Christmas Shopaholic(21)

I wait for Suze to reply but she’s staring down at her phone, looking a bit stunned.

“You know what, Bex?” she says slowly. “He is a bit of a Greek god. Unless it’s a different guy. Is this him?”

She holds out her phone and I jolt in shock. That guy is gorgeous. That can’t be Craig Curton.

I stare down at the image, trying to make sense of it. OK, I can just about see that it’s Craig. An older Craig. But his hair, which used to be weird and shapeless, is now tumbling down to his shoulders in dark shiny waves. And his teeth have been done. And he’s tanned. And look at those arms.

“He’s amazing,” says Suze flatly.

“He’s changed.” I find my voice. “He’s…he didn’t look like that. Nothing like that.”

“What does he do?” Suze scrolls down the page, which is some kind of professional network. “Musician,” she says, sounding a little awestruck. “His latest release is called ‘Love Underneath.’?”

“Really?” I try to grab for the phone, but Suze snatches it back.

“I haven’t finished looking!” she says. “Last year he released ‘Honest.’ He recently toured Germany with Blink Rage. Who are Blink Rage?”

I have no idea who Blink Rage are, but I’m not going to admit that.

“Haven’t you heard of Blink Rage, Suze?” I say, a little pityingly.

“Hi, Becky.” A raspy male voice greets me from across the shop, and both our heads jerk up—and I nearly die of shock.

It’s him. It’s him. He’s here. And we’re googling him. Fuck.

“Hi!” says Suze in a weird squeak, dropping her phone with a clatter. “Hi. Welcome to the…Hi!” As he gets near, she grabs her phone and hastily turns it over—but not before we’ve all seen his face filling the screen.

My face goes instantly red. This is so embarrassing.

“Hi, Craig,” I say, trying to sound nonchalant. “Hi. We were just…Hi. What a surprise! It’s been…”

“Years.” He nods. “Unreal, right?”

He sounds like a rock god with that raspy voice. And he looks like one, too, with his long hair and battered leather jacket and a skull tattooed on his earlobe.

He greets me with a kiss on each cheek, then he steps back and just looks at me with an easy, confident smile. That’s new too. He never used to smile like that at uni; he used to read me depressing pieces out of the paper and tell me I should be more engaged with the struggle.

“This is Suze,” I say, and Suze says, “Oh, hi!” She shakes his hand, then gazes at him with moony eyes, twiddling her hair as if she’s about fourteen.

“You came back!” Irene’s delighted voice chimes in, and I turn to see her hurrying over. “How lovely!” To my horror, she turns to me and mouths, “Very striking!” in a totally unsubtle way.

Oh my God. Could we be more uncool?

“So. Um…What brings you here, Craig?”

“I live here now,” he says in the same leisured, easy way.

“You live here?” I say in astonishment.

“I’ve rented Lapwing Cottage.” He addresses Suze. “I’m your tenant.”

“Oh.” I can see the light dawning on Suze’s face. “I didn’t know Lapwing Cottage had been rented out!”

Trust Suze not to know she’s rented out a cottage on her own estate. She and Tarkie have got so much property and investments and stuff between them, she can’t keep track. We were once eating lunch at a local café and they kept bringing us complimentary slices of cake and being really nice to us. We had no idea why—until Suze suddenly realized that she was the landlord, she’d just forgotten.

“Is it OK?” she adds anxiously. “If there are any problems, talk to Gordon, our estate manager; he runs all that kind of thing.”

“It’s great,” says Craig. “It’s charming. Old world. Rustic.”

“How did you know I work here?” I demand.

“One of those crazy small-world things,” he says easily. “I rented the cottage online. Wanted a bolt-hole from London. A place to write songs. Chill out, you know? Then I’m in the village shop getting some supplies and I see a postcard: For sale, three garden spades, never used, apply Becky Brandon, née Bloomwood. I think to myself, There can’t be two Becky Bloomwoods. So I ask the guy and he tells me you work here. What are the odds?”

“Wow,” breathes Suze.

“So I have a question,” Craig adds, fixing me with his dark gaze. “Three garden spades?”

“They were on sale,” I say, feeling a bit defensive, “so I bought a few. Our garden’s quite big and I thought we might need several. Only it turned out we don’t.”

“Sounds like you.” He looks amused. “Well, I must be going. Nice to see you, Becky. We should have a drink sometime. What have you been up to all these years?”

“Oh…er…” My mind has immediately gone blank. What have I been doing all this time? I can’t think of a single thing. “Loads of stuff,” I say feebly. “You know.”

“Cool.” He nods. “You’ve got a kid, I hear.”