Chapter 9 #2
“Walk-in fridge?”
“Fine.”
“Temperature alarm. Tomorrow’s lunch prep at risk. Mark is the only one who can decide what is safe to keep.”
“That sounds alarmingly competent. Call him.”
“I will. But, Peter?”
“What?”
“This is not casual behaviour.”
I hang up.
Cowardly, possibly.
Necessary, definitely.
Downstairs, Mark’s phone rings less than thirty seconds later.
I hear him answer. “Hi, Hunter.”
A pause.
“Oh. Right.” Another pause. “What is the temperature now?”
Good man.
“What about the prep fridge?”
Alexandra says something I cannot hear.
Mark replies into the phone, “No, tell them not to move anything. I’ll come back now.”
Mandy coughs.
“Problem?” Alexandra asks.
“Sorry,” Mark says. “Walk-in fridge alarm at Morton Hall. There is prep for tomorrow’s lunch, and Hunter needs me to check what is safe.”
“That sounds urgent,” Mandy says, with the relief of a woman who has seen a helicopter arrive on a desert island.
“It is probably nothing,” Mark says. “But I should go.”
Alexandra sighs. “I will come with you.”
“You do not have to.”
“I know. But if Hunter is standing near a fridge pretending he understands food safety, I would like to witness it.”
Mandy makes polite noises. Mark apologises again. Alexandra says they will rearrange the lesson, but her voice still carries suspicion, hooked and unwilling to let go.
At the front door, she pauses.
“Mandy?”
“Yes?”
“We are going to talk about the cottage pie.”
“I assumed.”
The door opens.
Then it closes.
For several seconds, nothing happens.
I wait.
The stairs creak.
Mandy appears in the bedroom doorway and shuts the door behind her. She leans back against it.
Her face is flushed.
Her eyes are murderous.
“You,” she says, “are never making cottage pie again.”
I lift both hands. “I was not aware my fork work would become evidence.”
“Depth, Peter.”
“I heard.”
“Mark complimented my depth.”
“Technically, he complimented the Worcestershire sauce.”
“That does not improve things.”
“No.”
Mandy drags both hands down her face. “I am a lousy liar.”
“You were under pressure.”
“I could have said a patient gave it to me.”
I pause. “That is actually quite good.”
“I know.”
“Much better than claiming sudden competence.”
She drops her hands and glares at me. “Thank you.”
“Sadly, it is too late for that lie now.”
She slaps my arm.
Not hard, but with feeling.
“Ow.”
“You deserved that.”
“I was admiring your improved deception skills.”
“You were being smug.”
“Only because I am very relieved not to be hiding behind your laundry basket.”
Her mouth twitches, and for a second we are back where we were. Annoyed, amused, ridiculous. Me in her bedroom without shoes. Her hair still mussed from my hands. Alexandra halfway down the road with a chef and a head full of questions.
Then the smile fades.
I look at her, at the way she folds her arms as if she can hold the whole morning together by force.
“Maybe we should tell Alexandra.”
The words are out before I can make them lighter.
Mandy goes still.
There it is. The wall.
“No.”
“It would be easier than this.”
“It would be worse than this.”
“She is already suspicious.”
“She is Alexandra. Suspicion is one of her hobbies.”
“She is my sister.”
“And my best friend.”
“I know.”
“Then you know exactly why we cannot tell her.”
I sit on the edge of the bed and reach for my socks, mostly because standing there looking at her feels too exposed. “Because she would make a noise?”
“She would make several noises. Then she would ask questions. Then she would have opinions.”
“She always has opinions.”
“Not about this.”
The sharpness in her voice makes me look up.
Mandy is no longer embarrassed about cottage pie or furious about Mark’s professional appreciation of my mash. She is frightened.
Not of me. Not exactly.
Of the thing sitting between us, taking up more space every time we pretend it is not there.
“What would we even tell her?” she asks.
“That we are seeing each other.”
“No.”
The word is immediate.
Too immediate.
“We are not seeing each other,” she says. “We agreed this was casual.”
“We are seeing each other casually.”
“That is not a thing.”
“It feels like a thing.”
“It is sex, Peter.”
I go quiet.
She notices. I can tell by the way her mouth tightens, but she keeps going anyway.
“That is what we agreed. No expectations. No relationship. No gossip. No telling Alexandra.”
“I remember.”
“Then why are you trying to change it?”
“I am not trying to change it.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I am trying not to spend another morning trapped upstairs while my sister interrogates leftovers.”
“That happened because you stayed over.”
I push out a breath and look towards the window.
The street beyond the glass looks harmless.
Quiet cottages, damp pavement, a bit of weak morning light catching the tops of the hedges.
Nothing out there suggests my life has become complicated enough to require hotel-based emergency calls and a secret exit strategy.
“I do not like lying to Lexi,” I say.
“Then leave before morning.”
The words affect me more than I should allow them to.
“I did not mean it like that,” she says quietly.
“Yes, you did.”
“No. I meant the rules are there for a reason.”
“What reason?”
“To keep this simple.”
I laugh once, without much humour. “How is that going?”
She looks away.
That is answer enough.
Because simple does not include cottage pie.
Simple does not include sleeping fully dressed beside each other because neither of us wanted to move.
Simple does not include my best friend inventing a fridge emergency so I can avoid being found in Mandy’s bedroom by my sister and a chef with professional opinions about Worcestershire sauce.
Simple has packed a bag and left St Claire entirely.
Mandy rubs her thumb across the inside of her wrist. “I do not want this to get messy.”
“I know.”
“It is good as it is.”
I nod.
“It is fun,” she says.
Another nod.
“It works because it is not more than that.”
The sensible thing would be to agree quickly. Smile. Make a joke. Put on my shoes and leave before I ask for something she has already told me she does not want.
Instead, I hear myself say, “And if Alexandra knew, it would have to mean more?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she would think it does.”
“And it does not.”
Mandy’s eyes lift to mine. “We agreed it would not.”
That is not the same answer.
We both know it.
For a moment, neither of us moves.
Then I make myself smile. It takes effort. More than it should.
“All right.”
Her shoulders loosen, but she does not look relieved.
“Peter.”
“No, you are right. We agreed.”
The words sound calm enough.
That is something, at least.
I pull on my socks, then stand and reach for my jumper from the chair. Mandy watches me as I drag it over my head.
“I do not want to ruin it,” she says quietly.
That, at least, sounds like the truth.
I look at her. “Neither do I.”
And I am being serious.
I also know, with sudden and deeply inconvenient certainty, that keeping it exactly as it is might ruin it anyway.