Page 8 of Smoke & Ashes
“It’s long, I couldn’t do it from memory, but I’ve got a slim volume of Eliot back at my place if you wanted to hear it.”
I pulled a slightly perplexed face. “Couldn’t you just find it online? I figure that and porn are what the internet is for.”
“I could.” She leaned forward and made a noise that was a mixture between a sigh and a laugh. “Or we could have a look for itback at my place.”
Oh.Oh. I almost choked on my moules. “Sorry I—I didn’t think you were going to go through with the whole seduction thing.”
“You thought I was a bored straight woman looking to kill an otherwise dull evening by stringing you along for a couple of hours?” She didn’t seem angry exactly, but she had a bit of ayou’ve let me down, you’ve let the school down,vibe to her.
“No. Yeah. A bit. Sorry.”
She slumped. I felt shitty that I’d made her slump. “Look. This obviously wasn’t what I was planning on doing when I woke up this morning, and I’m suredivorced estate agentisn’t anywhere near the top of your list of sexual fantasies, and if you feel—I don’t know—fetishised or taken for granted or anything like that then please forget I said anything. I’m making this up as I go along, and I probably got carried away, but when you walked through that door I thought I’d won the fucking lottery because I honestly do think you’re hot as hell and I really, really want to take you home right now.”
I … I could work with that. A little voice at the back of my mind said that this was going to be a bad idea and that we were both in way the wrong place emotionally for hooking up to make anything even resembling sense. But who the hell was I to judge her choices? And while I should probably have been more cautious about my own, given how my life was going, having a one-night stand with a forty-something divorcee from Brentford was probably the healthiest thing I’d done in about six years. Of course there was still Tara to be thinking about but we’d never quite pinned down whatever the hell it was we were doing and she’d always struck me as the sort who thought monogamy was a strictly one-sided deal. I wasn’t a fan of one-sided deals.
Twelve minutes later we were in a cab on the way to her place.
“So … what happened with your wife?” I thought it was best to get the elephants out of the room as soon as possible.
“Husband. And before you say anything, if you make me give you thebisexuals existspeech we are stopping this taxi right now and you’re walking back to Bow Street.”
That was me told. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have made assumptions.”
“Don’t worry about it. I get that you’re still worried that I’m playing tourist here, and you’re not totally wrong. It’s just that it’s the casual-sex-with-a-private-investigator part that’s new to me. Not the going-to-bed-with-a-woman part.”
“Good to know. And. Well. You don’t have to go to bed with me if you don’t want to.”
“I know. But we’ll see how it goes.”
The journey was short, and we stopped outside an almost terrifyingly normal semi-detached house. It was one of those pretty pre-war jobs with bay windows and a neat little front garden. A brick-arched porch led up to the front door and on the other side of that was an achingly homey hallway with soft grey walls and stripped floorboards. This was a place that people had tried to make a life in.
“So …” I drew out the syllable to give myself thinking time. “I think you were going to read me a poem?”
She nodded. “I know this sounds like a line. But I do actually keep it in the bedroom.”
I let her lead me upstairs. This was turning into a very strange day.
5
Sex & Eliot
Iwas beginning to get a little bit creeped out. Housing-wise I’d spent the past few years bouncing between my very, very batcheloretty flat in Muswell Hill, Julian’s absurd range of high-end pleasure palaces, and most recently the crumbling Gothic splendour of Safernoc Hall. The last time I’d gone into an honest to goodness family home, it had been because the family in question had been torn apart by a pack of feral vampires.
Also, my PI senses were tingling. “I don’t want to kill the mood,” I said as Penelope settled herself—a little self-consciously, I thought—onto the edge of the bed and kicked off her heels. “But it feels like this place is a bit too big for just you and your husband.”
To my surprise, she looked almost scared. She took a deep breath. “This isn’t what you were expecting, I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s not that, it’s …”
She swiped through her phone and showed it to me. On the screen was a picture of a boy and a girl, smiling in that slightly resentful way teenagers got when you insisted on photographing them. “David and Leah. Fourteen and Sixteen. They’re with their father for the evening, which makes tonight one of the few nights I get to myself.”
“And you wanted to spend it with me?” I didn’t mean to sound quite that shocked.
She shifted uncomfortably. “I know you said your job wasn’t as exciting and mysterious as it sounded. But I’m sure you’ve got far better things to do with your time than hang out with a forty-six-year-old divorced woman with two kids.”
“You know what? I really don’t.” That earned me a slightly confused look. “Sorry, that came out much more faint-praisey than I intended.”
She took her phone back and put it down on the bed beside her. “It’s fine.”
