He nodded, happy that there was at least an opening, another reason to be determined about freeing himself. After a moment or two he said, ‘Has there been anyone else?’
‘I don’t think that’s any of your business, do you?’ The indignation was light-hearted. ‘There isn’t anyone at the moment.’ He nodded, disappointed that she didn’t ask him the same question. He wasn’t sure whether that was because she wasn’t interested or just that she was pretty certain of the answer already. And yet he’d wanted her to ask, just to be able to tell her.
The food came and they talked about work as they ate, the familiar kind of catch-up conversation they’d had over dinner in the past. It felt like they were a couple again, as if in some small way they’d never stopped being a couple. And at the same time he couldn’t keep his eyes off her, so much so that more than once she became self-conscious about it.
A couple of times over the evening he thought he’d probably be able to sway her on the matter of sleeping together. He didn’t try though, caught up in the spirit of proving himself first. He was tired too, and still preoccupied. But he couldn’t believe he’d forgotten how attractive she was, how much he wanted her.
When they went into bed she changed in the bathroom, coming out in a night-shirt, keeping up the pretence that they were friends rather than lovers. Perhaps it wasn’t pretence though, and the intimacy they’d had was something they’d have to find all over again.
They shared the bed like friends too, Kate joking about why it had to be like this. It seemed strangely innocent, like some old screwball comedy, the two leads under no illusion as to where things were heading but still insisting on keeping their distance from each other.
Kate read. Alex lay on his back, keeping to his side of the bed, listening to the sound of a page turning every minute or so. As he began to tire he turned onto his side and rested his hand on her stomach.
‘Alex,’ she said, a friendly warning.
‘Just this,’ he said, already sleepy. ‘Just so I know you’re there.’ She didn’t say anything and a moment or two later he heard a page turn, and he drifted further, moored all the time to the soft warmth of her stomach through the fabric of the night-shirt.
That was how he fell asleep, quickly and without any uneasiness, comfortable in knowing she was there with him. He woke in the early hours though, and couldn’t get back to sleep again. He lay there in the dark and listened to Kate’s shallow breathing and let his thoughts stray too far.
He began to worry about Natalie. Maybe he’d been too quick to assume she’d followed his advice and disappeared somewhere. After all, she’d been sceptical the same way Rob had. Possibly she’d talked about lying low just to appease him and had actually continued with her daily routine, opening herself up to danger without realizing it.
He’d come here looking for Matt and for all he knew, Matt was already engaged in the next stage of his operation, airbrushing Natalie from the picture - a road accident perhaps, or on the tube. There seemed too many ways of killing someone and making it look like an accident, a random death.
Then he thought of what Natalie had said about Matt, and a counter-argument started to form in his head, the familiar descent back toward a scathing condemnation of his own paranoia. It almost shamed him, that he thought of himself as so loyal and yet was willing to think Matt a murderer.
He eased carefully from the bed without disturbing Kate, standing still at the bedroom door to listen out for the faint seashore breaths of her sleep. She always slept well, something he wouldn’t have even noticed ten years ago but that he envied now, more than he envied anything else.
He went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water, drinking only a few mouthfuls before leaving it on the counter. He walked through to the living room without turning the light on, making his way tentatively around the furniture and to the window.
The wind had dropped but there was still a cold blast of air as he opened the window and leaned out. He felt more real, more solid now, his body taut against the cold, bracing itself. He put that down to Kate. He’d hardly touched her and yet just being with her was bringing him back to the world.
There were fewer lights in the buildings across the street and no one walking below but the atmosphere and the sound of the city was almost the same as it had been earlier in the evening. Each end of the street still sounded busy with traffic, alive.