Rachel scowled at him.Ergo, for fuck’s sake.Bollocks to Jack, to Harrow and to Latin.
‘The truth is, you enjoy it,’ she said savagely. ‘All of it – the chasing, the endless flattery … The reeling people in.’
Rachel had gone too far, she knew; this wasn’t about work any more. She’d wanted to embarrass him into shutting up. She rapidly realised she’d miscalculated. Jack pushed his jaw out a little, narrowed his eyes at her, let his mouth quirk in amusement. He was eager for the fight.
‘I may not be quite the cad I used to be, but I’m still me,’ he replied, defiant. His lips curled completely into the smile they’d been promising, and Rachel hated how much she didn’t hate it. ‘I do this job because I’m good at it,’ he added. ‘You know as well as anyone that I’m built for persuading people. Coaxing, inveigling … Seducing.’
The colour in Rachel’s cheeks flared again.Fuck. He was doing this on purpose.
There was something arch and challenging in his tone too – almost as if he was daring her to disagree with him. Was he trying to tease her into saying she was impervious, too smart to be sucked in by him a second time?
She needed to get out of this car. How could theystillbe over an hour away from London?
‘You know, I’m more like my father than I ever intended to be,’ Jack went on, filling the silence that stretched between them. He sounded bitter now. ‘He’s always been brilliant at establishing relationships, useless at the middle bits and spectacularly bad at endings. Again, I guess you’re well qualified to agree that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’
Rachel’s stomach squirmed.
They lapsed into silence as they drove down the M40. Rachel checked her work emails and, at Jack’s request, composed a message to Isaac to let him know that the meeting with Humphrey had gone well. The atmosphere in the car was weird; charged. Jack’s grip on the steering wheel was too tight, and the set of his shoulders looked rigid.
As they neared Stroud Green, he cleared his throat and turned to her, eyes intense. ‘Listen … I’m sorry I said you were naive before. You’re not – you’re just a nicer person than I am.’ He smiled a less smug smile than she was used to. ‘You always were.’
Rachel felt a sudden tension in her chest and looked down at her hands, twisting them in her lap. ‘Er – thanks?’ she said.
‘Was that your boyfriend this morning? The really tall guy with the beard?’
It took a second for her to realise Jack’s misconception. ‘What? No! That’s Will. He’s Anna’s boyfriend.’
‘Right.’
Why was he asking? What was it to him? He wasmarried, for God’s sake – and it was none of his business. Rachel refrained from saying any of this, and deliberately didn’t explain that she was single.
They turned a corner, then crawled up Rachel and Anna’s street until Jack found a space to pull the car into. It was only around 4 p.m., but the sun had disappeared and the sky was a dull, deep grey.
‘Goodnight, then,’ Jack said, and looked at her with an intensity that made her insides ache.
The thing that had been missing between Rachel and Laurence was suddenly abundant inside this small, dark space.
Rachel allowed this knowledge to shimmer briefly in her peripheral vision, like a migraine aura. Then she heaved it out of the way, making space for salient facts about the situation: Jack had a wife. Rachel didn’t trust him. In many ways, she didn’t evenlikehim that much.
‘See you Monday,’ she mumbled without looking at him. She pulled the handle to release the passenger door and clambered out of the MG with as much dignity as its stupid low seats allowed.
Rachel usually enjoyed being right about things, but as she leaned against the front door and tried to compose herself she found no comfort in having known this simple truth all along: getting into a car with Jack had been a very big mistake.
13
It was unusual for Rachel to arrive home from work before Anna, but she was grateful for the silence and emptiness of the flat when she finally made her way inside.
Feeling chilled from the freezing car journey back to London, as well as uncomfortable in her dress and heels, she decided to take a hot shower. She let her hair get soaked, scrubbed her face with some expensive-looking stuff of Anna’s and lathered her body with lemon-scented foam. As the bathroom steamed up around her, Rachel was dimly conscious of trying to wash away all traces of her encounter with Sir Humphrey, as well as cleanse her mind of the several impure thoughts she’d had about Jack in the past few minutes.
Out of the spray, Rachel dried herself more vigorously than was really necessary, brushed her teeth and pulled her towel-dried hair up into a knot on top of her head. In her room, she slicked moisturiser onto her face and put on an old pair of jeans, a vest top and a snuggly blue sweater.
By the time Anna got back, Rachel had settled in front of an episode ofQueer Eyewith a massive mug of tea. Anna dropped her work satchel and a bag for life full of exercise books on the floor as she shrugged out of her coat and scarf, then snatched her leopard-print beret off her head. It was the sort of hat Rachel always admired in shops but told herself she could never pull off in day-to-day life. On top of her red hair it would be too ‘LOOK AT ME’ – implying a confidence in her appearance that Rachel really didn’t feel. On Anna, it somehow looked both cuteandfierce, the boldness of it undercut by her petite prettiness.
‘Well? How did it go today?’ Anna asked.
Rachel scrunched up her shoulders and made a face that spoke of suffering.
‘That good, huh? Will messaged me and said something about a sports car …?’ Anna flopped down at the other end of the sofa and raised her eyebrows at Rachel.
