Page 57 of The Good Boy

Matilda emerges from the shadows and leaps up to the top ofthe stepladder, where she rubs her head under his palm. Absently Miles scoops her up into his arms and holds her tenderly to his chest. Damn that cat.

“You can call me if you need bailing out,” he offers. “Oh, and what’s next for Rory’s person training?” He looks at Claudia. “His work experience, I mean.”

“Well, tomorrow is normally our day to volunteer at the care home,” I say. “Rory’s visits are really popular with the older folk down there. But I’m not sure if we should still go.”

“Go!” Miles says. “You saw Rory at the party—he’s an old lady’s dream date. Take him down and he’ll charm the pants off them. Tell you what, I’ll come too. I’m supposed to be collecting oral histories and memories as a wider part of my project anyway.”

“Really?” I ask him, with a surge of pleasure at the suggestion. “Sure you shouldn’t be dusting some dinosaur bones or something?”

“That’s a paleontologist,” Claudia says with a smile.

“Genie knows that,” Miles says, shaking his head.

“Then come, yeah—that’d be nice,” I say. “Well, better get my wig on.”

Somehow determined to make an idiot of myself, I jam the stupid thing on my head. Miles smiles, Claudia laughs.

“Blond suits you,” she says with a flick of her own golden locks.

“You look better when you look like you,” Miles says. Of course I do—that is really just stating the obvious—but it feels like he has just given me the greatest compliment since Romeo told Juliet she was a bit of all right. (Look, I’ve never actually read any Shakespeare, but I’ve seen the movies—I’m paraphrasing.)

“Genie,” Miles calls to me just as I’m about to head back inside.

“Yeah?” I turn to him.

“Be careful on your stakeout,” he says. “I’d hate to lose a good neighbor to jail.”

“Thanks,” I say. “You’re not bad yourself.”

By which I mean that I am desperately in love with his stupid, gorgeous face.

Chapter Twenty-One

“What are we doing again?” Rory asks as he sits in the back seat. I am trying to discreetly parallel park, which, when it comes to my spatial-awareness issues, is something of an oxymoron.

“We are spying on my Dave,” Kelly says. “The kids are at my mum’s, so this might be my only chance.” She’s in a shiny ginger bob wig and a pair of shades. “He never comes home straight after work anymore. So we are seeing what he is up to, the dirty bastard.”

“Maybe he just likes rolling in mud. It’s very cooling, you know, and good for fleas.”

“I don’t mean literally dirty, Rory,” Kelly says. “I’d actually go for that. He’ll be out in a minute.” Behind her dark glasses, Kelly is intent on the closed doors of Dave’s workshop and garage, which is all locked up for the night. Only a dim light, just visible in the back where his office is, tells us that he hasn’t left yet. The next few minutes pass in near silence except for Rory eating his way through a box of doughnuts.

“I’ve seen TV,” he’d told us when he demanded we stop at the bakery on the way. “Everyone knows you need doughnuts if you’re going to do a steakout. And by the way, when is the steak part?”

It had seemed safest just to get him the doughnuts and break the news about the “steak” later.

Suddenly there is movement from the garage. Dave steps out of the door.

“Shhhhhhh!” Kelly hisses for some reason, as if Dave might be able to hear Rory’s munches as he locks the door behind him. Sliding down in her seat, she peers at his every move over the dashboard.

“There he is!” Rory points.

“Don’t point, we are in disguise!” Kelly says. I find myself sinking down in my seat too, more out of shame than a need to be discreet. Dave pauses outside the garage and checks his phone, then he looks up at the still-light sky and sighs. It’s such a heavy sigh that I can almost feel it in my chest. I can almost feel the sorrow and wistfulness that runs through his frame. And then he walks right past his van and into town.

“What?” Kelly says, open-mouthed. “Where’s he going, the shady git? We need to follow him!”

“We can’t follow him, not in this car or on foot. He’ll see us right away,” I tell her firmly. “Look, Kelly, for what it’s worth, he doesn’t look like a man in the throes of a passionate affair to me. He looks kind of tired and deflated.”

“Yeah, from all the sex,” Kelly insists.

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