‘Pretty much.’
‘How come?’
‘I have issues.’
‘I thought we’d dealt with those.’
If only it were that simple. ‘Different ones.’
‘Which are?’
I tilted my head and narrowed my eyes at the man who was looking like the picture of casual interest as he started piling food onto a plate of his own. He was pushing me into another of those corners and the urge to go on the attack by deflecting the conversation reared up inside me. But this time, despite my irritation with him, something was stopping me following through on it. I couldn’t keep avoiding difficult conversation. Sooner or later, he would start to notice, perhaps to wonder why, and then push even more relentlessly for answers.
And perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if I shared with him a thing or two. It might be uncharted territory but perhaps I ought to try and match his efforts to move on from the past and reach a plane on which we could peacefully coexist. I hardly needed to go into detail. There’d be no need for an in-depth emotional analysis of anything. He’d been an on and off member of the audience at the show that was my life since I was eleven. He knew many of the facts already.
‘My parents, for one thing.’
‘What about them?’
‘You can’t have failed to notice their marriage was strained, even before my father lost everything.’
‘I do recall a number of occasions when things seemed off,’ he replied as he sat beside me, unnecessarily close, in my opinion. ‘There was that fortnight we spent on the Amalfi Coast when she flew home early. Meals during which she barely said anything. Sometimes, I seem to remember, she looked downright miserable.’
‘Thingswereoff and shewasmiserable,’ I said, burying the flurry of memories of the days spent diving with my father as we explored the coastal waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea, which had felt so special until they hadn’t. ‘She had an affair. That was why my dad screwed up with the money. He was trying to win her back and it made him desperate and careless.’
He turned his head and levelled me a look that had me feeling distinctly on edge. ‘Is that it?’ he said, his eyebrows lifting. ‘Their example was a bad one so you’ve sworn off relationships for good?’
His scepticism raised my hackles, but my defences were indestructible on this. However hard he tried, he wasn’t going to wheedle anything more out of me. There was carefully revealing a few minor elements of inner angst for the benefit of our future interactions and then there was the inconceivable baring of the soul. ‘Isn’t that enough?’
‘No. I don’t think it is.’
‘Too bad.’
‘Have you never been in love?’
I started and nearly choked on an olive. Nick? Talking about love? What was going on? ‘Why on earth would you want to know a thing like that?’ I asked, once I’d recovered from my coughing fit.
‘I’m curious.’
‘Haveyou?’
‘Yes.’
He had no problem answering the question and it was on the tip of my tongue to ask who with but I bit the words back. It was irrelevant. None of my business. Furthermore, I didn’t need to know. ‘Are you still in love with them?’
‘Yes.’
Oh. OK. That whipped the wind from my sails. ‘Yet you’re sleeping with me.’
‘Now who’s being judgemental?’
I frowned. He had a point. I had no reason to care. It wasn’t my moral dilemma. Nevertheless, it was just as well I didn’t want him for anything more than temporary excellent sex because if I had, I’d have been riddled with jealousy. But I didn’t, so I wasn’t. The tightness in my chest was a lingering effect of nearly choking on the olive, that was all.
‘So what’s your excuse?’ I said, nevertheless keen to move away from that particular subject.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re thirty-one. Rich. Successful. Hotter than the sun and not that deficient on the personality front, as it turns out. There has to be a reason why you’re still single. An aversion to commitment, perhaps?’