Page 65 of The Price of Love
‘I’ll give you a ring and let you know how Friday goes.’ I hurriedly put the phone down and let out a long breath. ‘I wouldn’t put it past him to turn up in the office next. If he does, will you say I’ve gone out?’
‘I’ll do better than that, I’ll set Clive on him. He can tell Luke you’ve gone lesbian. He tells people that anyway, every time you’ve turned him down.’
‘Now that Luke’s got the smell of money, I think it would take more than that to put him off. Oh, has Cal rung back yet?’ Flint had promised to replace my phone for me, but was taking his time about doing so, and I was seriously feeling the lack of a mobile now.
Katie looked at me pityingly. ‘You’ve got it bad, haven’t you? No, Willow, he hasn’t rung. I would tell you if he did.’ Cal, since dropping me off at my front door, hadn’t been seen or heard from. I’d left him loads of messages, but he hadn’t replied. ‘Why are you so uptight about hearing from him?’
‘Because I had fantastic sex with him the other night.’
‘Youwhat?’ Katie sank back into her chair. ‘You lucky, lucky cow. Can I have a turn with him next?’
‘You’ve got Dan.’
‘Your point is? No, I don’t mean that. Dan’s lovely. It’s just, jeezus, woman, if you were any more jammy, you’d be a pudding. Cal, eh?’ She got up and shouldered her filing pile, heading out of the office, but sprang back through the door a moment later. ‘No, it’s no good. I’ve tried, but I’ve got to know.What was it like?’
For the sake of sparing Cal’s blushes, should I ever get to see him again, I only gave her the edited highlights. But even those were enough to make her shake her head and mutter things about lucky, lucky bitches. She made me go over and over it. Spellbound, she insisted, by the romance of it all.
‘There’s nothing romantic about cold floorboards under your bum.’
‘Listen, Willow, with a man like that, it would be romantic shagging in the freezer section in Sainsbury’s. He was born romantic, you can tell. Why else would he grow his hair and wear all that black?’
‘Jazz wears black.’
‘That’s only so the dirt doesn’t show. Jazz has all the romance of a bin liner. Come on, Willow, admit it. Your man is the ride of the century.’
Katie was so determined to make Cal and I a couple in her head, she neglected to acknowledge that he hadn’t even returned my calls. Hadn’t been in touch at all. Not as much as an email, in fact. So, all in all, I was rather shocked, when I reached home, to turn the corner, enter my own kitchen and walk into the man in question holding forth to Ash, whilst wearing a tea towel round his middle and carrying a wooden spoon. There was a wonderful smell of cooking and something bumped and spluttered on the stove.
I stared and walked out. ‘I’m coming in again,’ I announced from the hallway. ‘So if either of you is a mirage, this is your chance to leave.’ When I looked again, they’d stopped talking.Ash was leaning against the wall supervising a saucepan and Cal was retrieving something which smelled of garlic from the oven.
‘Ah, you’re back. Just in time.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Cooking garlic chicken. In a minute I shall beservinggarlic chicken, so would you like to give the others a shout?’
Feeling like a visitor in my own home, I rounded up the remaining brother and fetched Bree from the garden where she was reclining in a hammock whilst Grace slept in her car seat. ‘How long has he been here?’ I asked her as she clambered dozily out of the swinging canvas.
‘Since this morning, I think. Turned up on the step with a chicken and a laptop, not long after you’d gone.’
‘Sounds like Cal. He’d never turn up with a bottle of wine, would he?’
‘What?’
‘Sorry. Nothing. Thinking aloud.’
We sat around the kitchen table and ate Cal’s delectable roast garlic chicken, although I noticed Cal himself didn’t seem to have much appetite. Whenever our eyes met, he’d hold my gaze for a second or two and then look away. He was fiddling with his cutlery or turning his attention to Ash, until I began to feel awkward and concentrated on the food on my plate. I found myself grateful for the interludes when Grace cried and needed fetching from her chair, or when the water jug needed refilling.
Eventually we’d all finished. Ash leaned back in his chair and lit a joint, blowing the smoke carelessly, which made Bree huff and remove Grace to the living room. Flint made some excuse about ‘finishing a drawing’ and left for his attic, and I started clearing the table.
‘I got your messages.’ It was the first remark Cal had directed at me since we’d sat down. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t got back to you,I, well, I just didn’t know what to say. And, to be honest, I was a little bit scared.’
Ash, demonstrating the first ounce of tact in thirty-two years, stood up. ‘Right. I’m off. Enjoy yourselves, children.’ Pressing the remains of the joint into Cal’s hand, he swept off, trailing his wrists dramatically.
Being alone with Cal made me nervous. ‘Perhaps we should . . .’ I indicated the living room.
‘I think we should be alone for this talk, don’t you? If only to spare me from looking a complete moron in front of your entire family.’ He rearranged the chicken bones on his plate, as though playing a complicated game with himself.
‘Why were you scared to get back to me?’ I couldn’t take my eyes off him. There was a set to his features, a kind of stoic squaring off of the chin and an inability to meet my eye that made me scared in my own right.Is he going to tell me it was all a mistake?My hands were trembling slightly, so I hid them up the sleeves of my shirt.
