She could never get enough of this kind of praise from Matt. He could say it again if he liked, but Beth was aware that any hint to that effect would make her sound needy. She scanned the pages again, sipping her coffee.
‘How’s your week looking?’ He’d given her a moment to recover herself and was moving ahead again. ‘I’m leaving early for Jack’s school Christmas concert tonight, but I can make any other evening. I brought your study up at the unit’s weekly meeting this morning and there was a lot of interest. It would be good to meet up soon.’
He really did not mess about. ‘Tomorrow would be fine. Here?’ After last night, Beth didn’t much want to meet with him at either his house or hers. She’d only just managed to get out of there before she’d made a fool of herself and shown her tears.
‘If you like. Either here or in my office. About six?’
She laid her coffee down and grabbed at a couple of sparkly marker pens that she had knocked against and which were rolling towards the edge of the table. ‘Yes, that would be great. Your office, perhaps. I imagine it’s less of a mess than it is here.’ She gestured towards the boxes of medical supplies and Christmas decorations that were waiting to be unpacked.
He grinned. ‘Only because I haven’t been in it for long. Give me time. Chinese?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘We have to eat. I’ll pop out and get a takeaway. I hear that the Chinese across the road isn’t too bad.’
‘It’s very good.’ Beth wondered whether a takeaway in Matt’s office constituted going out for a meal with him, and decided it didn’t. ‘Yes, let’s do that. Tomorrow at six.’
Beth made it down to his office at two minutes past six, and found Matt at the door, a large, fragrant-smelling bag with a red dragon on it in his hand. He grinned broadly at her and motioned her in.
He had cleared his desk, and set a comfortable chair for her on the opposite side of the desk from his own. He motioned Beth to sit, and put the bag down between them.
‘I wasn’t sure what you’d like so I got something of everything.’ The side of his face twitched with tense amusement. ‘I hope you’re not picky.’
‘No, I’m starving.’ The food smelled great and Beth was hungry. She hadn’t had a chance to stop for lunch and had made do with an energy bar from the bottom of her handbag.
‘Good.’ He seemed to brighten a little, and lifted his briefcase onto his desk, opening it and withdrawing two plates, wrapped in a dishcloth, followed by a couple of glasses.
‘So that’s what men carry in their briefcases, is it? I always wondered.’
Matt grinned. ‘Yeah.’ He tipped the open case so that she could see inside. There were files, pens, a stethoscope case, a toy car and something that looked like part of a model aircraft fuselage. ‘Sometimes Jack’s stuff gets mixed up with mine. The stethoscope’s his.’
‘And the car will be yours, then.’ A picture of Matt and Jack sitting together in the evenings, Matt working on his files and Jack on his model aeroplanes, formed in Beth’s head. She filed it carefully under ‘Rose Tinted’.
‘Yeah.’ Matt spun the model sports car across the desk towards her. ‘My first car was an old Spitfire. Leaked when it rained, needed a screwdriver and a lot of love to get started in the mornings, but it was my pride and joy.’ He shrugged. ‘Had to get rid of it, though. For some reason women seem to expect that driving somewhere means they won’t get their feet wet.’
‘Can’t imagine why.’ Beth leaned towards him. ‘So you had an old Spitfire, you played in the rugby team and…what?’
He shrugged. ‘Nothing, really. I worked hard, played hard. Thought that the world was full of possibilities. Just like any other young guy from the sticks who’s just hit the bright lights of London.’
‘Not so bright, though, when you get up close.’ Beth could almost feel the claustrophobic, protective blanket of her childhood smothering her.
‘Yeah. I gave the car away, to a friend who I knew would look after her properly, got myself a career and got married.’ He made it sound like the end of all his dreams, not a bright new beginning.
‘That doesn’t sound so bad.’
‘No.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Mariska smartened me up, stopped me from wearing grubby T-shirts and oil-stained jeans. Made me camera-friendly.’ He shrugged. ‘The paparazzi can be sharks, you know. When she died, they wouldn’t leave us alone.’
‘That must have been hard.’
‘It was. I tried to protect Jack the best I could, but on the anniversary of her death they were waiting outside the house for us. We slipped out and I brought him up here, to my parents’, for a week.’ His face formed an expression of disgust. ‘They wrote that we had gone away to grieve.’
‘Instead of being driven away from your own home. Where you both needed to be at a time like that.’
‘Yeah. It was then that I decided that we needed a new start. Somewhere where Jack could grow up, away from all the lies and pretence.’ He stopped suddenly, shaking his head, as if he had said too much. ‘I want him to be able to follow his own dreams and to know that it is possible to hang onto them.’
‘What about yours?’ This was so unlike the Matt she’d got to know. The man who talked about passion with such fervour.
‘Mine? Mine are for him now. With some left over for this place.’ He shrugged and the dismissive gesture of his hand told Beth that his sudden candour was at an end. ‘And at the moment I’m dreaming of food. I’m starving.’
He strode out of the office before she had a chance to reply, leaving Beth to start unpacking the bag of food. He was back in a couple of minutes, putting a bottle of wine onto the desk as he passed and then falling into his chair. There were tiny lines of fatigue at the corners of his eyes, which Beth hadn’t noticed there before.
She picked up the bottle and read the sticker that had been plastered onto it, obscuring the label. ‘Type AB positive?’
Matt’s face creased in a weary grin. ‘Yeah. Someone’s idea of a joke. Fancy a glass?’
‘Thanks.’ Beth wiped the glasses with the tea towel and set them in front of him, while he fished a complicated-looking penknife out of his briefcase and extracted the cork from the bottle.
‘We should drink to something.’
They should. To the evening stars, rising in the sky outside. Or to the velvet of his navy-blue eyes. To him locking the door and taking her in his arms, then sweeping everything that lay on the desk onto the floor and…‘Yes. Let’s drink to the project.’
He nodded, and Beth thought she saw an echo of her own thoughts in his eyes. ‘Good idea.’ He tipped his glass towards hers, without touching it. ‘To your research. And its successful implementation.’
They ate before turning their attention to work, Matt producing a couple of pairs of chopsticks from the bag. ‘These okay? I’ve got a couple of forks somewhere.’
‘That’s fine. I’ll manage.’ Beth adeptly scooped a helping from one of the foil trays onto her plate.
He looked almost disappointed. ‘And there was I with my rubber band at the ready.’
‘You learned that way, too, did you?’ The old trick of fastening the ends of the chopsticks together with a rubber band. The thought of Matt’s fingers closing around hers, showing her how to hold them, was almost enough to make her lose interest in the food in front of her.
‘Spurred on by a healthy appetite. Shame to see good food go to waste.’ He delved around in one of the foil containers and produced a choice morsel, holding it out to her. ‘Here.’
‘Thank you.’ Beth resisted the temptation to allow him to feed it to her, and took it with her chopsticks, depositing it firmly onto her plate. This was a working dinner.
After they had eaten, Beth went down to the canteen to pick up some coffee and when she returned Matt’s desk looked once more like a place to work, the empty foil trays in the bin and those that they had not managed to finish stacked neatly on the filing cabinet. The strange light in his eyes
remained, however, flickering as soft as candlelight as she opened her laptop and called up a new blank document.
‘Shall I type?’
‘If you don’t mind.’ Matt wrapped his hand around the cardboard coffee cup. ‘I doubt if I’ll be able to keep up with just two fingers.’
In the end, even Beth’s fingers had trouble keeping up. His mind raced ahead, exploring possibilities and working through different courses of action. It was exacting, difficult work but she found herself enjoying it.
She ventured a few opinions and he listened carefully. A few more and he argued his case, giving in with a grin when she carried the point. Her confidence, usually shaky in these situations, began to grow and gradually self-assurance began to quiet her habitual craving for approval.
Finally, he looked at his watch. ‘Nine o’clock. Suppose we’d better wrap this up soon.’ He gathered the papers in front of him together with obvious satisfaction.
‘Is that really the time? I’m sorry, I’ve kept you too long. You should have been home by now for Jack.’
He shook his head. ‘Not tonight. My mother’s looking after him and she’ll stay over. And you haven’t kept me, I’ve enjoyed this evening. You’re pretty formidable once you get going, you know.’
Really? She’d never been accused of being formidable before but Matt had left her in no doubt that he meant it as a compliment. ‘Well, thank you. I look forward to a return match.’
He chuckled. ‘Me, too. I don’t suppose you’d like to come over for a nightcap. We could talk some more.’
Beth shook her head. This was dangerous territory. Matt’s house. Matt’s mother. ‘Let’s finish off here. Go home and get some sleep. Tomorrow’s another day.’
He looked as if he was about to argue and then he nodded. ‘Okay. You’re the boss.’ Dark shadows of fatigue seemed to deepen in his face and he gathered together the papers that lay scattered across his desk. ‘I’m hoping to get away on time tomorrow to spend some time with Jack, but if you have an hour or so on Thursday evening we could talk then.’
Beth nodded. That sounded a more sensible idea. ‘Okay. In fact, there are some people I want to take you to meet. Say six o’clock?’
It was only a ten-minute drive to the university campus but Beth made it through the gates with a sense of relief. Her car was playing up again, and she had insisted she would pick Matt up outside the entrance to blue wing, not wanting to go through the rigmarole it took to start it with him around. Love might have worked with his old Spitfire, but her runaround needed a rather more determined touch.
She slid thankfully into the virtually empty car park and switched off her lights. The autumn term was winding to a close, and most people were out at parties or get-togethers before they went home for Christmas. Matt followed her over to the squat, ugly building that cowered in a slight dip alongside the main road, overshadowed by the tall, glass-clad Arts Tower and the elegant, turn-of-the-century Humanities block. Picking her way down a twisting metal set of steps that led to the lower ground floor, she banged on the only window that was illuminated.
Ed let her in, and Matt followed her through to the lab, a large dingy room, filled with desks and computer equipment. Beth hovered in the corner where the hum from the machinery disrupted her own hearing technology least, wondering what Matt would make of it all.
‘This is Ed.’ She gestured to the young man standing beside her. ‘He’s project managing and generally keeping me in order. And that’s Luke and Allie. Luke’s cracking out the code, and Allie’s a linguist, so she’s the expert on language definitions.’
Matt’s eyebrows shot up. ‘So you’re…what, writing your own software?’
Beth grinned. ‘Not entirely. But I couldn’t find any existing software that would analyse my data the way I wanted, so we’re making a few changes to existing modules.’
‘Quite a few.’ Allie was out of her chair, holding her hand out to Matt and giving him an unusually bright smile. She was obviously dressed up to go somewhere, a short dress over leggings and boots, her long blonde hair falling down her back instead of tied up in its usual messy plait. Now that Beth looked, Ed was looking unusually smart, too, and only Luke was in his usual uniform of jeans and a washed-out sweatshirt.
‘Hmm. Impressive. You have quite a set-up here.’ Matt was looking around him with an assessing eye.
Luke’s head snapped up from the screen he was studying. ‘Yeah—wanna take a look at the new server?’
Beth doubted that Matt had the slightest interest in the server, however much processing capacity it possessed, but he was looking politely enthusiastic. Before she could step in with an excuse, Allie spoke up.
‘We don’t have time for that.’ She turned to Matt, her hands clasped together in front of her, almost in a gesture of supplication. ‘Dr Sutherland, we’ve put together a small presentation for you to show you what we’ve been doing to assist with the computer analysis of Beth’s results. We know you don’t have much time, so it won’t take more than three quarters of an hour.’
So that was what Allie was all dressed up for. Beth had not meant them to go to all this trouble and Ed had said nothing about their plans when she had spoken with him the other day.
She gave Matt a little shrug to indicate that she had no idea of what was coming next, and he gave her a melting smile, turning to Allie with an enthusiasm that belied the fact that he’d already had a long day.
Matt was silent as they walked back to her car later, as if deep in thought. As she drove out of the university entrance gates, gunning the engine to stop it from stalling, he woke from his reverie. ‘What happens if they don’t come up with the goods? To your research, I mean.’
‘I’m not dependent on their software working. If it doesn’t, there are other tried and tested packages that will do what I want, only not as well. Why, do you have doubts?’
‘No. I think they’ll deliver. They’re a little rough around the edges, but there’s no shortage of talent there. I was just concerned that you might not have a back-up plan.’ He shifted in his seat. ‘You didn’t know they were going to make a presentation?’
‘No. Sorry if it—’
‘It was no problem. They saw an opportunity and grabbed it with both hands and I respect that.’ He gave a small chuckle. ‘It was a brave move to attempt a mock patient interview.’
‘I thought so, too. We haven’t done that before for real, only trial runs between ourselves. Allie was a bit enthusiastic about the symptoms.’
‘If it had been for real, I’d have been calling for a crash cart.’ His deep, rumbling laugh filled the car. ‘I’ve never seen anyone that sick sitting up and grinning like a Cheshire cat.’
‘Hey! It was just a demo…’ Beth sprang to her team’s defence.
‘I know. And a very fine one at that. I noticed that you filled in a few gaps, gave them a bit of a steer when needed.’
‘They had everything that mattered by themselves. I just added a bit of window dressing.’ Beth wondered whether Matt was thinking twice about his offer to help with references and contacts when the three finished their doctorates.
‘Of course they did. And I’m very impressed with them. They’ve worked hard and they’re talented, they deserve to have their efforts shown off to the best advantage.’
‘Yes. Thanks, Matt. You did them proud.’
‘Did I? I’m pleased you think so. I can never quite get used to being someone that other people think they have to impress.’
‘You mean you’re still just a student at heart, struggling for a bit of recognition, just like they are?’
‘Something like that.’ He fell silent, watching the shadows cast by the bright mix of streetlights and fairy-lights as they slanted across the dashboard. ‘Don’t you miss it, Beth?’
‘Miss what?’
‘Being young again. Not necessarily in terms of years, but that feeling that the world’s at your feet and it’s all there for the taking.’
&nb
sp; ‘They’re twenty-two, Matt. I’m only seven years older than them and you’re—what—fourteen years older? It’s not exactly a lifetime.’
‘Twelve, if you don’t mind. But it seems longer, somehow…’ He left the sentence unfinished and turned his attention to the line of cars in front of them, as Beth slowed to join the tailback.
‘Dammit. I forgot that it was late-night shopping every day this week.’ She revved the engine slightly. ‘I hope my car doesn’t die on me.’
‘Having trouble with it?’
‘It hasn’t been the same since I got it back from the garage. Goodness only knows what they did to it, the engine keeps cutting out if I don’t keep the revs up.’ She turned to him. ‘You might have to give us a push.’
‘Oh! So you mean that you can’t push and steer at the same time? I’m honoured that you think I’m that useful.’ It may have sounded like a joke, but there was enough truth in the observation to make Beth shift uncomfortably in her seat.
‘Don’t get carried away. You’re just a bit of spare muscle.’ She revved the engine again, defiantly. There was no just about the well-honed frame sitting beside her.
‘That puts me in my place, then.’ His lips twitched provocatively. Matt Sutherland was definitely nowhere near in his place.
It was ten minutes of stop-start and then they were free of the traffic again. At least he’d refrained from giving any driving advice during that time, preferring to crane his neck at the brightly lit shopfronts and ask about the best places for Christmas shopping for Jack.
She put her foot down and reached the hospital car park without further incident. Matt had fallen silent, and seemed to rouse himself from his reverie as she edged into the parking space next to his car. ‘So is there anything you would do differently? If you could go back and do it again.’
Beth got out of the car. There was one obvious answer to that one, but she didn’t want to talk about falling in love and then being shoved unceremoniously back out again at the moment. It was about time she let go of that. ‘No. I’m pretty happy with it all so far.’
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