a really skewed impression of me. I don’t go in for heavy drinking and partying—it’s really not my style.’
‘Okay.’ He held up both hands. ‘Not that it’s any of my business; you can stay out all night at the weekends, for all I care,’ he said, aware of a strange plummeting sensation in his chest as images of what she might get up to out on the town flashed through his head.
Good God, man—you’re not her keeper.
‘As long as your work doesn’t suffer,’ he added quickly.
‘Actually,’ she said, slouching back in her seat and hooking her slender arm over the back of her chair, ‘I was thinking about cooking you a meal tonight, to say thank you for letting me stay.’
He wasn’t sure why, but the thought of that made him uncomfortable. Perhaps because it would blur the lines between employee and friend too much.
‘That’s kind, but I have plans tonight,’ he lied, racking his brain to remember what his friend Dan had said about his availability this weekend. Even if he was busy he was sure he could rustle up a dinner invitation somewhere else, to let Cara off the hook without any bad feelings.
‘And you don’t need to thank me for letting you stay here. It’s what any decent human being would have done.’
Her face seemed to fall a little and she drew her arm back in towards her body, sliding her hands between her knees so that her shoulders hunched inwards. ‘Oh, okay, well, I’m just going to pop out and shop for my own dinner, so I’ll see you shortly,’ she said, ramping her smile back up again and wheeling her chair away from the desk with her feet.
‘Actually, I’m heading out myself in a minute and I’ll probably be back late, so I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Her smile froze. ‘Right. Well, have a good night.’
This was ridiculous. The last thing he’d wanted was for them both to feel awkward about living under the same roof.
He let out a long sigh and pushed his hair away from his face. ‘Look, Cara, don’t think you have to hang out with me while you’re staying here. We don’t need to be in each other’s pockets the whole time. Feel free to do your own thing.’
Clearly he’d been a bit brusque because she recoiled a little. ‘I understand,’ she said, getting up and awkwardly pushing her chair back under her desk. ‘Have a good night!’ she said in that overly chirpy way she had, which he was beginning to learn meant he’d offended her.
Not waiting for his reply, she turned her back on him and walked straight out of the room, her shoulders stiff.
Great. This was exactly what he’d hoped to avoid.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. Maybe it had been a mistake to ask her to stay.
But he couldn’t kick her out now.
All he could do was cross his fingers and hope she’d find herself another place to live soon.
* * *
To his surprise, he didn’t see much of Cara over the next couple of days. She’d obviously taken his suggestion about giving each other space to heart and was avoiding being in the house with him as much as possible.
The extremity of her desertion grated on his nerves.
What was it that made it impossible for them to understand each other? They were very different in temperament, of course, which didn’t help, but it was more than that. It was as if there was some kind of meaning-altering force field between them.
On Sunday, when the silence in the house got too much for him, he went out for a long walk around Hyde Park. He stopped at the café next to the water for lunch, something he and Jemima had done most Sundays, fighting against the painful undertow of nostalgia that dragged at him as he sat there alone. It was all so intensely familiar.
All except for the empty seat in front of him.
He snorted into his drink, disgusted with himself for being so pathetic. He should consider himself lucky. He was the one who got to have a future, unlike his big-hearted, selfless wife. The woman who everyone had loved. One of the few people, in his opinion, who had truly deserved a long and happy life.
Arriving home mid-afternoon, he walked in to find the undertones of Cara’s perfume hanging in the air.
So she was back then.
Closing his eyes, he imagined he could actually sense her presence in the atmosphere, like a low hum of white noise.
Or was he being overly sensitive?
Probably.
From the moment she’d agreed to move in he’d experienced a strange undercurrent of apprehension and it seemed to be affecting his state of mind.
After stowing his shoes and coat in the cloakroom, he went into the living room to find that a large display of flowers had been placed on top of the grand piano. He bristled, remembering the way he’d felt the last time Cara had started to mess with his environment.
Sighing, he rubbed a hand through his hair, attempting to release the tension in his scalp. They were just flowers. He really needed to chill out or he was going to drive himself insane. Jemima would have laughed if she’d seen how strung-out he was over something so inconsequential. He could almost hear her teasing voice ringing in his ears.
A noise startled him and he whipped round to see Cara standing in the doorway to the room, dressed in worn jeans and a sloppy sweater, her face scrubbed of make-up and her bright blue eyes luminous in the soft afternoon light. To his overwrought brain, she seemed to radiate an ethereal kind of beauty, her long hair lying in soft, undulating waves around her face and her creamy skin radiant with health. He experienced a strangely intense moment of confusion, and he realised that somewhere in the depths of his screwed-up consciousness he’d half expected it to be Jemima standing there instead—which was why his, ‘Hello,’ came out more gruffly than he’d intended.
Her welcoming smile faltered and she glanced down at her fingernails and frowned, as if fighting an impulse to chew on them, but when she looked back up her smile was firmly back in place.
‘Isn’t it a beautiful day?’ She tipped her head towards the piano behind him. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but the spring sunshine inspired me to put fresh flowers in most of the rooms—not your bedroom, of course; I didn’t go in there,’ she added quickly. ‘The house seemed to be crying out for a bit of life and colour and I wanted to do something to say thank you for letting me stay, even though you said I didn’t need to.’
‘Sure. That’s fine,’ was all he could muster. For some reason his blood was flying through his veins and he felt so hot he thought he might spontaneously combust at any second.
‘Oh, and I stripped and remade the bed in the room next to yours,’ she added casually. ‘It looked like the cleaners had missed it. I gave it a good vacuum, too; it was really dusty.’
The heat was swept away by a flood of icy panic. ‘You what?’
The ferocity in his tone obviously alarmed her because she flinched and blinked hard.
But
