‘Are you saying there’s stuff about Alice I don’t know?’
Scott shrugged. ‘Maybe. You’re the secretary remember, not the puppeteer. Imagine what goes on behind your back. Imagine that.’
Frankie looked so shocked it made him smile. He split the gateau in two. ‘Why don’t you try to find out? You talk about her like she’s real – which I don’t doubt. But seems to me perhaps when you’re writing you lose sight of that.’ He ate cake and read on, quietly. ‘Seems like she’s a really nice kid,’ he said.
‘She is,’ Frankie said.
‘And Annabel?’ Scott said. ‘And Sam?’
Out came Frankie’s phone and a guided tour pictorially through her children’s lives.
‘How have they handled the move – to Norfolk?’
Frankie looked through the pictures of her children. ‘Oh well, Annabel could run the country tomorrow,’ she told Scott. ‘But Sam – he’s getting there. It’s been harder for him – less of an adventure, more of a disruption. He left his pals, a school he liked, an area he knew. He’s settling now – but there were a few hiccups to start with, a couple of occasions when he skipped school.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘He came home.’
‘But he knew you’d be there, right?’ Frankie nodded and Scott weighed it up. ‘So he’s happy at home?’
She looked at Scott. ‘He’s happiest at home. He likes to think of himself as the man of the house.’
A fresh pot of tea was ordered. The other tables emptied and refilled, not that Frankie or Scott noticed. They talked easily, eagerly and relaxed into the affable pauses in between. For all the sharing and conversation, it was privately and shyly that they revelled in each other’s physical proximity. It confronted her how the man she’d given relatively short shrift to at the station yesterday, the same man in whose company she’d felt herself unfurl during an evening she wished was longer, who’d caused her heart to race in the lift and who’d whorled his way through her sleep, was today someone known to her and trusted. Since yesterday, he’d undoubtedly become the most handsome man she’d ever met but it was the fact that she knew him, that she was herself with him, which thrilled her most.
‘Do you have to go back to the studio?’
‘Yes.’ He rubbed his eyes.
‘Not a good session so far?’
He pushed the crumbs on his plate into an S. ‘I have the music – but today, in the studio, with everyone there, it’s not right.’
‘Your music?’ Frankie asked. ‘Or the way it’s being played?’
‘If I say the latter, do I sound like a jerk?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s personal – I get that.’
And Scott sensed that she did.
‘Do you have to go back there soon?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘More cake?’
‘No – thank you.’
‘More tea?’
‘Sure.’
‘Say cuppa.’
‘Cuppa.’
The tea was now lukewarm but it didn’t matter. They put their cups down at the same time, Scott’s shirtsleeve just touching Frankie’s arm, their hands so close. If he didn’t do it now, he might never. So he did. He moved his little finger the short but loaded distance until it touched Frankie’s. She linked hers around his, like those symbolic promises she used to make in the playground with her best friends. Scott and Frankie regarded their entwined fingers and looked at each other and gently placed their heads together and, while Frankie closed her eyes, Scott brushed his lips against her forehead. A kiss without being a kiss.
‘Will I see you?’ she asked.
‘Of course,’ he said.
‘Not just later today – but will I see you? After? Again?’
‘Without a doubt.’
‘It’s all a bit – mad – really.’ She rested her head lightly against his shoulder.
‘It’s crazy, Frankie. It’s insane.’ He paused. ‘But I like it.’
‘I do too.’
Her agent appeared to know most of the other diners in the restaurant so Frankie had to smile a lot whilst fretting at the time this was adding to the evening. In the studio, Scott was utterly wrapped in his music; coasting on the vibrant energy from his afternoon with Frankie and all the Maison Bertaux calories. Why stop now? he said to the engineer – let’s get this down. When he worked like this, hours polarized into mere moments. It was two in the morning when he arrived back at the hotel. The bar area was closed and, though he wondered whether Frankie might pop out from behind a giant urn, she didn’t. He checked his phone. They’d spoken earlier – she’d ducked out of the restaurant telling him her agent was ordering a second bottle of wine but she should be back by eleven. At the time, Scott said he didn’t think he’d be much longer either. And, until he looked at his watch on leaving the studio, he genuinely thought he hadn’t been. Jubilance and frustration hand in hand. What a day.
So sorry – I’m only just back and I guess you’re asleep. Scott x
Frankie read the message and wondered what to do. It was the early hours and she’d woken with a start, reaching blearily for her phone. In the vast bed, in a froth of Egyptian cotton, she thought and thought until she infuriated herself. She could text back. She could pad off along corridors in the complimentary slippers, holding up the voluminous towelling robe like a ballgown. And then what? Knock on his door, wake him? Stand there, the both of them, with expectation oozing from one to the other. What would he do? Pull her towards him, shut the door behind them, tug her belt loose so the robe fell open, slip his hands inside to find her body, find her lips and sink his mouth against hers. Then what? Fumble and fondle over to the bed and fall together in a writhe of lovemaking. This is what she wanted and she didn’t doubt he wanted it too. But what would it be at this time of night? Sex for the sake of it because she was leaving tomorrow?
And it’s stupid o’clock.
Frankie switched the light off and settled back into the darkness.
Not now, Scott.
But if not now – then when?
Scott woke early and he thought, she’s going today. He thought, it’s Thursday and that’s that – Frankie’s going home. Suddenly he wanted to be home too, not on his own here, negotiating the pace of London, working peculiar hours, living in a hotel, eating too much red meat and spending too much time indoors. He wanted to be sitting at his favourite spot on the Lillooet River, with Aaron and Buddy and a couple of beers. The rivers and creeks had recently turned a milky eau-de-nil colour, the glacial silt causing the change and heralding summer until the rain run-off turned the waters clear again in November. What’s the sea like, near Frankie’s place in Norfolk? What colour are the rivers there? Where can you fish? Who do you come across, whose landscape do you share? Eagles and otters, beavers, bears?
He left the bed and walked across to the window, looking down to the street five floors below, the besuited hurrying to work, their stress palpable. If this were a scene for a movie, he’d underscore it with a fidget of bickering strings and just the occasional soft melodious piano trying to establish a refrain for