His & Hers(58)

One hour and two beers later, Priya is cooking homemade burgers and sweet potato fries. Her house is on the edge of town. It’s a new build—one of those estates where the houses are on top of one another and all look the same, with red brick walls and PVC windows—but it’s nice enough. Rented, of course, but decked out in stylish furniture, and painted in a series of inoffensive neutral colors.

Everything is spotlessly clean, with low lighting and zero clutter. I note the lack of family photos, or anything remotely personal. If I’d ever given any thought to Priya’s home before now—which I hadn’t—I think I might have predicted Ikea or chintz, but I would have been wrong. Everything I thought I knew about her seems to have been a little off base. The only thing that looked out of place was my scruffy jacket when she hung it on the fancy-looking coatrack, and my shoes, which I took off in the hall. I was a little paranoid that she might notice they were a size ten.

“I just need to pop out for something I forgot,” she says, handing me another beer. “Make yourself at home and I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

The expression sounds too old for her young voice, and it seems a little strange to leave me alone in her house. She turns on the small TV in the kitchen to entertain me, and I drink another beer while watching my ex on the BBC News channel. I’m unable to tell if Anna is live this time, or whether this is just a repeat of what she said earlier.

I do something stupid then. I don’t know whether it’s the beer, or the tiredness, or frankly whether I’m just losing my mind, but I switch on Rachel’s phone. I canceled the trace on it this afternoon—being in charge does have some benefits—and I need to know how her mobile got in my car. Feeling like someone is watching me and trying to set me up is starting to take its toll.

Her passcode is her date of birth—people can be so predictable—and as soon as the phone is unlocked I regret it. There are a mind-boggling number of selfies in her photos, endless suggestive texts to numbers and names I don’t recognize, and her most recent e-mail exchange was with Helen Wang. The subject of which appears to be me. I keep reading the final message Rachel wrote before we met that night.

I know Jack is a loser, but a friend in the force could have been useful. You’re right though, I’ll end it tonight. Maybe a good-bye shag to soften the blow?

So Rachel planned to dump me, and Helen knew.

The front door slams. I slip the phone back into my pocket, just before Priya reappears in the kitchen. A jiffy is by no means a specific length of time, but she must have been gone over half an hour. Longer than I expected, at any rate. She doesn’t appear to have bought anything either. A lifetime of living with my mother, my sister, and Anna has taught me to know when a woman doesn’t want to be asked any questions. So I don’t.

“This looks and smells delicious, thank you,” I say, as Priya puts a plate of food down in front of me. I’m not lying, it really does look great, and I can’t remember the last time I had a home-cooked meal. “I wasn’t expecting this,” I add.

“Were you expecting me to cook a curry?”

“God, no, I just meant that…”

“What? You didn’t think I could cook?”

I can see from her face that Priya is teasing me. Sarcasm is a language that I am fluent in, but one which she doesn’t always seem to understand. The beer appears to have loosened her tongue, and made us both a little more relaxed in each other’s company. She sits down beside me, perhaps a little too close.

“It’s nothing special, just Nigella,” she says.

“I think Nigella is pretty special,” I reply with a grin, and she gives me one of her polite smiles in return, as though maybe I have offended her in some way.

I’ve always found women to be far more complicated than men, and wonder what I’ve done wrong now. She can’t possibly be upset because of my comment about Nigella—half the nation has a crush on the woman.

It’s odd, really. I’ve always thought of Priya as just a girl until tonight, but she seems far more grown-up in her own home environment. At ease with herself, unlike the way she behaves when we’re working. Perhaps that’s why I feel so comfortable in her company this evening. More relaxed. Possibly too relaxed.

“Where did you go earlier?” I ask, unable to stop myself.

Her eyes widen and she looks as though I just accused her of something terrible.

“I’m so sorry…” she says.

“What for?”

“I forgot, then I remembered, then I forgot again.”

She stands up from the table, abandoning her half-eaten food, and leaves the room without another word. I’ll admit I’m feeling a tad uneasy, but then she reappears in the doorway holding a bottle of ketchup.

“I know how much you like this stuff with your fries, sir. You always practically drown them in it, but I didn’t have any. I went out to get some—I wanted you to enjoy the food—but then I forgot and…”

She looks like she might cry, and I conclude that women are in fact a different species.

“Priya, the food is delicious. You really didn’t need to go to all that trouble.”

“I wanted everything to be perfect.”

I smile at her.

“It already is.”

I relax a little more now that I know where she went—it was sweet of her, really. She seems to unwind too. She clears our plates away and gets us both another beer from the fridge, without asking if I want one. I can’t decide whether she is just being a good host—my bottle was empty—or whether I’m right to be worried about the direction things are traveling in. Her hair is down again. I notice that she’s unbuttoned the top of her shirt, and I swear she sprayed herself with perfume the last time she left the room. I take a large swig of my beer, and decide to face this head on, like the man I suspect she thinks I am.