‘You’re leaving!’ Michaela gasped. ‘But you’ve only just arrived. What is wrong?’
‘I’m not leaving Prague but I’m moving to another apartment.’
‘When?’
‘Soon.’
‘Soon?’ barked Leo. ‘And when were you going to mention it to me?’ His stony expression, so at odds with the bright smile seconds before, immediately brought a flood of guilt.
‘But why?’ asked Michaela, looking from Anna to Leo. ‘And you?’ she asked him.
‘Just me,’ said Anna, trying to sound nonchalant.
‘But why?’ asked Michaela again. ‘Your apartment is the best in the block.’
Anna looked at Leo, who once again raised that taunting eyebrow. He had no intention of making this easier for her, even though he knew full well it was the right thing to do. One of them had to go. In fact, if he’d been any sort of gentleman he would have offered. She glared at him.
As if he read her mind, he held up his hands. ‘Your choice.’
‘Hardly,’ she snapped.
‘What, I’m holding a gun to your head? I haven’t asked you to leave. There’s no reason you have to.’
‘For God’s sake, Leo. Stop being so obtuse. Of course I can’t stay.’
Leo shrugged while Michaela looked on, fascinated. Jan, whom she liked the most at that moment, studied the top of his beer.
‘What is the problem?’ asked Michaela, innocently enough. Anna suspected that she hadn’t meant to sound so direct.
Leo leaned back and folded his arms, leaving her to answer.
A burst of rage flashed through her and she wanted to slap the complacent smirk from his bloody face. Under the table, her hands clenched into irate fists to stop her giving in to the urge.
Leo continued to look at her and the gap in conversation stretched as he took a leisurely sip of beer.
Frustrated beyond all bearing, Anna snapped, ‘Because we used to be married.’
ChapterSix
Leo’s beer went down the wrong way and he found himself coughing and choking as Michaela, like a Wimbledon spectator, kept moving her wide-eyed gaze back and forth between them.
He could tell from Jan’s odd, stiff jerks that he was kicking his girlfriend under the table but, to be fair to her, she seemed too dumbstruck to say anything.
‘Nice one, Anna,’ he’d said, annoyed as much at himself and his own contrariness. He’d pushed her into saying something and now he realised that it brought the awkwardness between them into the public domain and created a drama in which he didn’t want to be a player. He’d spent the last six years sublimating his feelings and consigning all thoughts of her into a very large mental dustbin.
‘Well, you weren’t helping, sitting there being all condescending. As if this situation is all my fault.’
‘It’s no one’s fault but some of us are trying to be grown-up about things.’ How he managed to sound so reasonable when he wanted to strangle her, he’d never know. ‘You’re the one that’s made a big thing of it.’
‘No, I haven’t,’ Anna snapped, with that tell-tale flush of anger.
‘Yes, you have. Why did you pretend you didn’t know me?’
Michaela’s eyes looked as if they might burst out of her head but Jan hung onto her arm as if physically holding back her lively curiosity.
‘I didn’t…’
He saw her swallow.
