He thought of his nightmare case earlier and wished he could’ve turned the clock back. To the point where someone had noticed what had been going on in that house and given them enough support to stop it happening, or removed the baby into temporary care before it was too late. OK, so his own experience of foster care had been less than great—but foster care was still better than living in a house where someone might hurt a child.
The orange gloop in the box wasn’t soup. It turned out to be mango sorbet. ‘Oh, crap,’ he said when he tasted it.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘I don’t think mango sorbet is meant to be heated.’
‘No.’ The word was expressionless—as was her face—but he’d seen the slight contempt in her eyes before she’d masked it.
Christ. Why hadn’t he just asked Janie at the farm shop to drop off some supplies for him today? Probably, he thought wryly, because he’d been in a bit of denial that Clara was actually going and he was going to have to get used to someone else as a housemate until he found a place of his own.
He’d keep his promise to Clara later and organise a welcome meal for her job swap partner. Though he hadn’t agreed to anything about actually sharing said dinner with the new housemate, so he could get Janie to sort out a touristy dinner for him, stick it in the microwave to heat it through for Dr Snootypants, and then take Truffle out so he didn’t have to see the woman sneering at the local delica—
The smell of singed bread brought him back from his thoughts and he yanked the pan from under the grill.
Crap, crap and double crap.
Not only was the orange gloop not soup, he’d managed to burn the cheese on toast because he hadn’t been paying attention.
Annoyed with himself, he cut off as much of the singed bits as he could, and dumped the edible bits on a plate.
‘Cheese on toast,’ he said, handing her the plate.
‘Aren’t you having any?’ she asked.
‘I’m not hungry.’ He thought again of the baby who hadn’t made it, the mum who’d dropped to her knees as if felled by an axe and wailed her loss into the floor, the dad who’d been white-faced with guilt and shame and horror and mumbled incoherent apologies.
No. He really, really wasn’t hungry.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said, knowing he was being rude but just not being able to face making conversation.
‘Thanks.’ She took a breath. ‘Is it OK to have a bath after I’ve eaten?’
‘You mean, have I hogged all the hot water?’ he asked, nettled.
‘No. I mean I’ve had a long drive, I’m tired, and I could do with a bath and an early night.’
‘Oh.’ He’d been oversensitive and assumed she’d meant something she actually hadn’t. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘Sure. There are towels in the airing cupboard next to the bathroom, and the water’s hot.’
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said again. ‘I’ll take Truffle out.’
She didn’t make any anodyne comment about seeing him later. Which was absolutely fine by him. He didn’t particularly want to make conversation with her. He pulled on a waterproof coat and wellies, then clipped the dog’s leash to her collar and left. And hopefully when they got back she’d be in bed and he could just sit down with his dog and a glass of single malt, as he’d originally planned on his way home from the hospital, and get his head back into a better place.
Without the man who was the walking cliché of a dour Scotsman and his equally unfriendly dog, the cottage should’ve felt larger. Instead, it felt smaller. How weird was that?
Georgie hadn’t really expected a housemate; and to have one who was so abrasive and had a nervous dog was... She blew out a breath. It was something that she wasn’t going to tell her brother about, because otherwise Joshua would worry. Maybe she ought to make more of an effort with Clara’s friend; but then again, Grumpy McGrumpface hadn’t exactly made a lot of effort to be friendly with her, had he?
He’d made her something to eat, yes, but he’d done it with bad grace and even worse ability. The so-called cheese on toast was utterly inedible. She wasn’t even going to try to choke it down. Or the heated-up sorbet, which in other circumstances she would’ve found hilarious but right now she just found irritating. Ryan McGregor might be pretty to look at, but she had the feeling he was going to be the housemate from hell.
She scraped the revolting mess into the bin with a grimace. Just as well she’d bought bread at the service station. She made herself a couple of slices of toast—which she ate dry, because there wasn’t any butter in the fridge, let alone anything else to spread on toast—then headed upstairs for a bath. Tomorrow was another day. And maybe tomorrow she’d see the really pretty side of Scotland, the reason she’d moved up here from London.
Though, when Georgie peered out of the window after her bath, she saw complete darkness. Scarily so. She couldn’t even see the shapes of the trees in the neighbouring field against the night sky. And it was so quiet. There wasn’t so much as an owl hooting; then again, would an owl bother flying around in all this rain? It trickled down the windowpane relentlessly.
Scotland was so very different from London.
Didn’t they say you should be careful what you wished for? Georgie had wished to be out of London, and here she was. So she should just stop whining and try to see the good side of things, the way she normally did, instead of staring into the darkness and wondering if she’d just made a huge, huge mistake. But it really did feel like a mistake, now she was sharing a
