Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [82]
‘I don’t know why she was here, Nat. Honest.’
‘You had three minutes with her.’
‘And we weren’t talking about what happened to have brought her here.’
‘Excuse me. Of course. How dull. What were you talking about?’
‘Work. Cars. Travelling. That sort of stuff.’
‘It doesn’t make any sense.’
‘Maybe she likes provincial guys.’
Natalie narrowed her eyes. ‘Like you?’
He pretended to be reading the card for the first time, squinting at it. ‘Yup. Like me. I’ve definitely made it on to her shortlist.’
‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you? It’s, like, fate or something.’
‘Sarcasm does not become you.’
‘And what about you? Did you put her down?’
‘I did.’
Natalie scowled. Tom laughed. ‘What is your problem, Natalie?’
She didn’t answer. ‘You going to get her details, then?’
‘You going to give me a reason not to?’
She wanted to shave off his incredible performing eyebrow, and stove in his dimple. ‘Don’t flatter yourself.’
‘Okay, then. Yes.’ Tom walked towards the desk where Cupid – in the guise of a middle-aged woman wearing too much foundation – was the keeper of all numbers.
He turned back briefly. ‘You getting any numbers?’
Natalie balled up her cards and threw them at him.
She waited for him, though. She had to – they’d come in his car.
Tom ostentatiously put the card into his wallet, next to his driving licence, and patted it gently as they walked towards the car park. ‘I must say, Nat, you do seem very stroppy all of a sudden. It isn’t my fault she showed up.’
‘Isn’t it?’
Tom shrugged his shoulders. ‘What are you talking about? You’re being completely paranoid. If I’d wanted to do something about Eve, I could have done it when we were in London for the party, couldn’t I?’
She remembered. Yes, he could.
‘So why would I go to all the trouble of staging something like this?’
He was getting quite near the knuckle. But she was too sulky to think it through properly. She climbed into the car, and fastened her seatbelt. They’d gone two miles before she said, ‘Are you going to call her?’
‘Maybe. I might. I’m not a monk, you know.’
She turned on the radio, and looked out of the window as though the streets they were driving down were new and exciting to her.
The next morning he told Serena about it. She sucked in her cheeks and exhaled slowly. ‘I don’t know, Tom. It sounds like she’s either on to you – and she’d be pretty thick not to be, wouldn’t she? – or she’s really, really pissed off with you.’
‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, Serena.’
‘She’s not an egg.’
Tom smirked.
‘Admit it – you liked her being jealous.’
‘Oh, I’ll admit it, all right. I bloody loved it.’
‘And are you going to confess?’
‘No way.’
Serena stood up. ‘On your head be it, Tom. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, you know.’
‘I haven’t scorned her.’
‘It’s an expression.’
‘It’s a load of rubbish. She blinking well scorned me, didn’t she? Can’t take me seriously in that way, can’t she? I beg to differ. She was pretty flipping serious last night. If she thinks I’m sitting around pining for her like some loser, she’s never going to work anything out, is she? If she thinks someone else might be interested… well, that might just galvanise her…’
Serena wasn’t sure.
Lucy
Patrick had a job interview. In Leeds. Lucy didn’t want to move to Leeds, but she didn’t want to tell Patrick that. She hadn’t a clue whether or not he wanted to do the job. They weren’t talking on that level. She laundered the shirts and gave advice about the ties, and cooked the breakfast that would sustain a man on a motorway and didn’t ask. She kissed his cheek, waved and beamed at him from the door, watched until his car had disappeared from view. Recognised that she was relieved he had gone, and instantly felt bad about that.
And then she made a mug of tea and two phone calls. One to a friend with a son Ed’s age, to ask her to pick up the children the following day: she claimed she had a dental appointment,