Page 34 of Pressure Head
“No! God, no—come in. Graham’s here. I asked him round for a meal—thought sitting alone every night with a takeaway couldn’t be good for him.”
The tension around Phil’s eyes relaxed, and he nodded. “Decent of you. I’ll leave you to it, then.” He thrust the bottle of wine at me. “Here. I wanted to apologise for yesterday.”
“Oh, right.” I didn’t quite know what to say.
“You know. In the car. I know I pissed you off. It’s just . . . There’s stuff you don’t know about me . . .” He half shrugged. “Anyway, I’ll get out of your face now.”
“Don’t be daft!” Okay, so maybe I was just a little bit desperate not to be left on my own with Graham any longer. I grabbed Phil by the arm not holding the bottle and practically dragged him inside—dropping his arm in a hurry when it occurred to me he might mistake my eagerness for something it wasn’t. Honest. “Graham will be pleased to see you,” I added.
I led him through the hall and into the kitchen. Graham had got up from the table, probably because Arthur, the big bully, had scented weakness and jumped up on top of it. “Arthur!” I yelled, clapping my hands. “Get down!” Haughtily, and in his own good time, Arthur left off hissing at Graham and jumped down via one of the chairs.
“Sorry about that,” I said. “If he does it again, just shove him off, all right? Actually, why don’t we go through to the living room?”
“Want me to open this?” Phil asked, holding up the wine. It was a French Merlot; looked expensive, like his leather jacket. Looked tasty too.
The wine, I meant.
Honest. Again.
“Um—best not, maybe.” I glanced over at Graham. He roused himself to say,No, go ahead, but of course we didn’t. “I’ll put the kettle on,” I offered.
We all ended up sitting in a row on the sofa, with Graham in the middle like a Victorian chaperone, although I wasn’t sure quite whose virtue he was protecting. His own, most likely. Arthur jumped on my lap (he winded me, but I was used to it) and Merlin again flirted shamelessly with Phil.
It ought to have been easier to find stuff to talk about with three of us here, but somehow it was even harder. I realised all Phil and I ever did was talk about the case, argue, or swap innuendo, none of which seemed very appropriate with Graham here. Luckily I remembered there was a League Cup match on telly tonight. I grabbed the remote and switched it on to find Chelsea had scored already. I groaned. “Come on, you Reds,” I muttered despairingly.
Phil gave me a dirty look. “I might have known you’d be a Man U. supporter.”
“And I might have known you’d be a fan of the boys in blue. But what was that supposed to mean?”
“Have you ever been up to Manchester in your life?”
“Yeah, I’ve been there. I’ve even seen a home match or two.”
“But basically, you’ve got about as much connection to the place as my left nut.”
I grinned. “I wouldn’t know. You tell me what your left nut’s been up to these last twelve years.” I wouldn’t have minded listening to the edited highlights, anyway.
Graham stood up suddenly, startling Arthur off my lap. “I ought to go.”
“Nah, it’s early yet,” I protested, feeling guilty but at the same time, a little bit miffed. Phil and I weren’t beingthatgay.
“Thanks, but . . . I think I’d like to go home. Thank you for the meal.”
Phil got up, and then both of them were looming over me, one skinny and scruffy if freshly washed, and the other big and bulky in all the right places. “I’ll drop you off,” Phil said. “No need for Tom to turn out again.”
“Okay. Bye, Tom.” They trooped off, leaving me with two cats, a load of washing up, and a bottle of wine I wasn’t sure whether to open or not. Was Phil coming back? He hadn’t said either way. But it really was early yet, so maybe . . .
I washed up, bunged some clothes in the wash, watched the rest of the match (United won three goals to one—take that, Phil Morrison), took the laundry out, bunged it in the dryer, and eventually had to accept I was on my own for the rest of the night.
So I took my nagging sense of failure upstairs and went to bed.
