The Art of Losing. Rebecca Connell

      Adam’s flowers are starting to wilt. She has kept them in a vase by her bed for the past week, and for days they stayed in full bloom, their crimson petals so plushly perfect that she had to inspect them several times to make sure they were real. She knows that Sandra has noticed them; a sly hint was dropped at the dinner table, a jocular attempt to find out the identity of the sender, but she pretended not to understand. Now the roses are curling and browning slightly at the edges. In another day or two they will be dead, and she will have to decide whether to throw them out, or whether to swallow her pride and press them into dried-out husks, as she secretly wants to. Sitting at her dressing table, she plucks a petal off and crushes it between her fingers, the sweet scent rubbing off on to her skin. He cannot have known that roses were her favourite flowers, although she supposes it is a common enough choice.

      This is not the first time she has sat like this, staring at the flowers. In fact, since she collected them from the pavement seven days ago, it has become something of a mid-morning habit. So when she hears the doorbell downstairs, Sandra’s voice raised in polite enquiry, and the almost inaudible but unmistakable tones answering back, it is perhaps not as much of a coincidence as it might seem. Still, it is enough to make her start up from her chair and run to the door, heart hammering. She can hear him more clearly now – he is asking whether she is around, his voice strained and embarrassed. Mentally, she wills a message down to Sandra. Tell him I’m out, tell him I don’t live here any more. And then finds with a guilty start that this is not what she wants at all.

      Footsteps are approaching now, coming up the stairs to find her. She darts back to the dressing table and opens a book, pretends to study it. The door is pushed open and Sandra peeks around it – she never knocks, presumably clinging to the knowledge that despite the fact that she has been forced to take in a lodger, it is her house and therefore hers to do as she likes in. She’s a big woman, comfortable and matronly with a peroxide bob and meticulously plastered make-up. Such is the size of her that for a moment, Lydia doesn’t see Adam lurking behind in the shadows of the hall.

      ‘You’ve got a visitor,’ Sandra announces, beaming. ‘The same visitor you’ve had every day for the past week, in fact. He finally tracked you down!’ Behind her, Lydia sees Adam experiencing a silent agony of embarrassment and feels sorry for him. She suddenly realises that he must only be nineteen, and still has something of a teenager’s gaucheness. He’s several years younger than her, although of course there is no way he could know this. ‘So!’ Sandra prattles on, oblivious to the mortification she is causing. ‘I suppose this clears up one mystery!’ With a flourish, she indicates the roses, which have clearly been given an elegant vase and set in pride of place. Lydia feels her cheeks flame up, so that by the time Sandra retreats, with much innuendo about leaving them alone for a good chat, she and Adam are equally mute and self-conscious.

      He recovers first, wiping a hand across his mouth and shrugging as if to slough off the temporary awkwardness. ‘Tracked you down is about right,’ he says. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

      She is tempted to ask why but can’t quite get the words out. Standing in her bedroom, where she has only imagined him up to now, he seems larger than life. His scuffed trainers, his big hands and his muscular body don’t fit the quiet chintz of Sandra’s box room.

      ‘I’ve been quite busy,’ she says. ‘I did want to thank you for these, though.’

      He dismisses the roses with a wave of the hand. ‘Least I could do,’ he says. The allusion to what happened in the club upsets her. She has been trying not to think about Isobel, or the lust-drunk look on Adam’s face as she danced, and much less what happened after. ‘Listen,’ he continues, sitting down with a bump on her bed, ‘I have been round a few times. Not quite as many as your interfering landlady might have suggested, obviously, but still, a few. I wanted to see you.’ He pats the bed and she goes and joins him there, thinking that this at least cannot hurt.

      ‘That’s very flattering,’ she says. ‘But I can’t imagine your girlfriend is too pleased.’

      ‘It’s not like that,’ he says, a trifle too quickly. ‘Isobel and I – we’re friends, sometimes we have fun.’

      ‘Have sex, you mean,’ she snaps, aware that she is sounding jealous, but unable to help herself.

      ‘Yeah, OK – have sex,’ he agrees, shrugging his shoulders helplessly. He’s trying to look contrite, but he can’t entirely hide the ghost of a smirk. ‘But that doesn’t mean she’s my girlfriend. Look, I feel really bad about going off and leaving you like that. I don’t know why I did it. It was you I wanted to—’ He breaks off and in her head she finishes the sentence with forbidden words, words that she has never said aloud. They make her feel hot, bewildered. She stares down at her hands.

      ‘Would she like to be?’ she asks then. ‘Your girlfriend, I mean?’

      Adam shrugs again and frowns, as if weighing up an entirely new concept. ‘She might do,’ he says. ‘But she isn’t. And besides, term ends in a fortnight. She’ll be going home to Kent, and obviously I live here.’ She doesn’t like the inference, and looks at him sharply. He corrects himself with commendable swiftness. ‘I mean, I don’t mean … it wouldn’t be going behind her back for us to spend some more time together. Because, like I say, there’s nothing going on.’

      ‘Mmm.’ She isn’t convinced, but wants to leave the subject of Isobel until she can think about it, alone. ‘What makes you think I’m not going home for the holidays myself?’ she demands. As soon as she asks, she sees a shift in Adam; he looks surer of himself, even a little angry, and with a flash of insight she realises that she is about to be challenged.

      ‘This is the thing,’ he says. ‘After I’d been here a couple of times and you weren’t in, I went over to Jesus and tried to get hold of you that way. But you’re not a student there, are you?’

      Lydia knows she will have to think fast, but she can’t get rid of the nagging question in her mind. ‘But you don’t even know my surname,’ she says.

      ‘I know that,’ he replies. Her comment seems to have taken away some of his anger; he leans back against the headboard, stretching his legs out across the duvet until they almost graze her own. ‘I left a note in every pigeonhole with the first initial L.’ The matter-of-fact tone in which he makes the admission suggests that, amazingly, it doesn’t seem to embarrass him. As she takes in what he has done, she finds that she is flattered and more than a little amused. She can’t help smiling.

      ‘That was very enterprising of you,’ she murmurs.

      ‘Yes,’ he snaps back, irritated again now. ‘And I left my number so you could get in touch with me, and I’ve had crank calls from about a dozen people all week, mostly blokes taking the piss.’

      She can’t hold back the laughter that bubbles up in her throat, and has to clamp a hand over her mouth. To her relief he joins in, and for a few moments they abandon themselves to a mutual paroxysm of mirth, flapping their hands at each other in wheezing protest. ‘I might have got your note, and just decided not to reply,’ she points out when she has calmed down, wiping her eyes.

      Adam shakes his head confidently. ‘You would have replied,’ he says, and for an instant she wonders what else was in the note besides his phone number. ‘Besides, you’ve just given yourself away a bit there.’ There is a pause; he looks slyly up at her, hands clasped behind his head, waiting for her to speak. ‘So what is it with you?’ he asks when she doesn’t. ‘You’re living here with some middle-aged battleaxe, you say you’re at college when you’re not, and you can make yourself disappear for days on end. What are you really doing here?’

      She