She grimaces. “The kitchen too.”
Relief washes through me, followed immediately by something else entirely unwelcome. The thought of her in my kitchen. Watching. Tasting. Arguing. Those green eyes taking everything in. I shove that firmly aside.
“Good,” I say.
She meets my gaze, chin lifting. “Don’t make me regret this.”
I smile, slow and deliberate. “I’ll be gracious when you apologise.”
Her eyes flash. “I won’t be apologising.”
“No?”
“I know what I tasted.”
I incline my head. “Then I look forward to proving you wrong.”
She snorts softly and turns away, already dismissing me.
As she walks off, I realise two things at once.
Thursday is going to be a battlefield.
And I’m already looking forward to it far more than I should.
Chapter 3
Tom
By the time Iturn into my street, my jaw aches from clenching it all the way home. The housing estate in Denton Holme, one of Carlisle’s unshowy corners, is a sprawl of identical houses and apologetic front gardens, built quickly and cheaply and never pretending to be anything else. It’s quiet, it’s fine, and it’s not where I imagined I’d end up, but it’s what I can afford, and that only as a house share.
The front door sticks when I push it open.
The smell hits me immediately.
Something is burning. Something else is being aggressively overconfident.
“Rupert,” I call, dropping my keys onto the shelf by the door. “What are you doing?”
“In the kitchen,” comes the reply, enunciated with surgical precision, as if he’s announcing the opening of a cultural institution rather than courting a fire hazard. “Engaged in a domestic experiment.”
Oh, fuck. All the culinary godsmay help me.
I follow the sound of frantic stirring and find Rupert at the hob, barefoot, wearing paint splattered trousers and a linen shirt that has never once met an iron. He holds a wooden spoon like a sceptre. Steam curls up from a pan I do not trust.
“You’re home early,” he says, without looking round. “How refreshingly punctual of you.”
“You’re cooking,” I say. “Explain.”
He turns, affronted. “Because I am a fully formed adult.”
“You set fire to rice last week.”
“That was an interpretive response to carbohydrate tyranny.”
Rupert has the poshest accent I have ever encountered. Perfect vowels, careful consonants, the sort of voice that sounds like it should be discussing chamber music or hedge funds. This would be less confusing if he weren’t from Leeds, working class, and the son of a man who once repaired my car with a hammer and a deeply expressive vocabulary.
Rupert simply prefers to curate an alternative narrative.
