by Karen Swan
Sam blinked back at her from his spot, leaning against the wall. ‘. . . Hi.’ He looked awkward.
It was several moments before she could even speak. How long had he been there? She hadn’t detected the pitch in sound, hadn’t seen the beam of light swing into the courtyard as the door opened.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded, but her voice was pale with shock, humiliation a fresh bloom that gathered again on her pale, cold cheeks. It was all she could think about, every time she saw him – his rejection, over and over again. Him walking out, leaving her.
‘I was invited.’
‘Not by me.’ Bart would be lucky to get away with just being fired tomorrow morning; now she was going to kill him. She could just imagine Jacintha’s delight at the invitation, telling her client it would be ‘good for his career’ to be seen here.
‘Liam asked me. I couldn’t get out of it. We’re going on afterwards, but he wants you and me to meet—’
She swallowed again but understood from his look that he hadn’t told their mutual friend they had already met. More than that.
How could this be happening? How hard could it be to avoid one man in a city of almost a million?
‘—which is how I came to be hiding out here. I figured I could pretend to him later that we’d talked. I didn’t expect you to . . .’
He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to. He hadn’t expected her to burst out here like a lunatic, trying to have a conversation with a person in a war zone on a satellite call.
A silence sprouted, unfurling its petals like a spring flower, and she became aware of how she held her body in his presence now, tense and stiff, her arms crossed like barriers, the easy manner of their very first meetings now long distant. She thought she saw something in him slacken.
‘Look, I had no idea it was going to be you photographing me on Monday. Jacintha had organized a car to pick me up and it brought me straight to the studio. I paid no attention, my mind wasn’t on it. I kept thinking about . . .’ He looked straight at her. ‘Well, you.’ He pushed himself away from the wall but she instinctively stepped back.
He saw the caution in her eyes and stopped where he was, a flicker of concern in his face. ‘Lee, I was going to call you. I was hoping we could talk.’
‘There’s nothing to say.’
‘I disagree.’
She felt his eyes catch her but she wriggled free again in the next instant, a worm off the hook. ‘I don’t want to see you again, Sam. It’s done.’
He straightened. ‘No. Nothing has been done, that was the point!’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Jesus, do you really think I’d have left if I thought I was never going to see you again anyway?’
‘Why? Would you have stayed then? Taken what you could?’
He looked shocked by her provocation, her aggressive words. ‘Lee, I left because I saw how it was going to be with you and I wanted more than just a one-time thing. Is that such a bad thing?’ He gave her a bewildered look. ‘I feel like there’s something between us that could be good. And I think you think so too.’
She shook her head, flatly rejecting the idea. ‘I’ve been clear that’s not on offer with me. I don’t want a relationship. But if that’s what you’re after, then you’ll find plenty of other women on the other side of that door—’
‘I’m not interested in other women.’
‘Then that’s unfortunate, but I can’t help.’ Her voice was stony and cold, but as his stare lengthened, she was forced to look away. Her ribs felt rigid, her breathing shallow. Something about his gaze made her feel like a cornered animal, trapped, with nowhere to hide.
‘This isn’t you,’ he said after a moment.
She scoffed. ‘You don’t know me!’
‘Don’t I? I know what I saw when you were helping those kids in the hospital; I know what it means that you’ve taken those pictures of the women in there. I know how you were surprising your son on Sunday night. And that woman – big-hearted, loving, kind, compassionate – she wasn’t this one. Why are you so threatened by the idea of a relationship?’
‘I’m not.’
‘Really? So when was your last one, then?’
She felt her heart rate move up a gear. ‘I don’t need to answer your questions,’ she said after a moment, but her voice was thick. She went to walk past him, to walk away. ‘Think what you like, it doesn’t matter to me.’
‘No. Clearly only Harry does.’
The comment was like a punch, a quick one-two knocking her sideways. She turned. ‘What?’
He took a step towards her. ‘Who is he? I’d love to meet the guy, see exactly what it is about him that’s made the rest of us consolation prizes.’
‘You don’t know the first thing—’
‘I know what I just heard. And saw . . .’ He looked at her pityingly. ‘He must really be something.’
‘Fuck off.’ She may as well have slapped him.
He recoiled, looking down at the ground and then back at her again, but his calm had slipped now too; she could see the frustration flash through his eyes, and his voice, when he spoke again, was dangerously low. ‘Well, I guess that’s something of a move on from what you wanted from me on Sunday.’
Her eyes narrowed and she stepped towards him, only inches away now. ‘You know what?’ she whispered, a sneer twisting her smile. ‘I’m glad you walked out. I’m glad you came away with nothing. It would have been a massive mistake and I would always have regretted it. As it is, I can just forget about you instead. Move on, and pretend we never even met—’
Just then, the gallery door opened and a dazzling cone of light shone into the courtyard, lighting them up like statues.
‘Lee? What are you—?’ Matt stood darkly silhouetted in the doorway, jolting slightly as he took in the sight of her standing out here in the dark, so close, with Sam. ‘Oh, I didn’t realize—’
‘It’s not what you think,’ she said, immediately stepping out of Sam’s orbit and only serving to make herself look guilty as hell.
‘Actually, it’s exactly what you think,’ Sam contradicted with an almost lackadaisical tone. ‘But don’t worry, I’m leaving.’ He looked back at her, a new coldness in his eyes that she hadn’t seen before. ‘It looks like you’re all sorted for tonight,’ he said in a low voice. ‘You can get straight on with forgetting me.’
For a moment, their eyes held the conversation in silent abeyance. She had done it – broken the thread he had been determined to keep – but she couldn’t reply. Just like at the shoot on Monday, he could undo her with a look, and unsaid words and feelings were tumbling through her, too fast to sort. Harry, Sam, Matt – falling over each other, crowding her. Her usually ordered life was suddenly a mess.
Sam stared at her for another moment in a silent goodbye. Then he walked past her, patting Matt casually on the shoulder as he went by. ‘Sorry about that, mate. She’s all yours.’
Chapter Ten
‘Mama? Mama!’ It wasn’t so much the words that woke her as the voice – that high pitch, the tone of bewilderment in it, a slant of fear.
She turned with a groan, having to hold an arm over her face as the light assailed her. It took a moment to get her bearings. This wasn’t her bedroom. ‘Wha—?’
Jasper was standing over her in his pyjamas, his hair standing upright on the back of his head. ‘Why are you sleeping down here?’
She looked across the bed in alarm – memories coming back in flashes – but it was empty, her velvet dress a crushed heap on the floor, her shoes toppled onto their sides, facing in opposite directions. ‘Oh God!’ she said with a start, trying to sit up but being forced back by the pickaxes being swung inside her skull. ‘Ow.’
‘Are you sick?’
She looked up at him, seeing the two-thirds-empty whisky bottle on the bedside table, the eggcups beside it. He had found that amusing, she recalled. Just the sight of it now made her stomach heave. ‘A little bit. But I’ll be okay.’ She tried m
oving again, more slowly this time.
What time was it? What day? . . . Oh God, was it Friday? Did she have to be a functioning adult today?
‘Are you ready for nursery?’ she mumbled, forcing herself to go through the motions, knowing it would mean she had to sit up, move . . . She was the worst mother in the world.
‘No. I’m hungry.’
Of course he was. He was five years old, the poor thing. He shouldn’t have to make his own breakfast. ‘Okay, well, we’ll get something sorted.’ The effort it took just to speak . . . She swung back the duvet and gingerly rose, reaching for the bathrobe that was hanging on the door and wrapping it around herself. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got,’ she managed, her voice a half-croak, half-whisper.
His heart-shaped face turned up to her as slowly – so slowly – they climbed the stairs. ‘Can I have my chocolate from Zwarte Piet?’
She looked back down at him, knowing he had sensed her weakness, that now was as good a time as any to strike. She couldn’t help but smile. ‘Well, just this once.’ Like she was doing him the favour!
He cheered with delight, running ahead of her into the kitchen. She peered around the door, watching as he raced over to the treats box. There were oranges in the fruit bowl. At the very least she should peel one for him, but even the thought of that was a step too far for her this morning.
‘Listen, Jazz, we’re very late,’ she said haltingly, forcing down the nausea that kept threatening to overwhelm her. ‘So while you eat that, I’m going to have a shower and get dressed and put your clothes out. I want you to come up and get dressed as soon as you’re done, deal?’
‘Okay, mama,’ he said distractedly.
She hauled herself up the next flight of stairs with visible effort, automatically stopping in at his bedroom. The curtains were still drawn, his Jedi duvet half on the floor, and she felt a stab of self-loathing that he had been sleeping alone up here all night whilst she had been passed out downstairs. Anything could have happened and she would have been unable to help him – if he’d woken needing the toilet, if the house was on fire, if an intruder had broken in . . . He had been as defenceless and vulnerable as if she’d never bothered coming back at all.
She made his bed (barely) and picked out some clean clothes for him, then continued into her bedroom, stepping straight into the shower. It was a luxury she never took for granted, much like turning on a light and having a fridge. She stood there with the water pouring over her face, trying to remember last night – Matt’s distracting kisses, his clever hands, his smouldering eyes, Harry’s voice breaking up over thousands of miles. But, to her despair, it wasn’t to either one of them that her mind kept returning. Worse, they weren’t the reason tears were streaming down her face.
Lee glanced at her friend on the other side of the window as she padlocked her bike. Mila was sitting at the breakfast bar, reading the local paper, a dispatched ginger shot beside her. Always punctual, she looked beautiful in the winter sunshine, her elfin features and shiny dark cropped hair rendering her positively doll-like. She was wearing her yoga kit; they had clearly already had very different mornings.
Mila looked up as the bell rang and Lee shuffled into the coffee shop, her expression changing at the sight of her. ‘Oh my God, what happened to you?’ she whispered as Lee sank into the chair beside her, which she’d bagged with her coat. ‘You weren’t that bad when I left last night.’
‘Half a bottle of whisky,’ she croaked by way of reply.
‘After all that champagne?’ Mila regarded her with silent concern, seeing how even her kitten ears were wonky, before putting a worried hand on her arm. ‘Black coffee?’
Lee nodded, pulling off the hat. Her hair stood with static. ‘Better make it two.’
Mila returned a few moments later with a tray of coffee and tiny slices of ginger cake on the saucers. Wordlessly, Lee put the cakes onto Mila’s plate. It was still too early for her to look at food.
Mila watched her closely. ‘So, did he go back with you?’
‘Who?’
Mila looked around them, to check no one else was listening. ‘Matteo Hofhuis. You were all over each other.’
Lee swallowed, staring down into the coffee. ‘Oh. Yeah.’
‘You don’t seem very happy about it.’ She leaned in to whisper excitedly. ‘He is so gorgeous.’
‘Also incredibly conceited, shallow, really quite dull and an egomaniac. But yeah, gorgeous.’
‘Obviously he didn’t stay over?’
‘Obviously.’
‘And you got Jasper off okay?’
‘Eventually – an hour and a half late. Having had chocolate for breakfast. Poor kid having me as a mother . . .’ She rubbed her face in her hands, feeling her failures writ large.
‘He’ll cope,’ Mila said, barging her affectionately. ‘And how about Bart? Did you call him too?’
Mila was always her go-to person for morning-after post-mortems and she was expert in managing Lee out of the door. ‘Yep. I told him I was taking a duvet day, like you said.’
Mila grinned, as though the words sounded especially amusing coming from Lee’s lips. ‘And what did he say to that?’
‘Well, once he’d picked himself up off the floor, he sounded relieved. I wasn’t the only one caning it last night.’ She looked at her friend with a feeble side-eye. ‘Talking of which, did you have a good time?’ As far as she remembered, Mila had left with a blonde chap who kept saying he was ‘big in stationery’. Lee had no idea how he had come by an invitation.
‘Yeah, it was all going really well,’ Mila smiled brightly. ‘Till his wife rang.’
‘Another one?’ Lee rubbed her face in her hands again, as though trying to slough off the exhaustion.
‘I know. Tell me about it.’
‘Why are all men such arses?’
‘Not all. Just the ones I meet.’ Mila sighed, her fingers fiddling with the ginger cake. ‘I must have “Mistress” tattooed on my forehead in an invisible ink that only married men can see.’
Lee rested her head against her friend’s arm, partly to show support and partly to grab support. ‘You’re worth so much more than that, Mils,’ she mumbled, wishing she could go back to bed.
‘I know. But last night . . . No. It was the last straw.’ Mila said with a determined voice. ‘I’ve had enough of being Miss Second Best, always the runner-up, the fallback option. I’m not doing it any more.’
‘Good for you,’ Lee murmured, her eyes closed.
‘Which is why I’ve decided to officially take a sabbatical from relationships. Starting from today I’m going to do a Man Detox and not date for six months.’
‘Six months?’ Lee’s eyes flew open as she saw her own social life contract in sympathy. Mila was her best friend, her partner in crime; when they went bar-hopping, they went together. She couldn’t go out with the guys – Liam would abandon her within moments of arriving anywhere and no one would approach her if she was with Noah; he was far too big to risk messing with. ‘Now hang on, don’t you think that’s a bit—?’
‘Rational? Yes, I do. I’ve already deleted all the dating apps from my phone, there will be no more blind dates or speed dates, and if you see me looking like I’m giving my details to a guy at a party, you are to stage an intervention. Promise?’
Lee looked back at her friend, aghast. But Mila seemed calm, logical and absolutely determined, and with the hangover Lee was facing right now, she was in no fit state to fight her on it. ‘. . . Okay.’
They sank into an easy silence, both watching as a photogenic young family walked past, the husband carrying their baby in a hammock, his wife’s hand clasped in his own. They could have been models in a winter catalogue for J. Crew. Life looked easy for them, effortless.
Both Lee and Mila looked away, staring down into their coffee cups instead.
‘So are you tempted to see him again?’ Mila asked her.
‘Who? . . . Oh, you mean Matt?’ Lee tutted, already bored of
talking about him, and shook her head. ‘Don’t be daft.’
‘You know they’re saying he could be the next Bond?’
‘Mils, I swear to God I’ve heard it somewhere that my postie could be the next Bond.’
‘But he’s so sexy, and he seemed really into you.’
‘Yeah, because he knows I’m not that into him. His ego can’t believe it. Trust me, he thinks it’s a challenge to “break” me now.’
‘I wouldn’t mind being broken by him,’ Mila murmured wistfully.
‘Uh, sabbatical?’
Mila’s eyes widened in surprise, then she pointed at her. ‘Exactly. Thank you. That was a test. You passed.’
Lee’s own eyes narrowed, not believing a word of it. ‘You’ve got to stop attaching narrative to everything, Mils. This is not a romantic situation. He doesn’t want me to fall in love with him any more than I do – no matter what his ego’s telling him. Last night didn’t mean anything. It was just sex, for both of us.’
‘But I don’t understand how you can . . . hold back, emotionally I mean, like that. If I like a guy enough to bring him home, then I like him enough to see him again. I just don’t get your “love ’em and leave ’em” approach.’
‘It’s not for everyone,’ she conceded. ‘I just know the right balance for me – I’ve got to like the guy, but not so much that I’m actually going to fall for him. One hot night to keep my hormones in check, and then I get to give all my love and attention to Jazzy.’
‘But don’t you think sometimes it would be nice to have a partner? Someone equal to you, someone you can share things with?’
Lee leaned into her again. ‘I’ve got you for that.’
‘Aww,’ Mila grinned. ‘Maybe I should get a kid, then,’ she quipped. ‘Although you would think it’d put guys off.’
‘Surprisingly, no. That’s only if they think you’re looking for a surrogate father for them. Most of them can’t believe their luck when you tell them it’s “thank you, next”.’
‘That’s so depress—’ Mila stopped. ‘Wait, what do you mean, “most”? Not all?’
