‘Um, what does Dave think?’
‘He thinks I should just somehow know all this organisation and domestic type stuff – like it’s innate to women.’
‘Sexist bastard.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Yeah. I do. But he’s right to say you can’t carry on like this.’
‘That’s what I thought. So what can I do? Ouch!’
Her peeling had reached such a pitch of savagery that she had sliced the implement into her finger, and bright red blood gushed at an alarming rate out on to her skin.
‘Shit, are you OK?’ Rob darted forward and grabbed her wrist, holding her finger under the running tap.
‘You see?’ wailed Ruth, and the tears made an unwelcome reappearance. ‘I’m useless. I can’t even peel a vegetable. According to Dave that makes me a shit woman and a waste of planetary space. I hate myself!’
‘Don’t be silly,’ scolded Rob, waiting for the blood to thin, and fade, and stop flowing. ‘Have we got a first aid box?’
‘In the bathroom cabinet.’
‘Hold your finger there. I’ll go and get you a plaster.’
He turned around in the kitchen doorway.
‘Don’t move,’ he reiterated, pointing at her to reinforce the order.
When he came back and applied the plaster, she was looking at him in a doe-eyed kind of way, if doe eyes were red and teary.
‘Never seen you like that before,’ she said.
‘Like what?’ He fixed the plaster in place and gave her a brief smile.
‘All forceful and efficient. Like Julian in the Famous Five.’
He laughed out loud.
‘I always had a bit of a thing for Julian, even though he was a patronising twat,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t like Anne. What a fucking drip. I saw myself more as George.’
‘I see myself more as Dick. Sorry.’
But she had burst into laughter and he joined in with her and then, on impulse, pulled her into him for a hug.
‘Oh.’ That was a sigh. She was sighing. And she felt gorgeous in his arms, all soft and yielding.
‘Sorry,’ he said again, although he wasn’t sure why.
‘Don’t be sorry. I needed this.’
She pulled her face away from his shoulder and looked up at him, in a kind of shy, expectant way that made his heart twitch.
‘Maybe you could help me,’ she said.
‘Could I?’
Maybe I could kiss you. Is that what you want? Or would that be sexual assault, or abuse of male privilege, or … Oh, fuck it, it’s too difficult. And Dave!
‘Yeah.’ She chewed her lip for a moment, and Rob thought he could see an inner demon trying to fight its way out. ‘No,’ she said eventually. ‘It’s a stupid idea. I’m sorry.’