I go to unlock the door. It’s already open. Please tell me I didn’t leave it unlocked. It’s not the equipment I’m worried about, that’s insured. But if someone has taken my laptop…
It doesn’t bear thinking about. So I refuse to think about it. I rush inside, trying to steel myself for what I’m going to find, imagining the worst. Everything looks exactly as it did when I left. Nothing seems out of place. I hear the sound of the toilet flushing in the little bathroom at the back, and I grab the nearest thing, arming myself.
The bathroom door opens. ‘Hey,’ says Amber, flicking the light off as she leaves the small room. ‘I was wondering when you’d get here. If you’d get here.’
‘How the hell did you get in here?’ Relief comes out of me as anger. I throw the umbrella down by the door.
‘You gave me a key, remember?’ She flops down on the velvet sofa. ‘Anyway, I was hardly going to go back to work, was I? Not now I know it’s her.’ She covers her face with her hands. ‘I can’t believe he was banging both of us and neither of us knew. All that crap he spouted about workplace relationships, about how we had to be discreet, and absolutely no one could know.’ With a furious twist of her arm, she punches the seat next to her. ‘Lying bastard. What he really meant was that he didn’t want either of us to find out. Until he went and fell in love with Victoria and decided he didn’t need me any more.’ She turns to me then. ‘Do you know what she said to me earlier?’
I’m not sure I want to know, but it’s clear that she wants me to ask, so I do. ‘What?’
‘She said that I’d got the most incredible tits she’d ever seen, and that she’d quite like to screw me! And then Paul said he’d like to watch!’
I wait for her pain to hit me. But it doesn’t. And then I say something that I’d never have said before. ‘You should go for it.’
Amber sits bolt upright on the sofa and stares at me. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I want him to suffer, Ellie. I want him to know exactly what he’s missing and exactly how much of a prick he’s being.’
‘I know you do.’ But still, I don’t feel it.
Amber gets to her feet. ‘Show me the photos.’ It’s not a request. It’s a demand. And I know that my time is up. I have to tell her the truth.
I sit down at my desk, open my laptop and click through to the file that contains the photos of her and Tom. The slideshow starts up, and Amber slips in beside me, pushing her hip against mine until we’re sharing the chair. She smells of Coco Mademoiselle and optimism. I get out of the chair and move to the other side of the studio. I can’t bring myself to look at the pictures, not today.
There is silence for a long moment. The pictures I did get are good, I know they are. But they aren’t what she wanted. And I know the second she finds that out.
‘Where is my picture?’ She’s clicking frantically through the folder, trying to find it. ‘Where the fuck is my picture, Ellie?’
I have to face the truth of it, then. ‘I didn’t get it,’ I say quietly. ‘I’m sorry.’
She twists round in her chair, and hits me with a question I really don’t want to answer. ‘Why not?’
I can’t tell her. I don’t really know what is going on between Tom and me, but I know that it’s our secret. It’s precious and delicious and ours, and I’m not ready to share it with anyone. I don’t know if I ever will be. ‘I messed up,’ I confess. ‘I don’t know what else to say.’
I’ve not kept anything secret from Amber in years, not since we were at school and she sat next to me in detention and let me copy her answers. She’s the only person who knows that I can’t really read. If it wasn’t for her, I’d never have passed a single exam.
‘You didn’t get it?’ She shoots out of the chair and starts to pace. Then she turns to me. ‘I want you to get Tom back in here,’ she says. ‘I’m going to show the pair of them that they can’t treat me like this.’ Her eyes flash fire, and her mouth is set hard. This is Amber spoiling for a fight, and I know better than to get in her way.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Come back tomorrow, after closing. I’ll get you what you need.’
I tidy up the studio, bleach the toilet, flick the feather duster around, all the usual things. I’m in the process of setting the alarm and locking the door when Tom shows up.
‘I couldn’t wait,’ he says, shuffling his weight from one foot to the other, his hands hidden inside the pockets of his flasher mac. Although he’s as neat as always, there is something about him that’s oddly dishevelled.
I have never been so pleased to see him in my entire life. Something inside me softens at the sight of him, as other parts heat and tighten. The whole situation with Amber has left me feeling shaken, disturbed, as if I’m missing something that’s right there in front of me.
Tom Hunt makes me want to not care. He’s so deliciously distracting, my entire body clamouring for him, as if he hasn’t already made me come today. When I think about it though, he didn’t make me come. He just happened to be in the room when I did.OK, yes, he contributed to it, and the orgasm I had probably wouldn’t have been quite so intense without him, but he owes me.
And I want him. I’ve had enough of being teased, of being tempted. I want to touch him, like he let me touch him in the delicatessen earlier, only this time I want no clothes in the way, no interruptions. When I’m in that moment with him, I forget who I am.
It’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to being myself.
I turn back to open the door, but he stops me. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Not here.’
‘Please,’ I say, but he just shakes his head and smiles at me. It’s a shy smile, an almost smile. A nervous smile.
‘Come home with me,’ he says.
So I do.
He lives in a narrow terrace near the train station, about ten minutes’ walk from the studio, and he walks fast. The only reason I can keep up is because he carries my bags for me. Not my handbag, obviously, but my laptop and iPad and camera.
Not only can he walk really fast, he can talk at the same time. I find out that he bought the house because it’s close to the boxing gym he uses, and he hopes I don’t mind, but he’s only decorated half of it. I just about manage to nod at the right moments. I’m a mess of nerves and anticipation. I was fine with the whole idea of having sex with him when he turned up at the studio, but delaying things like this, bringing me back to his house has added a whole new layer of intimacy to everything.
This is making it real. I’m not sure I can handle real, although I want him so badly that I’m not sure I can walk away either. Then he pushes open a gate and pushes me gently up a sloping path towards a black front door and panic sets in. I turn to him. ‘Are you sure…’
He puts his mouth on mine before I can say the rest of it. Before I can talk him or me out of this. The kiss is hot, hard, and fiercely intimate. He tastes of coffee and sweetness, and his tongue moves against mine with a desperate urgency. He grips my hips, fingers digging into flesh through the soft fall of my skirt.
He’s never kissed me before. All the things that we’ve done, and this is the first time we’ve kissed. It shocks me. And before I can even think what I’m doing, I’ve dropped my bag and dug my fingers into that neat hair and I’m kissing him back. His hands are all over me as I shove my tongue into his mouth and let out a low, dirty moan. He feels so hard against me, not just his erection, but his mouth and that muscle-packed body, and it turns me into a soft, quivering wreck.
Lifting his head, he watches me for a moment, then reaches into his pocket