We stomped together towards the beacon, entering it to find the snazzy chrome and glass interior half-empty. We got drinks and sat down by the window, looking out at the old cranes and boat stacks on the skyline.
‘So,’ said Tilda, after necking back half her bottle of San Miguel in one go. ‘How long has it been going on?’
‘Not long. Couple of weeks.’ Was it really no longer? We seemed to have waded a long way into each other in a very short time.
‘And were you ever going to tell me?’
I stared into my rum and coke, willing it to warm me up and give me the gift of the gab.
‘I wanted to,’ I said at last. ‘I wanted to see if it was going anywhere first though.’
‘Ah, I see. Keep your options open. See if you could avoid telling me altogether. Well, at least you wouldn’t have come crying to me next time he dumped you.’
Ouch.
‘Cos he will, you know,’ she continued relentlessly. ‘He always does.’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I knew you and he had history, but I didn’t realise you had…currency? Is that the word? Does that even make sense?’
‘You’re a sub, you should know,’ she said, stony-faced. For a wild moment I thought she was referring to my sex life rather than my job.
‘So I wasn’t the only one keeping secrets about Tom,’ I continued. ‘You never told me you had something going on with him.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s not exactly something I want to brag about,’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying to break the habit for weeks. Seems like you broke it for me. Cheers.’ She raised her glass sardonically.
‘Is that what you wanted to talk to him about tonight?’
‘No. Yes. I don’t know. Listen, the fucked-up thing is that I only ended up back with him because I’d gone to tell him off about the way he treated you, back in September. I ranted at him for half an hour, then somehow we…’ She sighed and drank some more.
‘And it happened again and again,’ I surmised. ‘Until…when was the last time?’
‘About three weeks ago,’ she said.
That was a tiny shred of relief. Before we got together. Barely.
‘I’m really sorry,’ I said. ‘If I’d known…’
‘What, you’d have left him alone, would you? Face it, Ella, he’s your fatal weakness. Just so happens that he’s mine too.’
‘Well…that’s common ground, then, isn’t it?’ I said, raising my glass and clinking her bottle. ‘Let’s not ruin our friendship over him. Please?’
‘That depends,’ said Tilda. ‘Are you still going to see him? Because if you are, I don’t think I can be in your life in the same way.’
I put my hands over my face, feeling the burn of her ultimatum. Tilda or Tom? Which one could I stand to lose the least? Which one could I rely on the most?
Well, the answer to that seemed clear enough. Tom could still be a several-night-stand, for all I knew. Without the Mia mystery to add spice, would he even bother with me at all?
‘It’s a bit of a strange one,’ I said slowly, having removed my hands. ‘The thing is, Tom and I got together over a…a…shared interest. And, even if we weren’t seeing each other, I’d want to pursue that.’
‘What, you have some kind of hobby going on with him?’ Her brow furrowed in perplexity.
‘No, it’s more like…an investigation. A blogger I was keen on went missing and he wanted to help me find her. And that’s still going on. So…’
‘What blogger?’ From Tilda’s tone, she judged this to be pure bullshit. ‘So you and he are doing this Sherlock Holmes number together? Really? And you have to shag each other while you do it? That’s even more unlikely than some of the silly-season stories he tries to file. Like the one about the duck virus.’
‘Duck virus?’
‘Yeah, last August he made up some crap about a deadly virus passed on by ducks. It made it into Snopes in the end. Anyway, never mind that. You’re telling me that you are going to keep on seeing him?’