‘Of what?’
‘About the way you look. Being so good-looking. David’s the first one to admit he’s no oil painting.’
‘You saw something in him,’ muttered Matt. He wanted to add, ‘the thirty-million-pound bank balance’, but decided against it.
‘I told him once that the night I first met you, I thought you were the sexiest bloke I’d ever seen.’
Her compliment caught him completely off guard. She’d always made him feel witty and charming. She was good at that. That knack of making you feel like the most important person in the room. He willed himself to deflect the remark.
‘You don’t have to be nice to me just because I’m giving you some free legal advice,’ he said, trying to make light of it. Carla looked embarrassed and turned away.
‘Are you going away this summer?’ she asked after a pause.
‘I doubt it, what with the new job and everything. I feel like I’m running at a hundred miles an hour just to stand still.’
‘So no girlfriend tugging at your sleeves to take her somewhere hot?’ She made the word ‘hot’ sound provocative.
‘No holiday. No girlfriend.’ He wasn’t sure if she was fishing, and if so, to what end. ‘The only woman pulling at my sleeve is Helen Pierce, wanting me back in the office. What about you?’
‘Jonas and I are going to Ibiza in a couple of weeks.’
‘Really? He didn’t mention it.’
‘I only just found out. My friend Sara has a villa and she’s asked us out there. I think it’s a sympathy invite.’
Matthew laughed.
‘I doubt that. She’ll have some handsome single banker waiting for you at the pool, a rose wedged between his Zoom-whitened teeth.’
She giggled.
‘Eww, that’s enough to put you off your mojitos.’ She picked a flower and began pulling off the petals. ‘I’m not looking, anyway,’ she said quietly.
‘I can understand that,’ said Matt.
She nodded, clamping her lips together as if she was afraid they would reveal something.
‘I’m sorry, Matt,’ she said softly. ‘I know what it’s like now. I’m sorry I made you feel like this.’
He looked up at her, just as she turned her face away.
‘Carla . . .’ he said, but just then Jonas came running back towards them, his arms stretched out to the sides like the wings on a fighter plane.
‘Dad, Dad!’ he cried, grabbing Matt’s hand. ‘You’ve got to come and see, there’s a man with a parachute and these bombs they used to hide inside dead rats.’
‘Wow,’ said Matt, grinning. ‘That sounds cool.’
‘Can I have a parachute?’ Jonas asked, dragging Matt towards the house.
‘Ask your mother,’ said Matt, winking at Carla.
Jonas slept all the way back to London. When they pulled up in a side street around the corner from Larry’s Cheyne Walk house, it felt cruel to wake him. Carla switched off the engine and for a few moments they sat in silence. The sun was low in the sky. Across the river they could see the scratchy, inky outline of Battersea Park, and the water looked blue and orange where it rippled. Matt had been pleased when Carla had suggested bringing Jonas to visit his grandfather on his birthday, but then Larry and Carla had always got on. They were the same sort of people. Gregarious social climbers who both appreciated the finer things in life. Matthew could tell Carla was impressed by the tall Georgian house; who wouldn’t be?
‘This place is lovely,’ she said. ‘When did Larry move here?’
‘Not sure. Some point between wives three and four.’
‘Do you remember when we used to walk around here when we were first married, dreaming about having a house on the river?’