This Could Change Everything(40)

‘Right.’ Essie was still trying to get her head around the change of circumstances.

‘You don’t have to hate him any more.’

‘No.’

‘He isn’t a dick. He’s actually a good guy.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m the one who was the dick. And I really am sorry about you and Paul.’

‘And my job at the dental surgery,’ said Essie.

Jay shrugged, accepting his culpability. ‘That too. Although . . . well, I know I never met his mother, but she always sounded like a complete witch.’

This might have been true, but it was for her to say, not Jay. Taking advantage of the moment, Essie reached across with her fork and pinched a small but extra-perfect roast potato from his plate. ‘I still can’t believe you did something so stupid.’ It made slightly more sense, though, than Lucas having done it. Especially when, since getting to know him, she’d come to realise he really wasn’t the type.

‘I’ll never do anything bad again,’ Jay promised. ‘When I’m ninety years old and someone asks me on my deathbed what the biggest regret of my life was, I’ll tell them it was this.’

‘Not putting me in a cardboard box when I was five and pushing me down the stairs?’ Essie raised an eyebrow; that wasn’t something she was ever going to let him forget. She’d tobogganed excitedly to the bottom, gone splat into the wall opposite and lost two front teeth in the process. One of them hadn’t even been loose.

‘That’s my second biggest regret,’ said Jay.

‘Mainly because Mum confiscated your bike for a week.’

‘God, yes, I remember that.’ He looked rueful. ‘Devastating. I cried even more than you did.’

The stolen roast potato, golden and irresistible on the end of her fork, was now mere inches from her mouth. Essie smiled. ‘Served you right.’

Essie woke late on Monday morning and pulled back her bedroom curtains. The sun was out, the sky was a clear ice blue, and a glistening white hoar frost covered Percival Square.

Such a beautiful sight mirrored her mood; since discovering the truth yesterday, she’d gone to bed feeling so much better, lighter, less conflicted. It had simply never been in her nature to actively dislike someone as much as she’d been actively disliking Lucas Brook.

And now all the ill feeling had dissolved, dissipated, floated away like a helium balloon disappearing into the cloudless sky.

Leaning her elbows on the windowsill, Essie watched as a tall elderly man threw a red ball for his labradoodle. The dog chased after it, grabbed it in its mouth, and did a lolloping victory lap around the square.

Then, behind him, Essie saw the door of the Red House open from the inside and Giselle emerge carrying a blue canvas overnight bag. Turning, she paused to kiss Lucas on the mouth before skipping down the steps and heading off in the direction of Milsom Street with a cheerful backwards wave. At a guess, she’d catch the bus from there and make her way to the hospital to start her shift. And she’d known the truth about the round robin all along, Essie realised. That explained why she’d been so unbothered by what Lucas had supposedly done.

Having watched his girlfriend leave, Lucas raked his fingers through his unbrushed dark hair, called out a greeting to the owner of the labradoodle, then disappeared back inside.

Essie headed to the bathroom; time for a shower.

And an apology.

Forty minutes later, she rapped on the door of the Red House, then let herself in. Maeve the cleaner was energetically vacuuming the carpeted area and singing along to something on her headphones that might have been Barry Manilow’s ‘Copacabana’. Lucas, in the process of shrugging his way into a brown leather jacket, was reaching for his car keys when he turned and saw Essie.

‘Oh, hi.’ He looked surprised, which was fair enough really, seeing as she wasn’t due to start work until five. ‘What’s up?’

‘I just wondered if I could have a word?’ Essie felt her pulse begin to quicken.

‘Whoops-a-daisy, mind your feet, love!’ Maeve flicked the electrical lead, wielding it like a whip in order to get it around one of the tables. ‘Or you’ll find yourself trussed up like a cow at a rodeo!’

‘Sorry.’ Essie stepped out of the way and mouthed to Lucas, ‘In private?’

‘I was just on my way out to the wholesaler. I’ll be back in an hour.’ He paused, sensing that this wasn’t what she’d wanted to hear. ‘Unless you’d like to join me.’

She couldn’t wait, not now. She nodded. ‘I’ll come with you.’

‘OK.’ Lucas signalled to Maeve that they were off. ‘Let’s go.’

The traffic was heavy as they crawled eastwards along Upper Bristol Road in Lucas’s slate-grey BMW, then approached the left turn onto Windsor Bridge Road. Essie waited until the traffic lights had turned to red, then said, ‘It wasn’t you.’

He turned the heating down a notch. ‘What does that mean?’

‘God, you’d make a good secret agent.’ She’d been watching him closely, and not by so much as a flicker had he indicated that he knew what she was on about. ‘Jay told me yesterday. You took the rap for him. He was the one who sent that round robin, not you.’

‘And?’ said Lucas.