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“Look, I know it seems like it’s gonna be really cold in here. But I can actually make it so boiling hot you’ll think you’ve stepped onto the surface of the sun, if you like. And not just from above. From below, too. Because the floors heat up,” he said.
Though weirdly, he didn’t seem proud about that fact once he’d said it.
He winced instead. Like all those facts embarrassed him, somehow.
Or made him uncomfortable.
And she could kind of see why that might be the case. After all, it was entirely possible he wasn’t that okay with all this excess. He had grown up in effing Watford. The most widely shared anecdote about his childhood was that he’d had no bed as a kid and had to sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag. Ten years into his career he’d still been living in a one-bedroom flat a mile from the club.That way I can walk to work, he’d told a reporter.
So this had to be at least somewhat weird to him, too.
And especially when he was with someone who didn’t look on it with cynical eyes. Or even taking-it-in-their-stride eyes. Hers were as big as moons, and he was clearly clocking it. He clearly understood what was going on. It was the reason, she thought, that he didn’t volunteer any further information.
Instead, she had to ask. Even though she didn’t want to, she had to.
Because Lord, the living room was even more ridiculous than the two halls.
It was just a big, hyper-polished box. Like the kind of place where an event was about to be held before people turned up with the chairs and tables and tasteful decorations. Literallyits only feature was a sunken middle bit, which you had to step down into. But there was nothing in the step-down bit. Just more glossy wooden flooring without so much as a stitch on it. Not even a rug, or a mat of some kind.
Which she supposed made the heating thing more reasonable.
This place would ice through three-inch flipping slippers, she thought.
Then couldn’t stop herself saying something about it.
“Where is all your furniture?” she blurted out.
And got about the amount of distress she’d been expecting.
He practically squirmed. And he wouldn’t look at her when he answered.
“I hired someone, all right. Because I know fuck all about decorating.”
“But whoever you hired hasn’t actually decorated anything.”
“Of course they have. It’s called minimalism, look it up.”
“I would, but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to say ‘a style of decor that people do when they want to take rich ex-footballers for a ride.’ Which is totally what’s happened here. I mean, what did letting someone do absolutely nothing cost?”
“It was very reasonable, actually. Almost cheap, in fact.”
“So a small fortune then.”
She saw him break before he spoke.
That faux-confident expression slid away.
The wince came back with reinforcements.
And then he just went ahead and gave in:
“My hand shook as I signed the check,” he said. Much to her delight. Because itwasdelightful, watching him fight his urge to be honest. Not to mention kind of cool to know that honesty and being straight down the line obviously meant a lot to him. Though naturally, she couldn’t tell him that.
All she could do was carry on ribbing him.
But in a slightly more gentle way than before. “That was your hand trying to tell you not to be an easy mark,” she said, and he sighed heavily in response.
“Well I know that now, don’t I? But at the time they weresaying a lot of very important fancy-sounding things, and then they hated my wicker chair and my coffee table shaped like theMillennium Falconand Christ, I don’t know what happened.”
