Page 18 of Fundamentals in Flirting

“All right, Dad,” I muttered, feeling the blush start to creep up my neck.

Please let him shut up, now.

Because when he started on this topic, it only went one way. And it never ended well for me.

“In fact,” he carried on, loudly, my prayers clearly going unanswered, “she spent most of her formative yearsbeinga horse.”

And there was his punchline, the cork of the bottle of fizzy confessions from my youth violently unstoppered, ready to spew forth with significant mortification for me. Excellent.

“Oh yes?” Teddy was staring at me with undisguised amusement.

“Yes, from about three to twelve years of age, wasn’t it, Linea?”

“I don’t remember.” My mother was so tight-lipped now that it was a wonder any sound came out of her mouth at all. This was as embarrassing for her as for me – I knew this for a fact. How she hated for anyone to see anything other than the vision of the perfect family unit she had so carefully constructed. I remember at the time how she used to shake me, ordering me to stop playing, to behave, to be a “normal” little girl and dress up the endless string of dolls she’d bought for me. She begged me to stop humiliating her with my unbridled (pun intended) imagination.

“Do you remember when you were in the supermarket, Linea, and an old lady tried to cut in front of you at the till and Hannah kicked her, hard, in the leg, then neighed and ran off?” My dad was actually guffawing now. “That took some explaining, didn’t it?”

My mother had gone impossibly still next to me, whereas I was shrinking into my seat, hoping the world would open up in a big fiery chasm and kill me now. I didn’t care if it was painful as long as it was quick. Eternal flaming damnation would be better than this. I didn’t look at anyone, but felt an awkward chuckle reverberate around the table.

“We even had to take her to the hospital once when she was seven and we caught her eating grass, just in case she’d consumed anything poisonous from the garden.” He raised his glass to me. “How many times did we have to take you to A&E to have your stomach pumped, darling?”

I held up three fingers while continuing to look down at the table. The ensuing silence was excruciating. Despite being someone who rarely drank, and who got pissed on a thimbleful of alcohol, I had the sudden urge to grab the half-drunk bottle of red wine and down the lot.

Teddy picked up the menu that was lying between us on the table and said, ever so casually, “Do you remember that time in that posh hotel when we were seven, Henry, and you stuck those balloons down your T-shirt and pretended to have an enormous pair of boobs?”

“Actually, Ted, you put some down your T-shirt first, but you fondled yours so hard they burst,” Henry answered smoothly.

Teddy smiled at me, waggling his eyebrows, and then said, “I always was the best at fondling boobs.”

I choked a little as I swallowed a mouthful of lemonade, while my mother gasped in shock and my father slapped Henry on the back with a roar of laughter.

“Oh, boys, stop it, please. We’re in company!” Mrs Fraser admonished, and both Henry and Teddy had the grace to look a little contrite. For a moment, anyway.

“Do you remember that time at our eighteenth birthday party when I found you two outside, alone, by that bench? What were you up to?” Henry said, giving Teddy a challenging look.

Teddy opened his mouth, and the fear of what he was about to say consumed my brain in such a fiery haze that I panicked and gripped his thigh under the table like a bird of prey capturing a rabbit, talons digging into flesh.

“Owww! What the hell, Hannah?!”

“Teddy nearly passed out in my consulting room today because of a stinky cat abscess,” I blurted out desperately, practically screeching this information and flapping my free hand wildly so that the nearby bottle of wine was flipped onto its side, spraying the ruby liquid all over the table and turning it into a scene from theTexas Chainsaw Massacre.

Frozen to the spot, my death grip on Teddy’s quadriceps still in full swing, I stared in horror at the slow motion scene of devastation unfolding across the table. My mother dropped her head into her hands with an audible groan as Mr and Mrs Fraser jumped to their feet to avoid being splattered. Meanwhile, my father remained seated, staring forlornly at the lost wine as it dripped onto the floor.

Well, at least no one was thinking about me and Teddy alone and kissing anymore, right?

ChapterSeven

“Give me your phone number,” Teddy whispered in my ear as carnage ensued all around and I finally let go of his leg.

“W-w-what?”

“Give me your number so I can call you and pretend to be a client and we can get away from this car crash. That’s if you want to…?”

Teddy’s lips were so close to my ear that I could feel his softly spoken words on my neck as well as hear them, their teasing caress and promise of rescue nearly my undoing.

Shakily, I rattled off the digits out of the side of my mouth and he replied with, “Got it.” And then, more loudly, addressing the whole table, he said, “I’ll ask Bob to come and clear this up and order another bottle.”

Getting to his feet and striding off across the pub, Teddy disappeared from sight, and this loss of his comforting presence left me feeling exposed and surprisingly vulnerable, an unpleasant jolt to my system which I tried desperately not to notice.

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