had in her life. In contrast, he felt like he had none at all.
“You have to come over and visit,” she urged him. She’d only been gone for ten days, but already missed him. He was so much a part of her life, and stood in as her family now, that she felt as though she had lost a limb being away from him. She didn’t miss Ed nearly as much as she did Sam, and she was still angry at Ed, and herself for falling for him. She could see now how innocent and trusting she had been, and he had taken full advantage of it, and still wanted to, if she’d let him. She was no longer as naïve, at least not about him. But Sam wasn’t sure how much more alert she would be, if the bad guys were packaged differently in a new setting. She was only twenty-two, and it would be easy for her to be taken advantage of in a fast international crowd in London. It sounded to him like she had fallen in with some of them the night before.
“Just be careful,” he warned her again, and promised to come over when his father would let him take time off from work and he could afford a cheap ticket, if he could find one.
Nigel made good on his promise and called her on Monday, at work. He told her how much he had enjoyed meeting her, and hoped to see her again soon. Hearing from him put a smile on her face as she started her second week of work. The next day, he came down from upstairs and showed up in her office right before lunchtime, and invited her to have lunch with him. She had no plans so they went to a pub nearby, and he had her laughing all through lunch, describing house parties he’d been to. He was the most engaging, ingenuous, funnily innocent man she had ever met. He had a boyish quality about him that was very endearing, and he was very sympathetic about her losing her parents. His own parents had died when he was young, but had been much older than hers, since he was the youngest son and his only brother was fourteen years older than he was, from his father’s first marriage. They walked back to the office together, he disappeared upstairs to the advertising department, and she went back to work for Leslie, and did some filing.
On Thursday he texted her, apologized for the short notice, and invited her to a party on Friday night. “Nothing posh,” he said in his text, “probably just mash and bangers or fish and chips, in the garret of an artist friend.” It sounded like fun to her, and he picked her up at seven-thirty at her mews house, looked around and was impressed.
“I say, Coco, this is very nice indeed. You must be paying a fortune for it. These old mews houses are very hard to find.” It was nicely decorated, which she was enjoying too, and came with everything she needed, a fully stocked kitchen, nice linens, and everything she could have wanted.
“The rent isn’t too bad, and it feels like a dollhouse. I love it. The owner moved to Hong Kong for two years. I was lucky to find it.”
“You certainly were.” They had a drink before they left, and when they got to the party in a shabby neighborhood, they walked up four floors to the artist’s studio. There must have been a hundred people squeezed into the tiny space. The smell of marijuana was heavy in the air, and the crowd was even more eclectic than it had been at Leslie’s, a little more down-market, but mostly very arty. Even in clean jeans and a nice blue sweater, she felt overdressed. Nigel was in a tweed jacket and jeans again, and seemed comfortable wherever he was, in any kind of group. The artist was Indian and had a Chinese girlfriend, who had posed nude for many of his paintings. She had a spectacular body and a lovely face.
The meal was fish and chips, as Nigel had predicted, and after an hour, he suggested that they slip away and go out to dinner. They left and he took her to a good French restaurant, and contrary to his earlier warning, he ordered a very good bottle of French wine, and paid for the meal. She suspected that he had exaggerated