Page 50 of Read My Lips

Why was I even surprised he was a master chef in disguise? He probably did brain surgery as a hobby on the weekends.

Simon dragged a hunk of bread through the sauce. “Were you worried I might poison you?”

“No. But it’s tomatoes and sausage, isn’t it? How d’you get it to taste so good?”

“Ben, you watched everything I did.”

“Yeah, but you cheffed it.” Only he would think it was simple. “There’s no way it’d turn out like that if I tried.”

Simon leaned forward, elbow on the worktop, easy and relaxed and perfect, and I sort of leaned in too.

“I think you’d do okay. If you tried. It’s all about working with what you’ve got.”

Oh, he had to be licking the sauce off his thumb on purpose. No way he didn’t know exactly what he was doing to me. I swallowed hard and forked up another bite.

“Reckon I like Mauritian food.”

Simon tilted his head, attention flashing between my lips and my eyes.

“It’s Creole actually. Mauritius has all sorts – Indian style curries, and Chinese food, French influence. Lots of seafood.”

“Sounds alright, that does. Bit of everything. Better than scrag end.”

“Mm.” Simon nodded. “All the variety you could want in life thanks to thousands of people being dispossessed of their homelands in service of the sugar trade for hundreds of years.”

A chunk of sausage stuck in my throat, hard enough to hurt when I swallowed.

“Oh.” Maybe we were not in fact having a deeply layered flirtation. “Right.”

Simon laughed.

“Tastes good though, doesn’t it?”

Why couldn’t I ever work him out?

After we’d eaten, Simon steered me into a cosy room upstairs. No telly. Three deep, slightly shabby sofas grouped around a fireplace, and bookcases lining the walls.

“Don’t they watch TV?”

“Not in here.”

How very foolish of me to ask. Obviously they had an entirely separate room for sofas and books. “So what’s this, the library?”

“Library’s down the corridor.”

My laugh perished in my throat. Simon wasn’t joking.

“What do they do in here then?”

“Hardly anything at all.” Settling onto the nearest sofa, Simon set his wine glass on a handy table situated exactly where you might want to put your drink down, and picked up a pack of playing cards. “They’re planning on redecorating and throwing out the sofas. Not up to scratch, according to Temp.”

Maybe they’d put them up on gumtree, and someone like me would pick them up and strap them to the roof of their car. Or maybe you didn’t do that kind of thing when you lived in a place like this.

“God knows why she cares when they only come in here at Christmas.” The cards flowed through Simon’s fingers like they were connected on a string. “Which is a shame, don’t you think? I rather like it. It’s lived-in.”

“Who by? The resident ghost?”

That earned me a head-tilt. “I mean it’s unpretentious.” Slim fingers tapped the deck back to order against his thigh. “Worn in. Human.”