“I was not. My parents don’t approve of flavoured coffee.” “I know you’re joking, but the fact they had an opinion about it really proves my point.”
Feeling nonspecifically guilty, Rosaline went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Her cake had long since died, so she rather forlornly scraped it into the bin and put the tin into the sink to soak. A quick check of the fridge revealed that most of the contents were okay, though the freezer was sitting in a rapidly expanding pool of icy water that she hastily mopped up while waiting for the kettle to boil. All in all, the situation could have been a lot worse.
Although she’d been a little affronted by Harry’s assumptions about her beverage preferences, the fact that her cupboard contained green tea, camomile tea, Earl Grey, and Assam but no English breakfast didn’t exactly speak to her status as a woman of the people. She decided that Assam was the closest to regular tea that she had and made two cups of that, one black and slightly less infused, and one full of milk and sugar.
She found Harry sitting at the top of the stairs. “So I’ve checked the hall sockets,” he whispered, “and it’s none of them. Which leaves your room and Amelie’s room. You want to do yours first? That way we might not have to wake her up.”
Rosaline didn’t wholly want to invite Harry into her bedroom—but she suspected that said more about her than it did about him. “Can you give me two minutes to . . . you know. Make it presentable.”
“Got three sisters, mate. Ain’t nothing I ain’t seen before. But go ahead. I’ll have my tea.”
She slipped inside and hastily stashed away her pants, bras, and vibrators—not that any of these things were particularly visible or shameful, but she felt they were best witnessed by choice, rather than by accident. When she was done, she opened the door and Harry, who’d made surprisingly rapid progress on his tea, came in and had a quick look round.
“We might need to move the bed.” He struck the universal tradesman pose of mild consternation. “I’ll check the others, but I reckon there’s a socket back there.”
There was, though Rosaline hadn’t thought of it since she’d moved in. But as fate would have it, she needed to think of it now because the other sockets were fine.
“Which end do you want?” asked Harry.
Did it matter? “I’ll take the footboard.”
“All right. Bend from your knees. Keep your back straight. On three.”
Fortunately, the only bed she’d been able to afford was made from MDF and held together with glue and hope so it moved fairly easily. Underneath, of course, was a warren of dust bunnies that appeared to have taken half her socks hostage.
Harry bent down—she wasn’t looking, she wasn’t looking—and poked his machine into the socket. There was a beep. “This’ll be the one.”
Pulling a screwdriver from his back pocket, he opened the panel and then, pulling a different screwdriver from a different pocket, did something Rosaline would never have been able to replicate with the tangle of wires.
“Here we go.” He stood and passed her the detached plug socket. “That there”—he pointed at a brownish-yellow stain running between two of the terminals on one side—“is where some damp’s got in and it’s built a connection from the live to the earth. And that’s what’s setting your switch off. I’ll go get another one out the van and we’ll be sorted.”
It took less than twenty minutes in the end, and that included getting the bed back into position as carefully and quietly as possible. And then they were standing awkwardly in the front hall, Harry holding a mug in one hand and his toolbox in the other.
“Well,” he said. “Better be leaving you to it.”
That just felt bad. Hi, drive for an hour at no notice, fix my house, refuse payment and then fuck off immediately. Although maybe he wanted to go. Maybe he had a hot date to get back to. Or, if nothing else, a self-saucing pudding. “You . . . you don’t have to. If you wanted to hang around and have another cup of tea or something.”
They eyed each other uncertainly. Then he shrugged. “Up to you, mate. Don’t want to wear out my welcome.”
“No, please. It’s fine.”
“Yeah, but”—his feet shuffled against the threadbare carpet—“it’s late and you’ve probably got stuff in the morning.”
“Well, I don’t want to make you stay if you’ve got to rush off. But you’ve come a long way and done me a favour, so I don’t want to chuck you out.”
He frowned. “Mate. You don’t owe me nothing. I said I’d give you a hand if you needed it and I have. I’m happy to stay if you fancy a natter, but just ’cos I like you and you’re pretty—which I know I shouldn’t be saying—don’t mean you gotta give me the time of day for a plug socket.”
“Um,” she said.
Truthfully, she wasn’t sure how to take this. She’d been raised with a very strong sense of social obligation, and the idea of being given a choice about it was on the edge of disorienting. Besides, she did sort of . . . actually want Harry to stick around for a bit, although she wasn’t overinclined to dwell on the why of it, and having to tell him “Yes, I do want you to stay” felt a lot more revealing than just assuming he had to.
Also, he thought she was pretty.
Which he’d mentioned before. But felt different now.
“Um,” she said again. “It would be nice if you . . . wanted to stay? For a natter?”
He plopped his toolbox back on the floor and followed her through to the kitchen. “All right then.”
Thankfully the room was in a reasonable condition—its diminutive size coupled with the edge of fussiness she’d inherited from her father meant Rosaline was a tidy-as-she-went kind of baker, and although the elements of an abandoned pudding were still readily visible, they were arrayed neatly towards the back of the work surface. On top of which, fridge door aside, it was a relatively Amelie-free zone.
“My hospitality’s a bit limited, for obvious reasons.” The freezer had continued to melt and she hastily remopped, since while she was sure Harry had been sincere about not wanting anything from her, he’d probably have been a bit upset at winding up with a nasty fall and a twisted ankle. “There’s more tea. And . . . well, not much else. Unless you want to help me use up some prematurely defrosted fish fingers.”
“You got bread?”
Yanking open the freezer door, she began sorting through the things that could be saved and the things that really couldn’t. “Yes, I’ve got bread. I mean, it’s from a shop. I’m not Josie.”
“If you’re serious, I could murder a fish finger sandwich.”
“If you like. They’re going in the bin otherwise.”
“Tell you what. Sling us a pan. I’ll fry ’em up while you put the kettle on.”
She slung him a pan. And tried not to stare as he heated a splash of oil and gently extricated the slightly-sorry-for-themselves fish fingers from their soggy cardboard packet.
“What’s wrong, mate?” He cast her a suspicious glance. “You’re not one of them what grills ’em, are you?”