Chapter Two
Lake
“Oh. My. God!”
“You don’t need to be so dramatic about it,” I insisted. I might have been calm on the outside, but inside I was struggling to make sense out of everything.
Verity closed her eyes for a moment, then reopened them in a way that screamed she was hoping to see something different. “Not be dramatic,” she said, her voice so high-pitched I imagined dogs within a mile radius of my house sitting up and cocking their heads. “He’s cleaned you out.”
“He hasn’t cleaned me out.” I waved an arm limply at the living room, which had been a lot less empty a few short hours ago. “There’s a sofa, isn’t there?”
“He took your TV.”
I shrugged. “I hardly ever watched it.”
“He took the pictures off the wall.”
“Were there pictures?” It was an unconvincing attempt at being offhand, given the three darker rectangles where the sun hadn’t faded the paint. “I needed new ones anyway.”
When she headed upstairs to the bedroom, I remained behind to say a silent prayer.
If luck had been on my side today, I would have been alone when I returned home to find that Carl had not only left, but had helped himself to a few things on the way out.
Although, if luck had really been on my side, he wouldn’t haven’t robbed me and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
“Oh. My. God!”
Well, that didn’t sound good. I braced myself for more bad news. “What?”
“He took your bed.”
A trip upstairs confirmed he had indeed taken the bed, leaving nothing but an empty space behind. Verity’s gaze narrowed on that space. “You should hoover under your bed more often, you scruff.”
I had to admit there were more than a few dust bunnies lurking there, but I could hardly have foreseen an eventuality where the bed was there in the morning and gone by the afternoon.
My sister shook her head. “You know what this means, don’t you?”
“That he found a place to stay.”
She shot me a dirty look. “It means he organized a removal van, that he had help, and that he planned this ahead of time.”
I opened my mouth to rebut the hastily drawn theory, realized I couldn’t—not a single damn part of it—and closed it again. The best I could manage was, “If he had a removal van, why didn’t he take the sofa?”
Verity laughed. “Because it’s not worth taking, numbskull. It was second-hand when you got it, and how many years ago was that?”
“A few,” I admitted.
Verity strode over to the fitted wardrobe and flung the doors open. It was only half-full. “Please tell me you’ve been Marie Kondo-ing the place?”
“Marie, what?”
“Kondo. You know, the whole if it doesn’t bring you joy, throw it out thing.”
I joined her at the wardrobe. “It must have passed me by.”
“Everything that isn’t at least a hundred years old and dead passes you by.”
“That’s not true,” I argued.
Verity sighed. “So he took your clothes as well?”
“It would seem so.” I plucked a hanger from the rail. It held a pale blue silk shirt patterned with darker blue flowers. “But why only take half of them?”
Verity’s lip curled as she studied it. “I guess because he has better taste than you.”
“Hey!” I said, genuinely hurt. “There’s nothing wrong with this shirt.”
Her lips twitched. “Do you reckon if I called him and offered him money, he’d come back and take it?”
I hung the shirt back and closed the wardrobe doors, the reality of the situation settling in hard enough that even I was struggling to find a bright side.
Only a few hours ago, Carl had waved me off and told me to have a good day.
Finding him gone would have been a punch in the gut.
Finding he’d left with half of my possessions had me not knowing how I was supposed to feel.
Upset? Angry? Both? It was going to take more processing to get past the pervading numbness.
“Let’s have a cup of tea,” Verity suggested. “Assuming he hasn’t taken the kettle.”
He had taken the kettle. He’d left some pans, though, so I used one of the biggest to boil water. There was some good news in the kitchen: the washing machine, fridge-freezer, and oven were still in situ. Gone were the microwave, the coffee machine, most of the food, and most of the crockery.
Verity studied the chipped white mug with I heart Majorca printed on the front. “It was that or the one with Henry VIII on it missing the handle,” I said.
She pulled the mug closer and watched the steam rise, worryingly silent. “You have to stop doing this,” she said eventually.
“Doing what?” I sounded defensive.
“Taking in waifs and strays. Believing the best of people just because they’ve got a pretty face.”
“You make me sound like a pervert.”
She steepled her fingers. “Look me in the eye and tell me you and Carl never slept together.”
I kept my expression neutral, though it took effort. “Define sleeping together.”
She leaned forward, her expression so intense I nearly shrank back.
She was six years younger than me, but twice as fierce.
No one would walk away from Verity Larson with her TV and bed.
Not and keep their balls intact, anyway.
But her sad sack of a brother was another matter.
“Did you have sexual relations with him?”
I pulled a face. “Sexual relations? Am I in court?”
“Answer the damn question.”
I tried to take a sip of tea as a delaying tactic, realized the handle-less mug was still too hot to pick up, and abandoned the idea. “Did you know that during his reign Henry VIII was believed to have executed seventy thousand people?”
“Fascinating.”
“And that his nickname was Old Coppernose because Cardinal Wolsey had coins made of a cheaper metal, and the thin coating of silver wore away just where his nose was.”
“Lake…”
I sat back in my seat with a sigh. “Carl wanted to thank me for giving him a place to stay.”
The look on my sister’s face was so scandalized that for a moment I considered offering her some pearls to clutch. She recovered quickly. “Oh my God. He Pretty Woman-ed you. Only without the happy ending.”
I couldn’t help myself. “Oh, there were definitely some happy endings. He wasn’t a prostitute, though.”
“And I suppose he told you that?”
I winced. He had. He’d made a big thing of having been on the streets for months without having fallen that far. His words. I would never have been so judgmental. I’d told him it was admirable he’d found other ways of getting by, especially with looks like his.
In retrospect, it had perhaps been a little na?ve. Especially considering he’d crawled into my bed within a week of me letting him stay. Maybe it was the bed he’d liked all along, and he’d just bided his time until he could get his hands on it.
“How far did you go?”
I met my sister’s nosey question with a raised eyebrow. “What do you want—details?”
She frowned. “No. I just…” I hitched the eyebrow higher. “Just tell me you didn’t fall in love with him.”
“He was here for two months.”
“You can fall in love with someone after two minutes. Time has nothing to do with it.”
I rolled my eyes. For Verity and her husband, it had been love at first sight, and unfortunately, that was the yardstick she used to measure every other relationship. “Not everyone is like you and Wayne.”
“Well, he certainly never robbed me.”
I didn’t respond. My tea was finally cool enough that I could lift the mug with both hands and drink.
“I can give you some mugs.”
“Thank you.”
“I can’t give you a bed.”
“I’ll buy another.”
When I put my mug down, Verity grabbed my hands.
I tried to tug them free, but her grip was mountain-climber strong, only surpassed by her tenacity.
I gave in and met her gaze, her eyes the same shade of brown as my own.
“I hope you realize,” she said, “that what I’m about to say comes from a place of great love.
You’re my brother, and I hate seeing you taken advantage of.
But you have to realize you put yourself in these situations. ”
“So I was just supposed to leave Carl on the streets?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “If the alternative was him robbing you blind, then yes. You’re forty years old, nearly forty-one.”
“I’ll call the undertaker tomorrow and have him measure me for a coffin,” I said dryly.
“Not my point.” She sighed. “I want to see you happy, but these young, pretty boys you keep hooking up with that don’t have a penny to their name aren’t the way to go about it. You need someone age-appropriate. Someone with a stable job.”
“Let me guess. You have someone in mind.”
She released my hands, and I quickly tucked them away on my lap before she changed her mind.
“Well, Wayne has this friend.” I braced myself for what was to come.
“He’s roughly your age.” I made a sarcastic tick in the air, but it didn’t slow Verity any.
“He’s an undertaker, so he has a steady income and job security. ”
I laughed. “I was joking about contacting an undertaker.”
She pressed on. “He has a two-bedroom house in Highgate and drives a Porsche.”
“Ooh. A Porsche,” I said, with mock enthusiasm. “What color?”
Her brow furrowed. “Yellow.”
“Yellow! All the colors in the world he could choose from, and he goes for yellow.”
“The color is hardly the key thing here. He’s a nice guy. You might really hit it off.”
“Maybe.” I doubted it. He sounded incredibly boring, and I had an inkling that Verity’s roughly your age would put him closer to fifty than forty.
“Will you go on a date with him?”
I tilted my head, studying her. “Why would this paragon of financial stability be interested in me? I don’t even own my own bed. Or a microwave. Or a TV. Or a―”
“You did this morning.” It was a mistake to remind her of Carl. “Call him.”
“What?”
“Call Carl. He has a phone, right?”
He did. I should know. I’d not only bought it for him, but I’d been paying for the contract. I added it to my mental list of things to cancel. “And say what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Bring all my things back, you absolute tosser.”
“Nice opener,” I said, hitting call. In news that would surprise no one, it rang once before going straight to voicemail. “He’s blocked me.”
“Predictable.”
“Yeah.” I took a deep breath in, hurt and mortification making their way through the veil of numbness.
We might not have been anywhere close to being in love, but I’d genuinely thought we were something.
But it seemed everything I’d done for Carl didn’t matter a jot to him, and I didn’t know what that made me.
Gullible, I supposed, which, I wasn’t going to lie, definitely stung.
Even if I wouldn’t admit as much to Verity.
Verity checked her watch. “Much as I hate to leave you in your hour of need, I have to go. I need to pick up Wayne’s mother from her hair appointment. I’ll never hear the end of it if I’m late. I’m sorry. If I could stay until the police get here, I would.”
“The police?”
“Carl burgled you. You need a crime number for the insurance.”
“Right.” I nodded earnestly as I escorted her to the door, not ready to admit insurance required a policy in the first place. One lecture was enough for today.
She swung around before I could open the door, her expression one of concern. “What about your latest book?”
“What about it?”
“Did he take your laptop? Was it backed up?”
“No. I had it with me. And yes, it’s backed up.”
“Well, that’s something.”
“It’ll be fine,” I said. “Things can be replaced.” At least they could if you had the money, which I didn’t.
I’d have to put in some extra days teaching history at whatever school I could get the work, which would put me even further behind with writing my book.
But at least, as Verity had pointed out, I still had a laptop to write on.
Silver linings.
Verity’s parting words were a reminder to get the locks changed because Carl still had a key.
Once she’d gone, I returned to the living room, its sparseness unchanged.
I plonked myself on the sofa and closed my eyes, remembering Verity’s words about it not being worth stealing.
The cheek of it. Although I recognized the irony of that thought as I shifted position and a spring jabbed me in the arse.
I considered calling the police. A minute of imagining the conversation was enough to stop me.
It wasn’t like they’d be able to track Carl down, and even if they could, it would be his word against mine.
He’d probably convince them it had been a lover’s tiff.
It was better to cut my losses and replace everything.
That was way down the list, though. Verity was right about one thing: I needed a locksmith.
She’d been gone less than five minutes when my phone buzzed with a message from her. In case I didn’t make myself clear, here it is in writing. LEAVE THE FUCKED-UP PRETTY BOYS ALONE.
She probably had a point.