‘Is it me?’
He grinned and rubbed his nose against mine.
‘Clever girl. And look at this.’
He showed me his profile and made the cursor hover over ‘Relationship Status’.
‘In a relationship,’ I read. ‘Oh. Wow. That’s …’
‘A commitment?’ he said. ‘Yes. And I want a word with you, Missy.’
‘Do you?’ I said, my stomach lurching. I thought I knew what was coming.
‘Yes. What the fuck does “It’s complicated” mean? Hmm?’
‘I didn’t think you’d want my friends asking questions about us. If I put “in a relationship” they’d all be hassling me to know who it was with. I didn’t feel like opening that particular can of worms yet.’
‘You’re digging yourself in deeper by the second, my girl. Are you calling me a can of worms?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It just seemed a bit … presumptuous. That’s all. I mean, who knows what the future will bring?’
‘Nobody,’ said Jasper. ‘Not a soul on this earth. But you have to take a leap of faith sometimes, Sarah. If nobody did that, the species would die out.’
‘I know …’
‘What do you want for the future?’
‘I want to get these cuffs off.’
He sighed and took the key out of the desk.
‘Same question,’ he said, ‘but a little longer term. Tell me.’
‘I want this,’ I said. ‘You. What we have now. I want it to go on.’
‘Right, well, so do I.’
‘But our lives are so different, Jasper. We come from completely different places. I mean, all this …’ I gestured with a newly freed hand at the opulent surroundings. ‘And I’m just normal. You’ve seen my parents. Mr and Mrs Normal, from Normal Town, Normalshire.’
‘So we have to come from identical backgrounds for a relationship to work? Bollocks, love. Not buying it. Why are you trying to look for ways out of this?’
‘I’m not! I’m just scared I’ll get in too deep … oh, why am I kidding myself? I am in too deep. Way over my head. I’m ridiculously, stupidly, horribly in love with you and I don’t know what to do.’
Tears were in my eyes and I put my pins-and-needling hands up to them, crushing them back.
Jasper wrapped his arms around me from behind and squeezed me tight.
‘Oh, my silly, much too serious, over-thinking girl,’ he said. ‘Come on. Let’s have that talk you wanted.’
He led me to his cinema screening room and I wondered if he was going to put on more films of our kinky adventures, but no. Once he’d fixed us drinks and nibbles, he got his laptop out and began clicking away until the cinema screen synced with it.
‘What’s this?’ I asked, watching over his shoulder as a list of dates came up.
‘I had a lot of old films transferred on to my hard drive a while back,’ he said. ‘Really old films. Not directed by me – well, some of them were. Most of them … see for yourself.’
He clicked and a very faded beach background came into shot.
‘I’m afraid the quality’s not great,’ he said. ‘Video being what it was. I can get it cleaned up – I’m having it done now, actually. This is what I’ve got at the moment, though.’