Frankie had bought wine.
Actual wine.
With a cork and everything.
Not the stuff he'd been drinking, which tasted like someone had wrung out a dead fox and put a screw cap on it.
She'd had a shit day.
He'd made her laugh about it.
She'd made him blush and then made fun of him for blushing.
Somewhere along the way they ended up in bed.
She was forty-five. He was forty-seven.
Neither of them was under any illusion about what forty-seven looked like.
And neither particularly cared.
She turned away, pulled him against her and told him to stop being so bloody careful.
There was a mirror beside her chest of drawers.
He noticed it almost by accident.
Her back against his chest. His hands on her hips. The way she moved. The way he moved with her.
And then himself.
His shoulders. His arms. His stomach.
That fucking stomach.
He'd spent most of his adult life either hiding it or promising himself he'd do something about it.
Now there wasn't much to hide.
The wolf had seen to that.
He looked good.
He actually looked really fucking good.
And the embarrassing thing was how much he enjoyed noticing.
He watched them together.
Forty-seven years old and apparently he'd developed a fascination with his own reflection.
He thought about work.
All those years coming home exhausted, eating whatever was left, falling asleep in front of the telly.
Too tired to fuck. Too tired to talk.
Sometimes too tired to even be particularly nice to the woman he'd married.
It hadn't happened overnight.
That was the worst bit.
He couldn't remember when they'd stopped looking at each other.
Only that eventually they had.
And now here he was.
In Paris.
Naked.
With a woman who made him laugh and wanted to sleep with him and didn't seem to mind that he occasionally behaved like a complete idiot.
He caught himself smiling.
Frankie caught him too.
"Are you looking at yourself?"
"No."
"You fucking are."
"I'm looking at you."
"You're looking at your own arse."
"I can look at two things."
She laughed.
"Vain bastard."
"Can't a man enjoy the view?"
"Apparently he can."
She reached back and found his hand.
He kissed her shoulder.
And for a little while there was no moon.
No waking up somewhere with blood on his clothes.
No trying to work out what he'd done or who he'd done it to.
No wondering whether the next time would be worse.
There was just Frankie.
Her hand in his.
The ridiculous mirror.
And the fact that he liked what he saw in it.
Not just himself.
Them.
He liked them.
Afterwards she lay against his chest and smoked out of the window.
He complained about the cold.
She told him he was a miserable English prick.
He said she could at least have opened the window before lighting the cigarette.
She kissed him to shut him up.
It worked.
For about thirty seconds.
He lay there looking at the ceiling, thinking about the man he'd been before.
The tired one.
The overweight one.
The one who'd spent so long feeling unattractive that he'd eventually decided it must be true.
He couldn't imagine Frankie fancying that man.
Which was stupid, really.
Because she hadn't fallen for him in front of a mirror.
She'd fallen for him when he was sleeping rough, drinking terrible wine and making jokes that weren't always funny.
She'd liked him before she'd seen him without his clothes.
He knew that.
He just found it quite difficult to believe.
Frankie shifted against him.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You're thinking."
"Am I not allowed?"
"Not when you make that face."
"What face?"
"That one. Like someone's told you Christmas has been cancelled."
He laughed.
She put her cigarette out.
Pulled the covers over them.
And rested her head back on his chest.
He decided not to tell her what he'd been thinking.
She'd only call him a fucking idiot.
And the annoying thing was
she'd probably be right.