“I—”
They both spoke at the same time, a collision of sounds interrupting the quiet.
“You go first,” Dylan said, still studying the carpet.
“I wanted to say...” Damn, what did she want to say? Her mind was suddenly blank. “I wanted to say sorry about taking your photo on the bus. It was completely out of order.”
“Ah... Well, I was going to say sorry for being such an arsehole. I’d had a crap morning and I was in a foul mood.”
Libby looked at him in astonishment; an apology was the last thing she was expecting. “You were pretty rude, as a matter of fact.”
“I’d had a fight with my old man and I was in a right hump, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
“Okay. Well, I’m sorry too.”
They both fell back into silence. Libby could hear sounds from the kitchen, the scraping of drawers being opened and the rattle of cutlery. She could see Dylan’s foot tapping on the floor.
“So, you’re an artist, are you?” he said eventually.
“Are you kidding me? You saw my drawing. I’m terrible.”
Dylan wrinkled his nose. “I wouldn’t say it was terrible...”
“It was.”
“You did make my hair look a little...” He stopped, searching for the right word.
“Like a child’s drawing?” she offered.
“I was going to say phallic.”
Libby let out a snort of surprise. “Phallic?”
“Yeah. It looked like I had a load of knobs on my head.”
“Oh my god!” She buried her face in her hands. “No wonder you looked so horrified. I’m so sorry.”
“Nah, that’s all right. But you did make me check my hair in the mirror when I got home.”
Libby looked at him through her fingers and thought she saw the corner of his mouth twitch.
“Well, you’ll be relieved to know I haven’t subjected anyone else to my terrible drawing since,” she said. “My sketching days are well and truly over.”
“Not because of—” Dylan started, but at that moment, Frank reappeared in the doorway.
“Right, where were we?” he said as he carefully crossed the room. Libby realized he wasn’t carrying any cake, but Dylan didn’t say anything, so neither did she. “Oh, yes. Libby, you were going to update us on your efforts to find my girl on the bus. Have you tracked her down yet?”
“I’m afraid not,” Libby said, and she watched his face fall.“I tried everything I could think of to trace her online—art colleges from the sixties, alumni groups on Facebook, records of London art exhibitions in that period—but nothing came up that could link me to a redhead. I’m afraid it was a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
“Oh, well, thank you for trying anyway,” Frank said, and she could tell he was attempting to put on a bright voice.
“But then I had another idea,” Libby said. “It might be a terrible one, but I wanted to share it with you.”
“Go on.”
“So, this morning I was on Kentish Town Road and I saw a poster on a bus stop about a missing dog.”
“Yes, I see posters like that all the time,” Frank said. “There’s one particular cat round here that seems to go missing once a week. He’s called Houdini, and I’ve always wondered which came first, the name or the behavior.”
