were now a part of.
‘It’s difficult to tell,’ I sniffed.
Thomas nodded and punched digits into his phone. ‘Hello, I’d like to report a burglary,’ he said, before giving my address. ‘They could be here in five minutes or five days,’ he said as he hung up. ‘There’s not much manpower left in the burglary squad these days.’
‘Can you stay?’ I asked.
‘Of course.’
It wasn’t until I really looked at the chaos surrounding me that I realized how many secrets my home held. I considered myself to be a private person, only letting those closest to me in, yet in just a few minutes, a criminal had found out so much about me. He knew that I was a primary school teacher at St Mary’s in Guildford and how much I earned. He now had all my bank account details and my current balance. Even the seemingly innocuous details about me, such as my eclectic fashion sense, my love of yellow, the book I was reading, and my fondness for the Brontë sisters were all laid bare, making me feel overtly vulnerable. It was only as my eyes caught sight of the solicitor’s headed paper, which my mother’s will was attached to, that I realized that the son of a bitch also knew things that I didn’t even know myself.
I worked my way through the wreckage fastidiously, refusing to allow my emotions to overwhelm the job in hand. But no matter how hard I tried, everything felt contaminated, sullied by a stranger’s touch.
‘Do you want to carry on doing this now?’ Thomas asked as he was putting all my books back in the bookcase. ‘We can do the rest in the morning.’
I looked at him and wanted to cry again.
‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ he asked.
‘Thank you.’
‘What for?’
‘For just being so kind.’
He looked away, as if embarrassed.
I went into the kitchen and opened the fridge, lifting a bottle of white wine out of the door. ‘I’d rather this.’
‘Yep, great,’ he said, following me in, watching as my shaking hands fumbled with the seal covering the cork.
‘Here, let me,’ he said, and I watched as his strong tattooed arm took the weight of the bottle away from me. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so safe, which was ironic seeing as I was stood in the middle of a crime scene.
19
‘Tell me about your family,’ he said, as we lay in bed later that night.
It seemed momentous, not only because we were talking properly, but because it was the first time that we were in bed without having ripped each other’s clothes off to get there.
‘There’s not much to tell,’ I said. ‘My dad died when I was thirteen and it’s just been me and Mum ever since.’ Just talking about him brought a lump to my throat. The thought of the only part I had left of him – his ring and the necklace he bought me – being in someone else’s careless hands turned my stomach.
‘So, no brothers or sisters?’ he asked.
‘Nope, a spoilt only child,’ I said, forcing a laugh.
‘Me too. Though I bet I wasn’t as spoilt as you,’ he joked.
I smiled, knowing he was probably right. There weren’t many girls who got a pony for their seventh birthday, and a boat named after them. I can still remember the gasps of schoolfriends as they arrived at my house for birthday parties. If it wasn’t the long drive that stumped them, it was the swimming pool and extensive gardens. Every year, the celebrations were more outlandishly themed, from animals to Disney and circus acts, to my personal favourite, the actual Chitty Chitty Bang Bang taking us all for a ride.
Mum would look on, quietly embarrassed, whilst Dad, the Italian showman, took centre stage, making all his daughter’s dreams come true. The very next day though, it became tradition for him to take me around all his restaurants and into the kitchens, where the hard work really happened.
‘No matter how lucky we are, we must never lose sight of what it took to get here and where we came from,’ he used to say to me.
His wise words had stuck, as I’d barely missed a day’s work since. Even when I was genuinely ill, I’d think of the children who were expecting me and would drag myself into school.
‘I wasn’t that spoilt,’ I said, defending myself.
‘What? With the dad you had?’ he said, laughing. ‘I find that very difficult to believe.’
I pulled myself up and turned