The One Before the One by Katy Regan Page A

“yawn” and other teenage expressions denoting boredom.’
    Toby smiles, amused, snuggles under the duvet and grabs my bum.
    ‘Anyway, she said she was going swimming followed by some body combat class at the gym, thank God. Otherwise, I don’t know what I would have said to get her out of the house.’
    ‘Like I said, Steeley, perhaps we’ll have to de-camp.’ Toby puts one arm across my chest then pulls me on top of him.
    ‘Decamp what?’
    ‘The book club, of course.’ He cups my boobs in his hands and gives them a squeeze. ‘I can’t do without my book club, no way. I’d go crazy with lust.’
    ‘Really?’ I say, with more hope in my voice than I’d intended.
    ‘Er,
yeah.
Let’s see.’ He frowns up at the ceiling in mock concentration. ‘Firstly, with whom else would I get to discuss whether
Pride and Prejudice
is, in fact, the perfect novel?’
    He gives one of his infectious schoolboy giggles and I kiss him on the lips.
    ‘How would I get through the week without hearing what a genius – who’s that Japanese bloke you love?’
    ‘Murakami.’
    ‘Yeah, him. What a genius he is. Where would we be without having to make it through another fucking Joanna Trollope novel?’ We both burst out laughing. ‘Shit, I mean, seriously!’ We’re both snorting now. ‘Enough to make you want to open a vein. And then there’s that Houellebecq dude. What a barrel of laughs he was.’
    He assumes a deep, pompous voice. ‘“I found
Atomised
very nihilistic text.”’
    I bury my head in his chest and shake with laughter.
    ‘Don’t be mean! At least Charles was actually taking it seriously, unlike someone I know.’
    ‘Who was just there because he fancied the arse off a certain book club member? A member who, as well as exquisite taste in literature, also happens to have the best norks in London.’ He squeezes them again and we end up snogging.
    I guess this is how I manage to square all this in my head (which most of the time I don’t, meaning I spend my waking hours swinging between ridiculous excitement at the prospect of the ‘book club’ and feeling like a wanton whore who is destined for hell). There once was an actual book club. Once upon a time, that wasn’t a lie. It was Marta’s idea, Marta being the office martyr, arranging countless, thankless, work-bonding events. We needed a venue, so I volunteered. It had been two months since Martin moved out and I liked the idea of the house being full once a fortnight. I imagined we’d sit around a roaring fire, sipping vintage Merlot and discussing so-and-so’s use of personification and whether we identified with such-and-such protagonist. What actually happened was that we’d discuss the book for ten minutes, get slaughtered on Blossom Hill. Then have a row.
    What was supposed to be a bonding exercise ended up dividing the office. It was ‘us’: Me, Toby, Shona and Charles from marketing (‘The ones with degrees,’ Toby would comment with typical scathing humour) and ‘them’: Marta, Health and Safety Heather and Toupee Dom (‘the plebs’ – Toby, again). The plebs thought our book choices were pretentious. We thought theirs were lame. Everything came to a head when Toby said that Heather’s choice – admittedly it was
Flowers in the Attic
by Virginia Andrews – had less literary merit than a McDonald’s menu, and she fled from the club in tears.
    And so, one by one, people fell away until it was just Toby and I who found ourselves in my lounge, books in hands. Iknew immediately this was a bad idea. We were reading
Intimacy
by Hanif Kureishi (my choice). An account of the night before a man leaves his wife, charting the unravelling of a relationship; how you can look at someone you’ve known for ten years and feel nothing.
    ‘How can you be married to someone for ten years and feel nothing?’ I said. We were sitting at my dining table. I’d lit candles – something I’d never done when everybody else was here.
    ‘Oh,