A younger Daniel Stone had been handsome: chestnut hair combed into a neat side parting, a smile that was at once beguiling and apprehensive, a small scar on his chin from where a childhood bike accident had left him needing stitches. Even as adolescents both he and his twin, Richard, had been constantly complimented on their good looks. Though of course, as boys, neither had taken heed of such throwaway comments, not least because they came from their parents’ friends, rosy-faced after too many drinks at the Stones’ infamous dinner parties.

‘You’re the spit of your father,’ they’d say to Richard, then call to a companion or colleague for confirmation. ‘Look at him, isn’t he just the spitting image of [Daniel’s father].’

‘Oh god, don’t say that,’ [Daniel’s mother] would say if she overheard such a remark. ‘That’s all we need, a second [Daniel’s father].’

And the dinner guest would laugh, because their mother had adopted the jokey tone that she had so perfected in public. In public when she could bear to be within arm’s reach of her husband.

Though the boys were identical twins, people never likened Daniel to his father. It was as if they only saw [the father] in Richard, as if an embryo had never been split, as if two lives had not begun just moments after one another.

On their father’s insistence, the boys had lived an active lifestyle of sports and outdoor pursuits that Daniel carried on into his adult life, maintaining his toned physique through morning and evening runs, thrice weekly squash matches and press ups each night before bed. Unlike when he was a boy and exercise had excused him from the home dense with his parents’ arguments, as an adult it had become an ally for the sense of focus it promised. When he was growing into the man that he’d always feared he would become, the man whose own desires made his skin crawl, exercise was an activity in which he put his total trust to distract his mind. For when he was running or on the squash courts, when he was feeling his muscles being worked, his thoughts were only of distance, time and competition. There was no room for any thoughts more personal. There was no space for doubt.

‘I love your arms,’ Samantha had said on the first night they made love.

They had been lying on top of the sheets that evening, their bodies sticky, scented with sex and sweat. Outside it was still hot, a heavy August heat weighing down on the city below. The window was open, but there was no breeze.

Though they had been so intimate just minutes before, Daniel flinched when Samantha squeezed his bicep between thumb and forefinger. She traced her tender touch down his forearm and took his hand in hers as she rested her head on his chest. He stared ahead at the blank white wall of his bedroom.

He had been thirty then, still so aware of the self that he loathed that it felt unnatural to be so close to another body. Least of all a female body. Samantha felt no such trepidation, though, he knew that. The way she had removed her clothes before taking off his had been testament to her confidence and self-assurance. Looking him in the eye, she’d undone button after button of her rose red blouse until it slipped down her arms to the floor, leaving her breasts covered only by a black bra with an intricate design. She’d been waiting for this moment, he realised at the sight. No doubt she’d wondered why it had not happened sooner.

As if reading his mind, she let out a little laugh,
breaking the silence between them.

‘I didn’t think you’d ever ask me up,’ she said, her voice so near to a whisper. Then she kissed him, taking him by surprise. ‘But I’m glad you did.’

He said nothing in response, and so she took his hands and pressed them hard against the soft flesh of her breasts, all the while looking him in the eye with what he was sure was a search for connection.

It was then that he turned the light out. The room dropped to the comforting darkness in which their lips met again and they kissed for what felt like forever. Kisses that he welcomed for they ceased the need for any more talk.

When he entered her, she let out a groan so guttural that he was sure he had hurt her and he immediately withdrew, imploring her to tell him that she was okay. She frowned - her eyes blurred with need - and reassured him that she was fine, that she was more than fine. She reached for him to come back to her.

As they made love he wondered if the tentative way he
did so in any way betrayed his naivety with a woman’s body. They had been seeing one another for almost a month when he’d finally asked her into the flat. He knew that was strange in itself, that any normal man would have wanted her from the moment he saw her.

His hands had been clammy and clumsy as he fumbled with the key in the lock and he hoped that she’d perceive his awkwardness as impatience, a want and need for her that he wanted more than anything to be able to summon.

She’d kissed him the moment they’d stepped inside the door and he’d taken a moment to kiss her back. Which he knew was ridiculous, of course, for they’d kissed so many times before: outside cinemas, theatres, restaurants and bars. But here, now, in his flat, he knew that there would be more expected of him; it wouldn’t be enough to pull away after their kiss, to tuck her hair behind her ear and tell her how wonderful it had been to see her. There was no possibility that, as they did every other evening, they might go their separate ways, their nights finalised by a journey that he saw as safe in its solitude. No, he knew in the moment her lips met his that she had a natural need he wished he could emulate.

Perhaps stupidly, he’d tried to stagger the steps that he was sure were to follow. Would she like a drink? He asked. There’s a bottle of white in the fridge, but if you’d like red I’ll have to go to the shop. It’s no trouble, though. I mean, I just want you to be comfortable, I just want –

Pressing her finger to his lips, she’d said simply, ‘I just want you,’ and then led him to the bedroom as if it were in fact her home.

A perfunctory task, the sex had lasted for just nine minutes. Atop her body in the dark, he had watched the red digits of the alarm clock blur from one to another, willing himself to climax so that he could take her in his arms and offer comfort and closeness in a way that he knew how, that wouldn’t make him feel like a failure.
When he came, it was with such relief that he fell away from her immediately, rolling into the cool, empty space on the bed while his heart raced against his chest.

Turning to look at her, hair splayed on the pillow, he
saw from her that he had done the wrong thing, that it wasn’t over for her yet.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I was too quick. I’m sorry.’

There was a moment in which the only sound was that of their breathing, out of time with one another, his chest rising as hers fell.

Samantha rested her hand on his cheek. ‘There’s nothing to apologise for,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t think that’s the first and last time we’ll make love, do you?’

Another silence, this one so long that Daniel knew he needed to say something, anything, to break it. The words on his tongue were wrong, he knew that. And yet simultaneously they felt so right, so perfect for the moment. They were what he was sure she wanted and needed to hear.

‘I love you,’ he said. And then again, as if in confirmation. ‘I love you.’

To look at him now, older in every way than his fifty four years, it would be hard to believe that he’d once been taut and fit, a man in a real man’s body. In fact, it was difficult to see anything beyond the surface of tired eyes and pale, pallid skin. And yet, like anyone, he is only a victim of the time gone by; the years that have passed have left him hollow of happiness, empty of emotion. But it would be wrong to say that he is without fault in this progression for he has done himself no favours. He has let this happen to him. He has watched it happen day in, day out along the way.