already undone my bra; I’ve unbuttoned his shirt….Whatever tiny tensions were between us have vanished. We’re in synch with each other. Moving with each other. In the zone together. This man is all I want or need….
Then a timer suddenly pings, and we both jerk in shock.
“Oh. I set that earlier. Sorry.” I wince. “It’s…doesn’t matter.”
“We could eat,” suggests Matt. “And then…” He raises his eyebrows, and as I remember what we got up to in Italy, I feel a cascade of responses all over my body.
“OK. Let’s do that.”
I ladle out my tagine into two shallow pottery bowls and usher Matt to the table.
“Interesting chairs,” he says, eyeing my vintage school chairs. I found them at a car-boot sale and they’re quite rickety, but Maud is going to upcycle them as soon as she’s done the shelving unit. “Don’t tell me. Rescue chairs?”
“Of course,” I say, laughing at his expression. “All my furniture is rescue furniture, pretty much. ‘Adopt, don’t shop.’ ”
“Not your bed, surely,” he says, looking slightly repulsed.
“Especially my bed! I found it in a skip,” I say proudly. “Maud painted it and it’s as good as new. I just hate new furniture. It’s so blah. It’s so…functional. It has no character.”
“If you say so.” Matt sits down and picks up his fork. “Bon appétit.”
As we both take our first mouthfuls, I hear a sound a bit like a twig cracking. I can’t quite tell where it came from, though.
“What was that?” I say in puzzlement. “Was that—”
But I don’t get to finish my sentence, because the next moment there’s the sound of splintering wood and Matt yells with shock—and before my eyes, his chair collapses with him on it, as if he’s in “The Three Bears.”
“Oh my God!” I shriek in horror.
“Shit!” Matt sounds like he’s in actual pain. “What the fuck?”
“I’m so sorry!” I say desperately.
I’m already on my feet and I try to help Matt up from the mess of wood, although Harold is barking frenziedly and capering around and generally getting in the way.
“Right now…” says Matt heavily, as he finally gets to his feet, “right now, I would probably take function over character.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again, feeling waves of mortification. “I’m so sorry…Wait, your arm.” I feel a stab of dread as I see his sleeve. It’s drenched with red. What has my rescue furniture done to the man I love?
Wordlessly, Matt pulls up his sleeve to reveal a horrible gash which has gone right through his shirt.
“Shit.” My stomach is hollow. “Shit! But how—what—”
“Nail.” He nods at a huge rusty nail sticking out of my salvaged kitchen dresser, which is also on Maud’s upcycling list. “Must have caught me when I went down.”
“Matt, I don’t know what to say,” I begin, my voice trembling. “I’m so incredibly sorry….”
“Ava, it’s fine. Not your fault.” He puts his uninjured hand on my arm. “But maybe I should go to A&E, get a tetanus jab.”
“Yes. Right. I’ll get a cab.” Flustered, I whip out my phone to call an Uber. I can’t quite believe it. This is not how things were supposed to go.
“Don’t stress. Shit happens.” He squeezes my arm. “And apart from that, it’s been a great evening,” he adds. “Really, it has. Thank you. I loved the…um…” He stops as though he doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. “I loved the…the…” He pauses again, and I can see him scrabbling for the next word. “I loved…you,” he finishes at last. “I loved seeing you again.”
“Well, me too. Cab’s on its way.”
I soak a tea towel and wash his arm, wincing at the blood, then grab a packet of biscuits from the cupboard.
“We might have a wait at the hospital,” I say, nodding at them.
“Ava, you’re not coming with me,” says Matt, looking taken aback. “It’s not necessary.”
“Of course I am!” I stare at him. “I’m not going to leave you. And…d’you want to come back here afterward?” I ask tentatively. “The rescue bed won’t collapse,” I add in earnest tones. “I promise. It’s sturdy.”
At the phrase “rescue bed,” a weird, fixed look comes over Matt’s face, which I can’t quite read.
“Let’s see how we go, shall we?” he says after a long silence. “We could come back here, yes, we could do that.” He pauses again, his eyes running over the heap of broken rescue chair. “Or we could always go to my place.”
Nine
I’m feeling upbeat and undeterred as I stand in an unfamiliar corner of west