‘Correct. James regularly speculates on the A, naturally. Could it be Arsehole? Axe-murderer? Adolf?’
Niamh sniggered. ‘He’s still pissed off about the bike thing?’
‘Very,’ Rosie nodded. ‘Though to be honest, I never thought the Post-it was “passive-aggressive”. It was perfectly polite, and A. Thomas was probably right about the bike blocking the front door and being a fire hazard. Plus all the dirt it tracked onto the carpet for the cleaner to clear up.’
She smothered a smile as she remembered how mad James had been when their neighbour insisted the offending mountain bike be stored in the shed to the rear of their flat, rather than left leaning against the post table in the hallway. He’d complained about it for days, conceding only because Rosie pleaded with him not to cause trouble. After the death of their old upstairs neighbour and landlord, Mr Bettini, the building had changed hands – and Rosie didn’t want the property investment firm that now owned it to have any cause for an early review of their tenancy agreement.
‘So A. Thomas is a safety-first, fire-aware neat freak, as well as crazily handsome …’ Niamh said dreamily, tapping her credit card against the reader their waitress had brought over. ‘Interesting.’
‘Stop it,’ Rosie ordered, grinning and wagging a finger at her friend. ‘He just wants to be left alone. And you aremarried. Withtwins.’
She paid her half of the bill and the waitress moved on, leaving behind a silver tray stacked with after-dinner mints. With some effort, Rosie resisted the urge to eat one and sweep the rest into her handbag.
‘Balls. I’d almost forgotten about them,’ Niamh groaned. ‘I suppose I should be getting back. What are the chances Brendan’s managed to get both kids bathed and into bed, d’you reckon? I’m thinking slim to none.’
‘I couldn’t possibly say,’ Rosie told her, holding both palms up. ‘But I’m rooting for him – and you.’
‘I know you are,’ Niamh said, grasping Rosie’s hand across the tabletop and squeezing it tight. ‘And I’m in your corner too, you know. Always.’
‘I’ll let you know if James does pop the question,’ Rosie said. ‘You’ll be the first person I call.’
For a split second, Niamh’s smile seemed to falter – perhaps, Rosie thought, because of what this said about her friend’s difficult family relationships.
‘You do that,’ Niamh told her, recovering her composure and grinning brightly as they made their way out of the restaurant. ‘Keep me posted.’
Chapter 3
Rosie decided to catch the bus back to Walthamstow, where she and James lived. Niamh hugged her goodbye at the stop, then set off to walk the short distance back to the four-bedroom Victorian town house she shared with her family.
Theirs was the kind of home Rosie had once thought existed only in films or interiors magazines: all elegant bay windows, original wood floors and real, working fireplaces. Brendan – a successful barrister who specialised in intellectual property law – had built up a sizeable nest egg before meeting Niamh at a corporate event she’d organised for his firm. He’d immediately fallen head over heels in love with her, and two years later they’d married, then bought the house as a dilapidated shell. Costly, extensive renovations were completed not long before the twins were born.
By contrast, Rosie and James’s rented flat was modest – but Rosie adored it, having spent the past six years sanding, painting, decorating and loving it back to life. Mr Bettini, who’d first rented it to them as a soulless box, had been happy for Rosie to renovate it to her liking. In fact, he’d kept their rent below market value in exchange for her tasteful work on the place. The discount had been enough to dissuade James from pushing Rosie on buying somewhere of their own for now – a compromise she was glad of, since his dream of a sleek, suburban new build clashed horribly with her love of period features, vintage furniture and quirky textiles.
Privately, Rosie suspected that theirs wasn’t the only rent the landlord had kept low. Val and Pat, who occupied the first-floor flat that lay between what used to be Mr Bettini’s place and their ground-floor residence, had lived in the building almost as long as he had. A female couple that he’d referred to as ‘close companions’, they were both in their fifties and semi-retired from teaching careers. Their long-standing presence in the house, as well as that of Mr Bettini, gave the place an unusual sort of homeliness. The old man would never have admitted it, but Rosie got the sense that the occupants of his building felt a little like found family.
She’d been deeply upset when Mr Bettini died – and not just because it put the ownership of her home in doubt. He’d had no other friends or relatives that she knew of, so – taking her cue from Val and Pat – she’d popped in regularly with cake and biscuits she’d made, or books she thought he’d enjoy. Once he stopped pretending to complain about these ‘unsolicited visits’, the two of them had grown close.
His funeral had been a pretty bleak affair. It had been organised in accordance with the funeral plan he’d set up many years before, but attendees were scant – consisting only of Rosie, Val and Pat, gossip-hungry Mrs Beaumont from next door and a few people from the local bridge club.
James had gone to work as normal. He thought Rosie’s sentimental reaction to Mr Bettini’s death was sweet, but told her she’d regret wasting a day of annual leave on an event that was really nothing to do with her. As she’d wept hot, salty tears in an empty church pew, however, she’d felt a strange sort of satisfaction. It was right thatsomeoneshould cry, that someone should mark and mourn Mr Bettini’s passing. Rosie couldn’t think of anything sadder than leaving the world unnoticed, unremarked and unmissed. She’d helped to ensure that didn’t happen to a person who, in a small but significant way, had mattered to her. The thought still gave her comfort.
As she got off the bus, taking her nose out of her book and making her way back up William Road, Rosie noticed there was a light on in what was now A. Thomas’s sitting room.
She’d feigned a level of disinterest she didn’t truly feel when Niamh had mentioned him earlier, and wasn’t entirely sure why. When she examined her motives, she realised that admitting her own intrigue about ‘Nameless Neighbour’ would feel somehow disloyal. Since the day he’d moved in, James had grown to genuinely hate the man – though Rosie didn’t think his behaviour, stiff and standoffish as it was, justified such loathing.
She’d never mentioned the fact that he’d saved her from falling over in the corridor – possibly even from breaking a bone or two, given the shoes she’d had on at the time. For some reason, she’d even kept the story from Niamh.
But A. Thomas’s conduct in that moment had convinced Rosie he couldn’t be the surly, misanthropic bastard James insisted he was. OK, so he hadn’t actuallyspokento her – but there’d been a kindness about him, a sort of warm humanity. He’d helped her without making her feel like an idiot – though in the end, she’d done an admirable job of that all by herself.
What was the word Niamh had used to describe him?Mysterious. A. Thomas was definitely that. In addition to not knowing his name, Rosie and James had no idea what he did for a living, where he was from or what his voice sounded like. Even for London, this was a pretty impressive level of distance to keep from two people who lived under the same roof he did.
While she’d never concede the point, Rosie also agreed with Niamh about A. Thomas’s good looks. He was handsome in a way she found almost far-fetched – like the brooding male lead in a perfectly lit period drama, or the smouldering star of aVanity Fairphotoshoot. The fascination A. Thomas inspired in her was akin to how she felt about exotic zoo animals: she was drawn in by their beauty and wondered about their secret inner lives, but was quite content to admire them from afar.
She opened the heavy front door of the building – old, with peeling red paint and a tarnished brass knocker and letter box – then made her way to the flimsier internal door that led to her flat. As she passed the occasional table in the hallway, she noticed that on one side –theirside – it was still piled high with post.
There was a large, messy stack that Rosie assumed consisted mainly of unsolicited junk mail, all addressed to James Gardiner. She felt a brief prickle of irritation at his untidiness.
Once inside the flat, she eyed the detritus of James’s solo evening in: the PlayStation controller and protein bar wrappers on the coffee table, the whirring dishwasher and the dirty wok and chopping boards piled up in the sink.
