‘Depends. Are you young, free and single again?’
‘Resoundingly, yes. Emily never wants to set eyes on me again. Mind you, she’s not overly fond of you either at the moment. What have you done to upset her so much?’
‘What? Apart from breathe?’
‘I asked her about your married man but she stuck to her guns. Insisted he existed — even after I said I believed you. At which point she spat your name out, reminding me, I might add, of an indignant llama, and said you wouldn’t know the truth if it came and slapped you.’
I laughed. I could so clearly picture Emily’s face. ‘And what did you say to that?’
‘Well,’ he hedged slightly.
‘Daniel,’ a note of warning creeping into my voice.
‘I didn’t mean to let on about us... but I might have been a bit... vocal in support of you.’
‘Can I help?’ A small man stepped out in front of us.
I gave Daniel a look, my heart filling with a little burst of pride as he gave me a little wink. ‘Er yes, we’re looking for a fridge,’ I said self-consciously. Shopping for white goods in John Lewis wasn’t quite how I’d envisioned spending my first proper date with Daniel but I felt a little, definite thrill. Shopping for two made a change.
Our man was a mine of useful information. He really knew his fridges, although discussing the merits of automatic defrost when your libido is on fire takes some doing.
Everything went swimmingly until we got to the taking-possession-of-our-chosen-model part of business. It turned out choosing a fridge was easy. Having it installed before the milk went off was another matter. Delivery took at least a week.
‘Dad’s got a spare fridge in the garage we use at Christmas,’ volunteered Daniel as my face fell. ‘Let me give him a call. I could bring it over tomorrow after work.’
Our helpful assistant beamed at this, although looking at my credit card clutched in his hand, it would have been a fight to the death to get it back from him.
* * *
Having someone to look after me, after years of self-sufficiency was rather nice. In fact, it was blood-tinglingly gorgeous. We went for a drink, strolled hand in hand through Covent Garden and stopped for dinner. It should have been perfect but annoyingly thoughts of Peter kept intruding. I did my best to keep them at bay by telling myself that he wouldn’t dare do anything else now. Would he?
Although I didn’t mention it to Daniel I was conscious that he too kept surreptitiously scanning the crowds as we walked along.
As it started to get dark, we headed towards the river and both relaxed as we left the crowds behind. We made extremely slow progress across Waterloo Bridge. Daniel kept pointing out landmarks.
‘Look.’
‘Where?’ I asked, stopping only to find his head dipping towards mine and his lips brushing my mouth.
‘The London Eye,’ he said grinning as he lifted his head. I soon joined in the game.
‘Look, Big Ben.’
It took half an hour’s sightseeing to get over the bridge and ten minutes to get up the stairs into Waterloo station.
‘Daniel, you don’t have to put me on the train,’ I said, as we looked up at the departures board, standing arm in arm, cheek to cheek. ‘You’ve still got to go all the way back to the West End to get your car. I’ll be fine, honest. There’s a train in five minutes.’
He shrugged.
‘I’d rather...’ He looked round at the busy concourse before kissing my cheek. His lips worked their way to my mine. ‘Plus I’m not going to see you ’til tomorrow night.’
I pulled a face and kissed him back, eyes closed, revelling in the warm glow of his words, as I ignored the little voice that wondered what Emily would have to say when he turned up tomorrow with the fridge.
I missed that train and the one after.
When I got home, to my massive relief, Emily didn’t emerge from her room although she was clearly awake as I could hear drawers and wardrobe doors rattling as if she was feverishly searching for something to wear.
As I quickly made myself a cup of milk-less tea, I resolved to tackle the contents of the fridge. Tomorrow.
