Page 59 of Read My Lips

Breakfast room felt like the right name for it – set up like a posh hotel, with too much cutlery and juice glasses and legitimate saucers under the mugs. Tucked neatly into the curve of the bay window, the table glowed in the sunshine streaming cheerfully through the glass.

This wasn’t real life. Not mine anyway.

No sign of the powder blue suit. Simon had magicked up a rusty brown tweed jacket – fitted to his shoulders with millimetre precision – while I was failing to drown myself in the shower, or suffocate myself with a pillow covered in gardenias. It had to come from Richard’s wardrobe. It didn’t have a single crease on it.

I scraped out a chair at right angles to Simon’s so we weren’t sitting at opposite ends like a pair of total nobs. A rack of cold toast stood in the middle of the table, because this was not a toast-your-own white-sliced kind of set-up. I stretched over to take a bit.

Simon hid behind his phone, scrolling emails.

Last night I’d switched mine off to save the battery because I hadn’t grabbed my charging cable when I hadn’t even known we’d be staying over. I felt like my own gran, who only ever switched hers on to send someone else a message or give them a call as it booted back up.

A raft of messages swam in when the signal connected.

Matt

You back late then?

Don’t worry about me. I’m only in the house all by myself with no one to go to the pub with and nothing in for dinner because my housemate swore he was going to the shops so I didn’t need to bother.

Hope you catch an embarrassing and mildly annoying STD. If you’re not back by tuesday I’m subletting your room.

My battery warning slow-motion ding-donged as I thumbed out a reply and Simon looked up at the buzz of the vibrate.

“I would have lent you my spare charger.” Because Simon was helpful and organised and magnanimous. Even to employees he didn’t want growing feelings.

I eyeballed him, and purposefully stopped myself from signing. His hearing aids were back in. He wouldn’t want me to. Familiarity, consideration, liking each other: those were all well off-limits now. “Didn’t know you had one.”

Ben

Sorry. Engineering works. No battery. Back tonight.

Matt

Why are you messing about with the trains? You left in a CAR

Long story. Tell you later.

Simon held up a delicate-looking pot, with a thin curving spout, catching my eye. “Some of that coffee you’re in love with?”

The neck of yesterday’s t-shirt threatened to strangle me. What a shit. I pushed the equally delicate cup towards him.

“Cheers.”

The pot was proper china. No push down bit in the middle. Elegant. Probably dead expensive. No way it wasn’t going to dump a pile of soggy grounds into the bottom of my cup, so what was the point?

“Trains are running again.” Simon buttered his slice with military precision, right to the very edge of the crust. “I’ve booked a taxi to the station.”

“Great.”

He crunched into his toast loudly enough to echo off the sunlit walls.

“Did you bring this all up from the kitchen?”

He dusted crumbs from the front of his shirt. “Agniezka brought it up.”

“Who?”

A ripple of a frown forged Simon’s eyebrows together. “She’s the maid.”