Page 63 of A Very Happy Easter

“A guy I served with flies organs and the transplant surgeons too. Sometimes they land at the hospital, but not every destination has the facilities. You’re going to finish that whole tiramisu, aren’t you?”

“Sorry. I’ll order you another one.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I was nervous about going today, so I didn’t eat much.” Just a bowl of muesli for breakfast, and I’d skipped lunch. Even then, I’d needed to suck in my stomach to do up my trousers. I’d discreetly undone the top snap before I sat down for dinner. This time last year, I’d been a ball of nervous energy that burned calories like a furnace, but these past few months, I’d found myself putting on weight. I picked up a spoonful of tiramisu and held it out for Heath to eat. “You finish it.”

He didn’t take his eyes off me as he ate it, and I pressed my thighs together as butterflies warred with indigestion.

“I could get used to this,” he said.

Me too.

Seventeen

“Oh, just invite him in for coffee,” Jerilyn said as we pulled away from Heath’s apartment forty-five minutes later.

“Heath comes in for coffee all the time. He knows how to work the coffee machine better than I do.”

“I meant invite him in for coffee.”

“You know that’s not happening.”

“You’ll get there, girl. Eventually,” she added under her breath, and then we headed back to Kensington.

I could rest easy tonight, Heath had said, but how could I when thoughts churned in my brain like whitewater, and my life was veering onto a path I never thought it would take? Spending time with a man and enjoying it?

By two a.m., I gave up tossing and turning and padded downstairs to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of white wine. After I’d stubbed a toe creeping around at two a.m. six months ago, Salma had told me to put a tiny refrigerator in my bedroom, but I didn’t want people to think I was an alcoholic. She’d retaliated with, “Who else ever goes in your bedroom?” and that comment had stung more than it should have.

Anyhow, I didn’t have a drinking problem; I had a sleeping problem.

I settled onto a stool at the breakfast bar and turned on the TV for company. The breakfast bar was a late addition after I moved in. Grandma Elizabeth used to eat in the dining room upstairs, and the live-in housekeeper brought the food to her. Eis and I had inherited the housekeeper as well as the house, and I’d kept Marcella on until she retired, but now the staff accommodation on the lower ground floor lay empty and her replacement lived out. I preferred it that way. Tiptoeing around people in my own home meant I never fully relaxed. Was that creak a burglar? Or just a member of staff with insomnia? At least now, I knew it was a burglar and I could panic accordingly. Plus every time I tried to sneak downstairs for a midnight snack, Marcella had insisted on getting up to help me, and if I wanted to eat an entire tub of cookie dough ice cream at one a.m., I didn’t need that kind of judgment. Marcella had moved to Cheshire to be nearer to her grandchildren, and I wasn’t devastated about it.

I glanced up at the TV.

And dropped the glass.

The news was on, orange flames dancing across the screen as a building blazed in north London. And not just any building. It looked remarkably similar to the one we’d left Heath outside four hours earlier. It couldn’t be…could it?

I screwed my eyes shut. The facade, the railings, the lopsided evergreen in the planter beside the door… They all matched. Heart racing, I tried calling him. Voicemail. Why wasn’t he answering the phone? Should I use my panic button? I mean, I was definitely panicking, but I wasn’t the one in trouble.

Wait, Heath had given me a number for Blackwood’s control room. My fingers trembled as I scrolled through my contacts list, accidentally dialled my masseuse, and hung up cursing. Finally, I got through.

“Hello, Blackwood,” a male voice said.

“It’s Edie Renner. Heath’s girlfriend, Heath Carlisle. There’s a fire at his apartment building, and he’s not answering his phone, and…and… I don’t know what to do.”

“Is that the fire in Highbury? The one on the news?”

“That’s right. Have you heard from him?”

“Let me look into it. Are you okay to hold?”

No. No, I wasn’t okay at all, but I swallowed a sob and forced myself to take a breath.

“Yes, and thank you.”

I paced the kitchen for thirty seconds, then pulled on a coat, shoved my feet into a pair of boots, and grabbed my car key. I was sitting in my Aston Martin, hyperventilating, when the guy on the phone finally came back.

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