“That I ate all my Bakewells at lunchtime.” Tam wipes hismouth with the back of his tattooed hand. “And you don’t need to make up for shit. When you didn’t show, I figured you’d got stuck at work, and then you didn’t come back till the middle of the night, so I didn’t want to bug you.”
“You couldn’t bug me if you tried.”
“Sounds like a challenge.” Tam offers me the box.
I wave it away only because I’ve already eaten a hundred cakes today, snaffling up donations left by local charities most of the patients on the ward are too unwell to eat.
At least, that’s what I told myself, and three hours into lugging crap from storage to the ward, I’d stopped caring. “What did you want to show me?”
Tam ditches the cakes and points to the stairs.
I cock a brow.
Tam simmers his russet gaze at me. Hisamusedgaze. “It’s way less exciting than whatever you’re thinking.”
“You have no idea what I’m thinking.”
Bet he does. And the smirk Tam tosses over his shoulder as he leads me to the stairs says the same. But I follow him anyway, up the wooden staircase, taking in the art work and photographs that punctuate the walls, breathing deeper as that cinnamon scent gets stronger.
His bedroom is up here. And the door is closed. But the studio door is wide open and I’m as drawn to it now as I was the first time I came up here. “Wow.” I glance around. “There’s so much going on in here.”
Tam gives a weary chuckle. “Tell me about it. I don’t know where anything is anymore.”
“Was it better in the annex? It must be weird not leaving the house to go to work anymore.”
“I don’t miss tramping across the garden sixty times a day.”
“Sixty?”
“Rudy turns into a massive wanker when he can’t throw himself at the front door every time someone walks past the house. Won’t shut the fuck up until I let him check they’re gone. When I’m up here, he can sort himself out.”
“Fair enough. What did you want to show me?”
Tam moves a stack of cards to one side and opens a drawer. From inside, he grabs a slim black box and what looks like a notebook. “Come here.”
It’s instinct to obey without question, and I don’t mind. Especially as where he wants me to be is right next to him. “Is that a schoolbook?”
“Nearly.” Tam flips the pages, revealing reams and reams of carol lyrics and festive stories printed in faint cursive. “You see these guidelines?”
I wince. “They look like the torture books from primary school.”
“Not far off, but it’s not torture, I promise. Come here.”
Again.
And of course, I obey as he steers me to a second desk that’s less cluttered than the one that seems to be his main workstation.
“Hold this pen. See how it feels.”
He’s serious. I purse my lips as he presses a red and gold stylus-type thing into my writing hand and manoeuvres my fingers into a position a world away from how I usually hold a pen. “What kind of pen is this?”
Tam grins. “Don’t ask me questions like that. I might answer, and you’re a busy man.”
“You like pens?”
“My job would be pretty shit if I didn’t.” Tam fills the space besideme and resets the workbook on the table at the very first page. Letters, not words. Loads of them. Line after line. Enough to make my head swim. “Can you write something here for me?”
“Like what?”
