Page 33 of Pride and Privilege

“Your brother Liam turned up on Friday morning looking for you—couldn’t get you on your phone.”

“Oh. Yeah. Battery died. Thank you. Again. For the new charger.”

He dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “Your brother Liam turned up,” he repeated. “And Dave… Dave assumed he was my drug dealer and kept trying to buy a few grams of coke from him.”

“Oh God.” Poppy winced. “OK, he might be…um…racist.”

“Then he explained to me about all the chores I was expected to do, because that was part of your rental agreement. He said, let me quote, ‘She’s like a frugal Victorian housewife. You can get hours of work out of her, but her cooking’s shit and she keeps refusing my conjugal rights.’”

“Ah. Yeah. So he’s a bit sexist, too…”

“And then he made it clear that the rent he’d agreed with you had been based on the assumption that youwouldbe…performing certain conjugal acts.”

Poppy blushed. “Obviously I didn’t realise that’s what he was getting at when I signed the tenancy agreement…”

“AndthenI managed to get him to admit that he bought the flat outright with his severance payment from Goldman Sachs and, in fact, has no mortgage payments to make and that you are basicallypayinghim for the privilege of working as hislive-in cleaner.”

Poppy winced again. Roscoe’s voice had risen angrily on that last part, his screens forgotten as he fixed her with a look. “You arenotgoing back to that flat.”

“I don’t really have another option. Or I could move back into my mum’s, but there’s only one bedroom and—”

“Stay at mine.”

“But you’ll be there.”

“I can stay at my—I mean, I’ll be at work most of the time. I’ll barely be there. Less than normal, even.”

She said nothing. Couldn’t think what to say.

“Look,” he said, turning fully to face her, putting the bagel down and pushing his keyboard back as he leant, hands clasped, forearms on the edge of his desk, strong wrist cuffed by the expensive leather of his watch. The look he gave her was probably the one that got clients handing over their worldly goods. Holding their wallets wide open and begging him to take it.

Take it all. It’s yours.

She almost missed what he said.

“Pay you?” she repeated.

“Yes. Pay me what you paid Dave. You’ll be my tenant. All above board and legal. If you managed to put up with Dave, I’m sure you can put up with me. Like I said, I’m hardly there. You won’t even notice me. And it means you won’t have to pay for that train ticket any more. It’ll save you hundreds every month.”

“But…”

“What?”

“But…”

“Come on, Poppy. You know it makes sense.” And the smile he gave her was no longer ghostlike, but warm and alive.

SEVENTEEN

It was just goodsense, Roscoe told himself. That’s all it was. She needed a nicer place to live, and he had one. And it cheered him up, managing to bring at least one person a little bit of happiness and hope after a few days of nothing but worry and despair.

He needed hope and happiness. Because there had been something sitting in that hospital room with him—something other than the anxiety, and the irritation with how long everything took, and the beeping noises, and the clinical, utilitarian smells, and that sense that, somewhere not far away, tragedies were taking place… There had been something creeping over Roscoe as he sat by his dad’s bed. Something hollow and cold. A long, empty shadow at his back. Because here was his dad, having stepped so close to that mortal cliff—to the dark unknown on the other side. But here also was his dad still talking about work, about an office and a report. Screens and numbers.

It made him feel he was going mad. Like he must be watching the scene from outside. Because he was still panting, breathless, shaking, after scrabbling back from that cliff edge. And yet his father seemed unmoved. There was a yawning drop below them—death,right there, so close. And his father talked of nothing but work, things to be done, while Roscoe stared down at the fathomless depths, a great nothingness stretching out all around.

Or maybe he needed more sleep.

Fuck, he really needed more sleep. It was barely mid-morning. His head hurt, his thoughts felt grainy and strange. Ten more hours maybe, ten more hours until he could drag himself home and into bed. And Poppy would already be asleep by then, but he would know she was there. The flat would not feel empty. Maybe that was why he had asked—suggested, demanded, begged—that she stay. Because last night, when he blundered, shattered, into that bedroom and saw Poppy asleep in his bed, his first thought had been,Thank God.

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