Through the square window

Out of the blue, Seriouscrush (who owns this house), suggests "Beer? It's been ages."

Why? Perhaps the answer might come if I stare at the screen hard enough. We never go out any more. I ring Kim and tell her, trying to dilute my worry about what they might want by saying it out loud. She takes me laughingly away by telling me about her successful date with a Politics postgrad and some crap drugs.

In the pub's slanting garden, the wooden seats aren't levelled off, and I sit in a vulgar open-legged straddle across the plank, presenting a laddish 90 degree angle to Seriouscrush and her boyf which is not the sort of pose one wants to present in polite Lancaster society. I am nervous and am drinking quickly, becoming a bit animated.

Boyf goes to get another round. The beer, from Kirkby Lonsdale, is first class. We give their two-year-old a little sip. She puckers a little, then asks for more. Good girl.

"Yes," says Seriouscrush, sitting up a little, announcing the topic. Her beautiful tits arch slightly towards me. Everything about her looks and clothes, her estuary colours, her skirt hemmed on the bias, her black square editorish glasses, her expensively untrammelled black hair, her gorgeous body, those thin, prematurely-old fingers that I used to silently shout at in desperation, to touch me, is still beautiful; but I don't want to be consumed, burnt away to something she could breathe on and make disappear, again.

Oh get on with it. Have you found out about our affair, or are you chucking me out of the house?

"The window frames and the door really need taking back to some good wood, or down to some decent paint, and repainting. It would be easier if, er, you could do it."

I wasn't expecting that. So this is where is has ended, discussing window frames. Giddy with relief, I fetch another round and we settle into a English Sunday Pub Chat about varnish and kitchen units and what has happened lately to people we know and friends stuck in rubbish jobs.

In further house news, I receive an enquiry about the room which will become vacant at the beginning of the next academic year. It doesn't make any difference whatsoever to my objective and impartial housemate selection process that she is mid-twenties, very pretty, and a PhDer. She's Canadian, but we all have our crosses to bear in life.