TWENTY-SIX
Aubrey wasn’t there when they went back into the office. Roscoe frowned in the direction of one of the meeting rooms to the side. Evie guessed he suspected his friend was hiding in one of them.
She didn’t mind. Wanted, quite badly in fact, to find a bathroom and a mirror and check what on earth she looked like, very conscious of the wet strands of hair still dripping down the front of her sodden coat.
“Is there a kitchen?” she said, taking the box back from Roscoe. “Bathroom?”
“Through that corridor at the end.”
She nodded, walking briskly down the room, heart thudding.
It was a bright, new office, almost entirely empty except for a few desks down one side. There was probably space for twenty people. It all smelt of new carpet and new furniture, plasticky and a little sharp.
She found the kitchen, put down the box. Found the bathroom, winced at her pale, blotchy skin and stringy hair.
God. This was not remotely how she’d wanted this to go. She hadn’t wanted this to happen at all. Her sincerest hope would have been to never see the man again, because what good could come of anything else? She couldn’t be immune to him. He affected her too deeply—always had, from the moment they met, something unignorable about him, demanding, provoking. Not just his height, or his figure, or the way he looked. Not even the dark irony in his eyes or the sense he gave of always knowing more than she did—having been there, done it, her own life and thoughts and feelings something he could look at in amusement, a silly, childish thing. But something beyond that. A harbour wall beyond the cold water. Solidity, certainty, a strange sense she got sometimes, or maybe it was a girlish dream, that he would hold the whole world back while she cried her silly tears and went about her stupid, sentimental life. A feeling, a wish, that he would hold her—s trong arm dwarfing thin shoulders, his jacket around her to ward off the night, a dark sardonic voice to make her smile, and a different, darker voice in the night, low but sure, telling her what to do, taking the burden of control, of decision. Leaving no doubt about what he wanted. Her.
She shivered, ran her cold hands down the goosebumps on her arms. The thin jumper under her coat was damp, creased. The forecast had been for fairer weather. She hadn’t been prepared. Wasn’t at all prepared…
A deep breath. She left the bathroom. Heard voices in the kitchen. Stopped, turned, couldn’t…
“Evie?”
All she had to do was smile. Remember how to smile. Meet his eyes briefly and look away.
“Hello, Aubrey.”
He was in the doorway to the kitchen. He stepped out of the way as she approached. She walked past him, went in, smiled brightly at Roscoe. “How’s the cake?”
He looked up halfway through a bite. Wiped a crumb of icing from his lip and said, slightly muffled, “Good.” He gave her a thumbs up.
“Excellent.”
Aubrey was eating nothing. Her own stomach was churning acid. The cake wasn’t vegan anyway. She’d got Roscoe the one he liked best. A granola bar for herself. She picked it up from the table, shaky fingers fumbling with the wrapper.
“And how are you, Aubrey?” she said briskly. “Life good?”
“Not particularly.”
“Roscoe says you’re volunteering here. If you’ve got time to spare, they could use you down at Refugee Action.” She was aiming for sarcasm, but it came out brittle, like dried up coral, crumbling to shards. And she couldn’t get the damned cereal bar open. Her fingers were freezing, numb. “You could make up some packs. It’s quite easy once you get the hang of it.”
“Maybe I’ll do that.”
“Excellent. Well.” She gave up on the bar, shoved the mangled, crumbling thing into her pocket. “I should get going.”
“You’re soaked,” said Aubrey.
“Yes. Goodbye.”
“Evie—”
She walked out, fled down the stairs on trembling knees, and burst into the rain.
The rain had stopped the next day, the weather quite fine, but the church hall felt colder than ever. Evie walked down the now-familiar row of tables, the now-familiar musty smell of the damp old place in her nose. She sneezed, turning her head, protecting the bundle of jumpers she carried.
They were sorting clothes today. As cold as it was in the church hall, a tent would be colder. Winter coming, and refugees arriving by the bus-load. All these donations had been collected from around London, people dropping them off all morning. Old coats and wellingtons and gloves and scarves. Jumpers and trousers. Little baby clothes. Printed with pink bunny rabbits. She sniffed, told herself it was the cold.
She dumped her armload onto the sorting table and began separating the piles.
“Someone told me you’re in charge.”
She jumped a mile and looked up at Aubrey, heart stopping then bursting like shrapnel, splintered fragments falling on ruined earth.
“I’ve come to volunteer,” he said when she did nothing but stare at him. He was in a long, dark coat, open over what might well have been the grey jumper he wore that day at Conyers. He looked so out of place in the busy chaos of the church hall, among all the odd-smelling old and tangled clothes. A celebrity at a soup kitchen, ready for the photo shoot.
“You said I should come,” he reminded her.
“I…um…” She nodded down the room, pulse echoing in her ears. “Get a pile of clothes from that lady at the end. Find space on a table. Sort them into women’s, men’s, and children’s.”
“Right.”
He went and did it. Stood at a table halfway down the room and got to work, back to her, sober, black-clad shoulders looming at the corner of her eye as though they were a screaming, glaring fairground ride, not discreetly expensive designer tailoring.
Three hours went by in a sort of swooping, rushing eternity, seconds tortured into month-long stretches, hours pulsing as quick as a camera flash. Aubrey worked. Got more piles of clothes to sort. Carried the sorted piles to the packing stations. Said brief, polite things to the other volunteers when required, but was otherwise silent. Once or twice, she looked up and met his eye.
When everyone was leaving, he carried the heavy tables to the side, took the big boxes to the van, then stood at the door, waiting. Evie stacked the last of the chairs away, found herself with nothing to do, and walked slowly to the door, shrugging into her coat, bicycle helmet in her hand. They walked outside together.
“Thank you,” she said. “Though I didn’t really mean it. About you volunteering.”
“I know.”
She looped the bicycle helmet strap over her wrist and began to button her coat. Aubrey was frowning at her. He looked away, then back at her, and, still frowning, said: “I want to ask you to dinner.”
Adrenaline pinged through her, but she tried to keep her surprise hidden. The last button done, she looked at him. “Why?”
Several replies seemed to cross his mind, from the irritated to the beseeching. While he was still choosing one, she continued: “Because you’ve already decided how things would go between us. So I’m not sure why you’re bothering.”
“Testing a theory,” he said. “But you’re probably right.”
She looked at him, her expression demanding more of an answer than that.
He gave a short, angry sigh. “If I took you to dinner… I’d probably order steak. I’d want to take you home to my house with its ridiculously overpriced leather sofa. I’d want to wake up beside you, but I’d want to drink coffee with real milk. I want to go to the job interview I have coming up and try my hardest to get the job, and if by some miracle I do, I want to go to it every morning without the guilt of the world on my shoulders. I want to take you to work events and not worry that you’re going to throw a drink at my client, or my boss. I want to have you on that leather sofa. I want you in my life. And my life doesn’t fit you.”
“Because I’m vegan?” she asked, incredulous. “I don’t expect everyone I spend time with to be like me. Hardly anyone is! And as for the job… You’ve left my dad’s company, you could choose to do anything , work for Roscoe—”
“He’s at least twelve months away from profitability.”
“Another place like it, then! You could work anywhere, you’re smart enough to do anything you want to.”
“It’s not that easy. I’ve spent ten years developing a highly specific skill set. There aren’t that many jobs available at my level. I have a mortgage. I’ll be thirty-five years old soon. I thought I’d be married by now. Have kids. Now I’m having to apply to jobs three rungs down the ladder from where I was, and it’s…difficult. I refuse to apologise for wanting to salvage the only career I’ve ever had.”
“I’m not asking you to!”
“But you’ll always judge me for it.”
“Is that what you think of me? That I’m so small-minded?”
He didn’t answer, but his dark eyes were very intense, as though he was looking through layers and layers—of her, of time, their past, their future.
“I think you want me to sit there,” she said, “judging you for your steak. You want me to walk out in disgust. Because that’s easier for you, isn’t it? Easier than the thought of actually giving this a go, worrying that I’m going to break your heart like Liv did. It’s not like I haven’t been thinking about it, Aubrey—the way you just gave up when I found out it was you behind Domnall’s purchase of the garden. I’ve wasted so much time trying to figure out what the hell happened. At first I thought maybe it was because we’d already had sex, and that was all you wanted. But I think the truth is that you were glad to put an end to it. That’s safer, isn’t it, than risking your heart?”
“Then why am I here now?”
“I don’t know. Why are you here, Aubrey? Why did you bother to come?”
“I think…” His voice was distant, as though talking to something inside of him. “It’s madness.”
“To try?”
“Madness that I can’t stop myself from wanting to.”
She let out a breath, not sure what she was feeling, only that it was strong, and it hurt. She turned blindly for her bike, propped against the wall by the door. But Aubrey gripped her arm.
“Will you forgive me for the garden?”
“Will you apologise for it?”
“I’d be lying if I did.”
She tried to pull away, close to tears. Aubrey kept his grip firm, but it didn’t hurt, she could have escaped if she tried harder. It’s madness…
“Evie,” he said, a note of urgency in his voice, “I’ll always be sorry if anything hurts you. I’m sorry you were sad. But I can’t apologise for doing my job.”
She tried to shrug his hand off again, but it was a weak movement, feeble tears swimming in her blood.
“Have dinner with me,” he repeated.
She gasped a laugh. “You are mad.”
“Yes. When it comes to you…yes.”