Free The Uninvited by Liz Jensen Page A

argued about Freddy before I left.
    ‘I’m the only adult male he’s ever been around on a regular basis,’ I said. ‘He thinks of me as his father.’
    ‘That’s exactly the problem,’ she said.
    ‘So you’ll just go and find him a new one?’
    She didn’t say anything. I did a mental flow chart which brought me to the conclusion that this might already have happened.
     
    It’s six o’clock and I have gone down to the hotel bar where a woman is sitting alone drinking white wine. She is flicking through a demographics journal. This attracts my attention, firstly because population distribution is a fascinating field of study and secondly because the journal is in German, a language I speak passably. I like to practise it, so I introduce myself to the woman in German – guten Abend – and we get talking. She tells me she is an academic attending a conference on statistical projections in the wake of the UN’s recent warning. It’s called The Perfect Storm: Climate, Hunger and Population. She shows me a graph whose growth curve I am familiar with: it is applicable to any biological species with no significant predators and finite resources. I ask her when she sees the exponential growth phase being replaced by stationary and death phases. She replies that it is unlikely to be later than 2100 and could be sooner than 2050.
    ‘Human civilisation faces a 90 per cent risk of collapse if the population rate isn’t held in check. We’re a species out of control. Do you realise, the world’s population has more than doubled in my lifetime?’
    I do a swift calculation. She’d have been born around 1960. ‘You must be above fifty, then.’ Her eyes change shape. ‘That’s OK. I like older women.’
    Although she has no distinguishing features by which she can be readily recognised, she is reasonably attractive. I haven’t had sex in two hundred and sixteen days and I feel the need with a sudden urgency. So I ask a few personal-information questions by way of a warm-up: where do you live, etcetera. I learn that she is based in Geneva but travels a great deal, which means she can’t have a dog. But she would like one. I ask what breed and she says a King Charles spaniel. I tell her I have an as-yet un-christened fish. When I ask her if she’d like to join me in my room, she understands what I mean immediately, but claims she is ein bisschen überrascht , ‘a little taken aback’, and suggests we have another drink first um sich kennenzulernen , ‘to get acquainted’.
    I thought we’d done that. I don’t want another drink, but I buy her a second glass of wine and wait for her to finish it.
    ‘Don’t you want one?’ she asks. She is drinking her wine rather slowly.
    Apparently I hadn’t made myself clear. ‘No. I just want you. I like older women. And sex too of course. I like sex. We won’t reproduce.’
    This prompts the blush reflex and she laughs. ‘Not at my age, no.’
    She looks down at her hands. Then she looks up and says, ‘Hesketh. You’re an incredibly good-looking man. But I expect you know that.’
    I do, as women have often told me so before. ‘My ex used to call me the tall, dark stranger,’ I tell her. ‘But she didn’t mean it as a compliment.’
    She smiles. I run my finger up the inside of her wrist, one of my favourite places on women. Then she finishes her drink in one gulp and we go upstairs and I get to sample some of my other favourite places: the nape of the neck, the breasts and nipples, and, of course, the mons venus area.
    The sex starts well, but just as I’ve established a definitive momentum my phone makes its text-message noise, which is the cry of the peregrine falcon. I regret programming this in. Some rhythms are not meant to be broken, and certain sounds are particularly disruptive, so this causes a setback. The Swiss demographer gets me going again quite expertly, but once my penis is back in her vagina it’s all over after twenty-two thrusts. She