‘Of course.’
Adam slid it very gently to the edge then picked it up with the tips of his fingers. Rowan thought of the three million dollars Hanna Ferrara had paid for her painting and wondered suddenly how much this was worth. Something, surely, even if she was nobody. Adam looked at it in silence for several seconds.
‘Does he like you?’ he said finally.
‘What?’
‘It’s you, obviously, but it’s not how I’d draw you. You look . . . tough.’ He frowned. ‘Not to be messed with.’
‘That’s not how you see me?’
She was teasing but Adam took the question seriously. ‘No, not tough. Self-sufficient – wasn’t that what I said on Friday? It’s one of the things I’ve always admired about you.’ He put the sketch down and turned to her, putting his hands around her waist. They kissed and she pulled him closer, wanting to breathe him in. She was surprised when, a minute later, he pulled away.
‘You could have called me,’ he said.
She looked at his face, his serious eyes, and wondered if she would ever be able to tell him that, no, after what Turk had said about her getting her claws into him, she couldn’t. If they had a relationship, she had to know that he’d chosen it. If Turk ever said it to his face, she wanted Adam to be able to dismiss without a thought the idea that she’d pursued him.
She shook her head. ‘I needed to know you were sure. And that it wasn’t too soon.’
‘It’s not too soon.’
He fell asleep before she did and after she’d reached gingerly over him to turn off the light, she lay awake again. Was she tough? Yes, when she had to be. If she had to fight, she could do it.
Twenty-nine
When she woke, the other side of the bed was empty. She sat up quickly. A thin grey light came around the edge of the curtains, enough for her to see that his clothes were gone from the chair. His shoes were gone, too. She slid her hand across the fitted sheet and, discovering it was still slightly warm, she threw back the blankets and stood up, the sudden change in posture giving her a head rush. When it passed, she threw on her clothes and went out to the landing. Silence at first and then, like music, the sound of crockery being taken out of the dishwasher. The relief was so intense that when she turned on the bathroom light and saw herself in the mirror, she was grinning. She brushed her hair quickly, rubbed the mascara from under her eyes and cleaned her teeth. The room was warm and slightly humid; he’d taken a shower.
As she came in to the kitchen, the kettle was boiling. ‘I thought you’d gone.’
‘Really?’ He was surprised. ‘No, I wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye.’ He came over and kissed her.
‘What time is it?’ She peered at the clock on the cooker.
‘Half-seven. I wish I could stay – not that I want to distract you,’ he tipped his head in the direction of her untouched books, ‘but I’ve got to give a lecture at two and God knows how long it’ll take me to get back. I should have come on the train – it’s a hassle having to go into London and out again but the drive’s so boring, all those crappy little roundabouts. There used to be a direct line, apparently, years ago.’
He filled the coffee pot then took the milk from the fridge. She watched him from the corner of her eye. Even under-slept and mildly hungover, he had the elegance she’d noticed at Gee’s: his hands moved lightly over the cups and spoons, as if he were conducting the process of coffee-making rather than actually doing it. She wondered which distant ancestor had bequeathed him that gene; it wasn’t his mother.
‘You’ve got to stop poisoning me with all this booze,’ he said, bringing her a cup.
‘I’m poisoning you?’
He smiled. ‘Shall we do it again tomorrow? I’ve got a meeting in college in the early afternoon but I could come back tomorrow night?’
The tentative note at the end of the question surprised her but it made her happy, too. This mattered to him; he wasn’t taking it for granted. A sensation of warmth, as if the sun had broken through and come streaming through the window. ‘I’ll buy some Alka-Seltzer,’ she said.
Before getting out of the shower, she turned the water to cold and stood under it until her back and shoulders started to go numb. She needed a clear head today, perhaps more than ever.
Adam’s pillow still held the shape of his head, and when she came back downstairs, her eyes went straight to his coffee cup on the table. It had an elegiac poignancy, as if it already belonged to a past she would never recover. She gave herself a sharp mental shake, telling herself to stop being mawkish. As long as she didn’t mess it up, he was the future, not the past.
Cory’s sketch was on the table, too, where Adam had left it last night. She picked it up and looked herself in the eye. When he’d called yesterday, Cory had said he’d pick her up at two-thirty. She tapped her phone to check the time. Nine o’clock.
Thirty