Page 73 of Cover Story

‘Bel Macauley?’ Connor said, ‘Bel Macauley’sa dream woman? A cheese dream more like.’

‘Funny, smart, ambitious. Very cute. Seems a genuinely nice person. Literally, only some sour old direct competitor in her professional field could find fault.’

‘Oh, haha. Bel’s pretty, I’ll give you that. And nice company for an evening. But add: frequently dresses for work like she’s plotting to climb a motorway gantry, full of herself, sarky, exhausting. The hubris of being born with a silver spoon. I promise you, the distaste is wholly mutual.’

‘You two really get across each other that much?’

‘She and her sycophantic sidekick Aaron needlessly opened hostilities with me on day one because she’s imperious, conceited and arrogantly thought she had me sussed out on sight. She’s too used to men going giddy at the Bel Macauley schtick. The scruffy, sweary indie movie heroine thing, Aubrey Plaza inParks and Recreation. My polite indifference to her appeal was reconfigured as me being a pompous wanker.’

‘She was very interested in you.’

‘I bet. The way a boxer wants to know their opponent’s weaknesses.’

Connor had deliberately snapped back before his real reaction could settle on his face.

Bel had started to provoke a new emotion: insecurity. He’d hedged and caveated her invite tonight to make declining easy, as he’d wanted to be absolutely sure she wanted to come.

And That Look she was giving him, what was that about?He’d glanced up and she was unexpectedly staring at him with this … discontentment … and if it didn’t sound insane, which it did …longing?

It gave Connor a feeling he’d not had since he was a kid in the school gymnasium, and someone had hard-pushed him off the climbing frame onto the crash mat. He could’ve looked away but he chose not to. If she wanted something from him, she could let him know.

He wanted her to let him know.

‘You think she lacks integrity?’ Shaun said. ‘Would she turn you over?’

‘No! Not at all,’ Connor said, recalling the good turn she did him with Toby. ‘Annoyingly.’

This was why he’d dodged: he didn’t actually know what he thought of her.

‘Well, I don’t know why or how you’ve turned her into Irene Adler to your Sherlock then. She’s the most intriguing person you’ve introduced me to in forever,’ Shaun said.

‘Ugh. If I’d known you’d take to her I’d never have risked introducing you. This is like annoyance squared.’

Their drinks arrived. Shaun paused with glass to lips and made the face he always made before he dropped one of his ‘et tu, Brute?’ lines.

‘I put it to you that the only thing you don’t like about her is that you don’t think she likes you.’

41

Bel opened her door to Connor the following Thursday afternoon and despite the relative solemnity of the occasion, a make-or-break professional meeting, she ended up hooting.

Connor was wearing a ‘just say it’ comedy hangdog fury look. His hair was as wet as if he’d been standing under a shower head, his jacket was drenched and his skin glistening with moisture, as if he’d run a marathon.

‘Ahahahahha,’ Bel offered as greeting.

‘Oh, fuck you!’ Connor said. ‘Going home to London can’t come fast enough.’

‘London, our famously rainless capital,’ Bel said, standing aside to let him in. ‘You southern boys, seriously. Have you heard of a thing called an umbrella?’

‘It was sunny when I left Deansgate!’

‘Yeah, Manchester does that, I’ve learned,’ Bel said.

‘I thought the Gallagher brother huge anoraks up here were a style thing but they actually serve a purpose, don’t they?’ Connor said.

He unbuttoned his jacket and peeled it off. You could wring it out like a dishcloth, Bel thought.

‘I’ll put that on a radiator for you. Wet white shirt, is it?Aspredicted, actual Mr Darcy,’ Bel said, before her brain could halt her mouth. Connor, rather winningly, blushed.

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