Page 96 of Read My Lips

Something in my chest crumpled and my eyes blurred, and a horrendous hiccough-sob escaped when I tried to breathe.

This wasn’t love either. No matter how much I wanted him, or how many times we slept together, or how many pictures I took, or how many times he looked at me like in another universe we could change each other’s world.

I scrubbed a hand across my face, covering my mouth, trying to stuff it all back down.

“Are you on your way home?” Simon asked. “I’m coming over. We could both use a stiff drink.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SIX

Some bloke was sitting on the low wall out the front of my house. And it wasn’t Simon. My pace slowed, trying to figure out who it was – hunched over, spinning a folded up bit of paper in his hands. Waiting, like it was a nicely situated park bench, not a pile of crumbling render two and a half feet away from a constant stream of homicidal urban drivers on a short cut.

He did not hear my telepathic suggestion he piss-off by the time I got my keys out. Excellent. Might as well go inside and give him my bank statements and my NI number, so he could relieve me of my identity as a reward for his nefarious loitering. That would solve everyone’s problems.

Sev could Photoshop his head onto all the footage she’d taken, and Simon wouldn’t have to deal with the fact I’d been infatuated since I started working for him, and I’d just spent twenty minutes making sure he really, really knew it.

Even better, this random guy could be Mel’s Benedict. She’d be ecstatic.

The bloke looked up. I nearly sprinted straight back to the bus stop.

“Oh, god.”

I flash-backed to an anti-shagpile carpet and my phone stag-beetling all over the place. And Simon calling him unintelligible. Luke was not nefarious.

“You alright Ben?” He beamed, raising a wave. “I saw you on the internet.”

Of course he bloody had.

“Oh yeah?” The Trade Descriptions Act would take issue with calling the strangled line my mouth morphed into a smile. My eyes were still gritty from bawling them out on the bus.

“With that Simon guy. With your kit off.”

My eyelid twitched. None of that explained what he was doing on my doorstep. How did he even know where my doorstep was?

“And..?” Surely he was not here to ask for an autograph?

“You could have told me. I bet he thinks I’m a right dick now. No wonder he was getting arsey. You know, you really should discuss bringing other people into a relationship with all parties.”

“Right.” Had he seriously trucked down to the dodgy bit of Croydon to hand out unsolicited polyamory etiquette to a failed one-night stand? “Yeah. You’re so right. Thanks.”

I clapped a hand onto his shoulder and immediately wished I hadn’t.

Silence fell. A kid on a motorised scooter zoomed up the road. Luke crumbled a line of mortar with the heel of his trainer, gazing up at me expectantly. I’d definitely been touching him far too long.

Maybe he wanted an apology?

“Look. I’m sorry.” I snatched my hand back under the pretext of waving my arms about. “We weren’t actually⁠—”

“Ready.” He nodded slowly. Sagely.

What?

Our story needed no more holes. The faintest whiff of the truth and Mel Booker would drive my body to an Essex pig farm to dispose of the evidence without bothering to check I was dead first.

“Exactly.” I nodded along with him, like a velveteen bulldog on the parcel shelf of someone’s car. Oh yus, yus, yus. Whatever he thought he’d figured out, I should not correct him. Benedict would have definitely been ballsing-up opening out the incredibly committed, deeply monogamous relationship Simon was absolutely, hundred percent, on-board with.

My brain ached.