“So?”
“So I slept with someone else!”
“Was it awful?”
Rory’s eyes, crinkled with amusement. His head bent over her br**sts. Kisses. Endless, endless kisses.
“No. It was . . . quite good. Really good.”
“And your problem is?”
“I’m meant to be sleeping with John.”
The barista girl is exchanging looks with Exhausted Father. She realizes they are both silently agog. “Six pounds sixty-three,” the girl says, with a small smile.
She reaches into her pocket for change and finds herself holding out last night’s knickers. Exhausted Father coughs—or it might have been a splutter of laughter. She apologizes, her face burning, hands over the money, and moves to the end of the counter, waiting for her coffee with her head down.
“Nicky . . .”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Ellie. You’ve been sleeping with a married man who is almost definitely still sleeping with his wife. He makes you no promises, hardly takes you anywhere, isn’t planning on leaving her—”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do know that. I’m sorry, sweetie, but I’d put my too-small expensively mortgaged house on it. And if you’re telling me you’ve just had great sex with a nice bloke who’s single and likes you and seems to want to spend time with you, I’m not going to start begging for Prozac. Okay?”
“Okay,” she says quietly.
“Now, go back to your flat, wake him up and have mad hot monkey sex with him, then meet me and Corinne tomorrow morning at the café and tell us everything.”
She smiles. How nice to celebrate being with someone, instead of having perpetually to justify them.
She thinks of Rory lying in her bed. Rory of the very long eyelashes and soft kisses. Would it be so very bad to spend the morning with him? She picks up the coffee and walks back to her flat, surprised by how quickly her legs are working.
“Don’t move!” she calls, as she comes up the stairs, kicking off her shoes. “I’m bringing you breakfast in bed.” She dumps the coffee on the floor outside the bathroom and dives in, wipes the mascara from under her eyes and splashes her face with cold water, then spritzes herself with perfume. As an afterthought she flips the lid off the toothpaste and bites off a pea-sized lump, swilling it around her mouth.
“This is so you can no longer think of me as a heartless, selfish abuser of men. And also so you owe me coffee at work. I will, of course, return to my heartless, self-centerd self tomorrow.”
She leaves the bathroom, stoops to pick up the coffee, and, smiling, steps into her bedroom. The bed is empty, the duvet turned back. He can’t be in the bathroom—she’s just been in there. “Rory?” she says, into the silence.
“Here.”
His voice comes from the living room. She pads down the hall. “You were meant to stay in bed,” she admonishes him. “It’s hardly breakfast in bed if you—”
He’s standing in the center of the room, pulling on his jacket. He’s dressed, shoes on, hair no longer sticking up.
She stops in the doorway. He doesn’t look at her.
“What are you doing?” She holds out the coffee. “I thought we were going to have breakfast.”
“Yes. Well, I think I’d better go.”
She feels something cold creeping across her. Something’s wrong here.
“Why?” she says, trying to smile. “I’ve hardly been gone fifteen minutes. Do you really have an appointment at twenty past nine on a Sunday morning?”
He stares at his feet, apparently checking in his pockets for his keys. He finds them and turns them over in his hand. When he finally looks up at her, his face is blank. “You had a phone call when you were out. He left a message. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but it’s pretty hard not to in a small flat.”
Ellie feels something cold and hard settle in the pit of her stomach. “Rory, I—”
He holds up a hand. “I told you once I didn’t do complicated. That would—um—include sleeping with someone who’s sleeping with someone else.” He steps past her, ignoring the coffee she’s holding. “I’ll see you around, Ellie.”
She hears his footsteps fading down the stairs. He doesn’t slam the door, but there’s an uncomfortable air of finality in the way it closes. She feels numb. She places the coffee carefully on the table, and then, after a minute, steps over to the answering machine and presses play.
John’s voice, low and mellifluous, fills the room. “Ellie, I can’t talk for long. Just wanted to check you’re okay. Not sure what you meant last night. I miss you, too. I miss us. But look . . . please don’t text. It’s . . .” A short sigh. “Look. I’ll message you as soon as we . . . as soon as I get home.” The sound of the receiver clicking down.
Ellie lets his words reverberate in the silent flat, then sinks onto the sofa and remains perfectly still, while the coffee grows cold beside her.
Chapter 23
FAO: Phillip O’Hare, [email protected]
From: Ellie Haworth, [email protected]
Excuse me for contacting you like this, but I’m hoping that as a fellow journalist you will understand. I am trying to trace an Anthony O’Hare who I guess would be the same age as your father, and in a Times column of last May you happened to mention that you had a father of the same name.
This Anthony O’Hare would have spent some time in London during the early 1960s, and a lot of time abroad, especially in central Africa, where he may have died. I know very little about him other than he had a son with the same name as you.
If you are he, or know what became of him, would you please e-mail me? There is a mutual acquaintance who knew him many years ago and would dearly like to find out what became of him. I appreciate this is a long shot, as it is not an uncommon name, but I need all the help I can get.
All best
Ellie Haworth
The new building is set in a part of the city Ellie has not seen since it was a random collection of shabby warehouses, strung together with unlovely takeaway shops she would have starved rather than eaten from. Everything that was in that square mile has been razed, swept away, the congested streets replaced with vast, immaculately clad squares, metal bollards, the odd gleaming office block, many still bearing the scaffold cauls of their nascence.