you in a bit,’ I repeated and waited until I heard the outside door slam shut before retrieving my phone from under my bum and dialling Amy’s number.
‘Yo yo yo,’ she answered immediately. ‘I wondered where you’d got to.’
‘Been a long day,’ I replied. I wasn’t nearly awake enough to fill her in on my adventures in housebreaking. ‘I’m at Charlie’s.’
‘Oh really?’
‘No need to sound so scandalized,’ I said. ‘It’s just Charlie.’
‘Charlie who has been calling me every day because you’ve been refusing to speak to him?’
‘Yeah, that one.’ I stretched my legs out in front of me, my shoulder singing out in protest at all movement. Padding into the bathroom, I checked the running water. Charlie’s bath filled slowly – new information to add to my encyclopaedic knowledge of his existence.
‘Shall I come over? Bring snacks?’ Amy asked. ‘We could make him watch Notting Hill again. That’s always good for a laugh.’
‘I think I probably ought to talk to him about some stuff,’ I said with a yawn. Between the painkillers, the steamy promise of the tub and the general combined stress of the day, all I wanted to do was get in the bath and get into bed so I could pretend all of this was just a dream. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Yeah, you want to “talk” to Charlie,’ she said. ‘And I want to talk to Channing Tatum.’
‘Well, if he calls, send me a text.’ I yawned and dipped my hand into the water. ‘See you tomorrow.’
‘See you tomorrow,’ she replied. ‘Enjoy your “talk”.’
Setting my phone safely on top of Charlie’s bathroom cabinet, I stripped off and sat on the side of the bath. When I’d made my phone call, when I decided it was Charlie I wanted to see, I hadn’t really had too much of a plan. I couldn’t ask Amy to come and get me from the police station because then I’d have to explain how I got there in the first place and it would have been really hard for her to collect me if she was being arrested for killing Vanessa. Charlie was the easier option; he wouldn’t give me a hard time and he would also bring snacks. But it did mean I was going to have to have a conversation that I had been putting off for the best part of a week. And in less than twenty-four hours, I had to have another conversation I’d been avoiding: a meeting with my agent, a meeting about Milan.
Sliding into the tub, I tried to get my shoulder under the water without soaking my hair. It would take forever to dry.
All I had to do was work out what I wanted. That was easy, wasn’t it? Only I didn’t know what I wanted, and the more I thought about it, the less certain I became. I didn’t just look before I leapt, I had visited the jump site, called the insurance company and done a full risk analysis and yet I still couldn’t come to a decision. I had never struggled like this before but ever since Hawaii, my compass was off. Instead of giving me a straight up yes or no, my brain had turned into a Magic 8 Ball. The outcome is unclear; ask again later; better not tell you now.
I opened the hot water tap with my big toe and watched as the mound of bubbles covering my body grew and grew and just as quickly, popped and vanished.
With a loud and obnoxious sigh, I slid deeper into the water. Sod my hair – it was already a mess.
Being a grown-up was rubbish.
The sun was fighting a losing battle when I woke up on the sofa. The room was pleasantly warm and you couldn’t tell how badly it needed hoovering now the light had faded away. I wriggled my toes inside the pair of socks I had found, sniffed and deemed fit to wear, and yawned loudly.
‘She wakes!’ Charlie called from the kitchen. ‘Better?’
‘Sooo much better,’ I said. The painkillers had reduced the shooting pains in my shoulder to a dull ache and my head felt altogether less stuffed with cotton wool after the nap. ‘You should get injured more often, I like those tablets a lot.’
‘Brilliant, you’ve been here for three hours and I’ve turned you into a junkie.’ He leaned around the door, spatula in hand. ‘What will Amy say?’
‘Amy will want to know why you’ve got a spatula in your hand,’ I suggested. ‘What’s going on in there?’
‘I’m making dinner.’ Charlie looked incredibly happy with himself. ‘I’m making dinner for us.’
‘I take it back, I’m not better,’ I sat up, pulling my second borrowed T-shirt of the day over my knickers. Amy’s was too small; Charlie’s was too big. Maybe one day I’d find one that was just right. ‘I must have hit my head as well as my arm because I think I’m hallucinating. You burn baked beans.’
‘Losing his job does strange things to a man,’ Charlie said, disappearing back into the kitchen. ‘I’ve had to amuse myself for too long. There’s only so many times you can play Grand Theft Auto and watch Breaking Bad before you start thinking a life of crime is a viable option.’
Until two weeks ago, Charlie and I had worked together at Donovan & Dunning, an advertising agency in Holborn. I ran the creative team and Charlie was an account manager, which mostly meant that I spent fourteen hours a day worrying over whether or not the target demographic would respond better to a happy squirrel selling them toilet paper or a friendly-looking bear, while he took the people who owned the toilet paper company out for dinner and then asked them for more money. But, like lots of agencies run by men who liked to blow all their money up their nose rather than into their employees’ pension fund, Donovan & Dunning was not prepared for the recession and had gone rather spectacularly bust, leaving me, Charlie, and about forty other people, out of a job.
‘So you’re going for Come Dine with Me instead?’ I asked. ‘This is a very interesting development.’
‘I’m not very good,’ he acknowledged, reappearing in the living room with two very full glasses of white wine. What went better with codeine than wine? ‘But I’ll get there. I’m making a chilli but I didn’t have any kidney beans so I used Heinz. That’s all right, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ I said, sipping the wine and trying not to wince. Charlie had never been much of a wine drinker; clearly this had been bought in for my benefit. I couldn’t help but wish it hadn’t been. ‘You can’t put baked beans in a chilli, but I’m really impressed that you tried.’
‘Then you’ll be completely wowed by my ability to call for a pizza,’ he said, sitting down next to me and pulling his phone out of his back pocket. ‘Because I’m amazing at that.’
‘A man’s got to have a talent,’ I replied.
His legs pressed against his too-big socks I was wearing and squished my toes in a way that made me feel warm all over. Or it could have been the wine, I wasn’t sure. Whatever discomfort had been between us before my nap had dissolved and all I wanted to do was stare at him in silence while he faffed about with the Domino’s app. But that could have been the wine too.
‘Pizza will be here in forty-five minutes,’ he said and turned to me with a grin. I quickly sipped my wine and hoped my face didn’t look as red as it felt. ‘So what should we do for the next forty-five minutes?’
