‘Oh, I am. Utterly convinced.’
He winked. ‘Glad to hear it. Right, so you’ll let me know if you hear from our girl? I’m going to have to get going.’
My dreamy post-coital haze dispersed, leaving me sweaty and shaky in an overheated room.
‘Oh. Another breakfast meeting?’
‘Got to tidy up some copy before morning, or I’m a dead man. You know what Ed’s like.’
The editor’s name wasn’t Ed. It was Haydon Maguire. But everyone called him Ed.
Tom kissed the top of my head and began gathering coats and other extraneous matter from the floor. He was gone before I’d pressed send on the message.
‘Was that you who went out late last night?’ asked Mehra over coffee the next morning.
‘What?’
‘I’m sure I heard the front door. About one-ish, half-one?’
I tried not to exaggerate my
look of bafflement. Hunching one’s shoulders up to one’s earlobes only conferred a guilty look.
‘No? OK then. Jess?’
Jess looked over from the toaster.
‘Not me. Out for the count as soon as my head hit the pillow.’
‘Maybe I imagined it,’ said Mehra, turning a page of the morning paper. ‘Oh, God, Ella, is that headline one of yours?’
‘Lemme see.’ I hunched over the paper, to see a story about a school production of The Snowman headed ‘All White On The Night’. ‘No, that was one of Miles’s.’
‘Miles,’ said Jess, just as the toast popped up. ‘He likes you.’
Not this again.
‘Does he?’ I said neutrally, retreating into my mug.
‘Yeah. I was talking to him in the canteen yesterday and he was asking about you. About whether you had a boyfriend.’
‘He could always ask me himself,’ I said. ‘Seeing as he sits next to me all day.’
‘Aw, I think he’s a bit shy. Don’t be fooled by that larging-it lad act.’
‘I’m not fooled by anything. I’m just not really interested.’
‘Oh, well, OK,’ said Jess after a pause. ‘Do you mind if I ask him out then?’
‘Go for it,’ I said, brightening enough to come out from behind the mug. ‘Tell him I sent you.’
‘But then you’ll be the only single woman of the house,’ said Mehra. ‘Wouldn’t that bother you?’
I knew I was blushing, but there was nothing else to do but bluster through.
‘Why would it bother me? I’m fine. Honestly.’
And I’m seeing Tom Crowley anyway.