Before he can answer, the restaurant door opens and Rob comes in. We turn to watch his progress across the room. As soon as the light hits him, I see that he looks a sickly shade of green. I raise my eyebrows enquiringly at him. He shakes his head imperceptibly at me, and turns toward Dominic Eden.
‘Sorry about that. I think I’ve picked up some kind of stomach bug. Can we reschedule this meeting for another day?’
‘Of course, Mr. Hunter,’ Eden says. There’s a taunting smile in his voice.
I gather up my files, stand, and take a couple of steps forward so Rob’s body is between him and me. Eden unfurls himself and stands, towering over Rob and me. Rob extends his hand, but he refuses to shake it, and Rob retracts his hand awkwardly.
‘Right,’ Rob says. ‘We’ll be in touch to make another appointment.’ He turns around and starts walking toward the door.
Eden turns to me.
I nod and quickly follow Rob without looking back, even though I can feel Eden’s stare like a dagger in my back. Rob holds open the door and I step out into the entrance foyer. My heart is racing. What happened in that empty restaurant was so crazy and so unlike anything I have ever encountered that I can’t even think straight.
I look at Rob as he enters the foyer and closes the door behind him. There’s a pinched look about his mouth, and his chubby face is shiny with perspiration. I must admit he doesn’t look too well.
‘Rude cunt,’ he mutters disgustedly.
My eyebrows shoot up. Rob is never so crude. He must be feeling really unwell—or Dominic Eden rubbed him up the wrong way.
‘Are you all right?’ I ask cautiously.
‘No, I feel bloody awful, but I’ll survive. I just need to get home. Will you drive?’
‘Sure,’ I say, opening the street door. Outside it is still raining steadily.
Rob turns toward me. ‘Damn, I left my umbrella in the restaurant. Will you be good enough to get it for me?’
I look at him in dismay. ‘Me?’
‘I’d go myself, but I’m not well, Ella,’ he says irritably.
I continue staring at him. I really don’t want to go back into that restaurant alone.
‘Can’t you see that I’m suffering?’ he asks through clenched teeth.
‘Yes, yes, of course.’
‘It’s by the table. Hurry, please. I’m afraid I’ll have to rush to the toilet again.’
Without a word I go back into the foyer and, after crossing the small space, open the door of the restaurant.
THREE
The first thing I see is the muscular bulk of Dominic Eden sitting at the table. He’s hunched over with his forehead resting on his fist. At the sound of my entrance his head jerks up. His eyes are brimming with tears and the expression on his face is shocking.
He looks utterly tormented!
In fact, it appears to me that I have interrupted him in a moment of such extreme suffering that it seems impossible he is the same hostile, high-octane, sexual man I left a few minutes ago. This man could have just walked off a battlefield, the cries of the dying still ringing in his ears.
Horrified by the intensely private moment of grief I have accidentally stumbled upon, I begin to babble nonsense. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to … Rob forgot his umbrella. I’ve come …’ My voice dies away at the change in his face.
It’s an expression that is raw and primal and impossible for me to understand. The closest I could come to describing it is to say that it’s almost a look of desperate yearning. As if I’ve taken something of great importance from him and he is silently begging me to return it, and yet … how could it be?
We just met in antagonistic circumstances. I have not taken anything from him. Not yet, anyway. It doesn’t make any sense.
Outside this closed, deserted restaurant, the world revolves inexorably: Rob waits with irritation, I have a two o’clock appointment I have to cancel, my mother will be cleaning the bathroom and waiting for my call to tell her what time I’m planning to pick her up tomorrow, my best friend Anna will have presented her dreaded sales report and be wanting to tell me all about it.
But in this strange world, I can do nothing except gaze at Dominic Eden in a daze. His suffering moves me more deeply than I care to admit and the part of me that I never allow out when I am at work, the part that gets angry when people are cruel to animals, propels me towards him. My hand reaches out and my finger lightly brushes his face. It is meant to be an expression of sympathy, but a small spark rushes up my arm.