‘No! I was just, it’s an English saying for people with a good memory, I wasn’t…’
‘I am joking.’ His face broke into a smile. ‘We say the same in France. I watched a documentary that said that in fact dolphins are more intelligent. Some believe they are even smarter than chimpanzees who are considered by many scientists to be the second most intelligent species on earth after humans.’
‘Sounds like you still enjoy watching documentaries, then?’
‘Now it isyouthat is the elephant!’ He laughed.
‘Thanks, but I think I’d rather be a dolphin. They’re cute and friendly,’ I grinned.
‘They are. So you already have that in common.’ He flashed his gorgeous smile and right on cue, my stomach flipped like a dolphin.
‘Charmer,’ I scoffed, trying not to let his compliments affect me more than they already had. ‘But to answer your original question, yes, I do still watchColumbo. As sad as it sounds, you can’t beat curling up on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon and watching an episode or three.’
I expected Gabriel to roll his eyes at how pathetic it was that I was still watching reruns of a show that was created in the seventies, before I was even born, which was exactly what I did years ago when he used to visit Juliette. It was sad that my life hadn’t moved on. Whilst Gabriel had travelled the world and done a million different things, I was still stuck in a rut.
‘It is not sad. I still watchColumbotoo.’
‘Wait, what?’ I frowned. ‘YouwatchColumbo?’
‘Why do you sound so surprised? I sometimes watched it at your house,non?’
‘Yeah, but that was just when you were waiting for Ricky so that you could do boys stuff with him.’
‘I never came to your house to see Ricky. I was more interested in seeing you…’
I swallowed hard. He couldn’t mean that.
‘What… why… how come you still watch it?’ I stuttered.
‘At first I watched it because of you, but then I grew to like it because it is clever. I love that from the beginning you know who committed the crime and you can watch how Columbo solves it. His attention to detail isfantastique. And people always underestimate him, but he proves them wrong. It is one of my favourite TV series and I have you to thank for introducing me to it.’
‘Wow.’ My mouth fell open. I couldn’t have put it better myself. ‘I agree. It’s so smart. A lot of the villains are rich and powerful and they look down on Columbo because he drives a run-down car and wears the same old clothes all the time. They think they’re better than him, but in the end it’s Columbo who gets the last laugh.’
‘It is like David and Goliath,non?’
‘Exactly!’ I nodded. My heart tripled in size as I realised he loved the show just as much as I did, which was crazy considering his age. I’d imagine there weren’t many twenty-somethings who’d heard ofColumbo, let alone watched it. ‘So how about you? You didn’t say whether or not you still enjoy documentaries.’
I remembered that as well as reading a lot of non-fiction books, documentaries were something that Gabriel was also into.
‘Oui, I still enjoy them.’
‘Life stories and nature?’ I asked. He was into the intellectual ones, which were a lot more high-brow than the documentaries that I rarely watched if at all.
‘Oui,’ he confirmed. ‘Do you watch any?’
‘Um,’ I laughed. ‘Sort of. Probably not what you’d consider a proper documentary though.’
‘Tell me,’ he said.
‘I’m more of aBeckhamorTinder Swindlerdocumentary watcher…’ I grinned, waiting for him to sigh in the way that Juliette did when I let slip that I occasionally liked watching reality TV shows.
‘Beckhamwas a very enjoyable. And I was very concerned to see how the man took advantage of innocent women inThe Tinder Swindler.’
‘You watched those?’ My eyebrows shot up to my hairline.
‘Again, I do not understand why you are surprised.’ He cocked his head.
‘Because I always thought you only watched serious, intellectual stuff.’
