The Other Woman(14)

‘Is she hot then?’ I asked. His brow crinkled as if working out the most diplomatic answer. If he said ‘No’ too quickly, I’d know he was lying. If he said ‘Yes’, he’d be mad. We both knew he couldn’t win.

‘She’s all right, I suppose,’ was all he could muster, which, given the options, was his best shot.

‘Does your ex, Rebecca, work in the City?’ I asked.

He sat up straight. ‘No,’ he said hesitantly.

Was that all I was going to get?

‘So, she doesn’t work in your industry? That wasn’t how you met?’

‘I wasn’t aware that I’d mentioned Rebecca,’ he said tightly.

A rush of heat spread up from my toes as it slowly dawned on me that he hadn’t. I’d put his reluctant ‘let’s not talk about it’, together with a picture of him and a woman who I guessed was called Rebecca, and let my mind run riot. I wanted to suck all my stupid, insecure words back in.

‘What’s all this about?’ he said, turning towards me, his face serious.

I moved closer to him and lifted his arm over me, as I laid my head in his lap. A diversion tactic to give my cheeks time to cool down.

‘I guess I just feel that there’s large chunks of your life that I don’t know about yet,’ I said, ‘and I just want to know everything that there is to know.’ I gave a little laugh and picked up his hand from where it rested on my stomach, and held it to my lips.

My heart was thumping as I waited for a response. Had I pushed it too far? Was he just going to get up and walk out?

The seconds ticked by like hours and I tried to gauge which way he was going to go as the pulse in his thigh beat against my cheek.

‘What do you want to know?’ he said, finally.

I let out the breath I’d been holding in. ‘Everything!’

He laughed. ‘By that, I assume you mean my love life. Isn’t that the only thing that girls really want to know about?’

I lifted my shoulders and wrinkled my nose. ‘That obvious, eh?’

He looked down at me, and I could see the fairy lights in the tree reflected in his eyes. My stomach flipped as he smiled. ‘Okay, you go first . . .’ he said. ‘Where’s the most unusual place you’ve ever made love?’

I almost choked, and sat up. ‘That’s easy . . . I had a one-night stand on a cricket pitch, but you already know about that.’

‘Tell me again . . . slowly,’ he teased.

I went to hit him round the head with a cushion but he caught it mid-flight.

‘Okay, so have you ever been in love?’ he asked.

‘It’s not your turn,’ I said.

He tilted his head to one side and raised his eyebrows. ‘Yes or no?’

The moment had suddenly become laden with anticipation. Funny, isn’t it, how the very real physical act of sex, even with unnamed strangers, can be spoken about with humour and joviality, yet talking about an unseen emotion called love is fraught with tension.

‘Once,’ I said, determined to keep my voice calm and steady.

‘Who with?’

‘A guy called Tom. I met him at work, when I was going through my retail period.’

He looked at me questioningly.

‘You know. Between my hairdressing and interior design phases.’ I’m sure I’d given him a quick run through my haphazard CV at some point.

‘Ah.’ He sighed. ‘The enlightenment years.’

I smiled, grateful to him for relieving the intensity of the conversation.

‘So, what happened?’ he asked.

I cleared my throat. ‘We met when I was twenty, went out for close to three years, and I began to think we had a future.’

‘But?’

‘But, despite how I felt about him and how he claimed to feel for me, he still managed to sleep with someone else.’

‘Oh,’ he mustered. ‘How did you find out?’

‘It was with a very good friend of mine, dear Charlotte, who decided that she was actually more in love with him, than she was a friend to me.’

‘Christ. I assume you’re not friends anymore.’

I laughed wryly. ‘Funnily enough, no. I haven’t spoken to her since, and have no intention of speaking to her ever again.’

‘So, was he your last boyfriend . . . before we met?’ he went on.

‘Seriously, you’ve had five hundred questions and I haven’t even had one,’ I said, laughing. ‘He was my only serious boyfriend. I’ve had other relationships over the three years since, but nobody of any significance, until I met you.’

He smiled.

‘Now, it really is my turn,’ I said.

He sat back and stared straight ahead, avoiding my gaze.

‘So, what about you? Have you ever been in love?’

His foot nudged the edge of the cobalt-blue rug that lay under the coffee table. I didn’t want to force anything, if it was still too raw. I waited a moment longer. ‘It’s not important,’ I said, far more brightly than I felt. ‘If it’s . . .’

‘Yes,’ he said quietly.

I chanced it. ‘With Rebecca?’

He nodded. ‘She was the one I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with . . . but it wasn’t to be.’