‘Not a problem. I would have called yesterday but I was in an underground restaurant which had really bad reception.’ He’d been out. Probably having a lot of fun. Which wastotallyfine. ‘With clients.’ Yessss, such a relief that it hadn’t been a date. ‘So, was it something important?’
‘Yes, quite important.’ Understatement.
‘Okay. So would you like to talk now?’
‘Maybe we should talk in person? If that’s okay?’ Then she might be able to tell if he still felt the same way about her.
‘Yes, of course. Now? I could come round? If you’re free?’
Now?What. No. She needed to have a shower and put some make-up on.
‘Maybe in about an hour’s time? If that’s okay?’ It was weirdbeing this polite and pussy-footy with Raf.
‘Perfect.’
An hour was good. In an hour, as it turned out, working at extreme speed, she had time to have a shower, dry her hair, do her make-up, decide what casual but flattering top to wear and sprint round the house making it as immaculate as possible. In fact, by the time Raf rang the doorbell, the kitchen and sitting room were practically ready to audition for an appearance in aBeautiful Hometype magazine. She had to stop herself from switching the oven on and sticking a loaf of bread inside to go full estate-agent’s-dream.
When she opened the door, Raf took her breath away. He was wearing nicely-worn-in jeans, with a slim fit navy shirt open at the neck, and he looked gorgeous. Even better than in her dreams.
He smiled at her and her tummy did a little dip. Please, please let him not have changed his mind.
‘Good morning,’ she said.
‘Good morning.’
‘Come in.’ She walked ahead of him into her excellently tidy sitting room and then wished they’d gone into the kitchen so she could offer him coffee without having to go to a different room to make it. Okay, fuck it, no coffee, she should just get on with it. ‘Thank you for coming.’
‘Thank you for asking me to come.’ This politeness was gettingridiculous. ‘So what did you want to talk about?’
That was better. More like normal Raf.
‘Basically, I wanted to say that I wondered if you, erm…’
Asking if he did indeed love her had sounded alotbetter in her head than it did out loud. Maybe she should have spent some time planning what to say instead of plumping up cushions. Raf wasn’t even looking at the cushions. He was just staring at her. Not moving.
Then he said, ‘Yes?’
Oh, fuck it again.
‘I love you,’ she told him.
‘You do?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh-kay.’
Right. She’d hoped for a bigger response than that.
Oh, fuck it once more.
‘If you were still interested in… um… becoming serious then I would actually also be interested.’ She really wished that he wasn’t looking so inscrutable right now.
‘You would?’ He was sticking with his inscrutability.
Georgie nodded.
And then his inscrutable mask cracked and his face spread into a broad, broad smile.
