Page 66 of Love and Loathing

“Among other things.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I am! I know how hard you worked. I can respect that, even if I don’t like the outcomes of it. I’m not half as small-minded as you keep making me out to be.”

Aubrey glanced over. She was probably right. She was probably right about a lot of things, like the reasons he’d walked away when confronted with the garden. Safer to nip this doomed romance in the bud. Safer than risking his heart again. Except, he’d concluded bitterly coming home from Roscoe’s office, it was a bit too late for that. Evie had been there… Evie had turned up out of the blue, just like every damned daydream, Evie walking back into his life. But this Evie was pale and wet and trembling. And talked to him like a stranger, like an acquaintance, just her brother’s friend. He’d watched her leave, stood in that silent white kitchen, Roscoe tactfully not saying a word as they heard the office door shut behind her. Evie running down the stairs and back into the rain, running away from him… And it was one of those old cartoons… Someone had thrown the weight over the cliffside and he was watching, helpless, as the rope whipped past him, rapidly uncoiling, the loop around his ankle about to drag him down, too.

Too late to worry about getting hurt.

“Romona’s away,” Evie said, having given up waiting for him to reply. She said it in a light, precise way, and though he watched the road, he could feel the careful look she gave him.

“Oh?” he prompted in that same light way, not wanting to jump to any conclusions.

But she said, “Aubrey,” as though starting a completely new subject. “I don’t want to go to dinner. I’ll feel like I’m being judged, like you’re watching my every reaction.”

“That’s not—”

“I know. But I won’t be able to relax. So how about… Look… There’s a supermarket around the corner from Romona’s place. We could each buy what we want, make our own dinners. Cook them together. Eat them together. That’s what you’re worried about, isn’t it? You want a serious all-in relationship and you don’t think we’ll work. This would be a better test than eating out, because that’s what it’d be like, isn’t it? Sitting in a flat together, nothing to do but look at each other across the table, nothing to talk about but the day we’d had, and the weather, and…and if we need to buy washing up liquid.”

Aubrey wrinkled his nose at this depiction of domestic bliss. “I want to take you to a nice restaurant.”

“Yes, I know the type you mean. The wine menu starts at three figures and they keep scraping the crumbs from your table between every course and the table linen’s so thick you could construct space suits from it.”

“Not somewhere quite that stuffy…”

“Supermarket,” Evie said firmly. “Romona’s flat. Awkwardness. Deafening silence.”

“I’m more worried about screaming. You stabbing me with a stick of celery.”

Evie laughed. “I’d use an asparagus spear.”

“I see you’ve put some thought into it.”

“Since the moment we met.”

“Well then,” he said dryly. “How can I refuse? Tell me the way to Romona’s flat.”

Romona’s flat was the attic floor of a small Victorian semi. Aubrey had a hell of a time putting the wheels back on the bike in the cramped ground floor hallway—it was raining heavily again outside. He cursed silently as the spanner slipped and banged his knuckle, Evie watching him, plastic carrier bags in her hands, dripping rainwater all over the dirty, cracked terracotta tiles.

“Chain it to the radiator,” Evie said when he was done.

He did so, took the bags from her, and followed her up the narrow, creaking stairs. She was right, at least, about all of this being extremely unromantic. But he walked into the flat after her and his heart was beating like a bird taking flight.

The flat looked like it belonged to a forty-something academic, which was, it turned out, exactly what Romona was.

“She’s a politics lecturer,” explained Evie as they unpacked shopping onto the scrubbed pine surfaces of the old Victorian sideboards that made up the narrow galley kitchen. It was built into the eaves, the roof sloping. The splashback tiles were glossy, Mediterranean blue. Arty ceramics and living herbs cluttered the shelves and window ledge. “I met her at university when she was a mature student.”

“You studied politics?”

“Yes.” She glanced at him. “Not going to make some quip about that?”

“No.” Instead, he’d found himself mildly surprised, although he didn’t know why. Just that the revelation set off a mix of jumbled thoughts all at once: Evie a student. How smart she undoubtedly was. That she had graduated, unlike him. That she had only graduated three years ago and was very young. That his choice of law speciality—tax—had been entirely due to Liv’sinfluence. That Evie was right: Liv had controlled his life for years. But she didn’t anymore.

He found himself smiling at Evie, suddenly happy in that bizarre way that often happened around her, like it had when walking back to Conyers from the viewpoint, his entire mood lifting as though the world had just pivoted towards the sun.

She was arranging her ingredients neatly by a wooden chopping board. Baby corn and mangetout and mixed mushrooms. Miso paste and garlic and soy sauce. Her dark bobbed hair was brushing her jaw, her pale green jumper a little creased, clinging to her slim form. Yes, he was suddenly sure he could sit and look at her across a table forever.

---