‘But I finished it,’ I said, surprised at the venom in his tone.
‘You wouldn’t have started it if it hadn’t been for her,’ he said coldly. ‘It was totally irresponsible of her, though she was completely up-front about what she’d done, I’ll give her that. You were half awake, obviously not in a coma, and you hadn’t drunk very much, so we thought you could go home to sleep it off.’
‘What happened?’ I demanded.
Hamish shrugged. ‘Rose didn’t think she could manage to get you home on her own -’ his eyes slid towards me - ‘Luke said he had to be at his house for an important telephone call.’ His voice made it clear that he didn’t think this was much of an excuse. Neither did I.
‘I offered to follow her and help, but she’d promised Jeremy she’d be back by midnight at the latest, so we decided that I’d take you back. Once you were in the car you fell absolutely sound asleep. I had to stop to get you off my shoulder, you were preventing me from changing gear, and I knew the chances were I’d to end up having to carry you across the green.’ He smiled at me. ‘Without being rude, Susie, I didn’t fancy it much. It’s one hell of a long way.’
‘And I weigh a ton,’ I interrupted, thinking he probably would have been quite happy to carry the diminutive Merial the whole distance.
‘Do you?’ he asked, looking at me with interest, as if I was one of those ‘Guess the weight of the piglet’ competitions. ‘You must have heavy bones for you don’t look it. But even if I’d been able to wake you up enough to get you to walk, it wouldn’t have done your reputation any good to be seen staggering across the green at midnight in the arms of a man. There’s no way that I could have got you in last night without that old bag in the end cottage finding out. She’s on permanent net-curtain alert, and it’d have been all round the village by now that you’re a loose drunk who has to be rolled home by her fancy man.’
‘I don’t think she’d have put it in quite those terms, she likes me,’ I said.
‘I doubt she likes you more than the opportunity to tell a good story,’ he said dryly. ‘On the other hand, it’s only five feet from car to front door here and one of the unfairnesses of the double standard is that if one of the neighbours did see me taking an attractive redhead home at midnight it’d only add to my reputation, so it didn’t seem as if there was any contest. You woke up as I was getting you out of the car and seemed quite happy to spend the night in the spare room. Don’t you remember?’
I shook my head. ‘But I didn’t spend the night there,’ I pointed out.
He shrugged as if it was of no importance. ‘I got you upstairs and remembered the spare-room bed was covered with rubbish, so rather than leave you propped up against the wall I laid you down on my bed. And then it seemed too much effort to wake you up again, so I left you there.’ He smiled reassuringly at me. ‘So there you are. End of story. Nothing to it.’
I wasn’t as comforted as I might have been. It wasn’t the end of the story. How come my clothes had ended up on the chair? And where had he spent the night?
‘Um, er. . .’ To my fury I could feel a blush heating up my cheeks. I stared down at the red Formica tabletop desperately. ‘Did we do anything?’ I blurted out.
‘Of course not,’ he said on a note of faint hauteur. ‘I can promise you I don’t jump on comatose women.’
I looked up, seeing that he really seemed annoyed. On reflection, it was insulting to imply he was so desperate for a leg-over he had to fumble someone who was fast asleep. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to suggest you did, but I was more worried about myself. . .’
There were those dreams. The ones about having my arms around someone’s neck. And the ones that went a lot further than necks. And if I’d been harbouring any illusions about my bad arm being some sort of guarantor of chastity a surreptitious waggle of it knocked that one right on the head. It might not be in perfect condition, but it was perfectly fit for a bit of rolling around in bed… That wretched blush was intensifying. ‘I thought perhaps I’d woken up slightly and come on to you…’ My voice trailed away in hideous embarrassment. The worst part about it was the realisation that with Merial hanging on his sleeve he would have been completely uninterested in any lures I might hold out, drunk or sober.
To my relief, his frowning displeasure had been replaced by amusement. ‘Susie, you were so out of it last night that anyone attracted to you would have to have been seriously into necrophilia. I can assure you that’s never been one of my vices. You didn’t make any improper advances to me either, you were far too fast asleep.’ I felt breathless with relief. ‘More’s the pity,’ he added regretfully. I glanced up to see his eyes gleaming with mockery. Well, of course he hadn’t meant it. ‘You’d even managed to struggle out of your top and skirt on your own so I didn’t even get the usual hero’s perks of being able to remove the lady’s clothing,’ he went on in the same light tone.
I glanced at him suspiciously, wondering if he was telling the unvarnished truth, then decided that even if he had had to help me undress he wouldn’t have laid more than the most reluctant finger on me if he’d accidentally touched me while easing my top off.
‘Thank you,’ I said in a small voice. ‘I’m sorry to have been such a nuisance.’
‘What are friends for?’ I hadn’t thought he liked me enough to regard me as a friend, I thought, with a surprising degree of pleasure. He rubbed the back of his neck ruefully. ‘And one good thing’s come out of it. I now understand why my parents were so willing to let me have the bed in the spare room. I’m going to have to get a new one before anyone can stay.’
‘You slept in the spare room?’ I said before I could help myself.
‘Of course. It would have given you the fright of your life if you’d woken up and seen my head on the pillow next to you,’ he said with complete accuracy. ‘Besides, there wasn’t room for me. You were lying across the mattress, taking up about three-quarters of it. Do you always hog the bed like that?’ he asked in a tone of mild interest.
He was about to ask me if I usually snored as well, I thought, sending him a meaningful glare and daring him to do just that. He laughed and, standing up, asked me if I’d like any breakfast, thereby restoring himself to my good books. My stomach was getting to the point where it was going to start rumbling embarrassingly. He started rustling around the kitchen in an impressively competent manner, doing the sorts of things that my brothers never remember to do, like putting the plates to heat up and actually knowing where the kitchen scissors were when he wanted to snip the bacon rind off. It was even more impressive that he didn’t appear to expect me to make any contribution, telling me to sit down and take a look at the paper if I wanted, while he set to work at the stove, producing a vast quantity of eggs and bacon. ‘I couldn’t possibly eat that much,’ I protested, wondering if he saw me as the sort of person who went in for pie-eating contests.
He looked over his shoulder and smiled. ‘Don’t think you’re going to get it all. I’m having some too.’ Even so, the plate that was put in front of me would have satisfied the appetite of the average navvy. Hamish’s was even more heavily loaded, and he added several pieces of toast to it as well.
‘Do you eat a breakfast of this size every morning?’ I asked, once I’d satisfied the first, most pressing hunger pangs. Surely even someone with his rangy frame couldn’t manage a constant diet like this without getting fat.
He shook his head. ‘Like you, I didn’t get any dinner last night. We were working late and Merial had already eaten at the hospital, so I didn’t bother.’
‘She’s a doctor?’
‘A consultant at the General,’ he said, as he speared his last piece of bacon.
And someone who must do a lot of private work if she could afford clothes like that, I thought, finding suddenly I didn’t approve of doctors who worked outside the NHS. Especially when they’re that beautiful. ‘Is Merial working with you on something?’ I asked casually, eyes fixed on a piece of bread I was usin
g to mop up some egg yolk.
‘She’s helping with a possible medical-negligence case, which isn’t really my area. I can’t even pronounce half the names, let alone understand what the condition is supposed to be,’ he said. So she was just a colleague, I thought, then realised that you don’t normally sit thigh to thigh in cocktail bars with colleagues. My first impressions had been the right ones.
‘Have you been living here long?’ I asked.
He looked slightly surprised at the abrupt change of subject. ‘Only a couple of months, I haven’t even unpacked most of my stuff yet. As you can see, it’s got what Stephen would call a lot of potential. Bags of it in fact, enough to keep you busy at B & Q for years. As I’m not your natural DIY type the work is going slowly, very slowly,’ he said, with a wry twist to his mouth. ‘But it’s got a good garden and at least the doorways are high enough for me to get through them without banging my head, which is more than I can say for a lot of the places around here.’
I could see Hamish would have problems living somewhere like my cottage. The church swear-box would make an absolute packet. ‘It’s going to be fantastic,’ I said, looking down the long kitchen, thinking that I wouldn’t mind having a kitchen big enough for me to get round the table without brushing against the units. Though perhaps the answer to my situation was a diet. Then it occurred to me I’d delivered a somewhat backhanded compliment, so I added hastily, ‘It’s lovely already, it’s got such good proportions.’
Hamish smiled at me somewhat cynically. ‘You don’t have to fall over yourself to be polite. You should hear what my mother says about it. It’s one stage above a dump, the best you can say is that it’s thoroughly tatty because no one’s touched it for fifty years.’
I leant forward, saying, ‘I think the house is super, really, but what I really covet are those two paintings in your bedroom. If you ever find them gone you know where they’ll be.’
‘Keep your sticky fingers off them,’ he warned, smiling. ‘I like them too. Gina’ll be pleased to hear she’s got another fan. Being a typically neurotic artist, she’s always needing her ego massaged.’
I stared at him. ‘You know her?’
He nodded. ‘She’s my sister, and before you ask, no I don’t have any of her talent. She’s a one-off, the rest of the family are hard put to draw a recognisable gibbet when playing hangman, let alone do the hanged man himself. It’s the sort of completely unexpected gift that leads people to count backwards on their fingers to when the mother last went to the Summer Exhibition. Luckily for Ma’s reputation, Gina looks remarkably like my father.’
‘I’m going to put one of her pictures right at the top of my list of must-haves for when I win the lottery,’ I said dreamily, leaning my chin on my hand. ‘I’d like to have one hanging opposite my bed so I could see it when I went to sleep every night.’
‘They’re very restful,’ he agreed. ‘But I doubt you’ll have to wait until you win the lottery. I don’t know exactly how much Gina charges these days, but I don’t think she’s that expensive.’
I had a feeling that there was a wide gap between what Hamish and I classified as ‘expensive’, therefore what he probably meant was her prices hadn’t yet reached stratospheric levels. ‘You could always ask her and see,’ he suggested.
There wasn’t much point; given the current state of my bank account I wouldn’t be able to afford one of her pictures unless she was giving them away. I nodded and said evasively, ‘I will if you give me her telephone number.’
‘Better than that, I’ll take you to see her. She doesn’t live much more than an hour’s drive away and you can have a look at her studio. She loves showing it to an appreciative audience.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ I said vaguely, thinking it was one of those meaningless things people say and never intend to carry out. ‘I’d like that.’
‘Good,’ he said, holding up the coffee pot, and when I shook my head emptied it into his mug. ‘Rose said your plans for the weekend had been cancelled because of your accident. If you aren’t doing anything else, shall we go today?’
‘Today?’ I squeaked. ‘But I don’t want to put you out…’
‘You wouldn’t be,’ he said. ‘I ought to go and see her anyway, I owe her a birthday present which has been sitting on the hall table for three weeks now. And she won’t expect you to buy anything, so you don’t have to make excuses about running out of cheques.’
That was an uncomfortably accurate observation. I hesitated; I’d really like to go, but since I’d just seemed, amazingly enough, to have established some form of friendship with Hamish, I didn’t want to bog it up right at the start by outstaying my welcome.
I stammered, ‘You’ve already done so much for me…’
‘I’ve offered a bed for the night and breakfast to loads of people before, so don’t make a big deal of it.’
‘I’m sure you haven’t offered house room to loads of drunks before,’ I said tartly.
‘You’d be surprised,’ he retorted. ‘Law students behave just as badly as medical students, I’ll have you know.’ Having gone out with a medical student during my first year at university, I found that difficult to believe. ‘Besides, you weren’t drunk,’ he said firmly, ‘so do stop going on about it. Now, are you going to come with me to see Gina and Tony? You’d be doing me a favour, honestly. Artists are supposed to be selfish, sacrificing everyone and everything for the sake of their art, but not our Gina. Unfortunately. She likes to paint with one hand and sort out the problems of the world with the other.’ He made a face. ‘And at the moment she reckons her biggest problem is me. She’s one of those mother hens who doesn’t believe men can live on their own without either suffering from malnutrition due to a diet of baked beans and beer or being suffocated in a mountain of unwashed socks.’
‘Sounds just like my younger brother’s flat,’ I said, thinking of the last time I’d dared to visit.
‘She should know better with me. I don’t even like baked beans. And I’m her older brother too,’ he said with emphasis. ‘But if you accompany me she won’t feel able to grill me about the contents of the laundry basket and whether I’m airing the sheets properly. She’ll enjoy meeting you, she knows Stephen and she’s very hospitable, loves visitors, especially the ones who have the taste to like her paintings. So please.’
He smiled pleadingly at me, eyes crinkling up at the corners, the unshaven, tousle-headed creature leaning back lazily in his chair a very different animal to the formally attired solicitor I was most familiar with. For a moment, I forgot he was inveigling me into protecting him from an over-motherly sister and imagined he was smiling at me just because he liked what he saw on the other side of the table. My stomach did an involuntary lurch and I dropped my eyes quickly, before I could betray that at that moment I was definitely enjoying what was on the other side of the table.
God, what’s happening to me? I thought. Didn’t I have enough to occupy myself, fancying both Luke and Arnaud at the same time, without adding a third to the list? I was becoming positively rampant. It had to be because I’d slept in Hamish’s bed last night, I must have absorbed some of his pheromones or something, which made me more attuned to him. It’d wear off. It would have worn off by now, I decided firmly, daring to look up. He was still looking disturbingly unstuffy, but I couldn’t fool myself his smile was anything more than a polite enquiry as to whether I was going to fall in with his plans or not. I suppressed a pang of disappointment.
‘Put like that, how could I refuse?’ I asked lightly. At least he looked genuinely pleased I was coming. ‘But could I go back to the cottage to change first?’
‘Of course,’ he said, and stretched. ‘I’ll ring Gina, tell her we’re coming, and then we can leave.’
I stared at his bristly chin. ‘Excuse me for pointing this out, but won’t going unshaven count as Not Looking After Yourself?’
He rubbed it thoughtfully. ‘Whatever happened to designer stubble?’ he asked sighing. ‘OK, m
ake that we leave after a call and a shave.’
I only just had time to stack the dirty plates in the dishwasher and wipe the crumbs off the table before he returned; he was obviously someone who didn’t believe in spending a lot of time on his appearance, but I already knew that from the paucity of male accoutrements upstairs. Arnaud had shelves of bottles and potions in his bathroom, so many they overflowed on to the table in his bedroom and it always took him at least half an hour to go anywhere.
Hamish had achieved a lot in his five minutes; besides a speed-shave, he’d brushed his hair into something approaching order and had found shoes and socks too. I wouldn’t say he looked like someone who would bring joy into the heart of the average father - he was still way too far from his weekday respectability - but he probably wouldn’t be refused entry to Harrods on account of breaking their dress code any longer.
I did my best to emulate his speed changing, but with less success, even though I’d been given firm instructions that jeans were de rigueur in Gina’s household due to the quantity of mud and animals I still needed to find a top. None of them seemed very flattering for some reason. Hamish was deep in the second chapter of the Michael Dibdin I’d just bought by the time I came downstairs, ready to apologise for taking so long.
‘You look nice,’ he said, looking up with approval. ‘That green suits your colouring.’
I felt quite ridiculously pleased. I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear and said gruffly, ‘Do you want to borrow that?’
‘Thanks, I’ll return it, I promise,’ he said, standing up and immediately seeming to take up a large amount of the space in the room. Well, he did, his head nearly brushed the large centre beam. He tucked the book into the back pocket of his jeans and picked up a photograph frame from the table. ‘Who are these? Your parents? And this?’
‘That’s Arnaud,’ I said.
He looked more closely at the picture. I’d taken it on my last visit to Paris, when we’d been having a drink at a pavement cafe. I’d called to Arnaud to look up just as he’d picked up his wine and he hadn’t thought a mere photograph warranted delaying the first pre-lunch drink of the day, even if only by thirty seconds. It showed in his expression. I didn’t like the photograph much, but the only other recent picture I’d got of him was one taken for some office journal, in which he looked impossibly stuffed-shirtish and not at all the enthusiastic bon viveur I’d fallen for. ‘Oh, the French boyfriend, the one Rose claims to dislike so much,’ Hamish said thoughtfully. ‘Mm, I can see why they might not get on. Not enough room centre stage for both of them.’
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