A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews. Annie Darling

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СКАЧАТЬ as Phil, Daquon and Mikey took their leave, each of them lining up to kiss her hand, look deep into her eyes and express the desire to see her again very soon.

      ‘It’s weird, but normally that kind of chat from men makes me want to rip them a new one,’ she remarked to Guy and Pippa as she set about making them dinner. ‘But those boys are so obviously harmless that I didn’t really mind.’

      ‘Do you still hate all men?’ asked Guy. It had been a little while since they’d last had a catch-up.

      ‘Mattie is taking time out from relationships to work on herself,’ Pippa said loyally. She knew exactly why Mattie had good reason to hate all men. Or one man in particular. ‘Not that Mattie needs to do a lot of work on herself, but I think we can all benefit from an opportunity for personal growth.’

      ‘Thanks, Pips. And I don’t hate all men, Guy.’ Mattie considered her brother’s question as she grated extra-mature cheddar for the twice-baked cheese soufflés she was going to serve with a warm salad. ‘I don’t hate you and anyway, I haven’t met all the men in the world yet, have I? There must be four or five that aren’t hateful.’

      ‘Do you hate Tom?’ Guy asked in a whisper. ‘You’re certainly not very nice to him.’

      ‘I am,’ Mattie said, though all the evidence suggested otherwise. ‘He’s not very nice to me.’

      ‘It’s the chicken and egg, really. Who wasn’t nice to whom first?’ Guy stared at Mattie without blinking. Pippa tilted her head and looked at Mattie too, as if she was disappointed in her, so Mattie felt forced to put down her grater with a beleaguered air and flounce out of the kitchen to knock gently on the door of Tom’s room.

      ‘Do you want dinner?’ she called out, while silently praying that he’d say no. ‘I can easily make enough for four.’

      There was silence and Mattie wondered if Tom had been crushed between the wall and his huge kingsize bed. ‘I’m all right,’ he called back finally. ‘I had a very late breakfast panini.’

      ‘Yeah, of course you did,’ Mattie muttered under her breath, going back into the kitchen so she could stand there with her hands on her hips and demand, ‘Happy now?’

      ‘Deliriously,’ Guy drawled back. ‘I’d be even happier if I didn’t have to drive Ma’s car back so I could have another glass of wine.’

      Although she begged them to stay, Guy and Pippa left as soon as they’d cleared the last smear of apple and blackberry crumble from their bowls. After she’d locked the shop door behind them, she very slowly and very unwillingly retraced her steps back to the flat.

      Tom was in the kitchen with a tin of baked beans and a loaf of sliced white. ‘I was just making dinner,’ he said defensively as if Mattie had asked him what the hell he thought he was doing. Then he opened the tin of baked beans in a very passive-aggressive manner, sighing and shaking his head and generally acting as if both tin opener and tin had done him wrong.

      ‘Well, you know where I am if you need me,’ Mattie said, exiting the kitchen as fast as she could. But just before she shut the door of the room that they’d fought so bitterly about, she heard Tom say to himself in withering tones, ‘What on earth would I need you for?’

      

      Thankfully, when Mattie woke up at seven thirty the next morning, which pretty much constituted a long lie-in, Tom was nowhere to be seen.

      Last night had been awkward enough; both of them confined to their rooms apart from the mortifying ten seconds when Mattie had tried to get into the bathroom, only to find it already occupied.

      ‘Go away!’ Tom had shouted rather than politely requesting that Mattie come back in a short while.

      As it was, she’d left it for a good half an hour before she plucked up the courage to venture into the bathroom, terrified of what horrors might be lurking. But there were none. Just Tom’s electric toothbrush (which seemed very cutting edge for Tom) and a few of his toiletries: shampoo, hair pomade, some fancy gloop that called itself a skin elasticiser rather than moisturiser. It struck Mattie, as she massaged her own moisturiser into her face then cleaned her teeth, that she hadn’t given a moment’s thought to how intimate it was to share a flat with someone.

      Mattie had shared flats before. At university, she’d lived in a four-bedroom house with seven other girls, which had been chaotic and messy, but mostly fun. And of course, when she’d lived in Paris, she’d shared a tiny attic garret with … well, that hadn’t ended up being fun, for reasons that had nothing to do with the actual living together.

      But sharing a flat with Tom, wondering if he could hear her brushing her teeth, felt intensely intimate. Mattie made a solemn vow that she’d never leave her room unless she was fully dressed or had her dressing gown tightly belted over her pyjamas. Not that she thought that Tom would be overcome with lust at the sight of her – Tom wasn’t the lustful sort at all – but she could picture his lip curling and he’d mutter something sarcastic under his breath. And the idea that she might bump into Tom wearing nothing but some very old-fashioned underpants, like those baggy shorts that men wore in old black-and-white films, had her choking on her toothpaste.

      This Thursday morning Tom was still tucked up in bed and if he was snoring, then Mattie couldn’t hear him through his bedroom door.

      And for all the awkwardness and the intimacy that had been thrust upon them, that thirty-second commute down the stairs and through the shop was worth it. Mattie unlocked the front door of the tearooms just in time to surprise Kendra, who ran a dairy in East London.

      ‘What are you doing here?’ Kendra said, as she hefted in the crate of milk instead of leaving it outside, as she usually did. ‘You must have been up almost as early as me.’

      ‘Actually, I’ve only been up half an hour,’ Mattie said a little apologetically. ‘Moved in above the shop, haven’t I?’

      ‘All right for some! How’s that working out for you?’ Kendra asked a little enviously.

      ‘Not without its challenges, but also kind of life-changing,’ Mattie decided as she checked the cartons of eggs to make sure that none of them were broken.

      Kendra left, the glass bottles on her milk float rattling as she carefully manoeuvred over the cobblestones, and then Mattie was alone. It was her favourite part of the day in her favourite place; early morning in her little kitchen at the back of the tearooms.

      Mattie looked at her hideaway with a pleasure that was still undimmed after eighteen months of running the tearooms. The kitchen walls had beautiful Art Nouveau tiles, dating back to when the bookshop had first opened in 1912, in the suffragette colours of purple, green and white. They were partly obscured now by the shelves and hanging rails Mattie had installed so she could store her pots and pans, whisks and wooden spoons. Jars and tins of dry ingredients and little glass bottles of spices, essences and flavourings sat on the scant wooden worktop, where she whipped up cakes and cookies, tarts and turnovers, breads and bakes. The oven where all this magic happened was the only new piece of kit and had cost the same as a small hatchback.

      Along the opposite wall was an old-fashioned butler’s sink and tiled СКАЧАТЬ