CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Raina felt an icy chill, despite being warmed by Tom’s jacket. She slipped it away from her body and returned it to him, silently begging the boat to pull into Putney quickly so that she could disembark and get home.
‘What’s wrong?’ Tom asked, frowning in genuine concern.
‘Those are your friends,’ she said, taking a step backwards. ‘And you talk about them like you don’t even like them.’
‘They’re my friends, yes. But come on, Raina. They’re not lovesick puppies. This is . . . not fireworks and roses. Or whatever. It’s not what we . . . That is, it’s not real. It’s kind of inevitable.’
‘Like love,’ Raina said, furious with herself for getting upset. ‘Love is inevitable.’
She regretted it in an instant. She’d intended to keep this sliver of herself out of the cynical writer’s path. She’d joked about being a hopeless romantic – joking was one thing; the truth of it all was quite another.
‘I think it’s lovely,’ she reiterated. ‘And I think you should go over to your friends and congratulate them.’
He looked concerned about her, but he obeyed, crossing the boat to shake Seb’s hand and kiss Ottie’s cheek.
Raina watched on from the outside. She stood alone by the bow of the boat and looked at the engagement party from a distance.
She drank in Ottie’s delight and the way she showed everyone her ring.
She smiled as people slapped Seb on the back.
In a world which so many people tried to make ugly, Raina loved moments like this.
She loved love. In all its forms. Men and the pets they didn’t know they needed.
Parents and children. Grandparents. Friends who’d become each other’s families.
Exes who were still in each other’s lives.
Step-parents who did what another had never tried to.
Aunts, uncles, and neighbours you called Auntie or Uncle.
Co-workers who’d gone from arguing over the photocopier to sneaking five minutes in an empty room.
Lovers. Married couples. Childhood sweethearts.
All of it made Raina feel hopeful. It made her feel the same sweet, dancing joy she’d known before everything became about fitting in and seeming normal.
Tom might be right about his friends being a little conceited and shallow, but he didn’t know their hearts. He didn’t know the secrets of their time alone when the rest of the world was shut out.
Just as no one seemed to know the person she was coming to really like. The one, when alone with her in Barnes, who was sensitive and kind and funny and warm.
Not this scornful, disparaging man who held most things in contempt.
He reappeared, looking uneasy. ‘You were right. I was being harsh.’
‘No,’ she said, waving away his statement. ‘Ignore me, I had a moment.’
‘No, you were right. I was being a dick.’ He leaned down and pressed a kiss onto her shoulder. ‘Sorry. I’m sorry, sweetheart.’
‘Why am I on a boat with you and your friends?’
She looked at him with genuine curiosity.
She was asking the question because she’d entered into this strange tryst with him, never imagining that they would end up here.
Fooling around on a posh little boat while drunk girls labelled them relationship goals.
Or eating crab in silly, plastic bibs while she poured out a small jug of the truth about her family issues.
They weren’t in a relationship. There were moments when Raina would forget that. Then she would remember how they’d met. Why they’d met. She would feel a twinge of apprehension when also remembering that they’d not yet had a serious discussion about him dumping the piece.
Tom never did anything she didn’t want. He read cues the way he wrote.
Attention to detail, committed and determined.
During their time in bed, he exhibited moments of true vulnerability.
He was unexpectedly affectionate. Reverential.
She’d almost expected the worship-like way he treated her in bed to be a facade, one that he’d drop in favour of taking what he needed instead.
But one night, she’d been experiencing stomach pains.
She didn’t tell him, but he must have caught her wincing.
After stepping out of her shower, she noticed he’d left tea, paracetamol and a hot-water bottle by the bed for her.
He was always attending to her. It was becoming so much more than great fucking and fun company. There was real care.
If she mentioned a book, he read it. If she silently admired something, he bought it.
He was always asking her take on things, stating it was because she was smarter than him.
He wasn’t just an incredible fuck. He cooked for her.
He massaged her head. He stroked the palms of her hands when she was overstimulated.
He remembered everything she told him about herself.
Raina was in real danger.
The boat was beginning to dock in Putney and Raina let out a sigh of relief. She was feeling a little unwell and it had nothing to do with the slight rocking of the vessel. The crew were readying the gangplank and Raina moved to get off. She felt Tom follow her.
‘Stay,’ she told him delicately. ‘It’s fine, stay. Enjoy your friends. Celebrate.’
He looked worried now. Examining her with fearful concentration. ‘Raina, what’s wrong? Let me come with you.’
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ she said, knowing it wasn’t a completely honest answer. ‘It’s just late.’
‘Exactly. I don’t want you out late, on your own.’
It was all getting a smidge too serious. She needed some escape from him because she was starting to feel the dangerous flickers of adoration. She needed to be with herself and remember how ‘enough’ that had felt before getting into bed with him.
She wasn’t going to let Tom Branimir become her new fixation.
Tom remained halfway on the boat and halfway off it. He watched Raina disappear from view and every instinct he had wanted to follow her. He was about to disembark and do exactly that when Ottie called his name once again.
‘What exactly is going on?’ she asked, as he moved slightly closer to the boat once again. They were clearly staying moored in Putney for a short while, the crew readying to sail east.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Are you pretending to go out with her to get more dirt for your story?’
Engagement party or not, Tom wasn’t about to let that go. ‘How dare you, Ottie.’
He said it so quietly, so flatly, it made her flinch.
‘Well, what am I supposed to think? You’d do anything for a story; you’ve always said that.’
‘I don’t particularly care what you think.’
‘You like her?’
‘Enormously. More than like.’
Ottie opened and closed her mouth. Her gaze jerked to the pier, where Raina had last been seen. ‘I’m confused. I thought she was your work assignment.’
‘She was.’
‘And she knows that?’
Tom was surprised by the question. Almost hopeful about the progress it showed. Perhaps Ottie was at last displaying loyalty to her own sex; it would be a massive breakthrough for her.
‘It’s your party, Ottie. Why are you here talking to me?’
He knew the sad answer. She was here because Tom was the only one who would really talk to her.
Seb was holding court with his lackeys and friends; almost everyone was here for him.
Ottie had become a beautiful accessory. Someone who walked one step behind him.
Tom often wondered if the loud, bolshy girl she’d been in their Cambridge days had always planned for this sort of life.
‘Congratulations, again,’ he said, nudging her.
Her demeanour softened by a margin, but she was still staring at the dock. ‘You look like you’re falling in love with her.’
Tom didn’t answer at first. There was a strange energy around the question.
‘You were never like this with Fern,’ Ottie went on. ‘And, God, with Mandy, the two of you always looked like co-workers.’
Tom blustered out a laugh at that. It might have been the most observant thing Ottie had ever said. ‘You can’t tell much about a couple by looking at them.’
‘You broke up though, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. Obviously. You know we did.’
‘And you didn’t seem that bothered about it, Tom.’
‘We broke up a while ago, Ottie.’
‘So, why her?’
Tom exhaled. He knew what Ottie was trying to get at.
Fern had been a Cambridge grad. She had mutual friends with Seb and Ottie.
It was part of a rather incestuous time, where everyone knew each other and each other’s others.
Everything had felt so staged. As if he and Fern had been playing parts.
Standing where they were told to, saying their lines correctly.
Then there was Mandy, who’d grown up in the Cotswolds.
Her parents were friendly with the royal family.
Raina was nothing like any of them.
‘She seems like a little social climber. That’s not what you need; you need someone of your . . . you know. Your own kind.’
Tom could have laughed. Ottie still believed the lie he’d lived ten years ago.
She thought his family thrived with acres of land in the Scottish countryside while he slummed it in a boxy Fulham flat like a faux bohemian.
She thought his father’s love of his garden came from a life of leisure and cultivation, rather than a retirement hobby which settled the grief.
The one and only time Fern had come to his hometown to meet his family, she’d been horrified. She’d eyed the betting shops and the job centre and the supermarket with barely contained terror. Tom had realized that it had been a mistake to bring her, then that they were a mistake, period.
‘Raina’s in a class all of her own, Ottie,’ he said dryly.
Loud cheering caused both of them to glance back at the main party. Seb was being hoisted onto two other men’s shoulders. He was downing a bottle of gin in one go. Tom blanched at the sight and glanced at Ottie.
Her expression was impossible to interpret. She watched the rowdy scene take place as if she were a passer-by, who didn’t know a soul on board.
It made Tom’s decision for him.