CHAPTER SEVEN
THERE WAS AN empty table near the window. Mia parked her coffee, sat down and slipped her laptop out of its case. She had work to do, but at home the words weren’t flowing. It was probably foolish to imagine that writing at Hannekes Boom would be possible, although maybe the bustle of the trendy riverside café-bar would give her something to pit her concentration against. At least getting here early meant she’d secured a table, although Ash would probably want to sit outside and dangle his legs over the dock like the students and the hipsters did.
She switched on the computer, gazing through the window while it clicked and whirred. Across the river, the Nemo science centre rose up like a blue cigarette butt stubbed out in the heart of Oosterdok. She liked its blunt lines, the canted roof. A blue building against a blue sky. An old blue stove in a run-down canal house. His house.
She pushed the thought away, opened the blog post she was working on, but the words on the screen kept rearranging themselves into his words.
Do we need to talk about this?
Impossible!
Impossible to work because she was missing him, aching for his touch, his kiss, his smile. Why did it feel as if she’d been on a collision course with chaos from the moment they’d met? The car to Greenwich. The fundraiser. Cleuso in the canal. Spending an entire afternoon in bed with him after what she’d thought was going to be a safe lunch. She dropped her head into her hands and massaged her forehead. She’d gone back to his house because she’d wanted to get to know him better but getting to know the smooth curves and hard lines of his body hadn’t been part of the plan.
She reached for her coffee, remembering the coffee he’d made which they’d never got around to drinking. Had she been reckless, giving herself to him so easily? She’d never done anything like it before. She put the cup to her lips and sipped slowly. The truth was that she’d always been a little bit scared of loving people because she was frightened of losing them, as she’d lost her parents. Not that staying away from love had been a deliberate policy; it had been more of a subliminal thing—self-preservation.
And the thing about Hal was that, when they’d started going out, she’d been eased in already because she’d spent so much time with him and Ash. He’d felt like family, had filled her longing for a circle that was wider than just Ash and herself. And she’d thought he was a known quantity—safe to love. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
When Theo kissed her in the dome, when he’d made clear what was on his mind, maybe he’d caught her in a defiant mood. Maybe some part of her had decided that she might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. She stroked the touch-pad of her laptop, waking the sleeping screen. But, no, that was wrong. It hadn’t been about defiance. It had been about feelings, about expressing all the things she couldn’t say to him in that moment: like how her heart had ached when he’d shown her around his empty house; like how she could see through the skim of bravado he used to cover his vulnerability. It was about that connection she’d felt between them from the very first day.
Maybe Theo was a risk, but she’d felt something real when he’d lifted her into his arms, when he’d loved her so tenderly, so passionately. Maybe it was that her heart had been ahead of the game, had run a risk assessment and given her the green light.
Would Ash give her the green light? For some reason, she’d avoided the subject of Theo with her brother, but now she’d have to tell him, and the thought of it was making her palms clammy. From the outside it would look as if she was falling down the same old rabbit hole: falling for another of his business associates. She pictured his face—the wide, serious eyes; that thing he did with his thumb, biting the pad of it—not the nail. When he did that, it meant he was concerned.
She nudged the computer off standby for a second time. Never mind Ash, she had concerns of her own. For all the physical chemistry between them, for all the feelings of intimacy and genuine connection, there were things Theo was holding back. She could read it in his eyes, in the way his shoulders had stiffened when she’d asked him about his ex-wife. He’d attributed his divorce to a youthful marriage, to Eline switching tracks, leaving him behind, but she couldn’t help wondering if there’d been more to it than that. She wanted to believe that Theo was blameless, but her experience with Hal had made her wary. She couldn’t stop wondering why Eline had had an affair. If she’d fallen in love with someone else, wouldn’t she simply have left? An affair seemed so untidy. Had Theo driven her to it somehow? And, if so, what had he done?
Guiltily, she’d searched online for information. She’d found one small photo of Eline and Theo together. A candid shot, taken backstage after Eline’s first catwalk show. Eline’s arms were draped around Theo’s neck, a cocktail in her hand. Theo was looking off-camera, smiling; even white teeth, his hair shorter, his face not quite so lean as now. He’d have been twenty-six, perhaps. Young and so handsome.
She’d turned up a brief article about their divorce, but it had been frustratingly short on detail. No details in the press; no real details from Theo. The fist in her heart clenched. In her limited experience, secrets spelled lies, set her nerves jangling like nails scraping down a blackboard. If only he’d told her more, she wouldn’t have been reduced to searching online.
Later, in a calmer mood, she’d reasoned to
