‘Is this what you writers do?’ she asked edgily. ‘Cross-examine people and then use their reactions as fodder for books?’
‘And is this what you do?’ Theo asked coolly.
‘What?’
‘Categorise people?’
‘I do not categorise people,’ Sophie said. ‘Well, not usually,’ honesty compelled her to admit. ‘Look, yes, you’re right. I’m renting the cottage because I need the money and, no, I don’t like doing it, as I said, because it’s full of memories for me.’
‘And what do you intend to do with it once your father’s affairs have been sorted out? Was his expenditure as extravagant as you think?’
Sophie opened her mouth to tell him that her financial situation was none of his concern, and shut it again. She hadn’t actually spoken to anyone about the mess that was her financial situation. Her bank manager knew and Robert, who had worked alongside her father off and on, a labour of love, as he told her, surely suspected the worst, but the other members of staff, Moira and Claire, wouldn’t have a clue and it wouldn’t have been fair to tell them. They were both in their fifties and had only ever worked on an occasional basis for her father, sometimes writing up complicated reports which would have meant nothing to them, or else generally tidying up in the wake of his discarded petri dishes and test tubes. They had indulged him and looked after him in the way an owner might look after a playful but lovable puppy, making sure that he ate, carting him off to their bridge groups and socials whenever they could.
He would never have let them in on the chaos of his accounts. He hadn’t even let her, his own daughter, in on it! She had lived in blissful ignorance, doing her gap year in the neighbouring town, then on to university in Southampton, from which she had travelled home to see her father every fortnight. Only his death, interrupting the final leg of her teacher training, had woken her from her peaceful slumber and catapulted her into a confrontation with debt and money borrowed and money owing, all poured into her father’s obsession with discovering things.
He had lived for the hope of discovery. Of what exactly he could only ever offer mysterious promises and the general assumption that in a world so full of complex life forms and even more complex diseases there was always something waiting to be discovered.
Over the years, Sophie had fondly considered his passion for tinkering around as a harmless hobby. He had been extremely bright and, having retired from his full-time job, it had kept him out of mischief.
Theo was looking at her with a shuttered expression. She knew that she would be safe from any saccharine-sweet expressions of sympathy from him. He would be blunt and he would probably reduce her to grinding her teeth in anger, but he wouldn’t cluck his tongue and offer her a cup of tea. And he wouldn’t insult her father’s memory by asking how he could have been so irresponsible as to leave his only child to cope with his debts.
‘Worse than that,’ Sophie confessed.
Theo didn’t say anything. He stood up and silently fetched the bottle of wine so that he could refill her glass.
Did he need any of this? Some stranger bawling out her troubles on his shoulder? Because he could smell a financial mess a mile off and he had smelled it big time in that office. It wasn’t his problem and he didn’t have to listen to anybody’s tale of woe.
But a night spent reading through reports, updating files on his computer, downloading information on three companies he had his eye on, didn’t hold much appeal on a rainy, cold October night behind God’s back.
Theo looked at the downbent head consideringly before he handed her the glass of wine, topped up to confessional level.
He knew that the slightest hint of reluctance on his part to listen and she would be off. And she would make sure not to repeat the mistake. And, indeed, take away the fact that it was dark, rainy, cold and she had probably discovered yet one more IOU to add to the stockpile, and he knew that she would never have succumbed to any need to confide. She wasn’t a confiding kind of girl.
What harm in indulging her need to talk? A village in the middle of nowhereland was not the place where confidantes could be easily located, not unless you wanted every member of the village to know your private business. Or at least so Theo assumed.
‘Care to explain?’ he asked, retreating to his chair and feeling suitably pleased with himself for actually bothering to listen to someone else’s problems. Obeying doctor’s orders, in fact! Doing this small good deed filled him with a bracing sense of virtue. ‘You will find that I am very good at listening.’
SOPHIE looked at Theo’s dark shuttered face and wondered where this strange urge to spill all her worries was coming from.
The man did not exude natural sympathy. In fact, she had to remind herself that he was a writer because he didn’t embody any of the characteristics she associated with being in a creative profession.
But, right now, the world seemed to be on top of her shoulders. There seemed to be no end to the invoices and bills she was discovering by the minute and her father’s cavalier approach to filing meant that there was the looming spectre of yet more debts waiting in the wings. She couldn’t bring herself to discuss the situation with anyone she knew. Her friends from college would sympathise but really their heads would be somewhere else and, anyway, she hadn’t seen them for ages.
And confiding in anyone in the village, even some of the people she had grown up with, would have been a huge mistake. She was determined to protect her father’s reputation and not reveal the extent of his financial troubles.
Of course there was Robert. Sophie frowned at the thought of him. Theoretically he presented the perfect shoulder on which to cry, but for some reason she fought shy of confiding in him. To his credit, he didn’t try and force her and a couple of times had even made it clear that he would be there for her, that however great the financial mess, he had savings and would bail her out.
It almost felt treacherous to be staring into Theo’s enigmatic green eyes now, insanely tempted to pour her heart out. Robert would feel utterly betrayed.
But then Robert was too much of a fixture in her life. The advantage with Theo was that he would be gone in a matter of weeks and with him anything she said. There wouldn’t even be a temptation to keep in touch with him because she didn’t particularly care for him. In a sense, that, too, made it easier.
‘You’ve listened to a lot of other people’s problems, have you?’ Sophie asked with a wry smile.
‘It’s not usually something I encourage.’
‘I thought you said that you were a good listener.’
‘I am. Which isn’t to say that I encourage people to pour out their problems to me.’
‘Thank you for telling me that. It’s just the right thing to make me feel at ease.’ Extraordinarily, she did feel stupidly relaxed. ‘Why don’t you like people pouring out their problems to you?’
‘Because most people like advice, they like solutions. They want to be told what their next difficult step might be and no one can advise anyone else on what they should do to sort themselves out. So, to avoid being called upon to do that, I prefer to refrain from putting myself in the firing line, so to speak.’
‘Sometimes it just helps to talk,’ Sophie said slowly.
‘And, as I said, I’m willing to listen.’ He had never talked about Elena. At her funeral, he had been surrounded by sympathetic well-wishers. He had been positively drowning under the torrent of well-meaning compassion. But at no point had he felt inclined to talk to anyone about what he was going through. Not even his mother could