My mum's best friend is called Alison. Alison Walsh, lives about twenty minutes from us. She and my mum have been mates since before I existed - birthday parties, Christmas, kitchen table with a glass of wine when something needed talking through.

It was the second Friday of my two-week rest. Hip flexor still nagging. Mum was on a late shift at the pharmacy. I was on the sofa watching the Tour de France - don't judge me, the physio had said no football - when she called.

'Finn, love. Al needs someone to get some boxes out of her loft. Mark's away till Tuesday and she can't get up the ladder properly because of her knee. I said you'd go.'

'Yeah, course.'

'She's made a lasagne.'

'Okay, what time?'

---

One of those proper July days, the kind we get four of per year in England. Stupid hot. I'd walked over in shorts and an old training top and rang the doorbell and could hear through the glass that she was already in the garden.

She came round the side of the house in a sundress. Loose, cotton, belted at the waist. Sandals, red painted toenails. Hair down, which I don't think I'd ever seen - she always has it up when she comes to ours. Light brown, shoulder length, a bit wavy from being up all day. Bit of sun on her face.

She wasn't what I'd expected. Not unrecognisably different, not magically transformed, standing in her own garden on a hot afternoon, completely at ease. And I thought: oh. Huh.

'Finn!' She hugged me hello, which she always does. 'Look at you. Running all summer, haven't you.'

'Five-a-side footie mainly. Not at the moment, though.'

'Your mum said. Hip?'

'Groin. Two more weeks.'

'Poor darling. Take it easy with the boxes.'

---

The loft was straightforward. Twenty minutes, three boxes down, one turned out to be Mark's old university stuff. Al looked at it with an expression I couldn't read and said leave that one. I folded the ladder. Washed my hands. Came downstairs to find her in the garden with two cold beers on the table.

'Sit out with me a bit?'

We sat in the way that's comfortable rather than awkward, which is the only way I've ever been with Al. She asked about Loughborough, student finance. Whether I had a girlfriend.

'Not currently.'

'Your mum will be pleased you won't be distracted.' She pulled a face immediately. 'That came out wrong.'

'It's fine.'

The sun was still properly warm at five o'clock. She'd tilted her face up to it with her eyes closed and I was not staring. She was forty-six. I'd done the maths off her fortieth, which had been in our kitchen, which I'd been dragged downstairs to say hello at in my pyjamas when I was twelve. My brain offered this up in roughly the same helpful-warning-label way it had offered up *she's about the same age as your mum* three weeks ago in the surgery. I told my brain to shut up and drank my beer.

'How's Mark?' I said.

She went quiet for slightly too long. 'Oh, fine. Frankfurt this week, Hamburg next. The week after he might actually be here for a Thursday.' Said very lightly, the way people do when they've decided not to say the real version. 'They want him to go permanent over there, actually.' She picked at the label on her bottle. 'So.'

Neither of us said anything.

Then, without looking at me: 'You look like your dad, you know. Same jaw. Same thing with the eyes.'

'People say that.'

'It's really come through now.' She did look at me then. 'Sorry. That's a weird thing to say.'

'It's alright.'

She laughed, short. 'No it isn't. Sorry.'

'Al, honestly.'

She looked at me a second longer than she needed to. Then: 'I'll get the lasagne on.'

---

We ate in the kitchen. Brilliant lasagne. She had wine. I had water. We talked about my mum, whether Germany was a reasonable proposition for a family with a house in Cambridge and a bad knee. She didn't say what she thought about Germany. She talked around it precisely enough that I knew without her having to say it.

It was half seven. I should have gone home.

We ended up back in the garden with the last of the evening sun, her third glass, another beer. Somewhere the conversation had gone somewhere I couldn't have predicted, which was her asking me quite seriously whether I was happy. Not Loughborough-happy. Right now.

'Yeah,' I said. 'I think so.'

'That's important. At your age especially.' She looked at her glass. 'Are you?'

She blinked. Clearly hadn't expected the question to come back. 'That's very direct.'

'Sorry.'

'I don't know. Mostly.' Looking at the garden wall. 'I get a bit lost in my own head when he's away.'

'About what?'

She laughed properly. 'Goodness, Finn. You're relentless.'

'Sorry. I'll stop.'

'Don't stop.' Said almost before I'd finished. She heard herself. Didn't take it back.

'This is the longest conversation I've had with another adult this week.' Something in her face was different now, nothing like the everything-is-fine version she'd been running since I arrived. 'Which is either very sad, or a very nice thing. I genuinely can't tell.'

I looked at her and don't know what my face was doing.

She looked back. Then, very quietly: 'Don't answer that.'

She put her glass down. 'I'm going to say something and I need you to tell me immediately if it's inappropriate and I'll drop it completely.'

'Um okay.'

'You've turned into a very...I mean, you're --' She stopped. Started again. 'Has anyone told you that you're quite good to talk to?'

That was not what I'd been expecting.

'Er no,' I said.

'Well. You are.'

She was looking at the garden again.

'Al.'

'Mm.'

'What were you actually going to say?'

She closed her eyes. 'Something very stupid.'

'Which I'm not going to say. Because I'm a grown woman and you're your mother's son and she's my best friend.'

'Yeah.'

'So.' She stood, collected the glasses. 'I'll get you some lasagne to take home.'

She went inside and I sat there looking at the garden and thought: nine out of ten, and she'd stopped it. Right call. Obviously. She's married, she's my mum's best friend, I'm eighteen years old, and I should walk home right now.

I followed her inside.

She was at the kitchen counter with her back to me, getting a container from the cupboard. She heard me and said 'I'll just-' and turned around and I was closer than she'd expected.

She stopped.

The space between us was completely different to what it had been all evening.

'Finn,' she said.

'Yeah.'

'I meant what I said. Out there.'

'I know.'

She let out a long breath. Then: 'Oh God.' Not like a decision. Like someone putting a bag down they'd been carrying a while.

She kissed me. Soft, just once, pulling back immediately like she was checking whether she'd actually done it. She had.

'Okay,' she said quietly, at my chest.

I put my hands on her face and kissed her back.

She pulled back, forehead to mine. Both of us just breathing. 'I want you to know,' she said, eyes still closed, 'that I am genuinely a sensible person. In day-to-day life.'

'I know.'

'Mark and I are--'

'You don't have to explain.'

She pulled back to look at me. Her eyes were very bright. 'You're eighteen,' she said.

'Yup. I am.'

'Finn.' But she'd already stopped meaning it as a reason to stop. I could hear it. She could too.

'Oh for goodness sake,' she said, almost to herself, and she kissed me again, harder, hands in my hair, and I had her back against the counter and she knocked something off it and neither of us looked.

She broke off. Face flushed, looking at me like she was deciding something she'd already decided. 'Upstairs. If we're -- if you're -- yeah?'

'Yeah.' Simple as that.

She took my hand. Fingers laced in mine all the way up the stairs, which I wasn't prepared for and which undid me more than everything that had happened so far.

Front bedroom, not the back. Not their room. She'd made a choice without saying anything about it.

She stood in the middle of the room and I kissed her and she undid the belt of the sundress and let it fall.

White bra, thin straps. Matching knickers, barely anything to them. Softer at the waist than I'd expected, fuller. Pale stretch marks across her lower stomach, which I'd never actually seen on anyone like this before, in this context, and I looked at them for a second and felt something I don't quite have the word for. She'd lived in this body forty-six years and had a proper life in it. That landed on me differently to how I thought it would.

She caught my face. 'Okay?'

'More than,' I managed.

'Come on then.'

Onto the bed. I got her bra off cleanly and then my mouth was on her neck, working down. Her fingers went into my hair when I reached her breast. Kept going. Stomach. That soft skin below her navel, the stretch marks under my lips just briefly, and she tensed like she was waiting for something -- and I kept going south, because why would I stop. I felt the tension leave her.

The knickers came off easy and then I was where I needed to be. She was properly wet and I had to run a quick mental detour via the Tour de France to stay functional, and then I got my mouth on her.

I worked slowly, circling her clit, not rushing, keeping a steady rhythm. Slid two fingers into her and curled them forward, kept my mouth where it was, and her thighs closed around my head. *Oh gosh* very clearly, then *don't stop*, then something that wasn't either of those things.

She came quietly. Windows open, next door probably had opinions, face turned to one side and hand pressed hard over her mouth. But I could feel it - everything locking hard, then letting go all at once. She said my name once when it was over.

That's going on the list. Near the top.

I stayed where I was a while, cheek on her thigh.

She pulled me up and kissed me - tasting herself on my mouth, which clearly didn't bother her at all - and reached past me to the bedside table. Two drawers before she found one, which is the most specifically married-person thing I have ever witnessed, and I say that with no judgment whatsoever. She helped me with it, unhurried, then pulled me between her thighs.

I pressed against her and didn't move. Taking too long. Building it up too much in my head.

'Alright?' she asked.

'Just. Give me a second.'

She touched my face. 'Finn. It's just me.'

Which was, obviously, the entire problem.

I kissed her and tried to turn my brain off, and when our mouths opened properly it actually worked. Just feeling it.

Her legs came up. Those red toenails against my back - I'd been looking at them since the doorstep and now here they were, pressing into me. I got my mouth to her neck and started moving properly, slow, finding what worked from the sounds she made and the small shifts of her hips.

Halfway through I caught our reflection in the wardrobe mirror. Both of us. Her hair loose on the pillow. Me above her. I'd never seen myself like this before, from the outside, and for a second I couldn't look away.

She noticed where I was looking.

Then she turned and looked too.

I pushed deeper and watched her face change in the glass and she watched herself and neither of us said anything.

She had a hand between us by then, touching herself while I was inside her, which I had absolutely not been prepared for and which I intend to think about every day until I die. She kept her eyes on the mirror while she did it. I kept moving and let her.

After a while she pulled me back down to her. Mouth at my ear. 'Harder.'

I gave her harder. She dug her fingers in to pull me closer and her breathing went short and ragged, all that composure completely gone. I was going properly now, not holding anything back.

'Finn, I'm going to--' She didn't finish it because she was already there, face in my neck, holding on hard enough that I felt it in my shoulders. I drove forward through all of it.

I wasn't far behind. She felt the change and reached between us, pulled me out, and I got my mouth on hers - tongues together, both of us still moving - and finished against her stomach and the sheets with her hand around me and her other arm pulling me down hard, like she wanted all of it. I stayed there, forehead to hers, until it was completely done.

I don't know why that got to me as much as it did.

We lay there. Evening going properly orange.

'Well,' she said.

'Yeah,' I said.

She looked at the ceiling, then turned to look at me. 'Are you alright?'

'Yeah. More than. You?'

She considered it, like it was a real question. 'I think so. Yes.' She put her hand flat on my chest for a moment, just there, not moving. 'This didn't happen,' she said.

'No.'

'I'm serious. Not -- I mean obviously it did, but--'

'Al. I know what you mean.'

She nodded. 'Mark and I are... it's complicated. I want you to know it's not nothing, what I've got with him. It's just long. And tired. And Germany.'

'Yeah.'

'And then you came to get my boxes down.'

'My mum bribed me with lasagne.'

She laughed properly. 'Oh God. Your mum.' Hand over her face. 'Never in my life will I--'

'Taking it to my grave.'

'You'd better.' She looked at me sideways. 'She'd skin me alive and then apologise and then skin me again.'

'Accurate.'

She sat up. Sorted herself out -- hair back up, dress back on. Barefoot. The knickers were on the floor by the bed. She didn't seem to notice. I did.

'Shall I heat up more lasagne?'

'Yeah, please.'

She smiled, nothing posed about it, and went downstairs.

I pulled my jeans on, found my top. Picked the knickers up off the floor and put them in my pocket. I don't know why. I just did.

---

We ate at the kitchen table and talked about nothing, the weather, Loughborough, whether swimming would help my hip. Ordinary air around something large.

I left at nine. She came to the door.

'Finn,' she said, behind me.

I turned.

She looked at me for a second. 'Thank you. For the boxes. And say hi to your mum.'

'My pleasure.'

I walked home in the dark and somewhere before the end of the road pulled my phone out to text my mum that the boxes were sorted and the lasagne was brilliant. She sent back a thumbs up and a smiley face.

I went to put the phone back and felt something soft that shouldn't have been there.

I stood under a streetlight and looked at them for a bit.

Then I put my phone in my pocket and thought about the summer, which had genuinely not gone the way I'd expected.