Whatever You Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

limited experience, is that they do. David knew he was doing it, although I don’t believe it was cynical: it was more an instinctive reaction to a woman he found attractive, that intent, expressionless stare.
    It was in a pub, our first meeting. I was there with a group of other physiotherapy students one of whom, called Carole, was weeping copiously because her boyfriend hadn’t shown up and she was sure he was seeing someone else. She left mid- evening, and the boyfriend came in not long after, with two friends. The boyfriend was David.
    I saw him as soon as he came in the door – tall, dressed in a heavy coat that bulked out a neat frame. His hair was dark and needed washing. One of the other girls I was with knew who he was and nudged me saying, ‘Look, that’s him, Carole’s boyfriend. He’s such a jerk,’ but I was already looking.
    While he was at the bar, we discussed him. He was public property, after all. Carole’s tears were the sauce with which he had been served and we had a right – no, an obligation – to pass judgement.
    ‘Not bad…’ I said, sipping my pint of lager top.
    The others disagreed.
    ‘Too confident,’ said Abbie.
    ‘I can’t bear men like that, Carole should dump him,’ declared Rosita.
    David finished buying a round for himself and his mates and only then did he look around the pub and see us, sitting in the corner. Abbie waved frantically. David and his two friends sauntered over, so laid-back they were almost visibly bending at the knees. As they neared our table, Abbie thrust her chest out and said in a sing-song voice, ‘She’s gone, you know. You’ve left it too late. She’s furious. ’
    David shrugged, and pulled up a stool, then folded himself down on to it, opposite me. He nodded. I nodded back. We were not of an age where either of us would do anything so uncool as introduce ourselves. Abbie flopped back on the bench seat. ‘Bloody hell…’ she muttered, apropos of nothing.
    We spent the rest of the evening around the small wooden table. The pint glasses piled up: the girls bought each other rounds and the boys bought their own. There was little in the way of shared conversation – the table stood between us like a demarcation line. That was the way relationships with the opposite sex were in those days; careful displays of mutual indifference punctuated by infrequent, clumsy sex. We talked about sex all the time amongst our peer groups, of course, but when any of us actually did it, we took care to reassure the person concerned, our friends and ourselves, that it was nothing personal.
    The barman called time and a moment later strode over to our table and reached behind my head for the bank of light switches on the wall above me, flicking on a whole row with a single swooping gesture of his hand. Repulsed by the sudden fluorescence, we all started, like vampires at an unexpected dawn. Vanity amongst us girls was socially acceptable, so the three of us scrambled to our feet, dragging coats up our arms, winding scarves around our necks, flicking our hair, while the boys scooped up their pints with affected casualness. The lighting laid bare the grubbiness of the table we were sitting at – the empty crisp packets half-folded in the ashtray, the sticky circles on the table’s shiny surface. When I eased myself out from behind the table, I could feel that the carpet beneath my thin shoes was soggy. I was already thinking of the essay I had to finish by Monday, on anterior and posterior tibials. I wanted to get back to the house I shared with Abbie and two other students. I wanted a cup of tea and my lumpen single bed.
    I was the first outside. David followed close behind. ‘You’d better give me your number, then,’ he said, as if we were concluding a previous conversation. Close to me, his voice low, I detected a Welsh lilt. It made him sound older than the boys I knew, more experienced.
    I stopped and looked at him. Up until that moment, neither of us had