Page 24 of Tears of Ink

“An apology.” His steady gaze is on my face. “Are you ready?”

I nod, my cheeks flaming. “Yes, I’m sorry about the confusion.”

“Don’t worry, I called ahead and told them lunch was going to be a bit late.”

“Lunch?” My heart starts knocking in my chest.

“Of course. You are going to need to meet everyone and talk through plans. Surely that would be better over lunch?”

I hadn’t even thought...? Suddenly I realise I haven’t been sensible about this at all. This is just another classic example of me being hasty. What was it my dad always used to call me? Flighty.

I lock away thoughts of my dad and straighten my shoulders. “Okay, let’s go. I wouldn’t want to make lunch later than it is.”

He grins, and it does something funny to my stomach. He’s engaged, Faith.

I follow him down the landing to the stairwell, breathing in deep. I can do this. I can do anything that stops me going back to Brighton and living my life in the shadow of the past.

C H A P T E R E I G H T

The car ride is awkward. Two strangers stuck in a small sports car for two hours. He tries to open up conversation, but my stomach is twisted into knots and I keep focusing on the movement of his wrists as he drives. So strong and controlled, his watch every so often flashes a ray of sunlight.

I’m paying so much attention to his wrists smattered in fair hair, I don’t hear him speak. “So why don’t you have many London friends on Facebook?”

I swivel in my seat to stare at him. “What’s the obsession with Facebook friends?”

He shrugs, his fingers flicking the indicator for a left turn. His fingers… Oh my god, stop it, Faith.

“I just figured that’s what people gauged their lives by?”

“Do you? I checked your profile; you don’t have many friends on there, either.” I’m not worried about my lack of online friends. I’ve never been a people person. That it should extend to my digital life is no skin off my nose. What am I going to do? Tell people on a daily basis that I forgot to have dinner and instead had a cigarette and a handful of crackers? Or that yesterday I shagged a stranger in the changing rooms of Topshop because I had nothing better to do. Those aren’t the sort of things people want to know.

“You checked my profile? Are you stalking me now?”

I roll my eyes and stare out of the window. I wonder if he’d let me smoke in his vintage car. I’m thinking not. He doesn’t look like a smoker. He looks like someone who works out, and eats salmon and broccoli for breakfast, probably brought to him on a silver platter by his skinny socialite fiancée.

“It would be foolish not to see who my boss is.”

I glance back at him just as he looks at me. Our eyes meet.

“Technically my mother is your boss.”

“Is she going to be there today?” I don’t know why but the delayed meeting with the baroness is starting to freak me out. “Or are you our permanent go-between?”

“That’s one of my favourite books?” His words make me sit up straighter.

“Pardon?” My palms slick a little—crazy overreaction. “L. P. Hartley is one of your favourite books?”

He nods, and those insane bright eyes glance over me. “Have you read it?”

I cough a little. “Uh, yes.”

“And?”

“I was obsessed with it as a child. That tension, the build up, and the final tragedy.” I studied The Go Between for my English exam before my life went to shit. It’s one of my last stable memories: sitting in my room, flicking the pages; trying to get to the ending, but then realising that the exciting bit was shocking, and it hurt to read. A bit like life. “It’s hard to forget.” I add, and my voice wavers a little.

“The past is a foreign country,” his words hang in the air.

“They do things differently there.” I finish the famous quote.