it.’
‘Friends there?’
‘A few – clients and colleagues, mostly, but they're a good bunch.’
‘Are you wined and dined, then, in the evenings?’ and she knew she wanted to hear him say, no, I just chill out on my own in the hotel room and order room service.
‘Mostly,’ he said.
An emotion swooped down on her so suddenly it was like a fishbone caught in her throat. She wondered about its provenance as she tried to sip away its sharpness but the wine tasted a little sour. Was it envy? Did she envy him his trip – the wining and the dining and the throb of London or Belgium or France? But what did this say about her newfound affection for here? Hadn't this place nourished her, provided her with a very literal breath of fresh air? Hadn't it nailed the coffin closed on city living? Lonely she might feel up here, some evenings, some afternoons, whole days too, all on her own, but she hadn't felt stir-crazy. Yet it seemed Joe enjoyed a perfectly good time away from here. And then it struck her that it wasn't Joe she envied, at all. It was whoever was showing him the bright lights and exciting times; she envied them their time with him. Faintly ridiculous, really, that this could cause her discomfort, but she couldn't deny the emotion. And, as she drained her glass, it occurred to her that actually, it might not be envy, pure and simple. There might be insecurity in there too. How could she hope to compete?
‘Can't remember the last time I went out at night,’ she muttered. ‘Pre Em, that's for sure.’
‘I'll bet you the library has notices about babysitters,’ Joe said helpfully. ‘You should treat yourself.’
Tess shrugged.
‘Have you met anyone, made any friends, since you've been here?’
That lovely Lisa whose invitations Tess had thus far not responded to – what would Joe make of that? She felt a bit pathetic. She could have said Mary. But actually, she couldn't – it would be contentious and untimely and she'd decided to keep Mary to herself a while longer. She could say Laura but that would be complicated and it wasn't exactly true.
‘Seb,’ she said, knowing she'd have to be brief because there was so little she could add.
‘Seb who?’
‘Seb the surfer.’
Joe's look lasted but a split second, but when Tess saw his eyes darken and focus she wondered if she recognized something – a single shot of unease.
‘Seb the Surfer, eh?’ Joe said lightly though he wondered whether Seb the Sodding Surfer had managed to lure Tess onto the beach, for a frolic in the waves. ‘Anyway, I'm back for a week or so now.’ To both of them, this came out sounding as though she should be at his beck and call. ‘So – if you – well, supper and stuff.’
‘Oh, OK.’
‘I'll be going into the Middlesbrough office most days, but I'll be working from home sometimes. So perhaps lunch too – on those days.’
‘OK.’
‘A week or so,’ Joe repeated, ‘maybe two.’
They took inordinate interest and time with the fruit salad.
‘Do you want me to ease off the renovations when you're in the house?’
‘I don't see why you should – you don't strike me as a noisy labourer.’
‘You haven't heard me singing along to the radio.’
‘And I suppose this is when Emmeline and Wolf are asleep? So it's a case of the lesser of two evils, then? You caterwauling – or them howling and squawking.’
If it wasn't for his wry wink, Tess would have taken offence and made it known.
‘Hey,’ she objected, ‘I can hold a tune. And Em's vocabulary is increasing daily – she knows the word for owl.’
‘Isn't “owl” the word for owl?’
‘You may think so,’ Tess said, waggling her knife at him, ‘but I think you'll find it's “wol”.’
‘She's very sweet, your little 'un,’ Joe said and Tess had to physically sit on her hand because it would be so easy to touch his arm. ‘Very sweet.’
‘And actually, your dog's not so bad,’ Tess said and she tipped her chair back a little to look under the table and give Wolf a nudge with her foot. ‘I've grown rather fond of Wolf.’ She could so easily have said, and I've met your mum and she's a very nice lady. But not tonight. Let sleeping dogs lie and all that, thought Tess, scrunching her toes into Wolf's coat.
‘I'm knackered,’ Joe said. ‘Thanks for dinner – I'll do the honours tomorrow, if you like, if you're around.’
‘Of course I'll be around,’ Tess said. ‘Where else would I be!’
Joe thought about this as he cleared the plates away. She could've said, where else would I go. But she phrased it where else would she be. It wasn't that there was nowhere she could go; it was that there was nowhere she'd rather be. Or was it all just semantics? And why was he analysing his house-sitter's turn of phrase? And why was he wondering again where Seb the Surfer fitted in?
‘I really am tired,’ he said. ‘Goodnight.’
‘I'm going to have an early night too,’ Tess agreed, though she sat at the kitchen table a little while longer, gazing at the space Joe had left.
The thing is about flirting, Tess thought to herself as she applied a coat of mould-resistant paint in the utility room, I'm not sure I've ever really been on the receiving end, nor have I been much good at it. She considered that she'd probably just been conditioned to an abbreviated form employed as a preliminary to sex.
She thought back to student days, when it had been both the trend and peer-group pressure to drink cheap wine and pair off with someone on a Friday night. The act of being bought the wine had been the apotheosis of seduction (not least because conversation was restricted anyway, on account of the decibel level at the various college dives). But all of this was less flirting, more it was bartering. I buy you wine all evening on my student grant; you take me back to your digs to do the deed. In retrospect, the cheap wine had such a swift inebriating effect on both parties that the deed was rarely accomplished but the hangover and bravado kept that quiet.
For the first time in years, she cast her mind back to the boyfriend she had all through the third year, but even at the time she knew he was less a soulmate and more a human radiator; someone who warmed her up in the freezing shared house. They also used each other to catch up on lecture notes so they could alternate on sleeping until noon. It certainly wasn't love, it wasn't really lust. There had been sex, quite a lot of it, but it was as if they kept at it to see if it could get any better. With or without wine or spliff. Then came their finals and it was only midway through the summer following graduation that they thought perhaps the relationship had ended. In retrospect, they had merely furnished each other's lives that last year in no greater
