself

  b) Stared at the ceiling

  c) Told me that the best thing about sleeping around was that no two guys were ever the same

  d) Lit her own cigarette

  e) Told me that she was going to Australia travelling for three months

  Then we stubbed out our separate cigarettes and I hit the light and we slept.

  So far so good. The perfect one-night stand. A few minutes ago, when I woke, I felt good about myself. Or maybe smug is more accurate. All the usual Single Fears had been swept away. Yes, I was still capable of pulling. Yes, I was still capable of having sex with a stranger. In other words, yes, I still had what it took.

  On the other hand, this isn’t exactly a good situation either. It’s a Friday morning and – I check the clock again and see that another two minutes have flicked by – I have things to do. As easy as it would be to nestle here in post-coital comfort, maybe even lift her hand from my stomach and hold it, protract the illusion of intimacy a little while longer, the time has come for us both to get up and get on.

  Careful not to disturb her, I move into a sitting position and lift the dead-weight of her arm from my body and lay it back on the sheet. From this elevated position, I can see her clothes lying in a pile by the side of the bed. I wait for a couple of seconds, reassuring myself that she’s still asleep, then slip out from beneath the duvet and quietly go through her clothes until I find her wallet in her jacket pocket. I pull on some shorts, slip out of my bedroom and walk through to the kitchen.

  Matt is there, already suited and booted, his black hair still wet from the shower, perched over a bowl of dry cereal and a mug of steaming coffee. He opens his mouth to speak and I raise a finger to my lips. I sit down opposite him at the table and take a swig from his mug.

  ‘She still here, then?’ he whispers.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What’s-her-name? Chloe’s neighbour?’

  Chloe is a girl we went to school with, but never went with at school. As a result, she managed to graduate from potential girlfriend to girl friend.

  ‘Yeah, what’s-her-name. That’s the one.’

  He nods his head, taking the information in, then asks, ‘Good lay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  He grins. ‘Noisy.’

  I smile back. ‘Tell me about it.’ I
toast him with his mug of coffee. ‘Happy birthday, by the way.’

  ‘You remembered? Bless you, mate.’

  ‘Even got you a present.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You’ll have to wait till tonight.’

  ‘A.k.a. you haven’t bought it yet.’

  ‘A.k.a. wait-and-fucking-see.’ I hand him back his mug. ‘So who’s coming tonight?’

  He lights a cigarette, inhales. ‘Usual crowd, plus extras.’

  ‘Single and female extras?’

  ‘Might be.’

  ‘More info.’

  ‘Wait-and-fucking-see yourself.’

  ‘Psychos and mooses, then …’

  He isn’t going to be drawn. ‘Like either would put you off … Maybe neither. Maybe both.’ He prods the wallet with his finger. ‘Memory loss?’

  I open it up and flick through the ID. ‘Not any more.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So what’s what’s-her-name’s name?’

  ‘Catherine Bradshaw,’ I read. ‘Born Oxford, sixteenth October 1969.’ I pull out her tube pass and study the photo, turn it round to face Matt. ‘Marks out of ten?’

  ‘Seven.’ He peers closer, reconsiders. ‘Make that six. She looked better last night.’

  ‘They always do, but—’

  ‘The camera never lies,’ he says, finishing off my sentence.

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t S&M coming round today?’

  S&M is Matt’s nickname for Sally McCullen, because he reckons my brain gets bruised from just thinking about how great she is.

  ‘Yeah, at ten.’

  He checks his watch, whistles low. ‘Cutting it a bit fine, aren’t you?’

  I walk over to the thermostat control and spin it round to maximum. ‘Plan A,’ I say, pouring myself a pint of water from the chilled bottle in the fridge. ‘Sweat her out.’