“Tom,” I say, nervously, trying to dislodge the unexpected shard of fear stuck fast in my soul. “We really should talk it through.”
“This,” he says, rustling the shiny pages and thrusting the magazine in my face, “is what we need to discuss.”
Something in his expression, unnerving and creepy, alarms me. Dumbfounded, I realise what it is.
Tom is afraid.
I swallow, glance at my watch, dance from one foot to the other. “Look, I’ve really got to go. Elliott will have me spit-roasted if I’m late again. Can we talk this evening?”
He doesn’t answer. Standing there, bare-chested, abs rippling impressively, he seems outwardly inviolate yet also vulnerable, reminding me of myself when we first met. When he runs his fingers through his thick mane of hair as if he single-handedly carries the weight of the world’s problems, I have a sudden, urgent desire to dump my bag, take off my clothes and fuck him right there and then. Instead, I ask him what he is doing for the day.
He shrugs, the anger dissipating from his voice. “This and that. Might go for a swim.”
I brighten up. Displacement activity, I think. “Will you sort dinner?”
At the mention of the word ‘dinner’, his field of expertise, he relaxes. “I’ll pick up something, a bottle of wine too.”
I read contrition in his eyes. “Fine,” I say, smiling with relief, as I make for the door.
“But what about Reg? Will he be joining us?” Tom’s inflexion is arid. Why does he have to spoil what I assumed is a truce? Admittedly, things between us have not been easy since Reg pitched up. My thirty-year-old ‘baby brother’ came to stay for a few days that turned into three weeks. Since our old hippie mum moved to Australia with her new husband ten years earlier, and our dad, a retired dentist, lives in the States and has done for many years, I feel responsibility for him. In my head, I’m sort of in loco parentis. If I tell Reg this, he’ll laugh in my face. I love him, yet can’t help count the days before he flies to LA with his band Robberdog. He plans to pay Dad a visit while he’s there, to ‘reconnect,’ he maintains. I don’t know what I feel about that, other than the fact that our father will throw a fit when he sees the state of Reg’s buckled teeth.
I assure Tom I’ll sort it with Reg. Once more, I turn to escape.
“Roz,” he calls after me.
“Yeah?”
Tom moves like a ghost. One moment on the opposite side of the room, the next right up close, hypnotic eyes melting into mine. When he reaches out I drop my bag, the intoxicating smell of warm, naked skin and man enveloping me.
His mouth finds mine. Lust radiates from my brain, through my chest to my groin. He doesn’t ask me to stay. He has no need. He simply hitches up my dress, slides down my knickers and takes me there and then in the sitting room, up against the wall. Fool that I am, pulsing with desire, I’m willing.
Praying the darkening late-January sky doesn’t unleash its payload, I run all the way from my rental in All Saints Road to a drab seventies-style office block in the centre of town. It usually takes under fifteen minutes at a good walking pace. Today, I bomb it in ten, which is impressive considering my mind is blown with disappointment and my legs feel vaguely sticky and tremble from instant and urgent sex. Tom’s behaviour is counter-intuitive for someone who professes never to want children. On my race to work, this thought consumes me.
Elliott takes one look at my shiny, perspiring face and hikes a hairy eyebrow. “Miss Outlaw, so glad you can join us.”
“Erm … sorry, I got held …”
He raises one pudgy hand, the thin band of his wedding ring almost buried in his fleshy finger. My boss doesn’t believe in excuses, no more than he believes in God, or accidents. Suspicion, the single most important attribute for a journalist, or so he tells me, is as firmly enmeshed into his corpulent physique as his DNA. I believe curiosity is a pretty good attribute too. Elliott also maintains that this is why he gets to do all the juicy investigative stuff instead of me. When I once argued the point, he left me in no doubt about where I stood.
“I don’t want you landing me in court.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“You’re simply not ready, Rosamund. Didn’t your mother ever tell you that you have to walk before you can run?”
My mother told me a lot of things, mainly about auras, finding my bliss and the necessity of being centred, but walking before running was not one of them. A product of the hippie generation, she spent her youth in a commune in Totnes, Devon, where she met my dad. Frankly, I count myself lucky not to be born with a name like Zoflora Moonstone, particularly as I have weird-coloured eyes that are a similar hue to the gem. Put it this way, my parents were free spirits until the spliffy glow wore off and they decided to rejoin the real world. Safe to say, she believes in us kids ‘going for it’, as she puts it, which is why she never smashes Reg’s dreams and tells him to find a proper career. To be fair, she never warned me of the perils of aimlessly flitting from one dead-end job to the next well into my thirties either. When I finally decided to settle down and get a degree in journalism, admittedly from a little-known college that punched above its weight to obtain uni status, it wasn’t due to any parental guidance.
With our faraway parents, my brother and I have a strange, more complex, relationship. Physically absent for much of our adult lives, in the past five, our dad is displaying more interest than during the previous twenty. Age and impending mortality does that, but it’s hellish confusing for offspring.
I glance over to Helen’s desk. Our sports correspondent, she is one of the few full-time staff. Most of our crew are contributors who write columns in return for a by-line. God only knows what the National Union of Journalists would make of that. I can be writing about counterfeit items one day and interviewing a local publican about his plans for a new venture the next. Book and theatre reviews sometimes fall into my lap and that’s great because it means I have a constant delivery of brand-new releases and get to see all the best plays fresh from the West End. For a couple of days a week, I basically go where Elliott, the editor, and hulk of a man, sends me. Jack-of-all-trades, I also knock out blogs for any company that will pay; the odd bit of copywriting when I can lay my hands on it. I’m not a workaholic. By nature, I’m lazy. Financial needs drive me. In short, I’m a woman trying to make up for decades of drifting and earning a pittance. Not good. Unlike when my parents belatedly decided to make waves, you’re now considered over the hill in the career stakes after the age of thirty-five.
Helen grins and winks. Goodness, is my mascara smudged? Surely, my knickers aren’t caught in my dress? I surreptitiously smooth down the creases and run an index finger under each eye. I badly want to talk to her about Tom but, judging from the predatory light in Elliott’s eye, he has my day already mapped out.
“Get yourself down to the train station,” he says.
Fabulous. London beckons, or could it be Oxford, Birmingham, perhaps? “Where am I going?”
“Nowhere. You’re going to interview train users about the travelling experience at Cheltenham Spa.”
“Is this a wind-up?” Purleese, surely we have more important issues to report than this?
“Spend what remains of the morning there and, this afternoon, two o’clock sharpish, you’re interviewing Detective Sergeant Mike Shenton.”
At this I brighten, dare I say. My nosy gene kicks in good and proper. “Terrific. About what exactly?”
“The force are– ”
“Can’t call it that any more. It’s