Free The Rose Petal Beach by Dorothy Koomson Page A

crave it, sometimes more than sex. It doesn’t seem to work as well with one-night stands, not sure why. Maybe it’s because you can’t pretend too hard? You can’t allow yourself to relax and sleep properly if you know at the end of it he’s probably going to be gone very early the next day, if he stays more than a few hours at all. Even if he stays till dawn, even if you have that early connection that leads to morning sex, you know he’s leaving and never coming back. When you crave the intimacy of sleeping with someone, having it faked for only a few hours is worse than not having it at all.
    I’ve opened my eyes this morning feeling flat. My mobile is definitely be-janxed, which means I have to go to the office when I’d planned on working from home today. I could do without driving all the way to Kent now, but they’ve got no way to get in touch unless it’s by email and for some reason that’s not enough for my company. They need to know they can talk to me at whatever time they want.
    My limbs don’t come anywhere near the edges of the bed, my body is not enough to fill it up on its own.
    Tami and Scotty pop into my mind. I bet they’re waking up right about now, curled up together, their skin so close it could almost be that they’re one person. I bet he kisses her on the top of her head as I’ve seen him do a million times, I bet she smiles and snuggles into the crook of his neck. I sound so jealous, and that’s because I am. I am of pretty much every couple who sleep together, not just Tami and Scotty.
    I’ve mentioned them a couple of times now, so I’m sure you’re curious about how I know them. Well, about nine years ago, the banker who lived at number eighteen Providence Close lost his job – couldn’t have happened to a nicer wanker, sorry, banker, if you ask me. I knew him because I used to work in the City and he’d been on the fiddle for years. Anyways, he had to sell his house pretty quickly, so when this couple came along with a huge deposit and the ability to move quickly he sold it to them and never looked back.
    Nine years ago
    Whenever I saw the neighbours who I talked to on the Close they’d always have a different story about who was about to move into number eighteen. Gus at number forty-eight said it was a widower and his six children, Leenie at number three said it was a single mother who’d won the lottery, Cleo at number ninety-six said it was the banker who’d had to sell the house in the first place under a different name so he could cheat the tax man. So when I saw the new owner coming out of the house, dressed in a dust-smeared T-shirt, old jeans, and wild, ‘manual labour’ hair, I kind of guessed he was none of these things.
    ‘Hi,’ he said, a grin taking over his face when he saw me.
    ‘Moving in, I see,’ I replied, pausing outside the small iron gate and then leaning against the gatepost.
    ‘Yes, a very long process, considering I’m moving a one-bedroomflat into a five-bedroom house. There’s so much stuff.’ He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t make sense, you know?’
    He had this cute way of wrinkling his nose to emphasise how baffling things seemed to him. And his habit – which is what I could tell it was from the way he did it – of running his right hand through his brown locks started a tingling in my stomach. But it was his smile, the way it was a little bit higher on one side of his mouth than the other, that made me fall for him. In my head, we’d kissed, made love, set up home, got engaged, had a huge wedding and were trying for a baby by the time he’d said ‘you know?’
    I nodded at him.
    ‘So it’s only you moving in, then?’ I said, trying to hide my hope. One-bedroom flat, no visible sign of anyone else helping with the moving process, all on his own at what seems a crucial phase … Ergo, moving in alone. Single. Available. As was I. Available, that is.
    ‘No. God, no. I couldn’t live in a house this big on my own. My wife is at