One Plus One: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

apart from that time when it was raining and she was at the station and asked him for a lift back to the halls in his Mini. He had been so tongue-tied the whole time she was in the passenger seat that he had said barely a word, except a vaguely strangled “No worries” when he let her out at the other end. And those two words somehow managed to cover three octaves. She had stooped to peel the empty crisps packet from the sole of her boot, dropping it delicately back into the footwell, before shutting the door.
    If Ed had it bad, Ronan had it worse. His love had weighed him down like a cartoon dumbbell. He wrote her poetry, sent anonymous flowers on Valentine’s Day, smiled at her in the dinner queue and tried not to look crushed when she failed to notice. And after they had graduated, set up their company, and swapped thinking about women for thinking about software—until software became the thing they actually preferred thinking about—Deanna Lewis gently morphed into a college reminiscence. “Oh . . . Deanna Lewis,” they would say to each other, their eyes distant, like they could see her floating in slo-mo above the other drinkers’ heads at the pub.
    And then, three months ago, some six months after Lara had left, taking with her the apartment in Rome, half the contents of his stock portfolio, and what remained of Ed’s appetite for relationships, Deanna Lewis friended him on Facebook. She had been based inNew York for a couple of years, but was coming back and wanted to catch up with some of her old friends from uni. Did he remember Reena? And Sam? Was he around for a drink at all?
    Afterward, he was ashamed that he hadn’t told Ronan. Ronan was busy with the new software upgrade, he told himself. It had taken him ages to get Deanna out of his system. He was in the early stages of dating that girl from the not-for-profit soup place. But the truth was, Ed hadn’t had a date in forever, and a bit of him wanted Deanna Lewis to see what he had become since the company was sold a year ago.
    Because money, it turned out, bought you someone to sort out your clothes, skin, hair, body. And Ed Nicholls no longer looked like the tongue-tied geek in the Mini. He wore no obvious signs of wealth, but he knew that, at thirty-three, he carried it like an invisible scent around him.
    They met at a bar in Soho. She apologized: Reena had blown them off at the last minute. She had a baby. She lifted a faintly mocking eyebrow as she said this. Sam, he realized long afterward, never showed. She didn’t ask about Ronan.
    He couldn’t stop staring at her. She looked just the same, but better. She had dark hair that bounced on her shoulders like a shampoo advert. She was nicer than he remembered, more human. Perhaps even golden girls were brought down to earth a little once they were out of the confines of university. She laughed at all his jokes. He could sense her surprise that he was not the person she remembered. And it made him feel good.
    They parted after a couple of hours. He wasn’t really expecting to hear from her again, but she called two days later. This time they went to a club and he danced with her, and when she lifted her hands above her head, he had to focus really hard not to picture her pinned to a bed. She was just out of a relationship, she explained, over the third or fourth drink. The breakup had been awful. She was not sure she wanted to be involved in anything serious. He made allthe right noises. He told her about Lara, his ex-wife, and how she had said her work was always going to be her first love, and that she had to leave him to save her sanity.
    “Bit melodramatic,” Deanna said.
    “She’s Italian. And an actress. Everything with her is melodramatic.”
    “Was,” she corrected him. She kept her eyes on his as she said it. She watched his mouth as he spoke, which was oddly distracting. He told her about the company: the first trial versions he and Ronan had created in his bedroom, the