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‘Are we coming back tomorrow?’
‘No, tomorrow’s Saturday. We’ll come back on Monday.’ Raina set Anya back on her feet. ‘Go and say goodbye to Heidi. I expect she’s got a sweet for you.’
Anya ran out to Heidi’s desk, and Heidi produced two sweets, one for each hand. Raina turned to Alistair, wondering how she was going to resist hugging him.
‘How’s the talk going?’ He was still safely behind his desk and Raina dropped into the chair on the other side.
‘Great. I’ve pretty much finished now. I’ll be looking for someone to try it out on next week.’
Alistair paused then seemed to come to a decision. ‘I’m not doing anything at the weekend. If you and Anya would like to come over for lunch on Saturday, we could have a play session and you could try the talk out on me.’
It was very tempting. ‘But you know it all already.’
‘Yes, and I know the kind of questions that people ask. I can throw those at you and see if I can trip you up. And I don’t know it all, I never did get around to having Ben give me an overview of how the computer system works. I just point at things and he tells me whether he can do it or not.’
‘Oh! So you decided to pass the problem over to me, did you?’
Alistair nodded. ‘I thought you’d make a much better job of it than I can. And you know Ben. He prefers to stare at the computer screen while he’s talking to you.’
‘You could handle that now.’ Alistair had made good progress with the hearing aid, and hardly ever missed what people were saying to him. If he did, it wasn’t a matter of concern to him any more, he just asked them to repeat themselves.
‘I just want to hear it from you.’ He stretched his arms, as if this new ability to reach out had extended to the physical world. ‘You’re the one who’s going to be running the induction course. And you’re a lot prettier than Ben, so I’ll be hanging on every word you say.’
That did it. Practicality was one thing, but she couldn’t resist the look in his eyes.
‘What time?’ Raina pulled out her phone to make a note in her calendar and then quirked her lips down. ‘I’m sorry... I completely forgot it was the third Saturday in the month. Mum has a sleepover for Anya and I’m taking her over there at lunchtime.’
‘Then how about dinner? If you don’t have any plans yourself.’
Alistair had given her a way out. She could say that she was doing something and walk away. But Saturday evening on her own, when she could be spending it with Alistair, sounded impossibly dreary.
‘Dinner would be great, thank you. I’ll bring my visual aids with me and we can see if they pass muster.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
ALISTAIR’S HOUSE WAS in a quiet road in Muswell Hill. Raina’s hand was trembling as she pressed the doorbell, and saw his shadow through the stained glass in the front door.
‘Hi. You made it.’ He opened the door, standing back to let her inside.
There had always been a chance that she wouldn’t. Last night she’d woken up more than once and made the decision that she’d cancel, only to change her mind and decide to go. He seemed to know that.
Raina stepped into the hall, looking around. The house was one of many in the area that dated back to the early nineteen-hundreds, and this one had escaped the over-zealous modifications that had spoiled so many of its type. Floor tiles in terracotta, blue and cream were laid in an intricate pattern of squares and triangles all the way along the hall, and when Alistair led her into the sitting room, a well-polished cast-iron fireplace, framed with a carved wooden surround, caught her eye.
‘This is really nice.’ The room was spacious, with a high ceiling, and decorated in neutral colours to accentuate the grace of the moulded plasterwork and the panelled door. ‘I wish I had some of these period features.’
He winced, as if the comparison between her place and his made him uncomfortable. ‘My wish is that I could make this into a real home. Like yours...’
Raina looked around. ‘Well, maybe it could do with a few finishing touches.’
‘I thought I had finished until I visited you. Then I realised I hadn’t.’
It had been this way before. Alistair’s love of clean lines and hers of clutter had somehow managed to combine into warmth with an air of order and sophistication. Raina had loved the house they’d had when they were married, and had never quite managed to re-create the look in her cottage.
But that had been then. And now they both had to make do with half of a whole that had seemed so per
fect for a while. ‘So tell me. How did you manage to find a place that still had the fireplace and all the plaster mouldings intact?’
‘It took me a while.’ Alistair looked around the room as if he were assessing it for the first time. ‘When I did, it needed a bit of restoration.’
