I was briefly bowled over. His eyes twinkled and he winked. For a second my bones seemed to dissolve. I blew out and dropped my head trying to concentrate on Lesley’s far less attractive behind.
‘Well?’ he asked her after a minute.
She brought her hands back onto her lap. ‘Nothing. Google, as you said. Nothing else. The other stuff is dated from two days ago.’
I turned the laptop towards me and stared at the column. ‘That can’t be true. It’s deleted itself. Is that possible?’
Lesley looked at her watch and levered herself onto her feet. She darted a nod at Joe. ‘I’ll wait in the car. Nice to meet you, Sadie,’ she said, though it was plain it wasn’t.
Straightening up I looked at Joe. He was still bent over the laptop, trying a couple of the keys, looking through the different menus. ‘There’s definitely nothing here,’ he said at last and righted himself.
‘I don’t know what’s happened.’ It was truly perplexing.
Joe cocked his head to one side and smiled. Oh no – here came that look again, of gut-churning sympathy. ‘It’s been a hard time for you lately.’ His eyes were going sort of dewy. ‘Could you have closed the dialogue box down without realising?’
‘What, and deleted that particular section of internet history too?’ The irritation in my voice was in response to the pity he was showing, not the concern, but it all got jumbled together and my words came out more sarcastic than intended.
Joe kept his head to the side. ‘Had you had a drink or three, Ms Asquith?’
‘No!’ It was a knee-jerk response that masked the truth. I corrected it. ‘Yes. But I wasn’t drunk, if that’s what you mean. I had my wits about me.’
He nodded. ‘Okay. Well, try and work offline …’
‘I was working offline,’ I cut in then shut up. It was pointless – he didn’t believe me.
His lips formed a line. ‘Right, well I can’t leave Lesley downstairs …’
I stood up, put my hands on hips, sighed then showed him to my door.
He turned around on the outside landing and said, ‘Call me if it happens again and you want to talk. Okay?’
I nodded. He took a step down the stairs and looked back. ‘In fact, call me if you want to talk at all – I have good shoulders that are pretty water-resistant, should you want to cry on them.’ He made it sound like a jaunty joke but I was out of kilter with his mood now. I made my eyes unnaturally wide so that they would hide the glare that was behind them. Joe didn’t deserve to be the butt of my anger.
‘In fact we could do it over dinner if you fancy? Next week?’ His voice was hopeful, on his face hung a tentative grin, his eyes flitting to and from my own weird wired look.
I forced out a grin of my own. ‘That’d be nice.’ The look he gave me was tinged with a blush.
‘Great,’ he said and vaulted down the stairs with the controlled grace of someone used to training their body. ‘I’ll be waiting.’
I closed the door with a silent ‘Oh well,’ and went into the living room. I would give Joe a call at some point but not imminently. I had a date with Felix on Monday and a stack of work to get through. It was important that I pleased my new editor, wasn’t it?
Chapter Eleven
Despite Lesley’s glum reassurance, I couldn’t bring myself to work at home that afternoon. Instead, I popped my computer into a bag and walked up the hill to Leigh Broadway. There was a nice café on Elm Road that did a great coffee and had Wi-Fi.
I ordered an Indonesian-Brazilian blend, positioned myself in the corner with my back to the counter and got stuck in to my piece on the Bennetts.
It had been a creepy experience and I have to say, I was glad to be writing it up somewhere comfy and cosy: the café had once been a vintage clothes shop and retained a pre-loved feel.
I blocked out the Dusty Springfield soundtrack and poor Beryl Bennett’s fit and concentrated on the fundraising, pulling out my notebook to check the odd fact here and there.
Once I’d polished it and mailed the piece off to the news editor, I trotted out some prose for Maggie, that filler Essex Girls article we’d talked about. I mentioned Mary Boleyn, Anne Knight, one of the first campaigners for women’s suffrage, Ruth Pitter, Kathy Kirby,