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to her.
    ‘Ah, those . . .’
    ‘Yes, those.’
    ‘Thomas gave them to me,’ she said
    ‘You just meet the guy today and already he’s giving you things?’
    ‘It just happened,’ she explained. ‘He was holding this cute little Liberty bag and I asked him what was inside, and he’d bought the gloves for his mother but then
suggested I try them on and they happened to fit me perfectly. So he said I could keep them . . .’
    ‘Just like that?’
    ‘Oh come on, Moana, he’s just a friend, that’s all. We need to make friends, you know, we can’t stay in this tiny room together every night of the week.’
    I could feel myself turning into a rather unpleasant sort of person. And I wasn’t enjoying it.
    She was on a roll, and continued to make her point as I stood sullen, with my arms crossed, and listened.
    ‘He’s a guy, Moana.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘So, what I mean is that even if you and I play around, it’s not all there is to life, to sex. It’s nice, I have very tender feelings for you, but I know there must be more.
Us, it shouldn’t be exclusive, you understand. So far, he’s just a nice and funny guy. But one day I want to know what it feels like with a man, you know. Him, someone else, I just want
to know.’
    As Iris said this, she also lowered her gaze as if she didn’t want to look me squarely in the eyes. My heart dropped.
    ‘I don’t.’
    Was I being jealous, petulant, spoiled? Somehow the way Iris was explaining things, more articulate than ever before on the subject now that alcohol was flowing through her veins, sounded
unchallenging, normal. She had never been very vocal. Passive, even. We had gravitated towards each other because of our closeness, situations, but we had never actually discussed it. It had just
happened. In fact, it struck me, we never did talk much together, did we?
    I decided to drop the subject. For now.
    She chose to ignore my reaction to the situation.
    My stomach rumbled.
    ‘Have you eaten?’ I asked her, deliberately not mentioning the possibility that Thomas might have bought her dinner.
    She shook her head. ‘I haven’t had time to do any shopping.’
    ‘It’s okay. I’m sure we can find scraps in the kitchen. Actually, bread and peanut butter would suit me.’
    ‘We can fry some eggs; there’s some slices of bacon left too, if you want.’
    ‘Not sure I’m up to bacon. The play was a touch violent, not the sort of thing to trigger much of an appetite . . .’
    ‘Tell me all,’ Iris demanded.
    We trooped over to the kitchen. Reunited for now.
    Thomas was never mentioned for the rest of the evening. We fed on leftovers, not that either of us was very hungry. Then settled down on the narrow couch and watched the telly.
Usually, Iris cuddled against my side, or lay down with her head on my lap, but tonight she sat cross-legged next to me, as if an invisible wall had appeared between us despite our earlier apparent
reconciliation. The distance made me glum.
    ‘Shall we go to bed?’ I suggested, hoping that there we would find the intimacy that words had not yet been able to restore. The flat was so cramped that the bed was barely a foot
away from the sofa, and yet we persisted in making the most of the little space that we occupied by eating most of our meals at the dining table and using the couch as if it were a living room,
saving the bed for sleep and sex.
    Iris readily agreed.
    I was working a matinée and an evening show the next day at the theatre but she had the weekend off as a reward for the monotony of her 9-to-5 job. So neither of us had to get up early,
which suited me fine.
    I’d just stripped and slipped my pyjama top on and moved to our bed. Iris was in the shower. The water had been running for an age, and I imagined her standing under it still in a
champagne daze. She’d never had much of a resistance to drink, even back home. I was sitting up in bed, two sets of cushions behind my back shielding me from the sometimes damp