My mother comes into the hall wiping her hands with a dishcloth when she hears the front door close. “Abby? Are you all right? You looked like you’d been crying when you came downstairs.”
“I had been.”
“Honey, why?”
“He told me he loved me.”
My mother’s face changes from concerned to relieved. “Oh, but that’s wonderful, darling. Why did you cry?”
I shrug. “He just caught me off guard.” I follow her through to the kitchen and help her with the washing up.
“He’s such a nice young man, Abby. I was worried at first, you know, because he’s in charge of the theater you work in and he’s a few years older than you, but it doesn’t seem to have any effect on how he treats you. So polite. To think he told you he loved you here, in the middle of dinner.” She calls out the good news to my father in his den, adding that it was in the middle of the dinner that she had cooked. To hear her you’d think that it was her dinner that had done it.
She’s still musing on Rufus when we’re drying up. “There’s something about him that makes you understand how he’s managed to run a theater single-handedly all these years, and deal with you flighty arty types as well as all the finances and practical things. Something—” she searches for the right word “—authoritative. Have you noticed?”
“No, Mum. I haven’t.”
“Oh. All right, darling.”
* * *
“No peeking.”
I grin as Rufus walks me slowly forward. We’re in his flat but I have no idea which room as he spun me about on the spot until I was dizzy. “Rufus, my eyes are closed and you’ve got your hands over them. I can’t see anything.”
“Keep them closed,” he says again, his voice echoing. He drops his hands and moves away from me. I hear him pick something up and then he’s in front of me. “Hold out your hands.” Obediently I do, and he places something weighty and flat, like books, into them. “Okay. Open your eyes.”
I do. I’m holding what looks like magazines tied up with pink satin ribbon and we’re standing in his spare room. It’s empty, and the windows are bare. “Where are your books? Your bike?”
He shoves his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. “I got rid of them.”
“Why?”
“I thought this could be your room.”
I stare at him, and then at the magazines I’m holding. They’re not magazines. They’re catalogues. I spy the names of department stores. Debenhams. Selfridges. John Lewis.
“I was thinking about how you don’t have a space that’s just your own to be yourself in,” he says, taking the catalogues from me and leading me back to the couch. “You might not feel comfortable expressing yourself in a shared flat, and my apartment isn’t exactly to your taste.”
“I love your apartment,” I say.
“Thank you, sweetheart. I’m glad you do. But I don’t want you to feel like a visitor. I want you to feel like it’s your space, too. So—” he puts the catalogues on my lap “—make it yours. However you want it.”
I stroke the satin ribbon. Not since high school have I felt like I’ve had a space that’s been mine, that I could be myself in. “You mean that? Even if it ends up looking like a unicorn’s fairy tea-party exploded in there?”
He strokes his thumb over my cheek. “If that’s what you want, then I’m happy.”
I burrow into him for a moment, inhaling the warm scent on his shirt. “You always seem to know what I need,” I whisper.
He kisses the top of my head. “That’s my job, princess.” He brings me a packet of pastel sticky notes and my pink-and-white notepad and pen and I get to work sorting through the catalogues, wish-listing furniture and cushions, fairy lights and bedspreads. I’m engrossed for several hours, my feet in Rufus’s lap as he reads a pop-psychology book. He absently rubs his fingers over my ankles. After a while he gets up and comes back with a beer for himself and a box of Pocky for me, and I show him what I’ve found. It’s a riot of pink and pastel purple and white lace.
“Beautiful, kitten,” he says, and kisses me. It’s such a lovely kiss that I forget the catalogues and wrap my arms around his neck. Rufus feels my reaction and pulls me closer, and my mouth opens beneath his. When he pulls back he’s looking at me with a wolfish glint in his eyes.
“What is it, daddy?”
He feels behind the couch cushion next to him. “I bought you something.”
I’m sure it’s going to be something naughty. “What is it?”