Page 42 of The Night Shift
‘Jeremy? Sounds like an absolute wanker.’
Gus looked like he was swallowing something spiky. ‘Yes– I’d say that’s a fair assessment,’ he said. ‘But Amelia clearly rates him quite highly.’
‘She must be out of her tiny mind,’ Violet muttered before she could stop herself, and Gus smiled.
‘Shower’s through there,’ he said pointing to a door in the far corner that Violet hadn’t spotted before. ‘It’s quite straightforward, on-off, temperature dial, etcetera. Shall I make you a cup of tea?’ He went to leave and then paused, turned back towards her. ‘Do you fancy some pasta?’ he said. ‘We missed breakfast with all the drama this morning and I’m starving. I could just do us some tagliatelle carbonara?’ His expression was hopeful and Violet couldn’t bring herself to tell him that she wasn’t an enormous fan of creamy sauces drowning her pasta.
‘That sounds lovely,’ she said, trying out some false enthusiasm and finding that it wasn’t so difficult. After all, she was ravenous herself and it was worth a little white lie to see Gus’s smile as he left the room.
* * *
It was close to five by the time she’d replied to Dev’s messages, tidied the bed and showered. She wrapped the towel around her body and had a quick hunt around the bathroom for a hairbrush. Her hair generally didn’t need much attention but having caught sight of herself when she returned from swimming the day before, her fringe wonky with tufts of hair sticking out at all kinds of crazy angles, she didn’t really want to put Gus through the same spectacle again. Not finding anything in the bathroom she returned to the bedroom and skimmed the surfaces but there was no sign of anything useful so she guiltily slid open one of the top drawers in the fitted cabinet. Although she’d slept in Gus’s bed and washed in his shower there was something about rootling through a chest of drawers that felt distinctly like a breach of privacy and she promised herself that if she didn’t find anything in the first one she’d quit the search– she couldn’t very well ransack the entire apartment on such a flimsy premise.
Luckily the first drawer she openeddidcontain a hairbrush, but it was immediately evident that this brush had been Amelia’s because the remaining items lying beside it had a distinctly female feel. Unless Gus had a similar second career to Marvin, and the lipstick and mascara were his. It was possible. Most of Marv’s maths class presumably had no idea that their teacher was a drag artist by night.
She lifted the brush out of the drawer with a degree of trepidation and pulled a few strands of long blonde hair from its prongs. She didn’t have time to wonder whether the hair was definitely Amelia’s because the photo lying beneath on the drawer base confirmed her suspicions and before she really questioned what she was doing, she had pulled it out to get a better look. Inside a plain silver frame was a picture of a very pretty blonde woman wearing an expensive-looking silk chiffon dress. The neckline of the dress was discreet but plunging enough to demonstrate an ample cleavage and it clung to the woman’s body in all the right places, skimming over the nipped-in waist and falling softly across rounded hips. Her make-up was flawless– Violet had spent enough time around Marvin while he watched YouTube tutorials on contouring to know that there was some top-level expertise going on here– but of course, Amelia was in television, that’s what Anjali had said. She would know exactly how to make the best of her perfect features for the camera.
Violet looked down at her own chest to where the fluffy white towel was tucked into itself rather than any useful securing cleavage. She could see the knobbly outline of ribs meeting sternum and pressed gently on her prominent costochondral joints wishing for one moment that beneath the towel’s scrunched layers there lay a rounded bosom of D-cup proportions. Even a C-cup would be an improvement. But she knew that the reality was an optimistic B and those cups were only truly full if she was leaning forward anyway. She looked back at the photo wondering what this odd curdling feeling in her stomach was and guessed it must be jealousy. She had never previously compared herself with other people, certainly in terms of looks. She knew that she was neither cat-walk supermodel nor hideous troll and that was good enough for her. A boyfriend (well, someone she had slept with a few times) had once described her as an ethereal beauty– which had sounded nice, if rather fanciful. But she was wise to those sorts of honeyed words and unprovoked flattery. Soon afterwards she stopped returning his calls and the relationship had come to, as far as Violet was concerned, a natural conclusion, although she did end up putting her housemate in charge of responding to his texts, once Dev had explained to her that an itemised list of the reasons they weren’t compatible as a couple was perhaps not the gentlest way to let a guy down.
Well, she felt jealous now staring down at this photo. She wanted this woman’s flawless skin, she wanted her tumbling long blonde hair and her voluptuous curves, and most of all she wanted what Amelia had her arms wrapped around– a laughing handsome Gus, squinting into the sunshine as he took the selfie, head titled back, smile on wide beam. That, she suddenly realised, was exactly what she wanted. She wondered for a moment how it might feel if Gus told her she was an ethereal beauty. It didn’t really sound like the kind of thing he’d say, but she was probably more inclined to believe him than not. Somehow with Gus, compliments seemed to at least have a basis in fact– like when he’d appreciated her being a straight-talker or when he’d been impressed by her diagnostic skills on reviewing Mrs Boulter’s ECG. He was charming, yes, and he’d not been honest with his family or colleagues about Amelia– but still, she trusted him.
A knock at the door startled her out of her envious reverie and she said yes before she really thought about what she was holding in her hands.
‘I’ll just leave your tea here,’ said Gus, placing the mug on top of the bedside table. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you weren’t dressed yet, I’ll—’ He caught sight of the photo in her hands and gave her a quizzical look.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly, almost dropping the frame as she fumbled to return it to the drawer. ‘I was just looking for a brush. My hair. I just. I didn’t mean… I wasn’t snooping.’ I was snooping, she thought to herself.I absolutely was snooping. And now I’ve been caught he’s going to hate me. He’ll probably ask to check my pockets. If I had any pockets in this towel.
Gus smiled easily. ‘It’s okay,’ he said as he crossed to where she was standing. He took the photo from her hands and laid it face down back in the drawer. ‘It’s the last few bits of Amelia’s stuff,’ he said, gesturing to the drawer. ‘I don’t really expect she’ll be back to collect any more of her things, but the frame was an engagement present from her brother, quite expensive, I thought she might…’ He trailed off. ‘It was one of her favourite photos,’ he said eventually.
Violet’s heart sank into her heels. She felt like she’d opened up a healing wound like a surgeon who realises they’ve left an instrument in a bodily cavity and has to take the patient back to theatre to repeat the incision.
‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘For finding it and for making you sad.’ She shifted awkwardly to face him. ‘You look so happy in that picture.’
‘I was,’ he said. ‘Although that’s mainly because we were at a friend’s wedding and one of the other ushers was making me laugh. But yeah, I was happy. I’m not going to pretend my life with her was a horror show just because we’ve split up.’
‘Quite right,’ said Violet firmly, even though part of her had been secretly hoping he would reveal exactly that. ‘Slagging off the ex isn’t a good look on men.’
‘No?’ He laughed.
‘No. It’s a bit like when you hear girls bitching about someone they’re supposed to be friends with and you spend the whole time wondering what they’re going to say about you behind your back afterwards. Not that I’m saying there will be an afterwards, with us I mean, or indeed anything to talk about behind anyone’s back regarding us or our relationship, because there is no relationship, so obviously… ‘
She was aware that Gus was watching her closely and felt her cheeks heating up as she ran out of breath. There was a moment’s silence.
‘Are you just saying the first thing that pops into your head, Violet?’ he asked, a smile playing on his lips.
She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said seriously. ‘It’s more “thinking aloud”. I do that sometimes– when I’m trying to make sense of things.’
He nodded and leaned a fraction closer, his tone still conversational. ‘Are you nervous?’ he asked. ‘You sound a little…’
‘Deranged? Unhinged?’ She tried to laugh.
‘No. Just nervous.’
‘Well, the evidence of my babbling incoherent nonsense would imply that I am at least apprehensive, yes.’ She tilted her face up towards his. ‘Although studies suggest that up to seventy-seven per cent of the population report significant anxiety around speaking– but I think that’s public speaking. And obviously I’m not standing in a lecture theatre. Wearing a towel. Thank goodness.’
‘But you’re not generally a nervous person,’ he said. His voice was now softer, his body close enough to hers that she could feel his breath on her bare skin. ‘In fact most of the time you’re completely rational, and an absolute mine of interesting information.’
She smiled at the comment. ‘Maybe I am nervous,’ she conceded. ‘It’s possible that I’m behaving slightly out of character because I really care what you think of me and my mine of interesting information.’ She gestured briefly to herself. ‘I am also, as I’ve mentioned, only wearing a towel. And you are now fully clothed, which puts me at something of a disadvantage.’
