Page 82 of A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews
‘So, you’re over him?’ Tom sat motionless with a slice of pizza poised in mid-air.
‘So over him and my God, I wish I’d never, ever been under him,’ Mattie said with great feeling and Tom, who’d finally taken a bite of his pizza slice, spluttered so hard that Mattie had to whack him on the back.
‘Sorry, it went down the wrong way,’ he said, pulling out a handkerchief from somewhere so he could mop his streaming eyes. ‘Well, I’m glad you’ve got your Christmas spirit back, really I am, but you’ve gone down in my estimation.’
‘I didn’t realise I’d ever goneupin your estimation,’ Mattie said teasingly because there was nothing she could take offence to in Tom’s tone of voice; it was warm, friendly, evenaffectionate.
‘Oh, you have been up in my estimation for quite a while,’ Tom said, but his eyes were now fixed on the TV and the episode ofGoggleboxthat they’d barely been watching. ‘You must have realised that.’
‘Well, yes, when we’re not shouting at each other about tote bags …’
‘I think you’ll find that the only person who was actually shouting was you.’ It was Tom’s turn to nudge Mattie. ‘I was saying things in a perfectly modulated tone.’
‘It was lofty, Tom. Very lofty and also unbelievably annoying.’ It felt good to get that off her chest. Did she want another slice of pizza? No, she didn’t. ‘Anyway, it’s a shame you haven’t had a change of heart about Christmas, but at least it’s one less person to buy a present for.’
‘You would have bought me a present?’
‘Well, we’ll never know now, will we?’ Mattie said, turning to Tom so he’d see the especially sad smile she’d put on.
‘I’m sure that somehow I’ll get over the disappointment,’ Tom said, but for a nanosecond he looked quite disconsolate.
Maybe if she had fifteen minutes spare between now and after work on Christmas Eve, when both she and Tom planned to depart the flat for their respective parental homes, she’d knock him up another batch of chilli chocolate brownies to take with him to …
‘Where exactly are you spending Christmas again?’ she asked Tom, who was setting about the last slice of pizza, albeit unenthusiastically.
‘With my parents,’ he all but grunted. ‘We’ve been through this.’
‘Tom, we are flatmates. We’ve shared some of our deepest, darkest secrets,’ Mattie reminded him, and as she did she thought of the other things they’d shared. Or one other thing, the kiss, which she’d tried to forget about but the memory of it still caught her unawares. She’d be whisking batter and suddenly recall Tom holding her. Or first thing in the morning, as she was waiting for Jezebel to come to life, she’d remember the feel and taste and heat of Tom’s mouth on hers and she’d have to take a bottle of milk out of the fridge to press against her heated cheeks until she’d banished the memory away. So, yeah, they were far from strangers. ‘Just blooming well tell me where your parents live and where you grew up and stop acting like it’s some great mystery! Unless they were in the witness protection scheme.’
‘Yes, how ironic that Verity’s running gag was that I was a Russian sleeper agent, when actually it was my parents who were high-ranking KGB officials who defected at the height of the Cold War,’ Tom said flatly so that for the life of her Mattie couldn’t tell if it were a joke or not.
‘You’re kidding … right?’
Tom sighed. ‘My father has a landscaping business and my mother does the books for him.’
‘This would be Jerry and Margot, I saw their name in your dissertation acknowledgements … and where do they live? Where did young Tom spend his formative years?’ It was like trying to clean congealed grease off the back of the oven. ‘Come on! What’s the big secret? Unless you grew up somewhere with a comedy name like Staines or Basingstoke.’
‘I’ve been to Basingstoke and there is nothing remotely amusing about it,’ Tom said and he was exasperating enough that Mattie picked up the empty pizza box and biffed him over the head with it.
‘Tell me!’
‘Why?’
‘Because the not knowing is killing me!’ Mattie burst out, but it was more than that. It certainly wasn’t because Tom was a puzzle that she couldn’t figure out (though he was still that in a lot of ways), but more because she wanted to know everything about him. What made him laugh? When was the last time he cried? What was his favourite food when he was little? And what was his favourite food now? (It had better not be the breakfast panini from the Italian café.)
Tom took the pizza box out of her hands before she could do any more damage with it – his quiff was quite flattened – and put it down on the coffee table. Then he took Mattie’s slightly greasy, pizza-y hand in his, which was equally the worse for wear. Mattie’s heart quickened.
‘I’ll make a deal with you,’ he said in a quiet, solemn voice as if they were about to make a sacred vow, and the mood shifted from light-hearted and playful to something more tense, more charged.
‘What kind of deal?’ Mattie asked in a voice that suddenly sounded quite sultry.
Was Tom stroking the back of her hand?
‘If we manage not to kill each other in the shop tomorrow, by which I mean if you manage not to scream at me, I will give you a guided tour of Tom Greer, the early years. Deal?’
For a moment, Mattie felt disappointed, cheated, even, after the anticipatory promise of Tom’s quiet voice and the hand-holding. But then curiosity won out.
‘OK, and if you manage not to do the lofty voice, I will whip up a batch of chilli chocolate brownies for you to take back to … now, where was it again?’
