A cursory glance at Tom confirmed he was wearing the same jeans and navy T-shirt he’d had on last night. He looked slightly mussed, Rachel thought, but nowhere near as dishevelled as she’d be after a night of sofa surfing. From some cheeky corner of her brain came the message that unkempt early-morning Tom was kind of hot. Annoyed, she moved it to her mind’s trash folder.
‘Coffee?’ Tom asked, standing up. He gestured at the half-full cafetière on the worktop. Where the hell had he evenfoundthat? She’d never seen it before.
‘Can’t face it,’ Rachel said. ‘I’m ruined.’
She could hear him laughing as he rooted around in the fridge.
‘Here,’ he said, placing a can of cold Coca-Cola in front of her. ‘Drink this. And maybe have a couple of these.’
He fished in the front pocket of his battered chestnut-coloured satchel, which was hanging from the back of his chair. Then he threw a dog-eared box of painkillers onto the kitchen table.
After a few slurps of Coke, Rachel rested her head on the shiny wood of the tabletop, breathing in the sweet, almond scent of the polish Anna must have used on it yesterday. She heard the sound of a cupboard opening, the rustle of plastic packaging, the click and twist of the toaster dial and the depression of its four bread trays.
‘Peanut butter? Marmite? Jam?’ Tom asked. ‘Or is this a “tiny scraping of butter in case everything comes back” situation?’
‘The last one,’ Rachel mumbled, without looking up.
Perhaps she drifted off, because it seemed only seconds later that a plate of lightly buttered toast was being put down in front of her. Delicately, she took a bite. Then another. She washed down each mouthful with Coke.
She didn’t feelbetterby the time she’d finished, but her stomach was calmer and it was no longer a painful effort to hold her eyes open. She picked up Tom’s packet of Panadol and swallowed two pills with the last of her drink.
After closing the box she pushed it across the table to Tom, who’d been quiet all this time – regularly turning pages in his book while munching on two slices of crunchy wholemeal, thickly coated with peanut butter.
Now the bodily effects of her hangover were receding, Rachel was left with plain, undiluted mortification. Embarrassment bloomed in her chest, intense and abundant; she wished she could disappear. She imagined herself shrinking away to nothing, like the Wicked Witch of the West when confronted with a bucket of water.
Rachel wanted to look at Tom, but didn’t dare. She couldn’t examine his features or test her reactions to them – not least because she didn’t want to be caught in the act. It was bad enough that she’d tried to plant an unwelcome snog on him; the last thing she needed was for him to think she was still mooning after him the next day. She averted her eyes from his bottom lip, which he was nibbling softly – presumably in reaction to some exciting passage in the John Le Carré he was reading.
In over four years, and excepting nights when they’d been watching films, this was probably the longest they’d gone in one another’s company without talking. The silence between them felt heavy and uncomfortable, now Rachel was awake enough to think about it. This was a strained, awkward sort of quiet that wasn’t natural for her and Tom, and both of them knew it.
Just as Rachel had made up her mind to apologise for jumping him, Tom put his book down on the table – facing down so he wouldn’t lose his page.
‘Rach,’ he said, softly. ‘About last night …’
Rachel buried her face in her hands, unable to look at him.
‘I want to apologise,’ Tom said.
She peered at him though interlaced fingers.What?His eyes were as regretful as his voice.
He carried on: ‘I played my part a little too well, I think. Took the performance too far. I should never even have thought about kissing you. That was … not okay. Not okay at all.’
Rachel gaped at him. He was blaminghimselffor the fact that she’d tried to put her tongue in his mouth? Some ember inside her glowed at the memory, and she stamped on it.
This was typical Tom: gallant, thoughtful and kind. Rather than letting her apologise for trying to cop off with him, he was shouldering all the blame for the meeting of their mouths. To spare Rachel’s blushes,hewas apologising toher– when surely they both knew it should be the other way around.
‘It’s … It’s fine,’ she said. ‘Really.’
‘It isn’t,’ Tom insisted. ‘You’re my friend, you’re important to me and you’d had far too much to drink for anyone to be kissing you – either for real, or as part of some act. I think I got carried away winding up Jack – who, by the way, I don’t like any better for having finally met. I crossed a line, though, and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.’
Rachel just nodded her head, not sure what to say to any of this. In a single stroke, Tom had confirmed her theory that the kiss was for Jack’s benefit – that it hadn’t arisen from some other, deeper desire. At the same time he’d taken full responsibility for it, firmly sidestepping any potential discussion of why Rachel reacted so strongly.
She could only assume this was Tom’s characteristically gentle way of making it clear to her that, if she harboured any more-than-friendly feelings for him, it was best for her to extinguish them.
Up until yesterday, it had never occurred to her that such feelings might exist. But when she looked at him now, all spectacles and tousled hair and yesterday’s creased clothes, something deep inside her ached. The idea of killing it made her want to cry.
‘Please don’t apologise,’ Rachel finally said. ‘Honestly, you’ve nothing to be sorry for. If anything it should be me apologising – I should never have involved you in my stupid lie in the first place.’
‘All right,’ Tom said. ‘Let’s agree that you shouldn’t have lied and I should never have kissed you. Deal?’
