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And Jonathan’s house is huge. It’s not a mansion, it’s not even a McMansion. But it’s a home. A proper family home—as long as your family had a lot more money than you’d ever make working at Splashes & Snuggles—with a garden so big you could lose sight of the house.
It feels wrong for him, somehow. He parks up and lets me into this big reception room, all plush carpets and open space and leading onto this kitchen-diner that’s meant to be full of life and people but just looks sterile. I’m half expecting to find out he’s housesitting for somebody who isn’t an arsehole, or maybe that he killed the people who really live here and stashed their bodies under the floorboards and now he’s going to do the same to me.
“Just sit…anywhere,” he says.
I set myself down on a firm two-seater that I’d bet money he didn’t pick out for himself while Jonathan stands there like he’s not sure what to do in his own house. Which, from the shirts and slept-on sofa in his office, he probably isn’t. After a while, he gives a little start like he’s got a shock off a nylon jockstrap.
“You’re going to need,” he says, “things. A toothbrush.”
If he hadn’t been threatening to sack everybody I know, this’d be almost endearing. “A toothbrush would be nice.”
“And clothes. You’ll need clothes. You can’t wear”—he indicates my outfit—“that for the next…until you’re better.”
It’s my best suit so I’m a bit offended. “Why? What’s wrong with it?”
“Well, it’s covered in blood for a start.”
I look down. Someone had removed my jacket so I’d bled spectacularly all over my shirt. I’d have felt like an action hero if I hadn’t known I’d got this way by losing a fight with a shower unit. “Oh,” I say. “Right.”
“You should probably take it off,” he says, “or it’ll stain.”
For all of three seconds he sounds like a normal person. A person who worries about whether you’ve got blood on your best top and if the chippy’ll still be open if you head off now and put a sprint on like, and I’m so distracted that I’m half out my shirt before I realise that this is exceptionally fucking weird. But by that point it’s too late, so I finish up and hand it over and pretend it’s the kind of thing that happens all the time.
It’s not the kind of thing that happens all the time and we both know it. Jonathan stares at me for too long and then looks somewhere else for too long and the part of me that’s still keeping a list of shit I could sue him for notices that from a certain point of view he put me in hospital, took me back to his house, and then told me to take my clothes off.
“I…” I didn’t think Jonathan Forest could blush. “Um. I.”
“Do you want to call your lawyer?” I ask.
Jonathan’s gaze flicks back to me, and I worry I’ve given the game away. Except, no. He’s just flustered. “No. But I didn’t mean—that is. You should— Let me do something with this and then I’ll find you something to wear.”
He strides into the absurdly huge, absurdly expensive kitchen space and opens a discreet wooden door revealing a brushed-steel monster that looks like a spaceship.
“Right,” he says to no one in particular and then searches my shirt for a label.
I take pity on him. “Just stick it on at forty.”
He’s now on his knees in front of washing machine like he’s in some dodgy cult obsessed with spin cycles. “I’d worked that much out. It’s the interface.”
I’m about to say, “what kind of washing machine has an interface?” but the answer is clearly, “the kind of washing machine Jonathan Forest would buy.” So I go over and check. The spaceship has one dial and a touch screen.
“Don’t crowd me,” snaps Jonathan, forgetting he’s being nice.
I ignore him. It’s a fake amnesia perk. “How can you not know how to use your own washing machine?”
He’s still looking at the spaceship like he wants to fire it. “I’ve got a housekeeper.”
“Well, if they have to use that thing you should give them a pay raise.”
“She’s amply compensated I assure you.” Jonathan jabs the touch screen and a row of incomprehensible symbols pop up. “Fuck.”
Leaning over him, I take a gander. Up close, it looks a lot less spaceship and lot more slightly complicated microwave. I press some buttons.
“What are you—” Jonathan protests.
And then the door pops open. “That should do it,” I tell him. “Now where do you keep your detergent?”
CHAPTER 6
