She texted him to say that she’d set the alarm and thanked him for the loan of his key, then headed for the office. At work, she explained the situation to her boss, who was kind enough to let her reorganise her work schedule so she could meet the loss assessor at the flat.
But the news from the loss assessor wasn’t good. It would take a couple of weeks to dry out the flat, even with dehumidifiers, and there was a chance they might need to take all the plaster off the walls to stop mould developing, and then re-plaster the walls. Which in turn would take time to dry. And the landlord would probably have to look into replacing the plumbing completely in the very near future. And that meant even more disruption.
How could a burst pipe cause so much chaos?
And she could hardly invite herself to stay with Roland for an unforeseeable amount of time. Her parents lived too far out of London for her to be able to commute from their place, and she knew her friends didn’t have the room to put her up, so she’d just have to find a room in a budget hotel. Hopefully Roland wouldn’t mind her leaving her stuff in his garage for another day or so until she could organise storage.
She called in to a specialist wine shop to buy a thank-you gift for him on her way back to the office, then worked through her lunch hour and left late that evening to make up the time she’d had to take out to meet the assessor. When she returned to the house in Docklands, Roland was in the kitchen, making himself a coffee.
‘Hi. Coffee?’ he asked, gesturing to the machine.
‘Thanks, but I’m fine. Oh, and I got this for you.’
She handed him the bottle bag, and he blinked in surprise. ‘What’s this?’
‘To say thank you,’ she said. ‘I have no idea if you prefer red or white wine, so I played it safe and bought white.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ he said.
But she noticed that he hadn’t even opened the bag to look at the wine. ‘Sorry. Obviously I should’ve gone for red.’
‘Actually, I don’t drink,’ he said.
Grace wished the ground would open up and swallow her. ‘I’m so sorry.’ And she wasn’t going to ask him why. It was none of her business.
‘You weren’t to know.’ He opened the bag and looked at the label. ‘Montrachet is lovely. I know a certain woman who will love you to bits for bringing this.’
His girlfriend? Grace squashed the seeping disappointment. So not appropriate. And it raised another issue. ‘I hope your girlfriend doesn’t mind me staying.’
‘No girlfriend. I was talking about my little sister,’ Roland said. ‘Just because I don’t drink, it doesn’t mean that I make everyone else stick to water.’
And the little rush of pleasure at discovering he was single was even more inappropriate. ‘Uh-huh,’ she said, knowing she sounded awkward, and wishing yet again that she could be as open and spontaneous as her sister.
‘So how did it go with the loss assessor?’ he asked.
‘Not great.’ She told him what the loss assessor had said. ‘So if you don’t mind me staying here again tonight, I’ll sort out a hotel room for tomorrow night onwards. I’ll find a storage place, and it shouldn’t take me too many trips to ferry all my stuff there.’
‘Why go to all that trouble when I’ve already said you can stay in my spare room and store your stuff here?’ he asked.
‘Because I can’t impose on you for an open-ended amount of time,’ she explained. ‘I know you’re my brother-in-law’s best friend, but this is way beyond the call of duty, and I’d rather stand on my own two feet.’
‘Noted,’ he said, ‘but you said yesterday that you’d made some choices that made life a bit up in the air for you. I think we all have times like that, when we could maybe use a friend.’
‘You’re offering to be my friend?’
He looked at her, his dark eyes full of questions, and suddenly there didn’t seem to be enough air in the room.
Was he offering her friendship...or something else? She didn’t trust her judgement to read the situation properly.
And then Roland said, ‘Yes, I think I’m offering to be your friend.’
‘But we don’t know each other,’ she pointed out.
‘I know, and I admit I took you the wrong way when I first met you.’
She frowned. ‘Meaning?’
He winced. ‘Meaning that I’ve been a bit judgemental and I can see for myself that you’re not what I thought you were.’