Page 36 of My Lord
She shook her head. “It was the look in his eyes, Alex. It was as if he really hated me, but he didn’t know me. His face was contorted in anger which I found strange considering he just wanted my bag.”
“Are you sure you didn’t recognise him?” I asked. It was odd for a bag snatcher to be so violent, I believed.
“I’ll be honest, I kept my eyes closed a lot of the time because I thought he was going to hit me. He was a white guy and I’d say about my age.”
The more she spoke, the more I was convinced it wasn’t a chance bag snatch. Kids, teens stole bags, not grown men, unless there was a reason for it. I didn’t voice that to her, of course, but I knew I’d be speaking with Mackenzie about it. He had to have enemies, and maybe Gabriella did without realising. It could have been a member of staff that had been let go when streamlining, it could have been someone slighted by either of them at some point. Although not able to speak from experience, obviously, if a bag snatcher, in the middle of the day, encountered a tough snatch, didn’t they simply run away? To shout and threaten her with rape seemed something so far away from a chancer. I let her talk and told her how brave she’d been. She started to blame herself for walking and not paying attention to her surroundings. I allayed her fear, it was the middle of the day, she was walking in an affluent area, not some slum in the back of beyond. She wasn’t to blame herself anymore.
“I called a restaurant to have some dinner delivered, is that okay? I’m really not a cook, not even beans on toast, I’m afraid,” I said, handing her a tissue from a box on the sideboard.
“Surprisingly, I am hungry. I haven’t eaten since breakfast and that was a quick pastry before I left this morning.”
“Good. And can I say, you look so fucking hot sitting here in my shirt.”
She looked up and smirked and by God if she didn’t look even more beautiful with wet eyelashes and shiny eyes from crying. Her lips were plump and the tip of her nose slightly red.
She smiled, cocked her head to one side slightly and laughed. “I do adore you, Alex,” she said. At least she hadn’t said she loved me. I could do ‘adore’ easier than ‘love.’
I kissed the tip of her nose and rose to pour us both a glass of wine. Rain lashed against the windows and the skyline was obliterated from view.
“How long have you lived here?” she asked.
“About three years, I think. I lived in the family home for a while and then we decided it needed to be sold to pay off death duty. Mother and I moved to a townhouse in a mews that she also owned. It needed a ton of work and she just wasn’t up for London living anymore. She wanted to move on, so I kept the townhouse and she moved to the retirement village.” I walked back to the sofa and handed her a glass of wine. “Then I sold that and for a short time I rented another apartment while this was being converted.”
“Do you like it here?”
I pondered her question. “You know, I don’t anymore. It’s soulless and I hadn’t seen that before.”
“It could do with some colour, for sure,” she said, looking around.
The apartment was very monochrome, boring in fact, with the basics and nothing homely. “Maybe I’ll look for a house somewhere,” I said before sipping from my glass.
We chatted about London life, anything other than what had happened. We talked about our families, and for the first time she mentioned an estranged brother. She mentioned Mackenzie’s ex-wife very briefly; it appeared they had been a group of friends in their youth. She didn’t say anything more about her brother.
The onlypausewas when she wanted to show me some photographs of her home and then remembered she no longer had her phone.
“I’ll have to buy another, I’m sure I saved the images in the cloud,” she said, hopefully.
A buzz indicated that our dinner had arrived. As I left the apartment to run down to the foyer, Gabriella promised to set the table. By the time I was back up, she’d found napkins, crockery and cutlery, and a candle in a silver stag horn holder. I was sure I’d seen the candleholder in the past but hadn’t realised I had brought it with me to the apartment.
“Matches?” she asked, turning on the spot.
“No idea,” I replied, laughing.
“Oh, well, it looks pretty anyway.”
She took the box from me and we plated up our meals. She wafted her hand over the veal in lemon sauce and hummed. We sat to eat and one thing that I loved about her was,she ate! She didn’t pick or push her food around. She leaned over her plate at times and sucked up spaghetti. She laughed as sauce splashed onto her cheek, and daintily dabbed it with her napkin. It was the most fun I’d had in my own apartment even though the circumstances that brought it about were tragic.
That evening Gabriella slept beside me. We didn’t have sex as she was aching and sore. I just held her until she fell asleep. With her in my arms, I had the best night’s sleep in ages.
Chapter Eight
I went to work the following day and Gabriella promised that she would do nothing but relax. I was dismayed to learn she had visited the local deli and stocked my fridge and cupboards.
“It will go to waste,” I said, looking at packets of pasta and thanking the extremely long sell by date.
“I’m going to teach you to cook. I can’t believe your momma didn’t.” She laughed when I told her we had a cook, and that Mother had never prepared a meal herself, either.
“At least you do your own cleaning,” she said, looking around a spotless kitchen.
