‘Sophie?’ Joe squatted down in front of me, a very real-seeming look of concern on his stupidly handsome face. ‘Are you all right?’
‘No,’ I replied as I dragged myself upright to find my feet again. Was the room spinning when we came in? I wasn’t sure. ‘I’m not all right and neither are you.’
‘Come again?’
‘When will I learn to trust my instincts?’ I asked myself out loud, shame steadily finding itself eclipsed by disappointment. Disappointment in him for proving me right and disappointment in myself for thinking I might have been wrong in the first place. ‘You’re an arrogant, ignorant, insensitive arsehole, so wrapped upin your own privilege, you can’t see past the end of your own nose. Not everything is about you, not everything is for you.’
‘Me?’ he exclaimed, clearly stunned as he looked up at me from the floor. ‘You thinkI’mprivileged?’
‘Unless you were part of a Harvard diversity programme where they mix up the rich Americans with some posh British boys for a bit of balance?’
‘What about you?’ Joe launched back, rising unsteadily to his feet, his face flushed. ‘Where did you go to university?’
I wrapped my arms around my body and squeezed.
‘Durham.’
‘Interesting. Isn’t that where your dad went? In fact, isn’t that where he still guest lecturesevery year?’
‘You know a disturbing amount about my father,’ I replied, chin raised. ‘Is there something you want to tell me?’
‘Only that you’re just as privileged as me, sweetheart.’
All traces of jokes or sarcastic asides were gone. He was angry. Joe tossed back the rest of his prosecco and slammed the glass back down on the low table, a dull crack piercing the synth-heavy backing track. Two hours of karaoke, two bottles of prosecco and two broken glasses. This was going to cost a fortune.
‘Life must be so hard for you with your university education and your amazing parents,’ he ranted, ‘teaching at some fancy private school—’
‘Ah-ha!’ I cut in. ‘It’s not a private school.’
He paused, an expectant expression on his face.
‘But it is quite hard to get into,’ I confessed into my chest.
‘You don’t know me as well as you think you do butI’ve got your number,’ Joe went on, moving closer as he continued with his tirade. ‘Let me guess, school was easy, you probably got accepted into Durham before you even took your exams, could’ve walked into a cushy publishing job but that sounded too much like hard work so you decided to rough it for a bit, teach some rich shits’ kids their ABCs until you land a rich shit of your own. But Mr Rich Shit still hasn’t appeared so you spend all your nights alone, reading books likeButterflies, wondering why no one has fallen for your silky hair and rose petal lips and your terrible, terrible singing voice, and—’
‘I spend all day, every day dealing with children but you, Joe Walsh, are the biggest child I’ve ever met,’ I yelled, poking a finger into his solid chest, so mad I barely even heard what he was saying. ‘Ooh, look at me, I’m so clever and well read. Ooh, look at me, I went to Harvard so I know better than everyone else about everything. Ooh, look at me, I’m handsome and tall and probably played lacrosse and … and …’
Through the red mist of rage, I couldn’t quite find a way to finish the sentence. We were so close, I could see the flare of his nostrils and the quiver at the corners of his mouth, but when I reached his eyes, instead of the anger I was anticipating they were full of something else entirely.
Lust.
Joe Walsh was looking at me like he wanted to eat me up and, I realised, as the white hot fury burned out from my chest and slid down into the pit of my stomach, settling somewhere unexpected, below my belly button, there was nothing in the world I wanted more.
‘Sophie—’ he began, reaching one hand towards me.
‘Excuse me.’ I jerked backwards before he could make contact and grabbed hold of my suitcase. ‘I have a train to catch.’
I was out the door and on the street before the song had even finished.
CHAPTER FOUR
The train from London to Chesterfield was not good. Not that there were any good train journeys any more, only OK ones and godawful ones, but this had to be one of the worst.
Every carriage was packed with human soup since the two trains scheduled before mine had been cancelled and I made it through the turnstiles with one minute to spare. As we pulled out of St Pancras, I shuffled down the overcrowded carriage, banging my shins on stuck-out suitcases, only to find three different people fighting over my seat and one already sitting in it since the conductor thought it would be fun to void all reservations. Too exhausted to join the fray, I carried on to the end of the carriage and crammed myself in with two muddy mountain bikes and a towering stack of overflow luggage.
The train was hot, the train was slow, I was fighting a fast-moving hangover, my phone battery was at twelve percent. I didn’t haveanysnacks, let alone an M&S cocktail in a can, and to top it all off, the toilets weren’tworking. It was the worst train journey anyone had ever endured but there was something that bothered me even more than the horribly embarrassed man in a very nice suit who kept apologising as he peed into an empty Lucozade bottle three feet away from me.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Joe Walsh.
