Hugh could certainly goggle when he had the right thing to goggle over, I reflected. When I’d knocked on his door an hour earlier, Hugh had answered it wearing his dressing gown and a scowl. He gave me a deathly stare, clearly remembering my comment the night before about where he put his dick. It took me ten minutes of begging before he agreed to let me buy him lunch. ‘But only because it’s Mr Tasty’s,’ he’d said grudgingly as he’d gone to throw on some clothes. Mr Tasty’s was one of the few cafés in Reading that wasn’t either part of a chain or trying to be horrific-ally fake-upmarket. It had lime-green vinyl booths, chipped beige tables, and, for some reason, it served both greasy British fry-ups and Thai food. Neither cuisine was particularly good, but for years Mr Tasty’s had been the place Hugh and I went whenever we had something important to discuss with each other. Partly out of habit, partly because we knew we’d never run into anybody we knew there, because nobody ever went there except for construction workers and Reading’s few Thai expats. Hugh poked his fork into his Pad Thai with extra chillies and peanuts, abandoned it, and went back to goggling at me. ‘She’s not old enough to be your mother.’ ‘She’s thirty-nine.
