Page 16 of The Price of Love
‘Can you fix it?’
‘Do you want me to?’ The red light made his face all angles, deep shadows under his eyes and cheekbones, like a Halloween mask.
‘Please.’
‘Then, my dear young lady, I shall be only too delighted. Now, let us leave here, before I become overexcited again and you call for your brother to sort me out using only his exquisite black belt.’
Cal held open the door of the darkroom and we went back into the suddenly too-harshly-lit hallway. ‘I’ll have it mended by the weekend. You can come over and collect it, if you like.’
‘Great. Oh, I’m away this weekend. Monday?’ Just the thought made me tingle.
Cal made a face. ‘Yeah. Sure. I’ll chuck a blanket over it on Friday, use it as a picnic table.’ Then he gave another of his sudden enormous grins. ‘Come Monday. It’ll be fine.’
‘I’ll look forward to it.’ I surprised myself by meaning it. Cal was strange to the nth degree, but he was fun, charming and seemed to like me. This was at least three points up on Ash’s previous boyfriends, who’d either been illegally odd, suicidal or had hated me in the kind of bitchy, supercilious way that some gay men do so well.
Ash decided to sleep over on Cal’s sofa. (Yeah, like I was going to fall forthatone. What did they think, that I’ve never watchedQueer as Folk?) So I made my own way home. The streets were dark, the road dull and bleak under the tyres of passing cars and I wondered what Ganda’s invention actually looked like.
His voice echoed in my head. ‘Remember, Willow, you have to see the whole picture,’ he’d always said, whilst inventing. ‘Don’t just think in the here and now, try to think forwards. You don’t have to think about what peoplewant, you have to think about what peopleneed. What they’re going to need in the future. Sometimes, they don’t even know themselves.’
All very well, Ganda, I thought as I headed down my own familiar road, but it’s hard to think about what peopleneed, when you don’t even know whatyouwant.
Chapter Eight
I was surprised at how much I missed Luke. In little over a week I’d somehow come to rely on his presence every evening, his phone calls every morning. The lack of these things made his absence more profound.
‘Are you falling in love with him?’ Katie asked. She and Jazz had joined me for our weekly Friday night drinking session and were gaining any amount of vicarious pleasure from asking deeply personal questions such as this. ‘I mean, you haven’t really known him very long.’
‘And you haven’t shagged him yet,’ pointed out Jazz. ‘No point in getting all droopy-eyed over the guy if he turns out to be hung like a vole.’
‘Oy, size isn’t everything. And, no, I’m not “falling in love”. I just miss him, that’s all.’
‘I read somewhere’ — Jazz took a deep mouthful of his Guinness while we expressed shock and surprise at the fact that he could read — ‘that you can make someone fall in love with you, just by being in contact with them at the same time every day.’
‘In that case,’ Katie retorted, ‘the barman in here must absolutely adoreyou.’
‘Maybe he does,’ Jazz replied evenly. ‘I’m only saying, that’s all.’
‘You aresocynical. I think it’s lovely that Will has got herself a gorgeous bloke, and if I didn’t have Dan I know I’d be raving jealous. That Luke is a real ride.’
Jazz and I stared at her. ‘Is there something you want to tell us?’ I said, eventually.
‘About how you know he’s a good ride?’ Jazz put in.
‘Oh, sorry. I was slipping into the Irish vernacular there, guys. I meant ride in the sense of being a shaggable bloke.’
We forgave her for not being British and ordered more drinks. Despite my newfound wealth, Jazz and Katie shared the round buying, which showed that the status quo was still exactly as it had been.
‘Have you told the others yet about the money?’ Katie asked, over another bottle of white wine.
‘Um. No. Not yet.’
‘Don’t you think you ought to?’
You see what I mean about the personal questions? ‘I’m still trying to think how to put it. Bree should be fine. She’s a senior partner at her law firm and Paddy earns enough to buy Mexico. I don’t think Ocean will be bothered, as long as no books were harmed in the making. Flint’s got bootloads of cash from doing whatever it is he does for foreign banks.’
‘And what about Ash?’
‘He’ll probably scratch your eyes out.’ Jazz snorted. ‘Or ignore youvery ostentatiously.’
