Chapter Fourteen
Now
E than led me to one of the plush sofas and lowered me onto it as if I was fragile. The cushion felt firm beneath me but also soft, the fabric against the backs of my legs slightly velvety.
He strode into the kitchen, his shoulders a tense line, then came back with a bottle of champagne and two glasses, along with a plate of canapés.
There were little salmon blinis with what looked like caviar pearls on top, the golden pastry shapes and creamy sauce of what could have been chicken vol-au-vents, and mini quiches.
‘These were in the fridge.’ He sat next to me and put everything on the glass table in front of us. ‘They haven’t been sitting out getting warm.’
‘That’s good,’ I said, ‘because I have really high standards even when I’ve been kidnapped by a house .’
He sighed and gestured at the plate, then poured two glasses of champagne, the bubbles reaching the rim but not quite spilling over.
‘This sofa is alchemy,’ I said as I picked up a blini. ‘Is this caviar?’
‘Sarah ordered the food.’ He handed me a glass. ‘I’m not a caviar sort of guy.’
‘I know that,’ I said with a smile. ‘Unless things have changed drastically since we last saw each other. But I think if you were a caviar guy now, then you would also have bought this place for yourself. You would be the sort of person who needed separate wine and beer fridges in their luxury kitchen.’
Ethan sat further back on the sofa and held his glass up.
I clinked it. ‘To being trapped together.’
‘To getting to spend time together,’ Ethan countered, and he gave me a hint of a smile, despite the worry still evident in his tight shoulders. He put his phone on his thigh and swiped and jabbed at the screen. ‘I don’t understand,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t get why it’s doing this.’
‘Won’t someone at your office get an alert that something’s wrong? That the house is in Panic Room Mode?’
‘They should,’ he said, ‘but seeing as nobody’s going to be in the office until Sarah gets back – and she probably won’t go in until tomorrow morning – I don’t think that’s going to help us.’
‘She won’t get an alert on her phone?’ I tried a mini quiche next, and the salty, rich flavours of some expensive cheese, a delicate herb I didn’t recognize, burst on my tongue.
‘Sarah’s committed to the company, and she knows the Sparks system as well as anyone – she was there throughout the testing. My worry is that now she’s off the clock, she won’t think anything could have gone wrong, because she’s as convinced as I was that it’s glitch-free.’
I sipped my champagne, and there was that niggle again: the one that suggested Ethan might have done this on purpose. ‘So the person we really need to get us out of this mess is you?’
‘Pretty much.’ He scanned the opulent room, as if looking for an escape hatch he’d forgotten about.
With the Smart glass set to blackout and all the lights on, it felt slightly suffocating – the lack of natural light made me crave it, and I imagined how, right now, the sunset would be turning the grey stone exterior, the fields and sea and houses nestled in the village, to gold.
But there was no chance of seeing it, so I kicked off my sandals and sat cross-legged on the sofa. I tried not to think about how long this might last – whatever had caused it – and decided to trust that we would be here for an hour or two, max. ‘How long have you been planning this?’
‘What?’ Ethan asked dryly. ‘Locking myself up with my ex-girlfriend on what should be the proudest night of my life?’
I wrinkled my nose. There was something so ordinary about ex-girlfriend , and I wanted to challenge him on it, but it wasn’t exactly the right time. ‘It’s not the proudest night of your life, then? Being stuck with me has ruined that?’
He glanced at me, his gaze flicking down to my bare legs.
He hadn’t put his shoes back on after showing me the nightlight trick, and he mirrored my position, shifting so he was angled towards me.
His trousers tightened around his thighs and I looked away.
‘How can it be,’ he asked, ‘when the Sparks system – the thing that makes this build stand out from so many others – has gone wrong?’
‘It’s only the open house.’
‘Which is the showcase. The event that’s meant to demonstrate how good it is, how sophisticated and smart and idiot-proof.
’ He closed his eyes for a long blink. ‘How can I sell it if the first time that people come to see the finished property, the house shuts itself down – with us inside ? I can just imagine the headlines: “Architect and ex-lover trapped inside flagship property by overzealous Panic Room feature”.’
I liked the sound of ex-lover better than ex-girlfriend, but that wasn’t the point. ‘That’s not punchy enough,’ I told him. ‘I’d go with: “Spark fizzes out for architect Ethan as house holds warring exes captive”. It’s not quite polished to perfection, but something like that.’
‘Oh God.’ Ethan ran a hand over his face. ‘You’re going to write about this in the Star , aren’t you? You could syndicate it, get it picked up by other papers. It’s the kind of thing they’d love. Fuck.’
‘You think you’re that important?’ I said, but the truth was, this was a real story.
An actual thing that had happened – was happening – to me.
It was already so much better than a bland report about an open house event for an impressive new redevelopment.
I could resuscitate my career by damaging his, I realized, the flare of possibility mingling with something sour tasting.
‘Architect and design magazines would cover it,’ he said. ‘Sarah got me interviews with a couple in the run-up to this. She said it would be good publicity.’
‘I read one of them,’ I said quietly. ‘It was how I found out you were the one who had done all this.’ I gestured to the ceiling, the original moulding restored around the crystal chandeliers.
‘You said, the house was never going to be called anything else .’ I deepened my voice, trying to mimic him, hoping it would raise a smile.
‘I wondered if you had seen any of them. I was half-expecting an Instagram DM or an email via the company’s website.’
My desire to make him smile was obliterated in an instant.
‘So – hang on. You wanted me to get in touch, but weren’t prepared to yourself?
You wanted me to do all the running, even though I’m still in the same house and you could have literally knocked on my front door?
’ I scooted off the sofa, picked up one of the pastry squares and bit into it.
Ugh. There was some sort of blue cheese hidden beneath the chicken and I gagged.
I turned away from him and forced myself to chew and then swallow it. So much for storming off elegantly.
‘I told you.’ He sounded equally annoyed. ‘I didn’t know if you’d speak to me. I haven’t exactly forgotten how we left things, how angry you were, and I thought it was best if I left it up to you.’
I walked to the window and tapped the glass, as if that would somehow wake up the house and force it into action. ‘You could have been brave and given it a go.’
‘And what would you have said? Honestly?’
I turned around. He was still cross-legged on the sofa, but his arms were folded tightly across his chest and I wondered if he’d chosen a tight fit on purpose so his clearly toned body was on show.
Eighteen-year-old Ethan wouldn’t have cared, but thirty-one-year-old Ethan – the one who had a string of incredibly elegant girlfriends – might.
Maybe he was a caviar guy now, after all.
I walked back over and perched on a cushion.
‘I would have spoken to you,’ I said. ‘I would have let you in and I-I would probably have given you a hug. Even the day after.’
He blinked. ‘The day after I came to Alperwick, on this build?’
I shook my head. ‘The day after our argument.’
His eyes widened, but the rest of him went still. ‘You mean the day after we broke up? The day after prom night, when I turned up at your door after I’d got out of the police station? The next day you would have let me in and hugged me and … what? Forgiven me?’
I nodded at the cushion. ‘I regretted our fight so much. I was angry with you, and frustrated, but after a few hours I understood why you’d done it.
I just …’ I looked up at him, saw how he’d composed his features into his original, impassive mask.
‘I spent so much time putting Mum first, skipping classes to take her to appointments, and I was starting to realize – being with you was helping me realize – how important it was to put myself first when it mattered. You were so kind, Ethan. But then you put yourself last , you jeopardized everything, and I—’
‘You would have forgiven me?’ he repeated. ‘The next day? But we didn’t speak to each other again. I was away that whole summer, thinking you didn’t want to see me, then you went off to university, and …’
‘I came back for Christmas and your family had moved away.’
‘We had to. Again.’ Ethan rubbed his forehead, the movement hard, as if he was trying to wipe away a Sharpie mark. ‘Fuck, Georgie. So they were true, then?’
‘What were?’
‘I was convinced, for years, and then I found …’ He sucked in a breath. ‘But I didn’t really believe that …’
‘I thought you’d forgotten about me,’ I admitted. ‘I thought that you’d got over me quickly, and so I tried to forget about you , but then there was Instagram.’
‘What about Instagram?’
‘My username is nondescript,’ I explained.
‘I didn’t expect – or want – you to realize that I’d followed you.
’ He’d posted a photo not that long ago, a shot of the beach at Porthgolow, where there was a vintage double-decker called the Cornish Cream Tea Bus.
I remember the jolt it had given me, knowing he was back in Cornwall, but I’d never considered that he’d come back for the house.
‘Then, when I had already agreed with my editor that I’d write a piece on the open house, my friend showed me the article, and I realized this was yours.
There was the bit about the name, and I—’
‘I never forgot about you.’ Ethan had gone from surprised to bleak. ‘I thought you were done with me. Even after …’ He shook his head, picked up his glass and took a long swig.
‘After what , Ethan?’
‘It was all too late. I didn’t know if I’d be welcome, and the thought of knocking on your door and you closing it in my face …’
‘Hey. Ethan.’ I moved closer to him, but he shifted away from me, the movement almost too small to notice. ‘It was all such a long time ago.’
He put his glass on the table and stood up. ‘I’m going to check the panel again. See if I can get us out of here.’
He walked off and I flopped back on the sofa.
I had imagined this moment so many times – admitting that I’d forgiven him almost immediately – and in all my daydreams, he’d been happy or relieved, wrapping his arms tightly around me.
He hadn’t been angry, like he was now. I rubbed my face and tried to think, but my mind was blank, so I got up, took another of the mini quiches, and went to find him.