And then, after all that, someone had strutted up to her and whipped that hard-won new life away, casually as plucking a daisy. I felt a sudden zip of outrage-not at her but, for the first time, for her.
“Whatever it is you want,” I said softly, into the dark cottage, “I’m here. You’ve got me.”
There was a tiny shift in the air around me, subtler than a breath; secretive; pleased.
It was dark, big patches of cloud covering the moon, but I already knew the lane well enough that I barely needed the torch, and my hand went straight to the latch of the back gate, no fumbling. Undercover time works differently; it was hard to remember that I’d only been living there a day and a half.
The house was black on black, only a faint crooked line of stars where the roof ended and the sky began. It seemed bigger and intangible, edges blurring, ready to dissolve into nothing if you came too close. The lit windows looked too warm and gold to be real, tiny pictures beckoning like old peep shows: bright copper frying pans hanging in the kitchen, Daniel and Abby side by side on the sofa with their heads bent over some huge old book.
Then a cloud skated off the moon and I saw Rafe, sitting on the edge of the patio, one arm around his knees and a long glass in the other hand. My adrenaline leaped. There was no way he could have followed me without me seeing him, and I hadn’t done anything dodgy anyway, but still, the look of him made me edgy. The way he was sitting, head up and ready, at the edge of that great spread of grass: he was waiting for me.
I stood under the hawthorn tree by the gate and watched him. Something that had been taking shape in the back of my mind had just made it to the surface. It was the drama-queen comment that had done it: the snide edge to his voice, the irritable eye roll. Now that I thought about it, Rafe had barely said a word to me since I arrived, apart from “pass the sauce” and “good night;” he talked around me, at me, in my general direction, never to me. The day before, he was the only one who hadn’t touched me to welcome me home, just taken my suitcase and gone. He was being subtle about it, nothing overt; but, for some reason, Rafe was pissed off with me.
He saw me as soon as I stepped out from under the hawthorn. He raised his arm-the light from the windows sent long, confusing shadows flying down the grass towards me-and watched, unmoving, as I crossed the lawn and sat down next to him.
It seemed like the simplest thing to go at this head-on. “Are you mad at me?” I asked.
Rafe turned his head away with a disgusted flick, looked out over the grass. “ ‘Mad at me,’ ” he said. “For God’s sake, Lexie, you’re not a child.”
“OK,” I said. “Are you angry with me?”
He stretched out his legs in front of him and examined the toes of his runners. “Has it even occurred to you,” he asked, “to wonder what last week was like for us?”
I considered this for a moment. It sounded a lot like he was in a snot with Lexie for getting stabbed. As far as I could see, this was either deeply suspicious or deeply bizarre. With this gang, it got hard to tell the difference. “I wasn’t exactly having fun either, you know,” I said.
He laughed. “You haven’t even thought about it, have you?”
I stared at him. “That’s why you’re pissed off with me? Because I got hurt? Or because I didn’t ask how you’re feeling about it?” He shot me an oblique look that could have meant anything. “Well, Jesus, Rafe. I didn’t ask for any of this to happen. Why are you being such a dickhead about it?”
Rafe took a long, jerky swallow of his drink-gin and tonic; I could smell it. “Forget it,” he said. “Never mind. Just go inside.”
“Rafe,” I said, hurt. I was only mostly faking it: there was an icy cut to his voice that made me flinch. “Don’t.”
He ignored me. I put a hand on his arm-it was more muscular than I had expected, and warm right through his shirt, almost fever hot. His mouth set in a long hard line, but he didn’t move.
“Tell me what it was like,” I said. “Please. I want to know; honestly, I do. I just didn’t know how to ask.”
Rafe shifted his arm away. “All right,” he said. “Fine. It was horrible beyond belief. Does that answer your question?”
