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‘Persistent chap.’
‘Yes,’ I muse. ‘A bit too much so. The strange thing is that on the date he just talked about himself constantly and my presence was largely irrelevant. Now he seems to have decided that I’m some wonderful elusive woman who’s playing hard to get.’
Mike laughs and it reduces my tension. I find myself laughing too.
‘What a nut job,’ he says.
‘I couldn’t agree more.’
‘Don’t let him get to you,’ he advises. ‘He’ll soon lose interest. That sort always do.’ He eyes me over a prawn cracker. ‘It’s the quiet, unassuming ones who don’t give up.’
‘Yeah, right.’
We giggle like kids over the rest of the food and by the time we’ve settled on the sofa to watch Angels and Demons on DVD, with Archie curled between us, the loathsome Lewis has long been forgotten.
Still, when I show Mike out with a grateful peck on the cheek, it’s nearing midnight so I take particular care to deadlock the door behind me and, call me paranoid, I check the back door twice as well.
Despite my anxieties, when I slip under the duvet and cuddle down with Archie, my fear dissipates and sleep finds me instantly. So it’s quite a shock when my mobile phone starts to ring at two o’clock in the morning. I pick it up and see that the display shows ‘caller unknown’.
‘Hello?’ I say tentatively. ‘Who’s this?’
But there’s no answer at the other end, just an interminable silence. I say nothing else and hang up. A moment later, I hear an engine start and the arc of headlights illuminates the bedroom. Jumping out of bed, I fly to the window, but I’m too late to see what type of car is departing at full speed along the lane.
It has to be Lewis Moran. Who else could it be?
I slip back into bed, glad that Mike is only a stone’s throw from my window. If I screamed and screamed he would hear me and then I think, it would be a better idea if I just phoned him.
When I first moved in here, sleeping solo for the first time in seven years, I was a nervous wreck at night. Not used to being in a double bed alone, I chased myself around, getting tangled up in the duvet, and I spent half the night punching pillows. Every single sound would wake me up and it took me weeks to get used to the settling of the ancient wooden beams, the clanking of unfamiliar plumbing and the pinging of modern central heating. The hooting of the owl in the oak tree across the road used to spook me, as did the theatrical rustling of the trees. Now I find all of those sounds comforting and soothing.
It’s only late-night silent phone calls that put the wind up me now. Pulling the duvet higher up around my neck, I eventually doze off again only to be woken up by a second silent phone call at four a.m. After that, I turn off my phone, but sleep dodges out of reach and by the time the alarm goes off at seven o’clock, I’m gritty-eyed and irritable and very, very tired. The fact that, at some point in the night, Archie puked in one of my comfortable working shoes does nothing to improve the start to my day.
At the salon, I tell Nina about my visit from Lewis The Moron and my nocturnal phone calls.
‘Creepy,’ she says. ‘What a wanker.’
‘Couldn’t have put it better myself.’
‘Did the roses turn up?’
‘Yes. Now I wish I’d told him to stick them where the sun doesn’t shine.’
‘I’ll get Gerry to tell him to lay off. I’m really sorry about this, Janie. I had no idea he was a psycho.’
‘Are you and Gerry OK again?’
Nina shrugs. ‘Sort of. You know what it’s like.’
But do I? My relationship with Paul wasn’t awful, but neither was it marvellous. It was just there, existing without very much input from either of us. Could we, with some effort, have turned it into something much, much better? There are times in my life when I wonder why I ever split up with Paul and then I remember that it wasn’t my choice, and contrary to the more usual reasons for leaving, it was an older, more divorced model who signalled the end for us, so it’s no good dwelling on that now.
All my appointments this morning are absolutely full, so I cut, blow-dry and perm my way to lunchtime feeling grumpy and worn out and, despite the fact that I have a fledgling stalker, very unloved.
Chapter Sixteen
I usually send one of the juniors out at lunchtime to get me a sandwich from the deli just down the road, but today I could do with a bit of fresh air to wake me up. I grab my handbag from the staffroom. I’ve only got half an hour for lunch today – my first proper and very welcome gap between clients. ‘Anyone want anything?’
