The Spark - Jules Wake Page 0,54

I should be abusing for passing on such crap genes.’

Their gentle bickering faded away as I jumped through the patio doors and dashed across the kitchen. Shelley was right; I did have it bad. Since I’d arrived from my mum’s, I was aware that Sam was with his parents’, a stone’s throw away through the hedge at the bottom of the garden. A couple of times we’d heard laughter from neighbouring gardens; everyone seemed to be eating al fresco this evening.

I slowed my barefoot progress along the parquet floor in the hall. Maybe I shouldn’t be so keen. But it was no good; my stomach felt as if it were chock full of excitable puppies rather than butterflies. Was it wrong that I was dying to see Sam again, after less than a day apart?

I threw open the door and grinned at him, only subliminally aware of the tightness around his eyes before they lit up as if I were the best thing on the planet.

‘Fancy seeing you here.’ I wrapped my arms around his neck and tilted my face up to his, unable to hide the sheer delight that just the sight of him made me feel.

‘Hello, you,’ he said, burying his face into the crook of my neck and shoulder and pulling me into a hug. He squeezed tight and held me for the sort of beat longer that sent up flags.

‘Sam?’ I asked.

‘Are you OK to head straight off? I’ve still got some marking to do this evening.’

I paused for a minute. ‘Yes, er … yes. Just let me say goodbye.’

I turned away, ignoring the quick duck-dive of disappointment. He was so early that I’d thought he might have been here to invite me back to meet his mum and dad.

When I came back, he was nudging at the doormat with the toe of his battered Converse as if it were annoying him.

‘Everything OK?’ I asked as we climbed into his car.

‘Yeah, fine,’ he said in that clipped, short way that invariably meant the exact opposite, as he turned on the ignition. His face was hidden behind his hair which, unusually, was down, almost as if he’d pulled it from his customary man bun to create a barrier. ‘Have you eaten?’

‘Hello? Aunty Lynn’s house. Hell, yes, I’ve eaten.’

‘Sorry, that was a stupid question.’ He grinned at me.

‘Have you eaten?’ I asked.

‘No … there wasn’t…’ His jaw tightened and as I looked at his profile, his eyes trained on the road ahead, I could see the tension in his neck. ‘Wasn’t time.’

The length of the car journey across town to my flat was not long enough for Sam’s woefully inadequate air con to even attempt to limber up and attack the heat in the car, so we drove with the windows wound down, not quite hanging out like a pair of dogs but each of us clinging to our side of the car as if putting distance between us.

As soon as we walked into the flat I busied myself opening all the windows. The heat today had reached a point where it had gathered in our absence and sat heavy and humid in an oppressive fug, a little bit like the conversation that we weren’t having.

Sam settled at the table with his exercise books, while I pottered about, tidying up and pulling our clean underwear from the drying rack out on the balcony. When I came back inside with the stack of pants and socks, Sam was staring miserably into space.

‘Want to talk about it?’ I asked, setting the pile down gently and standing next to him.

‘I’m really pissed off with my mum.’ His blue eyes met mine with a candid stare, as he poked at the pages of the book in front of him with his special green marking pen, leaving little streaks of colour on the white edge. He squeezed my hand.

‘They’re having a party. For their wedding anniversary.’

‘I know,’ I admitted. ‘Lynn and Richard are invited. It’s OK, you don’t have to worry about me.’ Saying the words out loud lessened the hurt that had been niggling since Sam had failed to mention it. I’d invited him to Gladys’s wedding a week ago; it had been the perfect opening for him to bring it up and he hadn’t.

‘Mum’s invited Victoria.’

‘It is her party,’ I said gently. ‘She can invite whoever she wants.’

‘That’s what she said.’ Sam’s face furrowed in frustration, his thumb rubbing over my knuckles. ‘It feels wrong that I can’t bring you. She