‘Well, I’ll have to meet him sometime,’ I argued. ‘What if he just pops up in the bathroom one day? I’ll scream the place down.’
‘You might do that anyway,’ said Kate.
‘Addison is very … well, sensitive. He’s a computer buff, you see.’
Only Josh still used words like ‘buff.’
‘You mean, what – an anorak? A geek? Dork? Nerd?’
‘Ahem.’
Josh gave a polite cough as a shadow flitted across the open kitchen door.
‘Is that him?’ I hissed. ‘I’m going to see.’
Kate stepped in front of me and shut the door.
‘What is going on?’ I asked. ‘Is he hideously deformed, like the Elephant Man?’
Josh patted me on the shoulder.
‘Sorry, Holls. We’re not doing this on purpose. Addison does a lot of highly technical, top-level computer work, and he hates being disturbed when he’s working.’
‘But he’s in the flat.’
‘He works from home.’
‘And for about twenty-three hours a day,’ muttered Kate. ‘It’s really easy to forget a hard day’s work when you’ve got beeps and tapping going on all night next door to you.’
‘Better than some things …’ I started to say, then remembered that Josh’s bedroom was next door to mine, and didn’t.
‘So, I mean, what’s he like?’ I started again. A man of mystery? Sounded good to me.
‘Oh, you tell her, Josh. I’m absolutely exhausted,’ said Kate. She took out her Psion and started stabbing at it, making me feel like a complete idiot. Then Josh and I shared our ‘it’s Kate’ glance, and I felt a bit better.
‘Well …’ started Josh, stirring the sauce. I went and leaned on the cabinet next to him.
‘He’s quiet. Very quiet. In fact, I think he’d rather not speak at all. He was amazed when we didn’t have e-mail in every room in the house so we could just communicate that way.’
I raised my eyebrows. At the table, Kate let out a long ‘How can I be so busy and successful when there are people in my kitchen making spaghetti bolognese?’ type sigh.
‘Whenever he bumps into one of us in the hallway he acts like a startled rabbit, like he genuinely wasn’t expecting anyone to be there. And he refuses to answer the phone or the doorbell. And he never eats.’
‘Hence the food drops.’
‘Hmm? Yes.’ Josh artfully splashed a measure of red wine into the sauce, crying out ‘Whoops!’ flamboyantly when he got a bit on his professional apron. I really could understand why women had a hard time taking him seriously.
He caught me watching him.
‘Am I being gay again?’
I smiled at him, colouring slightly. When we were at college, I used to tease him on a semi-continual basis when he’d bring his girl stories to me, but now I was his tenant, and it felt a bit uncomfortable.
‘That was a very masculine dash of wine. But I am definitely fascinated by my new invisible flatmate.’
‘Try taking the room next to his – it’ll wear off soon enough,’ growled Kate from the table, where she continued to do Very Hard Sums.
‘Oh, can I?!’ I yelped, before realizing the faux pas.
‘Sorry, darling,’ said Josh, ‘but you’re not – aha! – coffin up enough rent for that!’
Kate and I stared at him in disgust until he apologized.
Dinner was good. Josh liked to cook, and was good at it. He had a sinecure at his family’s ancient law firm near Chancery Lane, which required him to turn up at about ten thirty looking well groomed, take long lunches and impress foreign clients with his Englishness and hand-made shoes, before retiring to the senior partners’ offices at four thirty to partake of an early gin and tonic before heading home. Which was just as well, as he wasn’t the most academic of characters: you wouldn’t want him defending you in a murder trial whilst simultaneously admiring the court cornicing. The only thing preventing the absolute outbreak of class war was that he didn’t get paid that much for it. It just stunned me that such things still existed outside of the kind of stuff Rupert Graves does in all his films.
Kate ate about three bites, wiped her lips ostentatiously with a napkin then declared she had mounds to do and retreated to her room with the remainder of the wine. Her good night to me was curt, to say the least.
I looked at Josh.
‘What is with her?’ I asked. I mean, she’d always been uptight, but this was real carrot-up-the-bum stuff.
Josh toyed with his spaghetti.
‘Oh, it’s that stupid job of hers,’ he said. ‘She works fourteen-hour days, then comes home like a bear.’
‘What, pooing in the woods?’
‘Grizzly.’
‘Oh. Good spag bol.’
‘Thank you.’ Josh coloured prettily. ‘So, anyway, I keep saying she should change it, do something less stressful, but she just bares her teeth at me and hisses something about me being privileged and how I would never understand what it means to fight for something.’
‘Her dad’s a GP, isn’t he?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘Hmm. But she must make an absolute fortune. Why does she live here?’
Josh looked faintly amused.
‘Charmingly direct as ever, darling.’
‘Oh, you know what I mean.’
‘I know. I’m not sure, really. She does make a stinking amount of money, though. Something like more in her bonus than I do in a year.’
Than I will in a decade, I thought to myself mournfully.
‘We moved in together when I came down,’ Josh went on, ‘and she’s been here ever since, so I suppose she likes it. It’s only four stops on the tube, and pretty cheap.’
I remembered a rather better reason though. Well well well, after all this time. But then, even if she didn’t still fancy him, I suppose if I was feeling stressed out, I wouldn’t mind coming back to a nice warm flat and spaghetti bolognese and someone nice like Josh you could be rude to. Well, she certainly wouldn’t get away with being rude to me.
‘Would you mind getting out of that shower!’ screeched Kate, banging her Clarins bottles on the door at five o’clock one morning (I was doing nights at the market). She carried them daily in and out of the bathroom, presumably in case I stole them.
‘I don’t know what can be keeping you in there that long. You can only smell of flowers, surely.’
She banged again.
‘OK, OK, I’m coming,’ I yelled back, frantically drying myself and wondering if I could stab her with a cotton bud.
‘I have got a plane to catch, Holly,’ she said. Because I have a career and you don’t, she might as well have added.
‘Oh no! The Euro will fall!’ I opened the bathroom door dishevelled, wrapped in two threadbare towels which almost but didn’t quite cover all my bits.
‘Will it?’ she said, instantly alert, then relaxed as her brain realized the context. She gave a tight smile, said, ‘Excuse me,’ and slipped past me, unbelting