Freya North 3-Book Collection: Secrets, Chances, Rumours

She tried briefly, unsuccessfully, to equalize the score by deciding that the caller was some landlady who goes in to clean the apartment when Joe leaves.

A French version of me.

She doubted it, though. But, worse, she doubted herself now.

Tess put herself on autopilot; singing row-row-row-your-boat, letting Wolf out and then back in again, hanging out a white wash, going to the toilet. She knew it was ridiculous but everything she did was underscored by a silent chant. Stupid French cow, stupid French cow. French Sow. Sow'n Dairs. Joe leaving his phone in an apartment was one thing. In this woman's bed, with her velvety guttural emphasis on the possessive pronoun, was quite another. Who is she? Is she Kate? Can you be French and be called Kate?

But I thought he wanted to kiss me.

So Joe arrived back with Tess wanting to belt him. And she knew if she told him about the call straight away, she might very well do that. But she bit her tongue so she could just soak up a little of him first; absorb the warmth from his expansive smile, fill her ears with his voice, come close to him so she could brush by, accidentally on purpose, as she went to make tea, collecting a little of his physicality like it was magic dust that could seep through her clothes, through her skin and deep into her, carrying with it a cure. She just needed a little time to act as though she was fine, time to enjoy the ritual of making two cups again. Just five more minutes of him asking her this and that. Time to glance over at him leaning casually against the wall, or relaxing at the kitchen table, or giving his head a scratch, stifling a yawn, having a stretch. The hair on his stomach. How long had it been since she'd seen that? She'd only seen it the once.

‘What's for supper, then?’ he asked. ‘I'm looking forward to a home-cooked meal.’

Tess felt peculiarly triumphant – as if he'd been underfed or poorly nourished whilst he'd been away. Ha! Kate's obviously a shit chef! But then Tess thought, shit! I bet they eat out every night in romantic little bistros. And then she thought, why am I fretting? Why does this hurt? She could neither justify the feelings – yet nor could she deny them either.

It was only when she began to cook, with Joe wittering on in a friendly, anodyne way, that Tess was consumed with an invasive sadness. An intense and private remorse that there was indeed nothing going on. Because Kate was real. And Tess had been so happy to delude herself with daft little daydreams this last fortnight. Must get a grip. Must not be sad. What would my grandmother say? She told me to cook with love. She said, happiness is like seasoning, tiredness dulls flavours, anger turns food sour but sadness can kill a dish completely while love can flavour a dish to perfection.

So Tess added a lot of garlic and a pinch from every herb jar to counteract this. She didn't have the stomach to taste it. But Wolf gazed up at her expectantly and Joe kept saying, wow, smells great, when do we eat? And she kept thinking to herself, who am I cooking for? Who am I cooking for?

They ate. It was easy enough to laugh when Joe said something funny, to smile when he smiled at her, to be captivated by his bridge talk and appalled at the extreme hassles of the particular project. But it wasn't easy to strike up the conversation herself.

‘You're not very chatty, Miss Tess,’ he remarked, thinking she'd say, oh, I'm just tired – Wolf/ Emmeline had me up in the night. He certainly wasn't expecting the monotone response when it came.

‘Miss Tess?’

‘Kate called. She has your BlackBerry.’

It made no sense.

‘Kate?’

‘Yes, she called – about half an hour before you arrived home.’

‘My BlackBerry?’

Tess sighed. ‘Yes, Joe, your BlackBerry. You left it at Kate's. At her apartment. In her bed.’ And she scraped back her chair and dumped her plates beside the sink and walked out of the kitchen saying she was knackered, she was going to bed, goodnight.

Joe remained at the table wanting to laugh and groan simultaneously. Laugh because there was something so compelling about Tess when she was stroppy – the effect it had on him was the polar opposite of that which she intended. He just wanted to stop her and tuck her hair behind her ears and cup her face in his hands and call her a mad woman and tell her she was extremely attractive when she was pissed off and kiss her. But he had to groan because he had left his BlackBerry in France; groan because Nathalie had phoned here and got Tess and from Tess's reaction and the fact that she reported the sodding thing was in her apartment in her bed, Nathalie had obviously made it plain to Tess that though this wasn't a business call, she meant business. Groan because why did Nathalie call herself Kate? Groan because it complicated things with Nathalie – he didn't want to have to explain away Tess but nor did he want to relinquish the easy sex. Not yet. And how the fuck could he call Nathalie anyway – she had his BlackBerry and the only record he had of her number was in the bloody thing. He knew he should have synched the bloody thing with his computer. And then Joe realized in all of this there were more groans than laughs. He'd been travelling all day, for God's sake. He was tired, he had a lot on his mind far more pressing than angry lovers changing their names and petulant house-sitters stomping around his home. More groans than laughs, then – that was not what he wanted in life, it went coarsely against the grain of all he'd spent the last twenty years cultivating.

Bedtime.

The difference between men and women.

Oblivion in an instant for Joe.

A sleepless night for Tess.

Chapter Seventeen (#ulink_a7aed828-d29e-5b9e-ad4c-35d3aba5008d)

She was either going to have to say, sorry about last night, or persuade herself that she was entitled to her displeasure and thus manufacture a moral high ground to stomp around on today as well. Had she not been so tired, the former would have struck her as the right thing to do as well as the simplest and most sensible. But her lack of sleep made her crotchety and that made it easier to opt for the latter. She'd passed Joe in the hallway. He'd said good morning cheerily enough but with an audible question mark too. She'd smiled curtly before clattering around in the kitchen, giving an almighty sigh as she removed to the utility room Joe's kicked-off shoes. She also gave Wolf short shrift for darting around her legs with the slinkiness of a silverfish, his trademark display of affection which on all other days Tess would trip over and laugh at.

Joe was nonplussed, wondering quite what had happened to strip this girl of her artless sweetness, to have triggered instead the thunderous demeanour she was hurling around his house. He was about to suggest a cup of tea when he heard the front door slam and glanced from the window to see Tess marching off down the driveway, the wheels of the buggy skittering over the gravel as if she was making it travel faster than it was able.

Fresh air didn't seem to have lifted her mood or smoothed the furrow to her brow when she returned. She declined his offer of a sandwich and, later, she called downstairs that she wasn't hungry when he'd announced, for the second time, that supper was ready.

In her room she sat by the open window, trying to combat the mouth-watering drifts of lamb chops and sautéed potatoes filtering up from the kitchen by switching on the radio so she could concentrate on a sound other than her hunger pangs. She gave it an hour, then she eased open the bedroom door, leant over the banister and listened for sounds of activity. Hearing none, she descended the stairs, craning until she could see that Joe's study door was closed. Downstairs, the kitchen was in darkness and from the gap between study door and floor, she could see the light was on in there. She walked softly, quickly, over the flagstones in the hallway and once in the kitchen, she switched on the light in the extractor hood over the cooker – because the main light buzzed when it flickered into life. She'd meant to suggest to Joe that he consider replacing the strip lighting with something less harsh. What did it matter now? She opened the fridge door. Two lamb chops under cling film on a plate. She didn't take it to the table, but ate them then and there, using her fingers, too hungry to chew properly, swallowing mouthfuls that caught in her throat, sucking at the frills of meat left clinging to the bone.

‘Can't resist my cooking, hey?’

She spun. Joe was standing there leaning against the door-frame in his usual casual stance. Her first thought was to say that the chops were tough, leathery even, but the implicit nastiness shocked her.

‘Ta,’ she said instead, plucking an apple and biting into it smartly. She made to leave, winking at Wolf as she went but avoiding Joe's eyes. The problem was, he was blocking the doorway. She realized this halfway across the kitchen, by which time it was a little idiotic to retrace her steps, go through the utility room, through the boot room, out to the garden, circumnavigate half the house and enter through the front door. She did, though, momentarily consider it. No, she'd just have to stand her ground and keep moving.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, when she was in danger of treading on his socked feet.

Joe moved but as she passed, he caught her arm – he didn't hold on to it, he just caught it for a moment before letting it go.

‘Tess, why are you being so stroppy?’ he said to her back.

‘I'm not,’ she said, without turning.

‘And petulant.’

‘I'm not.’

‘You are. You are being stroppy and petulant. What's up?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You're being stroppy and petulant and uncommunicative. I don't like it.’

This was too much for her to tolerate without eye contact. She spun around.

‘Go to hell!’

‘Shall I add “insulting” to the litany, then?’ Joe's arms were folded but no longer in a relaxed way; his eyes had narrowed, he appeared taller, older, stern.

She said nothing, just stared at the space between them.

‘And aggressive – that goes on it too. For fuck's sake, Tess, if I've done something to upset you, will you please have the courtesy to tell me what?’

The deeper and darker Tess's mood became, the more difficult it was to haul herself out. If she was mad at Joe, she was also livid with herself. She'd gone beyond the point of being able to say, sorry about that – I'm just being a silly moo. She was now hopelessly trapped in the vortex of her own bad temper.

And then she looked at Joe and she knew why. What she saw she couldn't hate, she couldn't even dislike – what she saw was what she wanted. That's why she was hurting. The nearly kiss. The loaded silences. The eye contact lasting that exhilarating moment too long. The banter. The teasing. The making time to be – together. She had thought she was wanted too. But that was then, she told herself, that was way back then. That was before the reality of Kate. Before his phone in her bed. She felt caught between the strange dichotomy of mourning the kiss that never was, and outraged at Joe's duplicity. Only a quiet side of her, which she was too preoccupied to hear, wondered if she was entitled to feel either.

‘Tess?’

She turned away.