sipped her vodka and grinned awkwardly while Rob and his colleagues talked about stuff she didn’t understand and people she didn’t know. She found herself making mental notes: pay bills, speak to her bank, ring her father – her mother too. It had been ages since she’d spoken to either, let alone seen them. She’d try and arrange to visit one on Saturday, the other on Sunday. She’d take Rob along. Over the last ten months, her mother had met him only a couple of times and her father just the once. She glanced over at Rob, a slight sheen to his face from euphoria and the effort of the day, his voice loud and fast from alcohol and high spirits. He looked nice in a suit, she thought, and wasn’t it good to see him in his element, holding court amongst colleagues, reeling off extravagant anecdotes and technical data from the working day just gone. Just then, Petra felt a wave of resentment towards Eric and Kitty and Gina who were not particularly subtle about their doubts over Rob. Particularly Eric. And Kitty. Gina slightly less so.
And yet look how Rob’s lot include me, Petra thought to herself – Laura and the other girl asking all about our relationship, that bloke with the wet patch on his shirt asking me about diamond merchants, that other one buying me another vodka and tonic. If Rob hadn’t been stressed out and moody that day he visited the studio, perhaps my lot would be more accommodating. And I probably haven’t helped – taking into the studio my daft insecurities and niggles. They’re very quick to criticize, my Studio Three. I bet they wouldn’t say my slippers are cute.
Petra tried desperately to stifle a yawn.
‘Are we keeping you up?’ one of the men teased her.
‘You do look a little tired,’ Laura commented.
‘She was up half the night,’ Rob said.
‘Phnar phnar,’ one of his colleagues nudged him.
‘Not likely,’ Rob laughed. ‘My girlfriend gets up to all sorts of shenanigans at night – but it’s nothing to do with me.’
‘I sometimes sleepwalk,’ Petra mumbled in, hoping to curtail details.
‘Yesterday – Christ, the early hours of this morning,’ Rob was saying, ‘I get a call from the police asking me do I know a Petra Flint, does she have wellingtons and a Snoopy T-shirt and is there any way she could have walked towards Whetstone whilst asleep.’
‘You’re joking,’ Laura said, the focus of her pity directed at Rob which disappointed Petra.
‘Appalling,’ Petra said quickly. ‘Hence the slippers – from my blisters.’
‘Mind you, at least she was clothed,’ Rob said, raising his glass at Petra and winking.
Oh God, don’t, Rob, please.
But Rob was bolstered by Bollinger and he had a captive audience and he quite liked the power of being a raconteur.
‘When I took her to meet my folks down in Hampshire, she walked into their bedroom, switched on their light, opened their cupboard doors, had a rummage around and then walked out again.’
‘Rob—’
But Rob paused for dramatic effect only. ‘Starkers!’ he told the table. ‘I don’t know who it was worse for – Petra, or my parents.’
Petra hid her head in her hands.
‘Do you really not realize a thing?’ the other girl asked, slightly accusatorily. Petra shook her head without raising her face.
‘Why don’t you go to bed wearing something – just in case?’ Laura asked her.
‘I do,’ Petra said, ‘especially when I’m staying away from home. I put on layers and layers before I go to bed. I don’t know why I take them off – I don’t know why I take off.’
‘Can’t you take a sleeping pill or something? It could be dangerous.’
‘So could taking sleeping pills,’ Petra said. ‘I’ve seen specialists, had tests. No one knows why I do it or how to stop me.’
‘I can’t believe she walked into your parents naked,’ Laura said to Rob, and Petra would rather she’d said it to her.
‘I don’t mean to,’ Petra said, trying to look imploringly at Rob who didn’t seem to feel her gaze. ‘I don’t like it.’
‘Petra will kill me for this one – apparently, before I met her, she actually got into bed with complete strangers.’
‘Oh my God – did you have sex with them?’
‘Of course not,’ Petra said crossly. ‘I was staying at a place in the country for my friend’s thirtieth birthday. I didn’t know the house and I think I was getting flu anyway. But yes, I walked in my sleep into another bedroom and got into bed with a couple.’
‘What did they do?’
‘Tried to get me out,’ Petra said. ‘I only stayed for a few minutes anyway and then I went out of my own accord.’
‘Out?’
‘Into the grounds of the house,’ Petra explained, ‘but someone was having a spliff outside and they led me back.’
‘They must’ve thought it was damn good skunk,’ one of the men laughed.
Petra shrugged. ‘I know it sounds funny and crazy – but it’s not. Believe me.’
‘It’s a liability,’ Rob said. ‘That’s why I’d like to say that I’m particularly proud of the deal we did today, chaps – because I was up half the night in Whetstone bloody police station.’
Everyone raised their glasses to Rob, and Petra suddenly wondered whether it would have been entirely her fault if he hadn’t closed the deal with the Japanese. Poor Rob, she thought, I am a liability. So she raised her glass highest of all. And though she was desperate to go home and snuggle up with him for an early night, she stuck it out at the bar because she felt he deserved it.
Later, much later, they took a cab back to Rob’s flat in Islington. Petra was beyond exhausted but woozy with vodka too. When she sobered up, she would think how it was not particularly logical to be mad at Rob for humiliating her yet also to want to impress him, seduce him, enamour him of her – so that perhaps he wouldn’t do it again. When she sobered up, no doubt she would wonder why on earth she hadn’t just said, Rob, you sod, please shut up – it’s private and you’re embarrassing me. But she was a little drunk and her heels throbbed and she’d knocked her knee on the side of Rob’s chair and it was the same chair she’d once wet in her sleep. And suddenly she loved him for having not humiliated her by revealing that episode to his colleagues. And foremost in her conscience was that she’d pissed Rob off the night before and so now she ought to make it up to him because she didn’t like upsetting people and she didn’t like arguments and she didn’t like conflict and she wanted to remind Rob that there was more to her than Snoopy T-shirts and calls from the police. And it would be so very nice if this relationship could last beyond a year.
Before he had time to pour himself a whisky, Petra was behind him, encircling her arms around him. She kissed him between his shoulder blades, huffing hot breath through his shirt while she travelled her hands down his stomach and unzipped his trousers.
‘What’s all this?’ he murmured though he took her hand and thrust it down his boxers. He turned and kissed her hungrily. He tasted slightly rancid, of too much beer and champagne on top of a liquid lunch, but Petra told herself to block it out. She kissed him back thoughtfully, taking care to skip her tongue around his mouth, her teeth grazing his lips. She looked into his eyes which were a little bloodshot but no doubt hers were too. She didn’t really like his face so much when he was drunk – it was what Eric would term ‘leery’ and Eric had seen Rob pissed once before. But leery was fine for now because sex was on the agenda. He squeezed her breasts and bucked his groin against hers. She swept her hand downwards and thrilled at the feel of his erection holding the fine wool of his suit trousers aloft. He fumbled with his belt and pushed his trousers and underpants down.