Page 26 of Wild About You

Nooooo. I offered a prayer up that she was going to invite me to hers for a relaxed evening by the fire.

Good. Jamie came by the office to invite everyone up to the flat for a drink, but you’d gone. Everyone’s here and we’re going to have something to eat. Please come.

I stared at the screen. She could see the blue ticks. She could see I wasn’t answering, but the truth was I didn’t know what to say. Fi was typing.

Jamie says please come.

She carried on typing.

Give him a chance, love. Give Stonemore a chance. You can’t say no to everything.

I snorted.I think you’ll find I can, I typed and sent. She answered with an eye roll emoji, then:

Have you eaten?

I took a breath, and typed.

No.

Are you hungry?

I walked around my little kitchen. Yes, I was hungry. No, I did not want to go back into the lion’s den. I still felt angry, obscurely wounded, and was in no mood to be polite to Jamie. My phone trembled.

Please come. We all want you here. Xxxxxx

I felt something shift in me. I stared at my journal, left on the kitchen counter. I opened it at the latest page, at the word GOALS, written in such hope. One of the bullet points I’d noted under it:Do not be inflexible. Be open to every possibility.

Picked up my phone.

Alright then.

And pressed Send.

Fifteen minutes later, Jamie’s Land Rover was waiting at the end of the garden path. I swore under my breath as I pulled my coat on – I’d assumed Fi would come and get me.

The door swung open as I approached. I decided against trying to be graceful (there was a chance I’d get marooned halfway through an excruciating scrabble-up, like all those bar stools when I first came to London). Instead I enthusiastically hurled myself at the step and landed in the battered front seat with embarrassing momentum.

‘Hello,’ said Jamie. Even in the half darkness of the cab, I could see his face looked different. Marginally less grumpy than usual.

‘Hi.’ I couldn’t bring myself to smile at him and concentrated on closing the door.

‘Thanks for doing this.’ He swung the steering wheel and turned the Land Rover, eyes on the road. ‘I’m…’ he cleared his throat. ‘Sorry. If I’ve been a bit—’

‘It’s okay,’ I mumbled.

He took a breath. ‘Okay.’

Things felt strange – really strange. Until this moment I hadn’t realised how much his anger had wounded me. Sean had never really got angry; on the rare occasion I disagreed with him, he’d always adopted a kind of faraway expression, as though he wasn’t really involved. And I’d been extra careful not to upset people at work. Yes, that Anna had been soagreeable. When Jamie and I had clashed, we’d sparked off each other dangerously. Now, it felt as though we had to be careful with each other.

‘Have you recovered from all the weeding?’ he said.

‘Yes, thank you,’ I said, trying to sound cheerful.

‘Callum says you’re interested in converting some of the estate into scrub.’

‘Yes.’

‘Isn’t that quite controversial?’

---