Chapter 16
Tom
I’m doing everything properly.
Knife where it should be. Board clean. Heat controlled. The kitchen smells right, which usually settles me. Usually, if my hands are busy, my head follows.
Today it doesn’t.
My thoughts keep drifting back to Chloe. To the way she left this morning, quick and careful, like someone tucking something precious out of sight. To the final thanks. And the realisation that hit me once she had disappeared, that I never asked her why we can’t be… more.
I’m reducing heat under the Bolognese sauce when my phone vibrates against the counter.
I sigh, wipe my hands on a towel, and glance at the screen.
Chloe
Can we talk?
That’s it. No emoji. No softening. No full stop either, which somehow makes it worse.
My heart starts beating faster. Talk can mean anything. But it does sound suspiciously like this could be good news.
I step away from the cooker, asking Angela to keep an eye on the sauce, and take the phone with me into the back corridor, where it’s quieter and I can pretend I’m not suddenly bracing myself.
For half a second, something hopeful flickers. Ridiculous and unwelcome. The thought that maybe she’s changed her mind. That maybe she wants to try this after all.
I squash it immediately. Hope is a dangerous ingredient. Too much and everything curdles.
I call her.
It rings twice before she picks up.
“Hi,” she says.
Her voice sounds different. Tight. Controlled.
Whatever this is, it isn’t what I briefly, stupidly imagined.
“Hi,” I reply, keeping my tone even. “What’s wrong?”
There’s a pause on the line. A breath.
And in that silence, I know this call is going to change something. I just don’t yet know whether it’s going to break or sharpen what we have.
She starts carefully.
Too carefully.
“I’m at work,” she says. “Or I was. I’ve just come out of a meeting. And I want you to know that I’m about to say some things that are not… polite.”
My stomach tightens. “Okay.”
Another breath. Longer thistime.
“The Cumbria Times are running a piece about us,” she says. “About you. About me. About the feature article. About how I am apparently a morally compromised harpy who can’t tell journalism from erotica.”
There it is.
