She followed to find him lounging on her sofa, thoroughly and infuriatingly calm.
‘You might be some kind of writer. Who knows? Maybe you’re even famous in that little circle you mix in, but that doesn’t cut it with me!’
‘What little circle?’ Theo asked, curious to discover what image she had of his mysterious and fictional life.
‘Oh, you know what I mean!’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘That little circle of academics! Everyone sitting around, drinking wine and congratulating themselves on being so much smarter than the rest of the human race!’
There was a lot of insight in what she had just said, Theo thought, and it applied to his own circle of financiers and businessmen, the richest of the rich who could afford to relax on the Olympian summits of their own self-worth.
He watched her fume over the rim of his glass and nodded thoughtfully. ‘You’re right.’
‘But don’t think that you can swan in here and throw your weight around!’ His words registered belatedly and she lapsed into silence. ‘What did you just say?’
‘I said you’re right. There’s a lot of self-righteous preening that takes place when wealthy, important people get together. It’s fairly nauseating.’
‘So you agree with me.’
‘I agree with the concept, but not,’ he said lazily, ‘in so far as it applies to me.’
‘Because…?’ Sophie felt giddy. She took a couple of tentative steps into the sitting room and swore that she would be out of the cottage just as soon as he backed up his statement. She couldn’t very well initiate this and then flounce off, could she? Not, she reminded herself piously, when he was her tenant, a small fact which, once again, she appeared to have forgotten.
‘Because I happen to be a very modest man.’ Quite a few, he admitted to himself, might disagree.
Something didn’t sit right with that statement, but she had to admit that he had not been stingy in conceding her point. When he reiterated his offer of a glass of wine, she found herself accepting. She justified that easily on the grounds that it was just so nice being back in this sitting room, even if she had to share the space with a man like Theo Andreou. And, besides, her bank manager would appreciate her good manners.
He had drawn the curtains and the room was just how she loved it, bathed in the mellow glow of the standing lamp, with lots of shadows in the corners and the wind rattling against the window panes. Her father’s books were ranged along one wall, housed in a bookcase that looked as old as the overhead beams.
‘You hate this, don’t you?’
Snapped back to the present, Sophie looked at him and frowned uncomfortably. ‘Hate what?’
‘Renting out this cottage to an arrogant bastard like me.’
Sophie dodged the description. ‘It’s been hard renting it out to you or to anyone.’
‘But you had to because you needed the money.’
‘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.’