‘All the more reason for me to come with you, because being alone is the last thing you should be. Anyway, I spoke to a ridiculous woman on the line who said it was fine to add another passenger but she would need to speak to you first. So I’ll transfer the cash and you ring tomorrow. Want a coffee or will it keep you up? I’m hoping it will keep me up.’ He smiled at her, a lop-sided smile with sexual meaning that would have had Bella swooning, but all Laurie felt was irritation that he thought he could ride roughshod over her wishes as if she were a bimbo who didn’t know her own mind.
‘No coffee for me, thank you,’ she said, clearly vexed.
‘I can’t say I’ve ever considered a cruise before. But, for you, I’ll go. I’ll make us both a coffee.’
He even thinks he knows better than I do where a simple drink is concerned, she thought. Either that or he hadn’t even bothered to listen to her answer because he had already decided what it should be.
She watched him cross the kitchen to the kettle, fill up the cafetière with ground coffee. She pictured Pete there instead, his strong back and big firefighter shoulders and felt her heart lighten at the thought of him.
‘No point in paying for an empty place,’ Reid said, swiping his glass of wine up from the island. ‘I usually go skiing in February, so I always take the first three weeks off anyway.’
Mentally she dug her heels in further. ‘As I said, I want to go by myself.’
‘Do you now?’ he said, accusation in his words.
‘Yes.’ A very definite yes at that.
‘We’d have a great time together. Why would you want to be alone for Valentine’s Day? Oh come on.’ He flashed a warm smile.
‘That date wasn’t why I booked it, it’s incidental,’ said Laurie.
‘Why did you ask for a double cabin?’
Where had he got this information from? The only person she could think of was Stu – via Bella. It was such a Bella thing to do, contriving to put them together for Valentine’s Day and doing everything to make sure Laurie wasn’t alone and wallowing in a resurgence of grief that the anniversary of Alex’s death was bound to throw up. Her heart was in the right place, even if her brain wasn’t always.
‘I booked late, it’s all they had left.’
‘Expensive.’
‘It was. But I had no choice.’
‘Not sharing it with Pete then?’ The warm smile was still in place but the words were glacial.
‘Pete?’ She’d never mentioned Pete to him. Where had he conjured that name from? It had to be Stu via Bella, which made her seriously cross and she’d have words.
Reid tossed the contents of the wine glass down his neck, replaced it on the island none too gently.
‘Hard day tomorrow, think I’ll get an early night,’ he said. ‘Thanks for allowing me to cook you dinner and buy you flowers but as you have so much money to throw around, you can buy your own from now on.’
‘Reid?’ she said, confused, as he swept up his car keys from the work surface, picked up his jacket from where he had draped it over one of the bar chairs and left the house at speed. She heard his car fire up on the drive, the wheels squeal as if making a further statement of displeasure.
Laurie locked the door, poured herself another glass of wine. His exit was meant to punish her but it hadn’t. If anything, he’d relieved her of the sticky task of saying she didn’t want him to stay that night. A two-minute YouTube video of a firefighter rescuing a dog would linger in her head for longer, and mean much more to her, than his hissy fit could.
Chapter 56
15 January
When Laurie picked up her Norwegian krone the next day, she called in to the nearby Forest Hotel where Bella was working. She’d been too hacked off to ring her after Reid had gone, decided to let herself simmer down and speak to her friend face to face instead.
‘What’s up, you look narked,’ said Bella, sitting down at one of the tables in the coffee bar. ‘Everything all right with you and Reid?’
‘Not really,’ said Laurie, curtly. ‘He stormed out of my house yesterday, because I wouldn’t book him into my cabin on the cruise.’
‘Wouldn’t you like that?’ asked Bella.
Her reaction told Laurie that she’d been right to suspect Bella of interfering in her holiday plans. Her infuriation cranked up a few notches.
‘No, I wouldn’t. And then he asked me if that was because I was going with Pete.’
Bella’s eyebrows almost crashed together in confusion. ‘Pete? Why would he say that?’
‘You tell me.’ Laurie answered her in a voice she usually saved for court.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It can only have come from Stu. Please stop feeding him so much detail about my life so he can pass it on to Reid, Bella.’
Bella slowly shook her head. ‘Laurie, I haven’t said anything to Stu about your cruise or mentioned Pete to him and even if I had, he’s not a gossipy sort of bloke. Wherever Reid’s getting his information from, it certainly isn’t him. I swear to you. I can keep my gob shut sometimes, you know.’
Laurie’s brow furrowed. Well that was odd. She had to admit, Stu never had come across as a man who indulged in small talk about other people’s business, but how else could Reid know so much about her and her plans?
‘. . . Although he told me not to say anything, but I’m going to tell you because I’m a bit worried,’ Bella went on. ‘Stu’s off work at the moment with stress. I’ve never seen him like this before. He’s always been a bit sniffy about people who go off work with those sorts of conditions, says they must be either wimps or swinging the lead, and then he has to swallow his own words and trot to the docs because he can’t sleep and keeps on getting the most awful cold sores.’ Bella sighed. ‘He won’t talk to me about what’s wrong, just shuts me down as soon as I ask.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Laurie. ‘I hope he opens up to you. What do you think it might be? Has his job changed?’
‘No, it’s exactly the same. The only difference is Reid joining the team, and he and Stu get on fine, so it can’t be that. What were you saying about him? That you’d had a lovers’ tiff about the holiday?’ asked Bella, cheering up slightly at the subject matter. ‘I’ve bought a hat.’
‘I hope you’ve kept your receipt then,’ replied Laurie.
Sharp intake of breath from Bella. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t think we’re a match.’
‘But he’s gorgeous, Laurie. And clever – he’s got a first from Oxford – and a Porsche and he’s witty and ambitious and masterful and romantic . . .’
Bella’s list went on and on and he was most of those things. But he wasn’t masterful, he was controlling and he wasn’t romantic, he was manipulative and his rich, attractive veneer was serving to mask it. Laurie had spent most of the evening after he’d gone thinking about her relationship with him and the recurring weave in the pattern: sulk, confrontation, profuse apologies, presents. Up until yesterday it had all been low-level stuff and that was the first time he’d shown his disapproval by stomping out, but somehow it signalled a cranking up of pressure. She’d taken a long hard look at them as a couple, recognised the changes he’d imposed on her own self: how she found herself bending more and more to his choices, his will, heard the alarm bells alerting her to the discreet chipping away at her confidence, how he turned the full beam of his attention onto her, then switched it off without notice, intending to disorientate.