“If you're sure?”

“I'm sure.”

I'm still smiling when I put the key into the lock of the front door, waving as the cab pulls away. Though I can't see Callum through the tinted glass, I blow a kiss anyway. When it disappears around a corner, I walk into the hallway, and call out loudly.

“Hello?”

A scuffle comes from the living room, and a low, uttered 'shit.” Half-intrigued, half-worried, I open the door, my eyes seeking out movement in the low, ambient light.

My mum is the first to sit up. She clutches a piece of fabric to cover her naked chest, and it takes me a moment to realise it's her blouse. Then Digger jumps up, pulling his jeans up hastily, and I realise I've walked in on something extremely embarrassing.

It’s something no child should have to see.

“Oh my God!” I spin on my heels and run out of the room, wishing I could erase the image from my memory. She's done some stupid things before—had relationships with losers and married men—but I can't help but feel she's hit a new low.

My mum and my dad? The thought not only nauseates me, but it also sends me into a tailspin. If Alex ever finds out, he'll never forgive her, and I'm not sure if I can cope with that.

Leaving my suitcase in the hall, I clamber up the stairs, ignoring Mum as she calls my name. I don't want to talk to her, I don't even want to see her, and to make the point I slide the bolt through its cage.

Later, after I've climbed into bed, I hear the front door shut quietly, then the tap-tap of Mum walking up the stairs. She knocks softly on my door, and I bury my head under my pillow, not ready to talk to her about what happened down there.

When I fall asleep that night—after a text conversation with Callum that tells him everything—my mind is racing with thoughts of all that's happened, and I start to worry that Edinburgh was simply the calm before the storm.

As it turns out, I'm right.

25

Monday is taken up with a series of meetings, each one more tedious than the last. I’m not sure if it’s boredom that makes me check my watch every five minutes, or the incessant need to see Callum that’s nagging at my chest. I can’t even message him on my phone—we have clients in and if they saw me tapping away at the screen it would look disrespectful.

It doesn’t stop my fingers from itching to type, though.

By the time my final meeting ends at 6:45pm, I’m flagging. My stomach is rumbling from being ignored since breakfast, and my limbs ache as though I’ve been through five rounds with Floyd Mayweather. In short, I’m a mess.

That’s exactly how I feel when I bump into Callum just outside the second floor bathrooms. He’s wearing his suit jacket and carrying a satchel slung across his shoulder, and though I hate to admit it, he looks ten times better than I do.

“Hey.” He stops in front of me, leaning his shoulder against the wall. I loosen my grip on the handle to the bathroom.

“Hi.”

“Good day?” He raises an eyebrow and cocks

his head to the side. A lock of hair falls across his brow, and I lift my hand up to brush it away before remembering where we are and just how inappropriate that would look.

“Busy. Long, tiring. But I think we slayed some dragons.”

His other eyebrow lifts up, joining the first. “Dragons?”

“It’s what Jonathan says to us before we meet with a client,” I tell him. “‘Let’s ride in on our white horses and slay some fucking dragons’.”

Callum laughs at my pitiful attempt to take on a posh accent. “Jonathan’s full of shit.” The fondness in his tone belies his words. “Sounds as though the pigs are sleeping in the beds. What happened to the girl who was railing at me about elitism and chauvinist crap?”

“Where did the pigs come from?”

“George Orwell. In Animal Farm, when the pigs start sleeping in the house…” He trails off when he notices my confused expression. “You didn’t study it at school?”

This time I take on a London accent, over-egging it until I sound like Dick Van Dyke on speed. “Nah, guvnor. We didn’t have them new-fangled fancy book things when I was at school.”

His lips twitch, but somehow he manages to swallow down a smile. “Explains a lot.”

Tags: Carrie Elks Love in London Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net