I tried to be as dignified as possible whilst emptying my boots out into the sink, but I still caught the man smirking at me. Amused.
‘Were they actually expensive?’ he asked.
I cleared my throat, but I wasn’t about to lie – who cared what he thought? ‘Two hundred pounds. Or thereabouts.’
He let out a shocked bark of laughter. ‘Fuck me.’
I felt myself blush again. ‘They were a birthday present, to myself.’
To be fair, Richard had given me a fifty-pound gift voucher, which I’d put towards them. Though he’d been annoyed that I hadn’t used it on some ‘smart work clothes’. I think it was a gift mostly intended to get me out of my painty T-shirts.
His eyes strayed to the blanket on the bench seat, and he seemed to put two and two together. ‘Did you make that too?’
‘Yeah, that’s one of mine,’ I admitted.
He whistled through his teeth. ‘Looks complicated. How long did that take you?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, though I did. ‘Maybe… just over a hundred hours.’
It was more like two hundred but I didn’t want to go blowing my own horn.
‘Jesus,’ he said, and crossed over to the kettle on its little gas ring. ‘You’re shivering, by the way. Hot drink?’
I was. Fuck. I thought of the long walk back to my flat, and the silence that awaited me there.
‘Sure. What do you have?’
He knelt and looked below the counter. ‘I’ve got tea, beer…’ He looked up at me, eyes crinkled slightly with humour. ‘Do you need those options again?’
‘Tea, please,’ I said, reluctantly cracking a smile. Mostly because I was relieved we weren’t talking about the blanket any more.
‘So,’ he said, straightening. He picked up the copper kettle and started to fill it. ‘If it took you that long, why did you donate it?’
Okay, so apparently we weren’t done talking about it.
‘Personal reasons,’ I said, and leant against the wall instead of sitting on the offending blanket. ‘Why do you collect Diana memorabilia?’
He huffed a laugh, doling tea bags into a pair of commemorative mugs. ‘I don’t. This place used to belong to an older couple – they used it as a sort of… shrine. Kept it moored at the bottom of their garden. I’m still working on clearing it out.’
‘Mmmhmm… and how did you come to be the recent owner of such a fine vessel?’ I asked, as he passed me my cup of tea – handle first. The only acceptable way to do it. I had to get Richard to put cups down before I took them, I’d burned myself too many times. My fingers brushed his as I accepted the mug and I winced at how cold they were. Surprisingly soft too, for a guy living on a boat, just barely starting to roughen at the tips.
His voice was soft too when he said, ‘Personal reasons.’
Fair enough. I’d earned that. ‘And you bought two giant bags of my crochet because…’
‘It gets really cold on here at night. Went in to buy some blankets, a few jumpers, but the woman in there was just sticking prices on the bags and it looked like the best stuff in there. And possibly the only stuff someone’s Tory grandfather hadn’t died in, on or under.’
That was an understatement. Not to be a bitch but my crochet was leagues above the bobbly old microfleece blankets and knackered M&S jumpers the charity shop usually stocked. He’d be warm as toast in here with all those jumpers and blankets. Not to mention he’d look miles better in them too.
‘Maybe you should take that jumper back, though,’ he said, cutting off my train of thought. ‘Since it’s cashmere and all… I’ll probably just ruin it.’
‘I um…’ I felt my face burn hot with embarrassment. ‘I don’t really want it back. I just sort of freaked out because I wanted it gone and then… you turned up in it at my shop…’
‘The wool shop?’ he surmised, and I nodded. ‘So… bad associations with the jumper?’
‘You could say that… I made it for my ex,’ I said, deciding there was no sense tiptoeing around the subject. ‘I’m surprised it took so many to trigger the sweater curse but it happened eventually.’
‘Curse?’ He looked amused. ‘I thought the woman in the shop was a bit witchy. But she seemed too nice to curse any-one.’
