A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews

‘Oh dear.’ Posy pulled a face. ‘It’s just that Verity is the manager and I just assumed that it would be less awkward to have Verity and Nina take the flat, on account of them being, like, ladies. Two ladies.’

‘When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me,’ Tom said gravely.

Mattie saw her chance and seized it with both hands. ‘Don’t call Posy an ass,’ she gasped in shocked tones. ‘And her pregnant, too! You know, it would be awkward, wouldn’t it, for Tom to share with Nina, Nina being a lady, but I’m a lady too, so that would be absolutely not awkward.’

‘Nina is my dear, dear friend,’ Tom said, his eyes flashing behind his glasses though his dear, dear friend Nina had once confided to Mattie that she suspected that Tom didn’t even need glasses and just wore them to make himself look even more like a tweedy nerd than he already did. ‘Also, it’s the twenty-first century, and if you won’t let me share a flat with a woman, then, I don’t want to, but I would have a very good case to take to a sexual discrimination trial.’

‘Yeah, nice try,’ Mattie blustered, because she could feel the flat slipping through her fingers.

Tom nodded. ‘Maybe even the European Court of Human Rights. It’s your decision, Posy.’

‘It’s not my decision,’ Posy said, backing out of the room. ‘I’m not making any decisions that are likely to cause my blood pressure to rise. I’m stressed out enough about all this Christmas stuff. You’ll have to decide between yourselves, like the sensible, grown-up, adult people that I know you both can be.’

Mattie hated to beg, but just because she hated something wasn’t a good enough reason not to.

‘No Posy, please, please, let me have the room. I have to be here by seven thirty, eight at the very latest. I get up at six every morning. Six o’clock! Then I have evening prep, which means I’m not home much before nine, so I have no social life and I’m living with my mother, and please, Tom. Come on, don’t be a dick about this.’

‘I’m not being a dick,’ Tom said, though he was totally being a dick as far as Mattie was concerned. ‘And my current living conditions are also far from ideal,’ he added stiffly, then pressed his lips together as Mattie and Posy waited expectantly.

‘Far from ideal, you say?’ Posy prodded, stepping back into the room, her eyes gleaming at the prospect of finally learning something, anything, about Tom’s private life.

‘Yes,’ Tom said evenly. ‘That’s what I said. You don’t need to know my personal business.’

‘Oh,’ Mattie said, making her eyes especially wide. ‘Oh. How odd!’

‘What’s odd?’ Posy asked, lowering herself onto Verity’s rather lovely blue velvet reading chair with some difficulty.

‘Well, it’s just that Tom doesn’t want everyone knowing his personal business and yet he wants to move into the flat above the shop.’ Mattie tried her best to look sorrowful, as if she’d just been told that her favourite French cooking chocolate was no longer available in the UK. ‘I’m sorry, Tom, but I don’t see how you’re going to maintain that work-life balance that’s so important to you if you take the room.’

‘I will, because unlike the rest of you, I’m perfectly capable of compartmentalising and also fixing a padlock to my bedroom door,’ Tom said in stern tones.

Posy snorted. ‘Yeah, right. I’ve asked you to perform several minor acts of household repair in the past, and you couldn’t do any of them.’

‘Couldn’t or wouldn’t,’ Tom said, and Posy looked furious, but then she remembered that she was being neutral and sank back in the chair.

‘You have to sort it out between you,’ she repeated, and it was clear that Tom wasn’t going to give an inch, and Mattie didn’t see why she should, so there was only one thing for it.

‘We’ll toss a coin,’ she said. ‘I don’t see any other way, do you?’

‘I don’t,’ Tom agreed, already pulling out a handful of loose change. ‘Heads or tails?’

‘Heads,’ Mattie said, her fingers crossed as Tom handed Posy a pound coin.

‘You’d better do the honours,’ he said with a Cheshire cat grin as if the flat was already his. ‘Being a neutral third party.’

Posy flipped the coin, failed to catch it so it fell to the floor and bounced off the skirting board, and Mattie and Tom were a whisker close to bumping heads as they rushed to see what side up it had landed.

‘Oh, tails,’ Tom said, not even bothering to hide his glee. ‘Bad luck, Mattie.’

‘Yes, sorry,’ Posy said with a weak flutter of her hands. Then she fluttered weakly again. ‘Sorry, can you give me a hand getting out of this chair? Or hire a hoist.’

Tom and Mattie took an arm each and tugged Posy out of the blue velvet depths. There was nothing for it now but to head back to the tearooms and maybe if Mattie worked like a dog all day, then she might be able to leave a whole fifteen minutes earlier than she normally did.

‘Are you all right, Mattie?’ Posy asked as they stepped back into the hall. ‘If past history is correct, Tom will soon be hooking up with someone and want to move in with them. Who would have thought that in the space of a year, Nina, Verity and I would all be in committed long-term relationships? I think Lavinia must have cast a spell on the shop before she died. Mattie! Mattie, I know you’re upset but can you start moving? Work to be done and all that.’

Mattie was rooted to the spot and staring at a closed door behind which there could be … ‘Is that a broom cupboard?’ she asked, because if it was a large broom cupboard, then maybe …

‘Oh, you don’t want to see in there. It’s nothing,’ Posy said quickly, a hand on Mattie’s back to push her along. ‘Absolutely nothing.’

‘I really don’t want to be the one to say this, but didn’t that used to be Sam’s room?’ Tom queried in a long-suffering voice.

‘Room! Hardly a room,’ Posy said, wriggling past Mattie so she could form a human, pregnant shield in front of the door. ‘Anyway, there’s stuff in there. So much stuff.’

‘Again, I really don’t want to say this either, but when you say “stuff”, do you actually mean a copious amount of books that you (a) haven’t got round to moving to your gigantic house in Bloomsbury, or (b) can’t move because you told Sebastian quite categorically that was the very last of your books when you managed to fill two van-loads? Or is it (c) you actually killed Nina some months ago and that’s where her decomposing body is wrapped in bin bags? I thought I could smell something funny.’

Posy gave Tom a feeble slap on the arm. ‘Of course I haven’t killed Nina. I think the smell is just Verity’s newest meditation candle.’

‘Which just leaves (a) and (b),’ Mattie said, folding her arms and planting herself squarely so that Posy was hemmed in. ‘Which is it?’

‘OK, it’s (a),’ Posy admitted. ‘Also, (b). It used to be Sam’s room and now it’s my overspill books room.’ She pouted winsomely in a way that would have had Sebastian Thorndyke agreeing to build an extension to their already very big house just so that Posy could have more books. ‘I’ve filled every last shelf and bookcase that we own and Sebastian made me promise on my first edition of I Capture the Castle that for every new book I brought into the house, a book had to leave. It was very unreasonable of him.’

Mattie would never understand what the deal was with the Happy Ever After staff and all their many, many, many books. ‘Really, Posy, couldn’t you just go digital? Have you any idea how many books you could put on an e-reader?’

Posy made a furious huffing noise.

‘Best not to go there,’ Tom advised as he reached over his huffing boss to open the door to her unofficial library. ‘Anyway, look, there’s no room to swing a cat. Not even a very small cat.’

Mattie peered around the door and for one moment she thought that, annoyingly, Tom was right. There were piles of books, books and yet more books, and it was a wonder that the floor joists hadn’t given way. But when she tried to visualise the room without any books, it was … not spacious, but definitely bigger than a broom cupboard.

‘You could get a single bed in there,’ she decided, which was fortunate because she hadn’t shared a bed with anyone since … Anyway, she had no plans to share her bed with anyone. Ever. ‘And a clothes rail. Maybe even a shelf on the wall.’

‘I suppose … I could mention to Sebastian that I’d overlooked some books?’ Posy said, rubbing her bump. ‘And I am carrying his child, which is a very useful thing to bring up when I want to win an argument. Besides, Sam managed perfectly well in this room for years.’

Mattie smiled aggressively at Tom, who looked quite taken aback and blinked uncertainly. ‘Well, I guess we’re both moving in, then.’

‘I guess we are,’ Tom said.

Mattie gestured at the room. ‘And I’m sure you’ll be comfortable in here. If it was good enough for Sam, then I’m sure it will be fine for you.’

‘Why should I get stuck with this glorified cupboard?’ Tom asked incredulously.

‘Because you’re a man,’ Mattie said with a dismissive wave of her hand, as if Tom’s so-called manliness was in question.

‘That’s reverse sexism,’ Tom said.

‘It’s not. It means that I’m a woman, so obviously I have more things than you,’ Mattie pointed out with a slight gritting of her teeth. ‘Clothes and things.’

Tom swept his eyes over Mattie, then it was his turn to employ a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘You can’t have that many clothes. You wear the same thing every single day.’