The Boy in the Pink Socks

David decided to spend the afternoon on his own. Moments like this had become rare.

He had spent the morning writing, but his concentration had deserted him. Leaving Joshua creating something unidentifiable in the studio, he wandered towards Little Portugal and ended up nursing a cappuccino outside Starbucks.

Portuguese families had first settled around Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove before rising rents gradually pushed many south of the Thames. The neighbourhood around South Lambeth Road eventually became known as Little Portugal, although, today, there seemed remarkably few Portuguese about.

Places like this had always fed David’s imagination.

He would settle into his chair and watch the procession of strangers pass by; ordinary people following lives known only to themselves. He would invent those lives as they walked.

His attention always drifted towards solitary young men moving with effortless confidence. Summer had finally arrived and they appeared in shorts, T-shirts and trainers, a backpack slung casually over one shoulder. David had never quite lost his fascination with male legs.

Not long ago he had stumbled across an idea for a book.

It would require an entirely different kind of research.

He imagined choosing a young man at random. There was only one rule: he had to be someone David found beautiful enough to want to sleep with. Realistically, he thought, the feeling would almost certainly not be mutual. Most would be straight, but that hardly mattered. David would give each one a name, follow discreetly behind and see where life carried him. Every journey would become a chapter. Every stranger, a story.

So far, the idea had remained just that.

When he mentioned it to Joshua, he had received a look of genuine concern.

“You do realise you’re describing stalking?”

David had laughed, but the accusation lingered.

Even so, the idea continued to delight him.

When a handsome young man with thick dark curls appeared at the end of the street, David briefly wondered whether today might finally be the day.

Instead, his attention shifted to the table beside him.

An older man and a much younger one had just sat down together.

A couple? Father and son?

Before David could decide, a woman appeared carrying coffees.

Mother.

The younger man was exceptionally handsome. Tallish, blond, wearing a designer top, blue shorts and unexpectedly bright pink socks. The socks made David smile. Stretching his legs in front of him, the young man absent-mindedly stroked the smooth skin of one shin before rubbing the back of his knee as though it had begun to ache.

David found himself listening.

Only the boy’s voice carried.

It was unmistakably Home Counties.

“She’s strange,” he said. “And she walks funny too.”

His parents laughed. His mother replied too quietly for David to catch.

“I know what you’re saying,” the boy answered, “but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

David suspected she was trying to engineer a romance.

The father smiled with quiet satisfaction.

David recognised the expression immediately.

It was the face of a man who knew exactly how handsome his son was.

The longer David looked at him, the more he could imagine the father at the same age. Once equally beautiful. Once perhaps exactly the kind of man David might have taken home without a second thought.

The mother passed over a muffin.

The boy demolished it without the slightest concern for calories. Crumbs scattered down the front of his T-shirt before he brushed them away.

“We obviously flirt with each other,” he said, “but what’s the point of flirting with someone who doesn’t want you?”

My God.

How could anybody not want you?

He was exactly the kind of boy David loved to be seen beside. Someone impossibly attractive who might patiently sit in a garden listening to his stories while pretending to prune roses.

Then again, David suspected the illusion would disappear the moment he started talking about girlfriends.

Once upon a time, David had been that boy.

Only now did he realise how fortunate he had been.

At the time, he never knew.

His mother resumed talking while the boy scrolled through his phone, somehow managing to follow both conversations at once.

“It’ll take a month or so to grow,” he said, barely looking up.

Life would be much easier if parents never got in the way.

The father, who had spoken hardly at all, glanced towards David.

David instinctively lowered his eyes to his own phone.

The screen was still open on an interview with a twenty-something influencer from New York.

“The guys I fuck outside my relationship don’t look anything like my boyfriend. They’re all, like, fifty-five with massive tits. Why would I eat what I can get at home?”

David smiled despite himself.

Why don’t I ever meet people like that?

The thought faded almost as quickly as it arrived.

Another, quieter one took its place.

He was growing old.

Not suddenly.

Not dramatically.

Simply, unmistakably.

He imagined himself in ten years time.

An old man sitting alone on a bench. Shoulders rounded beneath the weight of time. Hands resting on his knees, or wrapped around the handle of a walking stick. A faded wool jacket buttoned to the neck. A flat cap pulled low across his brow. Scuffed trainers tied with thick laces.

Watching the world continue without ever asking him to join in.