Page 30 of Pride and Privilege

Roscoe laughed to himself when he walked into Poppy’s bedroom, because she must have had a mad-dash cleaning spree before getting the car back to his flat. The place was surgically tidy. It would pass an army inspection. There wasn’t a single object out on any surface.

Fair enough. It’s not like she was getting much of an insight into his character at his own sterile show-flat. But even the furniture and décor in her room didn’t give any clue to her tastes. He suspected it had all been chosen by the landlord. It was that cheap, mass-produced stuff that would be found in student rooms and rented properties the world over.

Was it wrong that he peeped in her wardrobe? Just to see if there was space to hang his shirts, of course. (There wasn’t.) Then his eye fell on her chest of drawers, and images of underwear flashed through his mind. Images of Poppy in her underwear. Poppy on the single bed…

When had he last slept in a single bed?

He sat down on it, still laughing slightly to himself. Because this was all absurd. Him being here. In the bedroom of a girl he hardly knew. In the bedroom of hisExecutive Assistant. Breathing her air, living her life…

His eye fell again on the chest of drawers. It was opposite the bed, next to the wardrobe. That’s all there was room for. A chest of drawers and a wardrobe along one wall, the bed along the other. There was less than a metre of space between them down the middle of the room. He could reach out with his foot and touch it. A small window at one end of the room, a door at the other.

Such a tiny space. But did people really need any more room than that? On a basic, fundamental level of human survival, did anyone really need any more than a warm, dry room with a bed to sleep in? Maybe not. But did peopledeservemore? Of course they did.

He forced himself to look away from the chest of drawers, because the part of his mind that wasn’t philosophising grandiosely about human worth was still busy conjuring images of Poppy and underwear. Plain cotton knickers. Or lacy lingerie. And whatever else she might hide in those drawers… Without any prompting at all, his brain conjured a mental image of Poppy on this very bed, legs spread, a vibrator teasing her core. And then he was in the mental image, and he was the one teasing her with it, watching her face as he pressed the tip inside and…

Fuck.

That was just…ridiculously inappropriate.

And hot.

And really,reallyinappropriate.

It was gone midnight, but he went out to the living room and persuaded Dave to give him the wifi password. Once he figured out that the crappy wifi signal only stopped working every thirtyminutes instead of every five if he sat near the end of the bed with the door open, he worked until late.

Unfortunately, having the door open meant he was fully exposed to the sounds of Dave existing. The belch as he finished his curry. The phlegmy clearing of his throat. Dave using thefucking toilet. Jesus Christ.

On the plus side, it managed to completely block out any more Poppy fantasies. Until he finally turned his laptop off and got into her bed.

The sheets were freshly laundered. They had that dry, crisp feel. And they smelled nothing like her. But there was still something intimate about being there. The place where she slept. Where maybe she—

He got out of bed, poured himself a glass of water. Spent twenty more minutes checking some market movements on his phone, and made sure his alarm was set for four AM. Which was only two hours away. Shit.

Back in bed, he lay awake in the dark—although it wasn’t properly dark. There was a street lamp near the window, and Poppy didn’t have blackout curtains. It was loud outside, too, despite the flat being on a relatively quiet street. His flat—the one Poppy was at—was so high up that all the sounds of the city seemed completely remote. And even his other place, which was in a smaller building, was on a quiet mews, and felt distanced from the world by the weight of old stone.

Here, the road was close, the world outside only held back by the thinnest of skins. And Dave was in the room next door, just the other side of a thin partition wall. He could hear him moving around, the noise of his mattress. The flat was so small that all the rooms seemed to crowd around. The hum of the fridge, the living room clock. People passed in the street outside and their voices rang clearly inside the room. The vibration of passing cars reached into his mattress, their headlights crawled shadowsacross the ceiling. Was this one of the secret privileges he hadn’t realised his money bought? The ability to put a cushion between himself and the world outside. To create a world of his own liking. Or the illusion of one, at least.

He fell asleep wondering how Poppy was getting on, if she was comfortable in his seldom-used bed.

He fell asleep wondering if he was in her mind even half as much as she was in his.

FIFTEEN

The four-day Easter Weekendwasn’t long enough to get used to Roscoe Blackton’s flat. That first morning, Poppy spent a long time just walking around it, trailing her fingers over every beautiful surface, peeping inside every cupboard (immaculate, mostly empty). She had a long shower with water pressure so high it was almost as good as a massage. Or what she assumed a massage would be like. Then she made herself a slightly ridiculous breakfast of scrambled eggs with fresh herbs and smoked salmon, and a toasted bagel. And fruit. And yoghurt.

But there was so much fresh food. Far too much for her to eat. So she packed some of it into bags and took it to her mum’s place, stocking the fridge there with cheeses and ham and fruit and salad and vegetables and Fortnum & Mason truffle mayonnaise—because apparently that’s where Roscoe Blackton did his grocery shopping and apparently that was the sort of thing he ate. Whether Liam or Harvey would enjoy it, or the beetroot ketchup, or wild boar pâté, she had no idea. She considered it educational.

She sat on her mum’s sofa, watching her brothers argue over the video game they were playing, as she fought the urge to invite them to the flat. They would kill to watch some movies or play some games on Roscoe’s enormous fancy screen. But she couldn’t. It wasn’t her place. She didn’t even dare tell anyone she was living there. Far too many questions that she had only the weirdest answers to.

On Easter Sunday, a huge Easter egg was delivered to the flat. It was in a big gold box, with a slim gold ribbon, and the golden writing saidCharbonnel et Walker, which, when she looked it up online, turned out to be the chocolate shop the Royal Family used. There was a note—a little card—and it said:How’s my life?

So. Yeah. That was a highlight. But even better, even better thanthat, a short time after the egg arrived, a courier delivered a brand new phone charger. There was no note with it, but she hazarded a guess.

Poppy: Thank you. For the charger. And the egg.

Poppy: I assume it was you, and not divine intervention.

RB (work): Some might wonder what the difference was ;)

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