Freya North 3-Book Collection: Secrets, Chances, Rumours. Freya North
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air didn't seem to have lifted her mood or smoothed the furrow to her brow when she returned. She declined his offer of a sandwich and, later, she called downstairs that she wasn't hungry when he'd announced, for the second time, that supper was ready.
In her room she sat by the open window, trying to combat the mouth-watering drifts of lamb chops and sautéed potatoes filtering up from the kitchen by switching on the radio so she could concentrate on a sound other than her hunger pangs. She gave it an hour, then she eased open the bedroom door, leant over the banister and listened for sounds of activity. Hearing none, she descended the stairs, craning until she could see that Joe's study door was closed. Downstairs, the kitchen was in darkness and from the gap between study door and floor, she could see the light was on in there. She walked softly, quickly, over the flagstones in the hallway and once in the kitchen, she switched on the light in the extractor hood over the cooker – because the main light buzzed when it flickered into life. She'd meant to suggest to Joe that he consider replacing the strip lighting with something less harsh. What did it matter now? She opened the fridge door. Two lamb chops under cling film on a plate. She didn't take it to the table, but ate them then and there, using her fingers, too hungry to chew properly, swallowing mouthfuls that caught in her throat, sucking at the frills of meat left clinging to the bone.
‘Can't resist my cooking, hey?’
She spun. Joe was standing there leaning against the door-frame in his usual casual stance. Her first thought was to say that the chops were tough, leathery even, but the implicit nastiness shocked her.
‘Ta,’ she said instead, plucking an apple and biting into it smartly. She made to leave, winking at Wolf as she went but avoiding Joe's eyes. The problem was, he was blocking the doorway. She realized this halfway across the kitchen, by which time it was a little idiotic to retrace her steps, go through the utility room, through the boot room, out to the garden, circumnavigate half the house and enter through the front door. She did, though, momentarily consider it. No, she'd just have to stand her ground and keep moving.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, when she was in danger of treading on his socked feet.
Joe moved but as she passed, he caught her arm – he didn't hold on to it, he just caught it for a moment before letting it go.
‘Tess, why are you being so stroppy?’ he said to her back.
‘I'm not,’ she said, without turning.
‘And petulant.’
‘I'm not.’
‘You are. You are being stroppy and petulant. What's up?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You're being stroppy and petulant and uncommunicative. I don't like it.’
This was too much for her to tolerate without eye contact. She spun around.
‘Go to hell!’
‘Shall I add “insulting” to the litany, then?’ Joe's arms were folded but no longer in a relaxed way; his eyes had narrowed, he appeared taller, older, stern.
She said nothing, just stared at the space between them.
‘And aggressive – that goes on it too. For fuck's sake, Tess, if I've done something to upset you, will you please have the courtesy to tell me what?’
The deeper and darker Tess's mood became, the more difficult it was to haul herself out. If she was mad at Joe, she was also livid with herself. She'd gone beyond the point of being able to say, sorry about that – I'm just being a silly moo. She was now hopelessly trapped in the vortex of her own bad temper.
And then she looked at Joe and she knew why. What she saw she couldn't hate, she couldn't even dislike – what she saw was what she wanted. That's why she was hurting. The nearly kiss. The loaded silences. The eye contact lasting that exhilarating moment too long. The banter. The teasing. The making time to be – together. She had thought she was wanted too. But that was then, she told herself, that was way back then. That was before the reality of Kate. Before his phone in her bed. She felt caught between the strange dichotomy of mourning the kiss that never was, and outraged at Joe's duplicity. Only a quiet side of her, which she was too preoccupied to hear, wondered if she was entitled to feel either.
‘Tess?’
She turned away.
‘Oh, for God's sake,’ he said. ‘Grow up.’
She swung round to face him, as if she was about to land a punch. ‘You should have said something about Kate, you know. Because – you were going to kiss me on the Transformer Bridge. You were. It's not nice for me – I'd been looking forward to you coming back, idiot that I am. Don't you play with me, Joe Saunders, don't you dare play with me.’
Her eyes might be bristling with indignation but her voice was wavering and Joe hadn't the heart to correct her transformer bridge to his Transporter Bridge or say, don't you mean toy with me?
‘Tess, can we please sort this Kate business out? Why do you keep harping on about someone called Kate?’
Fury scratched itself across Tess's face. ‘You're going to deny it? Oh, come on, Joe. Tell me to my face that your phone isn't in the bed of some girlfriend in France?’
Joe gave himself a moment. ‘I am not in a relationship with anyone.’
‘Forgive the semantics,’ Tess said. ‘Your phone is in the bed of some woman you're shagging, then. Go on then – deny it.’ Yet as soon as she said it, she suddenly dreaded the confirmation.
Again, Joe paused while he organized his response. ‘Look, I don't know why you think it's any of your business but OK then, there is a woman in France who I –’ He paused. Whom he what, exactly. ‘There's a woman in France – it's not a relationship. But yes, I sleep with her – it's just casual.’
Tess looked appalled, as if she'd just been winded. He was not going to feel guilty – which wasn't to say that her visible distress didn't unnerve him.
For Tess, it wasn't the specifics of Joe's consensual fuck-buddy set-up that had stabbed her (she'd had to broaden her outlook when she met Dick); it was Joe referring to Kate as a woman. She felt a girl by comparison, diminished somehow. She couldn't imagine any man referring to her as a woman, despite the fact that she was a mother. She felt suddenly small, unappealing, defeated by Kate and her grown-up, no-strings womanly sexiness. She was acutely aware of standing in this man's kitchen with a sulky pout across her face, and stupid Winnie-the-Pooh socks on her feet, her figure swamped and denied by her shapeless hoody and her slack jeans. She felt ashamed of herself and she wished she could look up at him and tell him so. But if she looked at him, he'd look at her and all he'd see was her flushed face and the socks and the sweatshirt and the hair that desperately needed a cut and could do with a wash too.
Joe wanted her to speak to him and he wanted to say something to make her feel a little better. ‘Tess, if it helps, she isn't Kate – she's Nathalie.’ His tone was gentle. He thought the information would appease her – if she thought she had the wrong name, she might think she had the wrong end of the stick too.
However, Tess's hands fell so sharply to her side that when they hit her thighs it sounded as though she'd slapped herself and hard. ‘Great, so you've got more than one on the go.’ She could cry but she fought to glower instead. ‘One for love, one for sex – and me to bandy about in some fucked-up game?’
‘Game? What on earth are you on about?’
Do not cry. Don't you bloody dare cry. ‘You were going to kiss me on the bloody bridge!’
Joe paused. This was true.
‘You were going to kiss me. You could've, you know.’
She sounded defeated and she looked broken.
Was he meant to reach out for her? Look at her, having a silent battle against tears – he could hear it in the brittle croak of her voice. He could so easily put his