Page 74 of The Spark

A beat. Despite everything, I can’t disagree. Maybe moving in with Ash – properly committing – will be a way to finally banish Jamie from my mind, to break free from the past, to get back to who I was before all this happened.

‘Yes. Okay. Yes.’

His eyes gleam. ‘Seriously? You want to do it?’

I smile. ‘Well, I do need to check one thing with you first.’

‘Go on.’

‘What would you consider to be your most horrifying domestic habits?’

He takes a second to mull it over. ‘Okay, I only have one.’

I sip my wine. ‘Let me be the judge of that.’

‘Well, I’m a rubbish-squasher. I leave the bin till the lid’s popping off before I can be arsed to go down and take it out.’

‘Hmm. You do live in a top-floor apartment. So that’s not too bad, considering.’

‘You’re excusing my bin crimes?’

‘There are mitigating factors.’

‘All right. You? I bet you don’t even have one bad habit.’

‘Oh, I do. I stress-clean.’

‘Nothing wrong with that.’

‘Ordinarily, no. But some of it’s a bit... next-level.’

He smiles at me over his wine glass. ‘Examples, please.’

‘Well, the worst one is probably that I... steam my bedsheets. Once they’re on the bed. Like, every single crease.’

‘That sounds . . . labour-intensive.’

‘It’s a sickness,’ I admit.

‘Still. Hardly what I’d call horrific.’

‘But what if you’re waiting to go to bed and I’m steaming?’

‘Then... I’ll just have to present you with a more appealing alternative.’

I smile. Beneath the table, he grazes my calf with his foot. Above it, he squeezes my hand. He can’t stop touching me, and I feel the same way.

‘So,’ he says. ‘Bin-squashing and sheet-steaming aside, reckon we’d be good housemates?’

‘Yes. I do, actually.’

He leans across the table and kisses me, almost dislodging the pot of fondue in the process. Someone claps. My heart does cartwheels.

Chapter 33.

Then

It was May. Jamie was spending long hours at uni, refining his proposal for his final-year research project.

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