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“Yeah,” he answered. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
“Then, we’ll get the dog,” I said.
***
It cost me a small bloody fortune to have the dog in the taxi, but I’d shrugged aside Callum’s protests. I simply couldn’t care less. Casey bounced around my feet as we entered my building, provoking raised eyebrows from the reception desk. I glared them down, reminding them without words whose fucking parents owned the building. Tenancy terms and conditions can kiss my sore arse.
“This a pissing hotel or summat?” Callum asked in the lift.
“Just posh. Residents pay through the nose for it.”
“Fair enough.”
“You asked,” I smiled. “My wages would never cover it. Like I said, I rent from my parents.”
“And they don’t mind? You having it cheap, like?”
“Money and property are two things they have in abundance. I don’t imagine they give it much thought. Not unless they’re trying to blackmail me with it, that is.”
“Blackmail you?”
“Dad wants me to work in their property business. I don’t. We go round in infuriating circles with it, mainly every Sunday lunchtime.”
The lift dinged, and my heart leapt as I put my key in the door. This shit was getting real.
Callum’s eyes sparkled like dark jewels as he looked around my place. Open plan, minimalistic, like every other apartment in this block. It was nice, though, light wood, and glass, and computerised fucking everything. I stepped into the kitchen, pulling out a bottle of wine from the cooler.
“Want a glass?”
“Aye, cheers.”
I watched him as I uncorked, skulking around the place with his hands in his pockets, careful not to touch a single thing. Casey wasn’t quite so considered, she gambolled about, spinning in excitement at her own reflection in the balcony doors, and charging headlong into the coffee table.
Callum jumped a mile as she sent a couple of candles flying, but I only laughed.
“Shit.” He picked up a chipped tea light holder. “Sorry, Soph.”
I handed him his wine. “It’s only a trinket.”
“Guess you’ve got enough of ’em.”
I followed his gaze, registering, as he was, that candles were my only real personalisation of this space. Everything else was standard, mirrored in the apartment opposite and identical in the one downstairs, but candles were my thing. I like the light.
He stood to check out a piece of art above the dining table.
“It’s a print,” I said. “Don’t even ask me who by. I expect we might be getting a compulsory refurb now my parents are getting all arty, though.” I smiled to myself, I could just fucking imagine it.
“Your parents are artists?”
That look again, the same one he’d given Bex. “Hell, no. They’re just developing that fancy new Southbank complex. You must have heard of it?”
He shrugged. “Dunno.”
I smiled. “You don’t know if you’ve heard of it or not?”
His eyes met mine. “No. Ain’t heard of it. Ain’t from your world, Soph, ain’t heard of none of this fancy shit.” He stood up, chasing after Casey who was jumping up at the worktops. “Shouldn’t be here,” he snapped, flustered. “Don’t belong.”
“The dog’s fine, let her be.”
