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You win! Goodnight.
***
We met up more and more often, and I stopped being embarrassed that James always paid for everything.
Then one evening, as he dropped me off, he asked, “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
No, that was not part of my plan; I’d been daydreaming that he’d invite me to Langley Hall, rather than this way round. I’d even kept £10 tucked away in case he was going to charge me an entrance fee. I couldn’t let him in to see the dead cooker, the burnt curtains, and the charring on the wall. He’d see the washing draped around the house, dripping wet, because I had made the decision to only use the machine for special occasions. He would see all my stuff taking over the house. He might look in the cupboards and find that they were nearly bare.
“Early start,” I said.
“I thought you were on the late shift tomorrow?”
“I’m hoping to pick up some overtime. They said they’d phone me, I have to be ready.”
He looked skeptical. “Just for five minutes?”
What were we going to do for five minutes? “Do you need the loo?” I asked, and I realized my mistake as he nodded.
“OK, then.” I bit the bullet and led him up the garden path.
I unlocked the door, holding my breath, half expecting my possessions to be waiting, ready to tumble out and engulf us. We’d be found in the morning, buried under the avalanche. But nothing fell and James didn’t bat an eyelid at the mountain of clothes heaped on the end of the banister, both mine and my mother’s, or the shoes around the door and halfway along the hall, not all pairs, or the tower of post on the side table, or the childhood toys balanced on the radiator.
“Which way?” he asked. “For the toilet?”
“Up the stairs, straight ahead of you.” There was also one downstairs, but the approach to that would’ve given him a view into the kitchen.
And off he went. As soon as I heard the bathroom door shut, I took my shoes off and hurried up after him to make sure all the doors up there were closed. I didn’t want him peering inside to see the bombsite that was now my room or the spare bed with the broken frame. Then I tiptoed back down and did the same downstairs. I waited for him at the front door.
“Coffee?” he asked coming down the stairs, and my heart sank.
“This way,” I said. I led him into the lounge, cleared a space for him to sit on one of the comfier parts of the sofa and went to make coffee, closing the door firmly as I left the room. I was poking around in the cupboard under the worktop when:
“Do you think I should buy a BMW?” James asked from behind me.
“Ow!” I jumped and banged my head on the cupboard doorframe. I turned as gracefully as I could. He was looking at the charred corpse of the cooker and the surrounding wall.
“I’m not going to keep the chauffeur service, I like driving. Have you had an accident?”
“Small one,” I said.
“Does the oven still work?”
“I never used it anyway.”
“I’ve got a plasterer doing some work at the moment,” James said. “He’s free tomorrow afternoon; he can soon have that wall ready for a lick of paint. Do you need any help with the drinks?”
We went into the front room. I put a CD on and we chatted untilthe music stopped, the lights went out, and I heard, from the kitchen, the hum of the fridge go silent.
“Fuse?” James asked. But no, my utilities were on a prepayment meter.
“There are candles somewhere,” I said. “Or I can put it on emergency credit. My card’s in my bag. If I can find it.”
“Leave it,” he said. “Who needs lights anyway? The sun will be up in the morning.” And after all, there was nothing in the fridge, now that I’d used the last of the milk.
In the moonlight that shone through the window, I saw him put his mug on the floor, then he moved forward and did the same with mine. He took my hands and pulled me toward him. As we kissed, he put his arms around me and pulled me closer and down. And I followed, trying to pretend there wasn’t a hairbrush digging into my back.
