but as she passed, he caught her arm – he didn't hold on to it, he just caught it for a moment before letting it go.
‘Tess, why are you being so stroppy?’ he said to her back.
‘I'm not,’ she said, without turning.
‘And petulant.’
‘I'm not.’
‘You are. You are being stroppy and petulant. What's up?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You're being stroppy and petulant and uncommunicative. I don't like it.’
This was too much for her to tolerate without eye contact. She spun around.
‘Go to hell!’
‘Shall I add “insulting” to the litany, then?’ Joe's arms were folded but no longer in a relaxed way; his eyes had narrowed, he appeared taller, older, stern.
She said nothing, just stared at the space between them.
‘And aggressive – that goes on it too. For fuck's sake, Tess, if I've done something to upset you, will you please have the courtesy to tell me what?’
The deeper and darker Tess's mood became, the more difficult it was to haul herself out. If she was mad at Joe, she was also livid with herself. She'd gone beyond the point of being able to say, sorry about that – I'm just being a silly moo. She was now hopelessly trapped in the vortex of her own bad temper.
And then she looked at Joe and she knew why. What she saw she couldn't hate, she couldn't even dislike – what she saw was what she wanted. That's why she was hurting. The nearly kiss. The loaded silences. The eye contact lasting that exhilarating moment too long. The banter. The teasing. The making time to be – together. She had thought she was wanted too. But that was then, she told herself, that was way back then. That was before the reality of Kate. Before his phone in her bed. She felt caught between the strange dichotomy of mourning the kiss that never was, and outraged at Joe's duplicity. Only a quiet side of her, which she was too preoccupied to hear, wondered if she was entitled to feel either.
‘Tess?’
She turned away.
‘Oh, for God's sake,’ he said. ‘Grow up.’
She swung round to face him, as if she was about to land a punch. ‘You should have said something about Kate, you know. Because – you were going to kiss me on the Transformer Bridge. You were. It's not nice for me – I'd been looking forward to you coming back, idiot that I am. Don't you play with me, Joe Saunders, don't you dare play with me.’
Her eyes might be bristling with indignation but her voice was wavering and Joe hadn't the heart to correct her transformer bridge to his Transporter Bridge or say, don't you mean toy with me?
‘Tess, can we please sort this Kate business out? Why do you keep harping on about someone called Kate?’
Fury scratched itself across Tess's face. ‘You're going to deny it? Oh, come on, Joe. Tell me to my face that your phone isn't in the bed of some girlfriend in France?’
Joe gave himself a moment. ‘I am not in a relationship with anyone.’
‘Forgive the semantics,’ Tess said. ‘Your phone is in the bed of some woman you're shagging, then. Go on then – deny it.’ Yet as soon as she said it, she suddenly dreaded the confirmation.
Again, Joe paused while he organized his response. ‘Look, I don't know why you think it's any of your business but OK then, there is a woman in France who I –’ He paused. Whom he what, exactly. ‘There's a woman in France – it's not a relationship. But yes, I sleep with her – it's just casual.’
Tess looked appalled, as if she'd just been winded. He was not going to feel guilty – which wasn't to say that her visible distress didn't unnerve him.
For Tess, it wasn't the specifics of Joe's consensual fuck-buddy set-up that had stabbed her (she'd had to broaden her outlook when she met Dick); it was Joe referring to Kate as a woman. She felt a girl by comparison, diminished somehow. She couldn't imagine any man referring to her as a woman, despite the fact that she was a mother. She felt suddenly small, unappealing, defeated by Kate and her grown-up, no-strings womanly sexiness. She was acutely aware of standing in this man's kitchen with a sulky pout across her face, and stupid Winnie-the-Pooh socks on her feet, her figure swamped and denied by her shapeless hoody and her slack jeans. She felt ashamed of herself and she wished she could look up at him and tell him so. But if she looked at him, he'd look at her and all he'd see was her flushed face and the socks and the sweatshirt and the hair that desperately needed a cut and could do with a wash too.
Joe wanted her to speak to him and he wanted to say something to make her feel a little better. ‘Tess, if it helps, she isn't Kate – she's Nathalie.’ His tone was gentle. He thought the information would appease her – if she thought she had the wrong name, she might think she had the wrong end of the stick too.
However, Tess's hands fell so sharply to her side that when they hit her thighs it sounded as though she'd slapped herself and hard. ‘Great, so you've got more than one on the go.’ She could cry but she fought to glower instead. ‘One for love, one for sex – and me to bandy about in some fucked-up game?’
‘Game? What on earth are you on about?’
Do not cry. Don't you bloody dare cry. ‘You were going to kiss me on the bloody bridge!’
Joe paused. This was true.
‘You were going to kiss me. You could've, you know.’
She sounded defeated and she looked broken.
Was he meant to reach out for her? Look at her, having a silent battle against tears – he could hear it in the brittle croak of her voice. He could so easily put his arms around her, coax that crumpled face up to his lips. Plant the kiss that had germinated that night on the bridge. But he really didn't want to kiss her now – not with her like this.
‘I was, Tess. You're right – that night I really did want to kiss you. And it wasn't just a heat-of-the-moment thing. I was about to kiss you on the bridge that night. And when we got back – I could've done so then too.’
‘But you didn't!’
‘Because you gave me no signs of reciprocation.’
Tess stamped with frustration. It was so true. He was absolutely right and her indignation came from Joe's perception. It was maddening. The sides of the hole she'd dug herself were crumbling and she could not work out how to clamber back to normality.
‘Well! I'm bloody glad I didn't. We wouldn't want you three-timing Kate, would we!’
Joe closed his eyes, placing fingers against his temples as if to keep his temper in check, or to protect himself from further onslaught, or to guard against the threat of a headache of blinding proportions.
‘I do not know a Kate, Tess.’
‘You're lying – I've seen the photo!’ Tess was not going to listen to him or think before she spoke.
‘The
