‘Was it your father? Is he going to be late again?’
Her father had been dead for eight years. ‘No, Mum, it was just a friend.’ Although perhaps she couldn’t call Mateo that any more. Perhaps she never could have called him that. ‘Do you want to watch one of your shows, Mum?’ Gently Rachel took her mother’s arm and propelled her back to the bedroom, which had been kitted out with an adjustable bed and a large-screen TV. ‘I think that bargain-hunter one might be on.’ Since being diagnosed, her mother had developed an affinity for trashy TV, something that made Rachel both smile and feel sad. Before the disease, her mother had only watched documentaries, the obscurer and more intellectual the better. Now she gorged herself on talk shows and reality TV.
Carol let herself be settled back into her bed, still seeming grumpy as Rachel folded the blanket over her knees and turned on the TV. ‘I could make you a toastie,’ she suggested. ‘Cheese and Marmite?’
Another aspect of the disease—her mother ate the same thing over and over again, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Rachel had gone through more jars of Marmite than she’d ever thought possible, especially considering that she didn’t even like the stuff.
‘All right,’ Carol said, as if she were granting Rachel a favour. ‘Fine.’
Alone in the kitchen, Rachel set to buttering bread and slicing cheese, Mateo’s strangely brusque call weighing on her heavily. She was going to miss him. Maybe she shouldn’t, but she knew she was. She already did.
Looking around the small kitchen—the tinny sound of the TV in the background, the uninspiring view of a tiny courtyard from her window—Rachel was struck with how little her life was.
She didn’t go out. Her few friends in the department were married with children, existing in a separate, busy universe from her. Occasionally they invited her to what Rachel thought of as pity dinners, where they paraded their children in front of her and asked sympathetically if she wanted to be set up. Rachel could endure one of those about every six months, but she always left them with a huge sigh of relief.
The truth was, she hadn’t felt the need or desire to go out, to have a social life, when she’d been working with Mateo for eight hours every day. Their banter, their companionable silence, their occasional debates over drinks...all of it had been enough for her. More than enough, since she’d dealt with the stupid crush she’d had on him ages ago, like lancing a wound. Painful but necessary. Thank goodness she’d made herself get over that, otherwise she’d be in real trouble now.
‘Rachel? Is my sandwich ready?’
With a sigh Rachel turned on the grill.
* * *
Three days later it was bucketing down rain as Rachel sprinted down the street towards her flat. She was utterly soaked, and even more dispirited by Mateo’s disappearance from her life. She’d tried to be cheerful about gaining a new research partner, but the person put forward by the new chair was a smarmy colleague who liked to make disparaging comments about women and then hold his hands up, eyebrows raised, as he told her not to be so sensitive. Work had gone from being a joy to a disaster, and, considering the state of the rest of her life, that was a blow indeed.
She fumbled with the key to her flat, grateful that she’d have half an hour or so of peace and quiet before her mother came home. Carol spent her weekdays at a centre for the memory impaired, and was brought home by a kindly bus service run by the centre, which made Rachel’s life a lot easier.
She was just pushing the door open when someone stepped out of the alleyway that led around to the back courtyard and the bins. Rachel let out a little scream at the sight of the figure looming out of the gloom and rain, yanking her key out of the door, ready to use it as an admittedly feeble weapon.
‘Rachel, it’s me.’ The low thrum of his voice, with the faintest hint of an accent, had Rachel dropping her keys onto the concrete with a clatter.
‘Mateo...?’
‘Yes.’ He took another step towards her and smiled. Rachel stared at him in wonder and disbelief.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I wanted to see you.’
Rachel shook her head, sending raindrops splattering, too shocked even to think something coherent, much less say it. She realised just how glad she was to see him.
‘May I come in? We’re both getting soaked.’
‘Yes, of course.’ She scooped her keys up from the floor and pushed open the door. Mateo followed her into the flat, and as Rachel switched on the light she realised how small her flat probably seemed to him, and also that she had three ratty-looking bras drying over the radiator, and the remains of her jam-smeared toast on the coffee table, next to a romance novel with a cringingly lurid cover. Welcome to her life.
She turned to face Mateo, her eyes widening at the sight of him. He looked completely different, dressed in an expertly cut three-piece suit of dark grey, his jaw closely shaven, everything about him sleek and sophisticated and rich. He’d always emanated a certain assured confidence, but he was on another level entirely now. The disparity of their appearances—her hair was in rat’s tails and she was wearing a baggy trouser suit with a mayonnaise stain on the lapel—made her cringe.
She shook her head slowly, still amazed he was in her flat. Why?
‘Mateo,’ she said questioningly, as if he might suddenly admit it wasn’t really him. ‘What are you doing here?’
CHAPTER THREE
THAT, MATEO REFLECTED, was a very good question. When the idea had come to him twenty-four hours ago, after his initial disastrous meeting with Vanessa de Cruz, it had seemed wonderfully obvious. Blindingly simple. Now he wasn’t so sure.
‘I wanted to see you,’ he said, because that much was true.
‘You did?’ Rachel pushed her wet hair out of her eyes and gave him an incredulous look. ‘Why?’