Unless that’s your thing, but self-flagellation does nothing for me.
I do regret dropping her phone last night; especially after the way she glanced at it and frowned this morning, slipping it into her purse without another word.
Anger flares irrationally in my chest.If they’ve split up, maybe he wants her back?I regret dropping the phone because, of course, he’d want her back.Why wouldn’t he?And he’ll call again. And if I’d spoken to him, maybe I could’ve put him off that notion by telling him she’d moved the fuck on. With me.
Only she hasn’t agreed to this
The thought twists my insides. She’s the one person I can see bending my rules for. The one person who could be worth changing the way I live. Why is it she can’t be straight with me?
‘Where are you?’ My brother’s voice sounds down the line amidst the clamour and clatter of construction in the background.
‘Weren’t you ever taught how to answer the phone properly?’
‘Stop pissing about, Kit.’ There’s a squeal of a door with unhealthy hinges before the background noises drop out.
‘Not particularly hard.’ My phone had one missed call from him last time I checked, and that was Monday. ‘I had some... personal business to attend to. Where are you, anyway?’ We have a hotel in Mayfair due to open next week, though I hope he’s not there, given the noise. We should be past fit-out now. Which leaves—
‘I’m at home. They’re fitting a new kitchen.’
‘Okay. Tearing out the kitchen you’ve never used because...?’
‘Seemed like a good idea at the time. Fuck, it’s taking forever. At this rate, she’ll never move in.’
‘But in the meantime, you’ll just live at her place.’ Because he can’t leave the woman alone.
‘Stop changing the subject, fucker. Where’ve you been?’
‘The nature of personal business meansnone of yours.’
‘And the nature of hotel opening next week means—’
‘I went to see Meg.’ The phone falls silent. ‘I thought it was time.’
‘Aye,’ he answers quietly. I wouldn’t have ordinarily mentioned our grandmother but for throwing him off thepersonalpart of that statement. I haven’t been back in a while. ‘How was it?’
‘The conversation wasn’t up to much.’
‘That’d be on account of her being dead and all.’
‘There is that.’ I inhale a painful breath. Our grandmother was a force of nature. We’re both still coming to terms with her death—that some will greater than her own actually exists. She raised us after our mother died and after our sperm donor wanted nothing to do with us. Or as Meg referred to him, thatlanky string o’ piss.‘I’m on my way back to the airport now.’ I’d gotten a limo to drive me out to the west coast where Meg’s buried in the village where she’d been born.
And then married a rich hotelier twenty years her senior before proceeding to rut him into the ground.
That was her story, at any rate. That she loved him went unsaid but shone in her grey gaze anyway.
‘So what did you want?’
‘Did you manage to get a hold of Bea?’
My smile is unrestrained. ‘Yeah, I did.’ Mission attained and exceeded because I did so much more thanget a hold of her. I bent her. Pulled her. Fucked her. Lost myself in her for a while.
Of course, I hadn’t managed to get past her protective shell.
‘Aye, good. Fin says she’s not seen her much lately.’
‘They live in the same flat, don’t they?’ This I know for a fact, but it doesn’t do to seem too knowledgeable. Rory can be like a scent hound. Very occasionally.
‘She hasn’t been around.’
