by Lindsey Kelk
He trotted off down the corridor while I hung around outside the office. What a success story he would turn out to be. From a disagreeable yeti into a considerate, kind fox in five easy steps. Someone get me a loaf and five fishes, I was officially a miracle worker.
‘Oi, Higgins.’
I turned to see Mir giving me The Look over the top of her laptop.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Sam wants me to help him make dinner for Elaine,’ I explained, coming back inside and wandering around the office, too unsettled to sit. ‘Tonight’s the night.’
‘Wow,’ she replied. ‘And you’re going to do it, are you?’
‘Of course,’ I nodded. ‘I can’t wait.’
Mir bit her lip and frowned.
‘Annie?’
‘Miranda?’
‘You can totally correct me if I’m wrong but it seems to me as though you’ve been putting a lot more energy into Sam’s personal life than you have the actual bet.’
‘Putting effort into Sam is the same thing as putting effort into the bet,’ I replied, picking up a stapler then putting it down. Then picking it up again, snapping a few staples into my palm and putting it back down. ‘I help Sam, Sam helps us, we win a month’s free rent. What’s so complicated about that?’
‘I’m only saying, it looks like you’re having a lovely time together,’ Mir retied the pink bandana holding her hair back from her face as she spoke. ‘While you’re putting in all this effort.’
‘You know I like a challenge,’ I said with a sigh.
‘I know you do,’ she agreed. ‘And I know you like Sam.’
No I didn’t. No I didn’t. No I didn’t. No I didn’t. No I didn’t.
‘Shut up,’ I said as my neck and cheeks began to burn. ‘And don’t be so ridiculous.’
‘Oh, you poor thing,’ she whispered. ‘You poor, poor thing.’
‘I’m going to his flat to help him make a special dinner for his girlfriend while he fills the place with candles and rose petals and begs her to take him back and I’m completely and utterly OK with it.’ I sank into my chair and dropped my head, face first, onto the desk. ‘Completely and utterly OK.’
‘Right you are, Annie,’ Miranda replied with a salute. ‘Whatever you say.’
‘I’ll get started on dinner and you concentrate on the set dressing,’ I ordered Sam as he unlocked the door to a surprisingly nice flat in a surprisingly nice house in an unsurprisingly nice row of Georgian mews in Bloomsbury. I’d come to the conclusion that the best way to get through this was just to get through it and the sooner it was over, the sooner I could be at home, watching Queer Eye and inhaling the family-sized trifle I had in the fridge. I had to keep reminding myself this was a project. He was a project, nothing more.
‘Sam,’ I said, realizing he was not following me inside. ‘What are you doing?’
Instead of following me in, he was hovering in the hallway, holding his key in one hand, staring past me, Sainsbury’s bags clustered around his ankles.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, putting down my own shopping bags and waving a hand in front of his face. ‘Do you need me to invite you in? Oh god, are you some sort of reverse vampire? Because that really would make a lot of sense.’
‘I haven’t been here in so long,’ he said, still hesitant to step inside. ‘Something about this feels odd.’
I offered him the best sympathetic smile I could muster.
‘Sneaking back into your own home to cook a nice meal for the woman who kicked you out? I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Yes, all right,’ he said, breathing out and stepping over the threshold. ‘Quite right.’
He looked around as though he was seeing the flat for the first time. As someone who was seeing it for the first time, I didn’t know quite what to make of it. Sam and Elaine had a very nice home. Very, very nice. The flat wasn’t huge but it was in a pretty swanky part of town and everything was tastefully done in that quietly expensive way. I couldn’t spot even a single item of Ikea furniture. It was unheard of.
‘It’s a lovely place,’ I said, watching as he picked up cushions and put them back down.
‘It’s Elaine’s aunt’s,’ he replied. ‘We’re really just looking after it for her while she’s in Spain. Only we’ve been looking after it for the last five years. I don’t know what we’d do if she ever decided to move back to London.’
‘Nice work if you can get it,’ I commented, slipping out of my shoes and letting my feet sink into the thick beige carpeting.
It wasn’t only a lack of Ikea furniture that was upsetting me. There was also a distinct absence of any evidence that Sam had ever so much as walked through the door, let alone lived here. No sign of him in the photos on the walls or the picture frames that lined the bookshelves. Either he still believed photographs stole your soul or he’d been removed. Already. ‘She’s changed such a lot of things,’ Sam muttered, taking himself through to the kitchen. ‘These are new pots and pans.’
‘Sometimes it’s nice to buy new pots and pans?’ I suggested, trying not to panic him. None of this was a good sign. Elaine had completely erased him from her life.
‘And all new plates. New mugs, even,’ Sam reappeared in the living room. ‘She’s bought new cushions.’
‘Miranda is always buying new cushions,’ I said quickly. It was true. I knew because I had all her old ones. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’
But I was very, very worried that it might.
‘Hmm,’ he replied, his stance shifting slightly, stiffening until he looked completely at odds with the comfortable surroundings.
‘Why don’t I get dinner started,’ I suggested, picking up as many of the shopping bags as I could carry. There was no way I could back out now. ‘And you get to work with the candles and the rose petals and, god knows what else you’ve got in that bag.’
‘It’s cat food,’ he said, producing an enormous sack of cat biscuits from his rucksack.
Of all the fetishes.
‘My cat, Wellington, he’s in here somewhere,’ he explained as he got down on his hands and knees to look under the sofa. ‘He doesn’t like strangers, he might have hidden himself away when he heard your voice. This is his favourite food but Elaine doesn’t like paying extra for it.’
‘So I’m making dinner for your girlfriend while you make dinner for your cat?’ I asked. Still crawling around on his hands and knees, Sam nodded. ‘Good to know,’ I said as I made my way into the kitchen. ‘Good to know.’
If someone had asked me what was the most romantic meal a man could prepare for his lady love, I wouldn’t have said Old El Paso fajitas but then I was the single one so if Sam insisted Tex-Mex be the food of love, I would cook on.
‘It’s all in the oven to keep warm,’ I said, swiping my forehead with the back of my wrist as Sam peered at the serving dishes from a distance. ‘The guacamole and the salsa are in the fridge and the tortilla chips are in this bowl. Are you all done?’
‘Yes, captain,’ he replied with a salute. ‘The red wine is open, the candles are ready to be lit – one scented and the others unscented, as instructed – everything else is where it needs to be.’
No one had ever covered a bed in rose petals for me. Matthew once put a rubber sheet down when I had food poisoning, but that really wasn’t the same.
‘Brilliant.’ I wiped my hands down on the front of my jeans, ignoring Sam’s grimace, and gave everything a once-over. It was ten past eight, Elaine would be home in ten minutes. Time for me to scarper. Or at least hang around in the bus shelter opposite and pretend to look at my phone until she arrived, which was exactly what I was planning to do.
‘All you need to do is get changed and you’re good to go,’ I said, slinging my handbag over my shoulder.
Sam looked back at me blankly.
‘Get changed?’
He pulled out the hem of his promotional University of Newcastle fresher week T-shirt, presenting it for approval.
‘Remember
how we’re trying to show Elaine that you’re prepared to change?’ I said, exasperation creeping in to my voice. Just when I thought we were getting somewhere. ‘What’s the point in the fancy new haircut and thoughtful dinner if you’re going to trot up in a T-shirt you should have been embarrassed to wear when you got it, let alone now?’
‘But Elaine will think it’s funny,’ he insisted. ‘Because I actually went to Durham.’
‘I can’t with you,’ I said, holding up my hands in defeat. ‘I can’t even.’
‘You can’t even what?’ he asked, following me out of the kitchen.
‘You’re getting changed,’ I told him. Looking him up and down, it really was only the T-shirt that was a major issue. His jeans were the ones Brian had dug out from the Dashell collection and, thankfully, his bare feet were in pretty good nick. Impressive really, for any man. ‘Have you still got clothes here?’
He nodded. ‘My shirts are in the wardrobe in the bedroom.’
‘Then let’s see what we can do,’ I said, pushing him down the hallway, hands on his shoulders and eyes trying not to look at his backside.
The options weren’t great but we had what we had. I picked out a pale blue shirt that didn’t look as though it would bury him and handed it over, politely turning my back when he pulled his T-shirt over his head. The bedroom was as nice as the rest of the flat and there were just as few hints that Sam had ever lived there. He’d scattered the petals over the beautiful new duvet cover we’d bought from the White Company and arranged them in a heart shape. A Jo Malone Red Roses candle waited patiently in the corner of the room and I spotted the ready-and-waiting post-coital chocolates I’d recommended on the dressing table. My knickers and my heart almost spontaneously combusted.
‘Will this do?’ Sam asked. I turned to see him glasses-less, buttoning up the next to last button on his shirt and gave him a thumbs up.
‘I know I’m biased,’ I said, straightening his collar slightly and smiling up into his worried eyes. ‘But any woman who isn’t impressed by this kind of effort would have to be crazy. She’s going to love it, Sam.’
‘I hope so,’ he said, covering my hand with his.
‘Sam,’ I felt the skin on my neck begin to tickle and I couldn’t stop myself. ‘I don’t know if it’s going to help at all but I think you’re brilliant. I realize all this started off with me trying to help you to change but, really, you’re such a good man already.’
It was so quiet in the flat I could hear him gulp.
‘And Elaine is lucky to have you,’ I said, unravelling my hand from his and giving him a playful punch on the chin. ‘Good luck, buddy.’
‘Annie,’ he said, catching my hand in both of his and holding it tightly this time. ‘Thank you. For everything.’
It was only when I heard the key in the door, I realized I wasn’t breathing.
‘Fuuuuck,’ I mouthed, snatching away my hand. ‘Elaine?’
Sam looked around as she moved on to the second lock.
‘Elaine,’ he confirmed at the sound of a woman singing. ‘In the airing cupboard,’ he said, bundling me backwards. ‘I’m sorry, I’ll get you out in a moment, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’
But not too sorry to shove me into a pitch-black cupboard barely wide enough and tall enough for me to stand up straight. Before I’d had time to squeeze myself into a safe space, I felt something warm and soft move over my foot.
‘If that’s a rat, I’m going to murder him,’ I whispered before letting out a very restrained squeal as it moved again. Bracing myself, I looked down to see the outline of large, grey tabby cat looking right back up at me with Total Eclipse of the Heart eyes. It sniffed my leg, batted the hem of my skirt with an enormous paw and then settled down on top of my feet, curling up for a nap.
‘You must be Wellington,’ I said quietly. ‘Why don’t you make yourself comfortable, pal?’
Sarcasm was wasted on cats.
The tiniest orange light on the hot water tank cast everything in the cupboard in shades of grey. Fuzzy outlines with no sense of perspective. The only sound was Wellington, who was having himself a time, purring on top of my foot.
Just as my eyes were beginning to adjust to the dark, the door to the cupboard flew open and I breathed in and pressed myself against the wall as a panting and confused Sam joined me, slamming the door shut behind him.
‘What are you doing?’ I gasped, shuffling up to make room, much to the annoyance of Wellington. ‘You can’t jump out at her, you’ll give her a heart attack.’
‘She isn’t on her own,’ he whispered. ‘She’s got someone with her.’
‘So you’re going to scare them both to death?’ I asked.
‘It’s a man,’ Sam hissed, his voice despondent. ‘They were both laughing.’
‘Lot of people laugh with other people, it doesn’t mean anything,’ I replied, my voice full of hope I didn’t really feel. ‘I’ve even cracked up at you once or twice, haven’t I?’
He didn’t say anything. Instead he slumped against the door, not even inches from my face. This was not a two-person hiding place. I could smell the warmth on his skin and feel every exhalation of breath. He shifted, just slightly, and suddenly my cheek was pressed against his chest and I could hear his heartbeat.
I opened my mouth to say something but nothing came out. Think, Annie, I ordered myself. Say something helpful, something nice. It can’t be that hard. But every time I tried to find the words, my thoughts were drowned out by the rhythmic thud of Sam’s heart. I rested my cheek against his shirt and closed my eyes just for a second.
‘She’s with a man,’ Sam whispered, more to himself than me. ‘Already. She’s got someone else already.’
‘We can’t stay in here,’ I said, finally breaking the spell. ‘What if she finds us?’
‘What if she does?’ he replied. ‘It’s still supposed to be my home. It’s not as though she can call the police.’
‘Then why were you the one sleeping on your office floor?’ I asked.
I could just make out his silhouette’s response. An unconvincing shrug.
‘I can’t stand this, Sam,’ I said, as Wellington began to wriggle around on our feet. The natives were getting restless. ‘Open this door, walk out there and demand to know what’s going on.’
‘I don’t want to look at him,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t want to see his face.’
‘What if they come in here?’ I said slowly. ‘To the bedroom, I mean.’
‘Oh no,’ Sam mumbled. Outside, I could hear Elaine giggling away about something, as well as another voice, murmuring what, I couldn’t tell. ‘Absolutely not. What are we going to do?’
Luckily for Sam, I was excellent in a crisis. Just as long as it wasn’t my crisis.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ I said. ‘Just follow me.’
I reached down to the floor and scooped up a handful of fur and claws, then let my handbag fall into the crook of my elbow.
‘Keep your head up but don’t look at them. And you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.’
I reached for the handle of the airing cupboard and turned it sharply, kicking the door open into the bedroom. Down the hallway, Elaine screamed as I marched Sam out into the living room and towards the front door. She was sat on the sofa, or rather her salsa partner was sat on her sofa and she was sat on him. Both half-naked and neither one of them expecting company.
‘Evening, Elaine,’ I said, holding up my hand as well as I could, given my furry cargo. ‘Hello … you.’
Tall, dark and naked held up a hand in a confused greeting. Elaine stayed exactly where she was, her face set in a silent scream with, I noticed with not a little pleasure, mascara all over her face.
‘We came for the cat,’ I said, bundling Wellington into my bag, very much against his will. As if I want you in there with my MacBook Pro, I wanted to say. ‘We’ll let ourselves out.’
Sam was stood behind me, staring at his now definite ex-girlfriend.
It was too late, he had looked.
I was furious. Utterly enraged. How could she do this to him?
‘There’s chicken fajitas in the oven if you get hungry,’ I said to Elaine, grabbing Sam’s hand and pulling him out the door. ‘And just so you know, I made the guacamole myself, so don’t let it go off, avocados aren’t cheap, you pair of complete bastards.’
Wellington miaowed in agreement as I flipped up my middle finger, yanked Sam over the threshold and slammed the front door shut behind us.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Before anyone could say anything else, I was shepherding Sam out onto the street and into a black cab that was idling outside his next-door neighbour’s house.
‘I am so sorry,’ I said, breathing hard and trying to keep Wellington safely inside my bag. Matt & Nat totes were not meant to be cat carriers. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Not particularly.’ When I looked down at his lap, I saw his hands were shaking. ‘I can’t take Wellington to my brother’s house. He’s allergic.’
‘You can both come to mine,’ I offered as I gave the taxi driver my address. ‘It’s not a problem.’
We drove on in silence for a moment, twisting and turning around Russell Square before slowing down at a red light.
‘That’s a very generous offer but I think I’d rather be alone.’ Sam finally spoke as we turned on to Clerkenwell Road. ‘But it would be a tremendous help if you could watch Wellington for the evening. Until I can make other arrangements.’
‘Of course,’ I agreed readily. Wellington seemed perfectly happy to spend the rest of his life in my handbag, how hard could it be? ‘Shall we drop you off at your brother’s house?’
‘The office will be fine,’ he replied, his voice stiff and far away, as if the last two weeks had never happened.
‘Sam,’ I said, one hand on the fur ball currently face down in my bag, the other resting on his knee. He looked down at my hand then up at my face as though I had just punched him in the nuts. ‘You’re not sleeping on your office floor tonight.’
‘Please don’t.’ He kept his face turned away from me as we rolled on down the road. ‘I’m not having this conversation.’