Some Girls Do

Chapter Twenty-six




Claire called round to Luca’s as planned on Tuesday evening after work. She had booked a flight for Friday afternoon, and had decided to count the weekend as two dates, so Saturday would be her fifth date with Mark. Now she just had to tell Luca.

She arrived laden with carrier bags as usual. Since her mother had come home and Claire no longer spent the night at Luca’s, they had been eating takeaways or ready meals rather than wasting time cooking – sometimes forgoing food altogether to spend more time in bed. But Claire still found a pretext to buy groceries, sneaking food into Luca’s fridge when he wasn’t looking, or pretending she had simply got carried away in the supermarket.

‘No point in letting it go to waste,’ she’d say, as she filled his cupboards.

‘So – good news!’ he said as he let her in. ‘The gallery sold one of my paintings today.’

‘Oh, that’s brilliant! Congratulations!’

‘Thanks,’ he said, taking her bags from her and starting to unpack them on the counter. ‘I thought we could go out to celebrate – my treat!’

‘Oh, you shouldn’t spend your money on me.’

He turned to her. ‘Is that your way of saying you don’t want to be seen in public with me?’

‘No, but … maybe it’s my way of saying I don’t want to waste time out in a restaurant when we could be in bed.’

‘What have I created? You’re insatiable.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘Surely you could afford one night off.’

Not when it might be our last, she thought sadly. ‘We could get a posh takeaway – compromise.’

‘Have it your way,’ Luca said, going back to unpacking the groceries. ‘But I’m paying.’

‘Okay. So how much did this painting sell for?’

‘Three grand. So I’ll get fifteen hundred.’

‘You only get half? That’s terrible.’

‘That’s the way it is.’

‘It must be so hard to make a living at this.’ No wonder he lived in a shithole and couldn’t afford to pay his electricity bills.

‘It is – almost impossible. But I’m having a solo show there in September, so who knows? Hopefully I’ll sell a lot more then.’

When they had finished putting everything away, they moved to the sitting room.

‘Wine?’ Luca asked, picking up a bottle of red.

‘Yes, please.’ Claire sat on the sofa as he poured two glasses, trying to get up the nerve to tell him about Mark. She had meant to say it as soon as she’d arrived, but he’d had his news about the sale, so it hadn’t seemed the right time – and then the moment had passed.

‘How was lunch yesterday?’ she asked, as Luca handed her a glass and sat beside her.

‘It was fine. I behaved myself. I went on the dry to keep Jacqueline happy. We haven’t turned into the Waltons, but there were no fights.’

‘Have you ever tried to trace your real parents?’ she asked suddenly. A shadow passed across Luca’s face. ‘Sorry, none of my business.’

‘No, it’s okay. Jacqueline tried to trace them. But they didn’t keep very good records in those places. I was about nine months old when I was put in the first orphanage, but I still have no idea how I got there.’

‘What about Ali?’

‘They already knew who her parents were. They’d got their permission to adopt her.’

‘But she didn’t find out anything about yours?’

‘No. She drew a complete blank. And do you know what I felt?’ he said, his lip curled in disgust. ‘I was relieved. I didn’t want her to find them. I was terrified they’d send me away to live in a hut on the side of some mountain in Romania. I knew she didn’t want me, but I didn’t want her to find my real mother because I didn’t want to be poor.’ He looked up at her and she was appalled to see his eyes were shining with tears. She wished she’d never brought the subject up.

‘You know most of the kids in those so-called orphanages weren’t orphans at all?’ he asked.

Claire nodded.

‘I wanted to be. I wanted her to find out that my parents were dead, so there’d be no chance of her ever sending me back.’ He laughed harshly. ‘I told you I’m not a very nice person.’

‘Jesus, Luca, you were only a child.’

It broke her heart to think of Luca living in terror of having what little hard-won stability he’d finally got in his life snatched away. And instead of making him feel safe, Jacqueline had fuelled his insecurity with her precious ‘honesty’ about her feelings. It was a bloody good thing she hadn’t known about this on Saturday, Claire thought furiously – she’d have had a hard time restraining herself from punching the woman. Did Jacqueline have any idea about the torture she’d put Luca through?

‘She shouldn’t have made you feel that being sent away was a possibility in the first place. Did you tell her that was what you were afraid of?’

‘No. I didn’t want to put the idea in her head in case she hadn’t already thought of it.’ He took a gulp of wine. ‘I’ve never told anyone that before, actually.’

‘Not even Ali?’ She frowned.

‘God, no. Especially not Ali.’

Claire wondered why especially not her, when he was so close to her. But he got up then and went to the table, leafing through a pile of papers. Confession time was clearly over.

‘So, what do you want? Pizza? Thai? Indian? There are menus here somewhere.’

She drank some wine and decided that this was as good a moment as any. She knew it was cowardly, but she didn’t want to be facing him when she told him her news.

‘I’m going over to stay with Mark next weekend,’ she said to Luca’s back.

‘Oh?’ He stilled, and now she wished she hadn’t been so spineless because she wanted to see his face. She had no idea what he was feeling. His hands resumed their searching.

‘It’ll be our fifth date on the Saturday.’

‘Right,’ he said, turning to her slowly. ‘So, this is it, then?’ he asked, leaning against the table and folding his arms.

‘I guess so,’ she said, plucking nervously at the upholstery of the sofa. Even though he was facing her now, she still couldn’t tell how he felt about it.

He came to sit beside her on the sofa again, looking at her with concern. ‘Are you ready for that?’

She shrugged. ‘I think so. Don’t you?’

‘Well, I don’t think there’s much more I can teach you,’ he said, with a wry chuckle. ‘Not after that performance on Saturday.’

She smiled.

‘But don’t let him pressure you. If you need more time, just tell him to back off. Take it as slow as you like. Make him go at your pace.’

‘It’s not that I need more time … I don’t think.’

‘You don’t sound very sure.’

‘It’s just – I don’t know …’ She struggled to explain how she was feeling.

Luca was silent, waiting patiently for her to say what was on her mind.

‘It’s just that I’m fine now with you. I feel like I know what I’m doing. I’m confident, and I’m relaxed about being naked around you. I can take the initiative.’


‘Boy, can you!’

‘But that’s you. I know you and we’re friends—’ She pulled herself up. ‘Well, I think we’re friends—’

‘We are friends.’

‘So I feel comfortable with you. I don’t feel like I have to perform and you’re judging me. I don’t have to try to impress you. I can just be myself. But I’m afraid that with someone else I’ll be back to square one and it’ll be like starting all over again.’

‘Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. And it won’t be like starting again. It’ll be like … riding a bike. Just a different bike.’

She laughed.

‘And don’t worry about impressing him – just be yourself.’

‘But what about us?’ she asked, blurting out the thing that was worrying her most.

‘What about us?’

‘Will I ever see you again? Will we still be friends?’

‘Yeah, of course,’ he said immediately, and she sagged with relief. ‘I mean, if you want to be?’

‘I do.’ She nodded eagerly. She couldn’t imagine not having him in her life.

‘Me too.’ He sank back against the sofa and blew out a breath. ‘So, this is it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m going to miss this,’ he said, waving his hand between the two of them.

‘Me too.’

He reached for her and pulled her into his lap so she was straddling him.

‘So, what do you say?’ he asked mischievously, as he trailed a warm hand underneath her skirt. ‘One last undress rehearsal?’


They didn’t have any dinner in the end, instead spending all the time they had together making love. Claire knew she was kissing Luca more passionately, clinging to him more fiercely than ever before, sucking his cock like it was the last time – because it was. He seemed more intense too, kissing her frantically, pushing into her faster and harder than he ever had before, touching her everywhere as if he were trying to memorise every inch of her skin. He went down on her for so long that she thought she was in danger of forgetting his face. It had been the most intense, exhilarating, satisfying sex of her life.

So why did she feel so deflated as she travelled home later that night in a taxi? What had she been expecting? Some display of jealousy? Luca begging her not to go? It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been clear from the start about what their relationship was – and what it wasn’t. He had told her right from the beginning that she wasn’t to think of him as a boyfriend, so she could hardly expect him to declare undying love for her and beg her to stay. But, still, she couldn’t help feeling rattled by how cool he had been about it all – the ease with which he could watch her move on to another man. Maybe she’d fallen a little bit for Luca’s easy charm. But the kind of casual, no-strings arrangement that was all he could handle would never be enough for her. He was wrong for her and she had always known that. With Mark she could have a proper grown-up relationship and the kind of life she wanted. She was probably just feeling wobbly about taking it to the next level.

It was a pity Luca didn’t want to be in a relationship because she thought he would be better at it than he gave himself credit for. But he didn’t, so he would go back to his old ways, and she would go to London next weekend and sleep with Mark. There was nothing stopping her – certainly not Luca.