Page 26 of Read My Lips

“I know.” While I fully supported her right to move out and take everything she owned that wasn’t bolted to the floor, if I was going to be jobless and broken-hearted in an entirely empty house, I needed tea. “How about I buy you a brand new one if you don’t take the kettle?”

Cathy rolled her eyes. “An extra special, super fancy one, mind. And make us a cuppa you moody git. You’ve been in a right snit since yesterday.”

How very dare she. I had not.

“Done.” Anything was worth the continued ability to self-caffeinate.

One hand in the box of teabags, I watched her climb onto the worktop, brandishing a screwdriver. And start taking down the blinds.

“Seriously mate?”

“They’re vintage Laura Ashley!”

To buy: plates, bowls, curtains. A life.

I flipped the cupboard door open, and ducked right back out of it again. “Erm, Cathy...? You didn’t buy all the mugs as well, did you?”

“I’ve left you those ridiculous horse ones.”

Of course she bloody had.

Matt appeared in the doorway like he’d been summoned by the kettle, but the app on his phone wasn’t that clever. Leaning past me, he snagged one of the Hobnobs of Guilt Cathy had put on a plate, signing one handed.

“Not being funny, but there’s this bloke outside who looks like he’s taken the wrong turn on his way to a wedding.” He dumped a teabag into the novelty mug shaped like a flower pot Cathy was leaving behind because the handle had come off. Which, actually just meant it was a flower pot. Minus the hole.

“He’s been going up and down the street for fifteen minutes.”

Very carefully, I set my tea down to free my hands up. Albert the #notahorse goggle-eyed me.

“What d’you mean a wedding?” Crumbs from the third Hobnob I would absolutely burn off in the gym tumbled from my t-shirt as I signed back to him.

“Full on three-piece suit.” Matt’s hands traced down his chest, like he was mapping out the long line of the lapel on both sides. “Dead nice one.”

I stopped crunching.

Simon would not come here. There was no reason Simon would come here. It was Sunday. He lived miles away. On a legitimate tube line.

The doorbell ding-donged. Matt’s alarm app on his phone waggle-danced to tell him about it.

“You might want to get that, Ben,” he signed, smirking his head off. “Pretty sure it’s for you.”

On the doorstep, Simon looked up with so much genuine relief it couldn’t have been the first bell he’d rung that morning.

“Something seems to have happened to the numbers on your street.”

“Yeah.” Really, who needed friends when they’d remorselessly dismantle your home, and let your boss wander about outside for a quarter of an hour like you were actively trying to get him mugged? “There was a bomb.”

Simon’s eyes widened. “A bomb?”

“Not like that. In the Blitz.” Why couldn’t he have been a shit fake kisser? When he read my lips, my brain stopped working and all I could think about was his mouth. Which was so not ok. “About five houses got taken out, and they chucked these up in the gap.”

The memory of his lips prickled against mine and the phantom coolness of the glass of our office building hit between my shoulder blades. What the hell was I supposed to do about that?

“I see.”

The toes of his shoes faded from nearly orange to a duller tan brown. Jaunty fabric panels on the sides in a pale blue and cream floral pattern matched the sky, and his impossibly creaseless jacket, and the exact shade of not-faded-white of his shirt. And absolutely nothing about me.

I tilted my chin, oh-so-casually leaning against the woodchip wallpaper like doorstep chats about local history with someone who was definitely not just passing-by were totally normal.