A Friend of the Family by Lisa Jewell

her head. She was also, Sean was delighted to note, wearing red lipstick. She’d never worn red lipstick before and it was one of his favourite things.
    ‘Hello, gorgeous,’ she said, wrapping her arms around his neck and giving him a big kiss on the lips. ‘I’ve just been chatted up.’
    ‘Oh yeah,’ said Sean, ‘who by?’
    ‘A ten-year-old boy wearing DKNY jeans. He said I was “hot”. And that he liked my boots.’
    ‘See – I told you you’d like it here.’
    He unlocked his door and let her in. The sounds of Spiritualized wafted through the flat, along with the smell of garlic and fresh basil. The candles he’d lit around the place gave an almost romantic glow and then there was his secret weapon.
    ‘Oh my God!’ She pushed past him and headed straight to the back of the living room. ‘This is amazing.’She’d spotted his secret weapon – the floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows on three sides from which you could see pretty much every inch of London spread outbelow, like a glittering rug. Oh my God,’ she said again, her hands pressed against the glass, her mouth open with amazement. ‘Look – the Dome. The London Eye. And the river. Oh wow,’ she moved to the south-facing window, ‘look, it’s the Crystal Palace mast.’
    He joined her at the window, following her fingertip to the flashing head of the mast, and slipped his arm around her waist.
    ‘You can see Crystal Palace from nearly everywhere,’ he said proudly. ‘Primrose Hill, Suicide Bridge, Alexandra Palace. Even from Ilford on a clear day. It’s like the North Star.’
    They stood for a while watching the blinking light on the horizon.
    ‘God, I can see why you don’t want to give this place up – it’s absolutely amazing.’
    ‘You haven’t seen the toilet yet.’
    ‘Why,’ she said excitedly, ‘what can you see from there?’
    ‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘it’s just really grim, that’s all.’
    She laughed. ‘Look, I was brought up on a farm – I know all about grim toilets.’
    Some farm, he thought to himself. She always referred to it as a farm but he knew it was an estate, with a management office and people employed to deal with things like dung and corpses and artificial insemination. The stable block was probably bigger than his parents’ house and her father was a Sir.
    ‘Aren’t you going to give me the grand tour?’
    He shrugged. ‘This is it.’
    ‘But where’s the bedroom?’
    ‘It’s the dank, musty hovel just through there,’ he indicated with his eyebrows. She pulled off her sheepskin coat and Sean pulled an ice-cold bottle of Louis Röederer from the freezer compartment of his Smeg where it had been chilling for the last hour.
    Sean wasn’t given to romantic gestures. None of the London boys were, really – it wasn’t in their genes. Their father was a kind man, an affectionate man, a man in love with his wife, but Sean couldn’t recall him ever buying Mum flowers or whisking her away for a surprise weekend. Gerry showed his love in other ways; nuzzling Bernie’s neck while she was hoovering, talking proudly about her achievements with friends, doing the washing-up without comment and driving out to Croydon at two in the morning to collect his drunken wife from a nightclub after her monthly girls’ night out. These had been the London boys’ lessons in love.
    Millie looked at the bottle in his hand with surprise.
    ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you are a classy act.’
    ‘What – this? ’ he said, waving the £45 bottle of champagne around airily. ‘This is nothing. You wait to see what you get on our three -month anniversary.’
    She smiled and sauntered around the corner into his bedroom. Sean carried the bottle and glasses on to the balcony. It was mid-April and Sean could just about distinguish the lazy, magical scent of a London summer encroaching. He could hear the EastEnders theme music coming through the balcony doors of the flat next door and the distant echo of children in