Page 44 of Read My Lips

Housebreaking skills: negative.

“Why am I the one doing this?” Twisting to look up at Simon, I rattled at the door to underline how badly it was going. His bright socks peeked at me from beneath the hem of his trouser legs, striped like deckchairs at the beach. With all the gravel on the drive we could have been at Brighton.

“You’re all...” He made a vague hand gesture that wasn’t even pretending to be a sign, circling around me with fluttering fingers looking to snatch the right word out of the air. My skin prickled under the weight of his incoming assessment. “...Practical.”

“Right.” That had to be a euphemism for meat-headed and knuckle-dragging. “Can’t we get a cab and go home?”

Crossing his ankles, Simon leaned against a column like he was posing for one of those smudgy, lifesize oil paintings from way back when. It’d be called Nonchalance, and under the brim of the hat he would be wearing, his hooded eyes would follow me all over the room.

“Mel’s convinced I’ve willfully attempted to torpedo the company she single-handedly birthed in the middle of a recession. She’s not going to pay a £300 taxi fare to get us back to London unless it’s for my funeral.”

“Fair point. I’ll get back to it.”

“This has to be easier than you’re making out.”

Apparently I wasn’t failing at a life of petty criminality fast enough.

Dusting myself down, I shoved my loyalty card at him. “You have a go then. Knock yourself out.”

“Rather not ruin my suit.” He waved my offer away like a box of chocolates on the third round.

“Alright. No bother.” My jeans had twin wet patches leaching larger and larger circles into the denim from the puddle on the flagstones right outside the terrace door. My hamstrings screamed at me for crouching too long. And I was starting to shiver. “You stand there playing Lord of the Manor.”

Pushing away from the column he’d been leaning against, Simon stepped in closer, tilting his head to lock my eye contact. “Is that what you think this is?”

Under my blunt thumbnail, I compulsively tick-tacked the edge of the plastic card. The air between us prickled. I couldn’t look away from the fullness of his mouth. “Who am I to argue if you want a bit of breaking and entering alongside your interpretation services?”

Simon took another step. “This is a bespoke suit.”

“Yeah.” I flashed him a once-over, as if his outfit choices didn’t permanently engrave themselves into my memory the moment I looked. Every. Single. Time. “I can see that.”

The sky blue jacket moulded to his body. The cut of his waistcoat was devastation itself. No way Simon was getting down on his knees in a puddle for anyone, no matter how many future daydreams I was going to have about it.

His eyes narrowed dangerously, but a flash of amusement lit his mouth.

“Wait here.”

The soles of his shoes rasped sharply against the damp stone pavers as he pivoted on the spot. Cutting the conversation off dead, he jogged down the steps to the gravelled carriage drive, without so much as glancing back.

Beyond a strip of formal garden brimming with roses, the landscape fell away, the slope of the hill running down towards a pond that probably counted as a lake. Imagine being our age and owning all that. No wonder Simon was happy to get involved.

I slumped against the locked door, thunking my skull on the glazing. No point me calling down to him – he wouldn’t hear. No point staring at him obsessively either.

Simon crunched along the sodden gravel, head down, inspecting the ground like he’d lost a cufflink. Around him everything dripped and glistened as the clouds cleared. He ducked, picking something up and the sunlight shafted down leaving the world behind him wet and fresh and new and flawless.

Tossing a rounded cobble in his hand, he jogged back up the steps. I squinted at him. Silhouetted against the sun, ten feet away from me at the edge of the terrace, he looked like he was glowing.

Uncomprehending, I watched him curl his arm in and wind up, windmilling forward on a darted free-fall step.

The rock shot out of his hand. Right at me.

I dove sideways.

The crack of splintering glass echoed like a shot. My elbow throbbed sick-hot where I’d thwacked it on the pavers.

“Did you just spin-bowl a rock at my face?” The small rectangular pane next to the handle of the patio door had a perfect hole in the middle of it. Right where my head would have been.

Simon folded his arms, crumpling his jacket. “I suspected you’d get out of the way.”