“Likewise. Where are you off to?”
“Work.”
“Ah,” he said, setting down his phone. “How’s that all going?”
He gave her that same, analysing look, and she began to fumble.
“Well,” she replied, her eyes catching on a young couple taking a seat behind him. “I interviewed a woman who believes a ghost haunting her home is stealing her knickers and socks.”
Logan gave her a blank expression, one that made her suspect he didn’t believe a word of it.
“I’m dead serious,” she added. “People think fiction is strange; real life is much, much better.”
“I take it you don’t believe her, then?”
“Are you telling me I should?”
“I think we should all be open to believing things, Miss Daisy. The world is a very unexplainable place, the more you dig into its layers.” He paused, gesturing to the empty seat across from him. “If you’ve got the time, I’d like to hear more of these stories. Sit, have a coffee with me.”
“I really shouldn’t. I have to get to—”
“Russell Watson is your boss, isn’t he?” Logan interrupted.
“He is, yes.”
“Thought so. I play golf with him.”
“You play golf?”
He smirked. “Do I not look like the golf-playing type?”
She looked him up and down, taking in his black leather jacket over a hoodie and the worn Chuck Taylors on his feet. It was almost impossible to picture him standing on some manicured driving range in Twickenham, talking about stock markets and cars.
“Well…if I’m honest, you look like you’d be in some dive bar smoking rolled cigarettes and pot,” she said.
Logan laughed, leaning back in his chair. “Maybe I do both. Are you judging me?”
“If I were judging you, it wouldn’t be on your recreational habits.” She paused, checking the time. “I’d love to stay, but I really should get going. Russell and I have a meeting—”
“Forget the meeting,” he cut in, waving a dismissive hand as he leaned forward to snatch up his phone. “Russ is a big boy, I’m sure he can handle flying solo as a once-off.”
Before she could so much as open her mouth to object, the phone was already at his ear.
“Hey, Russ,” Logan said smoothly. “Quick favour. Do you mind if I steal Daisy for, say, half an hour?
Ironically, if she was asked what the café looked like or even what the weather was that day, she wouldn’t be able to say. She used to envision everything so clearly, but a decade later, all sheremembered from that day was how Logan looked at her when he said her name.
II
LOGAN
Logan had always found life to be an intriguing concept. In a single choice, a whole new narrative could be drafted. In a single mistake, a narrative could burn without the promised ending. He’d thought about that a lot lately—which one he’d classify her as. A choice or a mistake?
He’ll never forget the day they met. It was the middle of summer, and even the air conditioning units struggled to keep the air hospitable.
She’d walked into his office, her cheeks flushed red and head down with a bed of chocolate-coloured hair cut bluntly at the shoulders. And it surprised him. She wasn’t just attractive; shewas wearing a long-sleeved white blouse and a blue floral skirt, almost as if her soul hadn’t left the sixties.
“That’s the reporter,” Aiden said, fixing himself a cup of black coffee. “Do you mind getting started? I just have to make a quick call.”
