He grinned. ‘Well, you know how I told you I do Wordle every day?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I also took up art.’
I blinked. ‘You what?’
‘Once a week I go to this art class. It’s me and about ten women in their sixties. They mostly complain about their husbands’ snoring and the way their kids parent their grandchildren, and then they fuss over me because I haven’t settled down with a nice woman yet.’
I burst out laughing.
‘I’m serious. I’ve actually got pretty good,’ he said.
I shook my head in disbelief. ‘What possessed you?’
‘Don’t you ever feel like your life is a bit . . . one-dimensional?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Like all you do is work, and that if you didn’t work, you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself?’
‘I mean . . . work is all I do.’
‘No hobbies?’
‘My work is my hobby.’
‘Yeah, mine used to be too. Until I got injured in the field and had to take six months off. I thought I was going to go insane and I needed to do something, so I took up some hobbies. I thought I’d give them up when I went back to work, but I missed them, and I missed my pensioner friends too. I’m really good at painting fruit bowls now.’
My stomach had plummeted. I hadn’t heard anything past theinjured in the fieldpart. ‘You were injured?’
‘There was an altercation. I got shoved. Hit my head.’
‘What? Oh my God.’ My heart thumped.
‘It’s fine now.’ He took my hand and brought it round to the back of his head. ‘Feel here.’
‘Is this a scar?’ I asked, running my fingers over the clear ridge that cut across the back of his skull.
‘I had to have surgery,’ he said, and my heart did more than thump this time.
‘Brain surgery . . . in the brain?’
He smiled. ‘That’s usually where they do brain surgery.’
I shook my head. A sudden bolt of panic was followed by a wave of intense sadness. ‘I’m so sorry.’ I didn’t know what else to say, so many strange emotions were sprinting through me.
‘I’m fine now. Don’t worry. Now give me the lipstick.’
I pulled back. ‘Just because you can paint a fruit bowl doesn’t mean you can apply lipstick.’
‘Want to bet?’
‘Yeah. Actually I do.’
Cam laughed and snatched the lipstick from my hand. ‘Okay, what are we betting on?’ But before I could open my mouth to reply, he’d already taken my chin in his hand.
‘I—’
