Page 24 of You Belong With Me

Memories of shared confidences and intimacies by the glow of the chilli fairy lights kept making Edie smile, feel shy, or shiver.

Once he’d left, she went back to bed and slept until midday, waking up to find a WhatsApp that she’d since reread seventy-eight times.

I’ve got a pint of black coffee with two sugars in the BA lounge, and I look like I’ve been exhumed by detectives who want to run toxicology tests to prove foul play. In a hailstorm. I wouldn’t change a thing. Be mine forever? x

There weren’t many commuters grinning like a lovesick clot in the first grey week back in January.

On the Friday morning that her sole team member, Declan,was due to start, Edie made sure she was in her seat, laptop open, for a frankly magnificent twenty past eight. She was a victim of her own excellence, as it was too early to get coffees and pastries without them going cold. Edie reckoned she’d trot out once she had settled Declan in.

They’d exchanged cordial messages confirming the location, in which it was impossible to gauge much about each other.

Edie had intended to use the extra time to check emails and be hyper efficient, but she ended up browsing gastropub menus in the Dales for tomorrow’s trip with Nick and Hannah. The break hadn’t fallen at an ideal time, leaving Declan on his own at the start of next week, but at least they had a day to get acquainted.

The clock ticked to nine, then ten past, then half past. No sign of Declan. Edie segued from surprise to judgement.

Not the greatest indicator,she thought.If you can’t be arsed to be punctual on day one, what else will you be sloppy about?Pardon her for sounding like Margaret Thatcher, but it was an issue of respect to not roll up forty-five minutes after the fact.

He’s never been here before. Maybe he’s got lost,she chided herself. Then remembered, if so, he could call her. Mobile phones had ruined the middling excuse: nowadays, this sort of thing meant either huge crisis or flagrant etiquette misdemeanour.

Or, she could contact him?

Hi Declan, checking you’re OK and can find the place? Let me know if I should come down and collect you!

Two blue ticks, read instantly, yet minutes passed by and nothing back.Wow, OK.

Had Richard sent her a Gen Z problem? Richard wouldn’t have knowingly sent her a problem, so it’d have to be more sinister than that: someone who’d fooled Richard. Edie didn’t think such an employee existed.

Oh God, unless this was the nefarious plan from day one? Jessica running interference? Disrupt the operation, tell a different story to Richard, besmirch Edie’s capabilities. Choose someone he liked in Declan, who was what counterterrorism called acleanskin, someone with no convictions who didn’t fit the profile.

Admittedly, perhaps leaping straight to this sort of MI5 chat was paranoia.

Edie had always hated snitching, even before she became a prime snitch target. Yet by ten a.m., she wondered if she should just call Richard.Bet you’d reply to contact made by him, huh.If this was going to be warfare, keeping secrets for the other side wouldn’t help her.

At five past ten, the door of the office banged open dramatically. A tall, lean, disarranged man of about thirty, holding a bike helmet, stepped unsteadily, glassy-eyed, over the threshold.

‘Good morning, is it Edie? Hello! I’m so sorry I’m late – I’ve had a bit of a scrape,’ Declan said, in a strong Irish accent, which immediately made this information sound as if it was a charming gambit in a bucolic romantic comedy. ‘I think I was unconscious for a wee while. At least, I lost quarter to nine until about half past.’

‘Oh fuck! What happened?’

‘A car knocked me off my bike. I woke up on a roundabout. I was zooming along likeI’ve got this Nottingham thing cracked. Then crack.’

‘You’re bleeding!’ Edie said, pointing at the red mark that was flowering through his white shirt at waist height.

Declan looked down, swiping a luxuriant amount of his brown hair out of his eyes. ‘Aw, shit. So I am.’

‘You’re really pale?’

He had that distinct quality of grey-green, about-to-boak clammy that couldn’t be confused with his Celtic fairness.

‘I am?’ Declan put a hand to his glossily sweaty face.

‘Declan, you shouldn’t be here – you need to go to hospital! Why did you come in?’

‘I didn’t want to make a bad impression.’

There was a beat of silence, and they both laughed.

‘Let me help you.’ Edie ran over to guide him to a chair, bearing his weight with some difficulty as he staggered. He was surely six foot two at least; if he fell onto her, it’d be like a skyscraper demolition.

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