Blowing It (12 page)

“This is what I was afraid of,” Max growled after bidding
yet another pushy gossip-seeker goodbye. “One slip, and months of groundwork
comes undone.”

“What do you want me to say?” I demanded. “I’m
sorry some creeper took my photo. Who knew anyone would even recognise me?”

“It only takes one,” Katy said, taking the seat
opposite.

We were in the lounge of the Royal Horseguards Hotel,
housed in the ex-Secret Service HQ just off Whitehall. It was an impressive
setting for a string of very mundane interviews. If it wasn’t already late May,
I’d suspect the agency was trying to pad their tax bill. We were sitting at a
high, round table, the remains of the Horseguards’ famous afternoon tea before
us: delicate china plates spotted with crumbs of sandwiches and cakes, cups
half-filled from a silver teapot, their contents long gone cold. The hostess
had refilled it twice, and if I never drank another cup of tea again, it would
be too soon. I’d always been more of a coffee person, no matter how yummy the
strawberries and cream blend we were currently drinking was.

“You can’t hold me responsible for the actions of
every idiot with a smartphone.”

“That’s exactly what we can do.” Max pushed his
teacup—bone china with a floral pattern—aside and rested his elbows on the
table. “Every time you leave your house, you’re on display. You’re a public
figure now, Owen. You have to remember that.”

I rolled my eyes. “The way you talk, you’d think I
was Brad Pitt.”

“The facts are indisputable.” Katy fixed me with a
hard look. She was wearing her dark hair swept back into a tight bun, and it
made her pretty face seem pinched, too severe. “Someone recognised you. Someone
took a photo and put it online, and those reporters have seen it.” She gestured
towards the exit from which the last journalist had left. “YA is huge right
now, you should be raking it in, and instead you’re barely making ripples. There
are scripts in production for every major series except yours. Why do you think
that is?”

“Don’t make out this is because of one photo,” I
protested. “The book was optioned months ago.”

“And something’s holding them back,” Max cut in. “Our
people are working night and day but getting nowhere.”

“Well maybe you’re pushing too soon,” I countered.
“They didn’t start making the
Harry Potter
films until the fourth book
was out.”

“Don’t be so naïve,” Katy snapped. “You think a
film is made overnight? The series was optioned by the time the second book was
out, and the script was in development within a year. The lack of interest is
starting to become a problem.”

“You think I don’t want this?” I asked. “You think
my mum wouldn’t shit if they made a movie from my books? It’s something I
barely dared dream about, and now you’re, what, accusing me of sabotaging
myself?” I snorted. “I want this as badly as you do.”

“Then act like it,” Max growled.

“I haven’t seen Magnus in
weeks
!” I
protested.

“Magnus? Is that his name?”

Fuck
. “It doesn’t matter what his name is. The
point is I haven’t seen him.”

My heart sank as I realised how long it had been. With
Magnus working nine-to-five through the week, and me doing interviews at all
hours and snatching whatever time I could in between to finish my edits, we’d
barely spoken over the previous fortnight. A couple of texts a day, occasional
phone calls, and one glorious afternoon when the stars aligned and we’d met
long enough for me to fall to my knees and suck his cock like my life depended
on it. Hardly the stuff dreams were made of.

I missed him, I realised, tuning out Max and Katy
as they continued to berate me. When they were finally done casting dire
predictions on the future of my writing career, I turned down their offer of a
lift and crossed Whitehall Place towards the embankment, checking my emails as
I walked.
1984
was showing at The Playhouse, and I almost bumped into an
American tourist snapping a shot of the theatre with a professional-looking
camera. Smiling at her and her companion, I took my attention off my phone long
enough to cross the busy road with a swell of other pedestrians, and was carried
along with them into the gloom beneath the bridge and into the station.

Ducking to the side, out of the flow of people
bottlenecked at the entrance, I pulled up my messages. Magnus had texted that
morning, saying he was working from home all afternoon. A hint if ever I saw
one. Embankment to Archway was a straight trip on the Northern Line. I could be
at his door in less than half an hour.

Fishing the Oyster card from my pocket, I joined
the queue at the barriers.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I spied Magnus’s car parked in the street as I
approached his house. I rang the bell for his flat and saw the Venetian blinds
in the window lift a moment before he admitted me, a broad smile on his face.

“This is a surprise,” he said, ushering me inside.

“I missed you.” I saw no reason to beat around the
bush, and seeing him, I realised just how true my words were. He was dressed in
a pair of old jeans, stained and worn at the knee, and an equally-worn plain T-shirt,
almost pink when I was sure it had once been red.

With the door closed, I paused in the small kitchen
and put my arms around his waist, lifting my lips for a kiss which he readily
bestowed.

“I missed you, too,” he admitted. “I hoped you’d
come today. Although I wasn’t expecting you this early.” He indicated his
attire with an embarrassed shrug.

“You look wonderful.” As much as I appreciated him
in a suit and tie, there was something about seeing him in the old, worn outfit
which stirred my loins. He seemed comfortable, more authentically himself, and
more attractive for it.

He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, perhaps more,
the beard around his mouth thicker than across his cheeks. Some gray was
noticeable now the hairs were longer, bright flecks buried in dark hair. In a
few years, he’d probably be all salt and pepper and even more handsome. I still
waged war on the occasional grey strand I found on my head, cursing every time
I pulled one out and half a dozen friends came to the funeral.

Magnus’s lip twisted in a wry grimace. “I’m a
scruffy bastard,” he countered. “But you,
you
look wonderful.”

He took a step back to better look at me, although
he kept his hands on my hips. I was wearing Cardwell & Grosse 2014, an
outfit chosen to meet Max’s exacting specifications. White dress shirt under a
beautifully-tailored tweed jacket, which Katy swore was retro-chic but I
thought was too damn twee by half, a pair of jeans looser in the leg than I
would usually choose for myself, and tan Timberland boots. I looked like I was
on my way to a country house shooting party, or at least how I imagined a guest
at such an event might dress. More to the point, I didn’t look like
me
,
and Magnus’s appreciation of the outfit made me uneasy.

“They told me to leave the leather jacket and
drainpipes at home,” I said with an attempt at a smile.

“You look good in anything,” Magnus said
magnanimously. “Although I have to admit, I prefer your edgier stuff.”

“Oh?”

“Mmhm.” He yanked me against him by my hips and
mouthed my ear, sending a shiver racing down my spine. “You look… I don’t know.
More comfortable, I suppose.”

It was exactly what I needed to hear. I threw my
arms around his neck and kissed him, although the effect was dashed somewhat
when he made a startled sound and I burst into laughter. I hung onto his neck
for balance as we doubled over, my giggles proving infectious.

Magnus sobered first. “I needed that,” he said,
palming my cheek and smiling. “God, I don’t want to do anything else today but
curl up on the couch with you.”

“We could do that.”

He groaned. “I have to work.”

“Oh.” I felt my smile dim. “I can come back later,
if you want?”

“No. God, no. I’ve only got to finish three more
reports. They shouldn’t take too long, if you don’t mind waiting?”

My smile brightened. “I’ll put the kettle on, shall
I?”

Five minutes later, bearing two cups of coffee and
a packet of chocolate digestives I found in a cupboard, I joined him in the
living room. He was working on the sofa, his laptop on his knees. A frown
marred his handsome face, and his nod of thanks when I placed his cup on the
table beside him was definitely distracted.

“Stuck?” I asked, curling up next to him, cradling
my cup. I opened the packet of biscuits one-handed and took one.

“A little bit,” he admitted.

“What’s the problem?” I glanced at the screen,
where Magnus was flicking through several pictures of a neat, white bathroom.

“There’s a leak coming through the kitchen
ceiling.” He pulled up a photo showing a water stain surrounding the fitting of
a chrome spotlight. “It’s an extension with a flat roof, but it’s fairly new
and I can’t see any holes in it. The join with the old exterior wall is about
where the leak is, but the flashings appear sound. The first room upstairs is
the bathroom, so I’m wondering if that’s where the leak is coming from, but I
couldn’t see anything when I visited. I was hoping something would jump out at
me from the photos.”

“Does it matter?” I asked.

Magnus nodded. “Without a cause of damage, the
insurance won’t pay out, and T. and A. is excluded under this policy.”

“T. and A.?”

“Trace and access,” Magnus explained. “It means the
insurance won’t pay to find the leak. So we could go in, knock the ceiling out,
and locate the cause in five minutes, but the insurance won’t cover it, and
there’s no way we’ll get the money off the homeowner if our findings result in
the claim being declined.”

“Sounds complicated.”

Magnus sighed. “It always is. If the claim was
straightforward, they’d probably have paid out without sending it to us.”

“Wouldn’t the ceiling have to come down anyway?” I
asked. “I mean, it’s damaged, right?”

Magnus shook his head. “It’s only stained, the
plasterboard isn’t bowed.”

I laughed. “If we’re going to talk about this,
you’ll have to assume I know as much about building as Abi.”

 He smiled. “I’m not boring you?”

“No, I think it’s interesting.” I placed my cup on
the table and snuggled closer. “You get to snoop around other people’s houses
for a living.”

“Heh, there is that.” He closed the folder and
opened another. “Look at the state of this one.”

“Oh my god.” My jaw dropped as he pulled up a
succession of photographs showing a house which looked like it came straight
off an episode of
Hoarders
. “Is that the living room?”

Magnus nodded. “She’s got a path between the door,
her chair, and the TV, see?”

The room appeared to be a decent size, but boxes
were piled high, covering every last inch of floor and wall space. The chair
was threadbare, with sweat and grease stains on the arms and headrest. I pulled
a face. “Doesn’t it stink?”

“And then some.”

“Someone actually lives like that?”

“You’d be surprised. When I first started, I
assumed because I was dealing with homeowners, not tenants, they’d look after
their properties. As you can see, that’s not always the case.”

“What’s the claim for?”

“Another leak, see?” Magnus pointed to a dark patch
in the corner of the ceiling, barely distinguishable from the dirt around it.

“Surely that won’t be covered?”

He laughed. “She thinks she’s getting a new carpet
out of it.”

“
Seriously
?”

“I don’t think she’ll get that far,” he conceded.
“Although another company deals with carpets, so it’s not really my area.
Technically there’s rot in there—see the black mould? That tells you how long
the leak has been going on.” He pointed to several spots creeping their way
down the wall. “The insurance could repudiate the claim, but it’s bad PR, so
they’ll probably give her something. I’m pushing them to cash settle anyway,
because I don’t want our guys working in that environment.”

 “Cash settle?”

“Give her a cheque and wash their hands of it.”

I nodded. “I wouldn’t want to work in there,
either.”

Magnus closed the file. “It won’t come to that,” he
said confidently. “The insurance won’t cover clearing the room, and there’s no
way she’ll shift that lot on her own.”

“But you still had to go in there.”

“I’ve got masks in the car.”

“You see this sort of thing often enough you need
to carry masks?”

Magnus shook his head. “No, that’s a rare one. We
get run-down properties all the time, but not often that bad. The masks are a
precaution against a number of things.”

“Such as?”

“Well, mould spores are dangerous. Then there’s
asbestos in a lot of Artex ceilings—most people don’t even realise it’s there,
but if the ceiling comes down, you don’t want to be breathing in the dust. And there
are other biohazards, like if a sewer or a toilet floods. Because we’re mostly
insurance-based, we could get a claim in for anything, so I carry masks and
gloves all the time.”

“I didn’t realise surveying houses was so risky.”

Magnus laughed. “Generally, a leaky washing machine
has warped a laminate floor, or the wind’s blown a couple of tiles off
someone’s roof. Very boring stuff. And chances are, if you were exposed to any
of the dangerous stuff, as a one-off it wouldn’t be a big deal, but because I
do asbestos tests and the like pretty much every day, it becomes prolonged
exposure.”

“You be careful,” I said firmly. “I know about
asbestos; that stuff is lethal.”

“It can be,” he agreed. “Although what you find in Artex
is as benign as it gets, and there’s barely anything in there anyway. I don’t
lose sleep over it.”

I gave him a long look which said he might not lose
sleep over it, but after today, I would.

“Seriously, Owen. I know the risks. I’m careful. I
had to do a training course on asbestos awareness before I started, and some of
the cases they tell you about….” He shuddered. “Kids dying because their dads
worked in factories which used it, and they hugged them when they got home. A
teacher who got cancer because she stuck pins in an asbestos notice board—”

“You’re not reassuring me,” I said quickly.

“No, sorry. Here, look at this one.” He pulled up
another folder. “The police chased a guy onto the roof of a row of terraces.
You can see where he ran, look.” He pointed out a series of photographs showing
a succession of broken tiles. “And here’s where he fell in.” Grinning, he
clicked to the last photo in the set, showing a gaping hole in the middle of
one of the roofs.

I laughed. “What happened to him?”

“Arrested, I assume. Came down in somebody’s loft.”

“I might have to use that in a story.”

Magnus grinned. “They have slate roofs in the
future?”

I smiled back. “Why not?”

҉҉҉

I let him get on with his work while I drank coffee,
ate biscuits, and played
Temple Run
on my mobile. Magnus snorted and
shook his head when he saw what I was doing, but otherwise offered no comment. All
was quiet in the flat save the soft tapping of the keys on his laptop as he
wrote, and the distant sounds of traffic outside.

At last the tapping stopped. Magnus closed the
laptop and stretched cat-like beside me, fingers and socked toes splayed.
“Sorry that took so long,” he said, curling an arm around me and pulling me
into his shoulder.

I instructed my avatar to jump off a cliff and
closed the game. “Next time, maybe I should bring my laptop,” I suggested. “We
could work together.”

Magnus smiled. “I’d like that.”

I snuggled against him, resting my hand on his
stomach. A smile curved my lips at the delay before he remembered to suck in,
and I curled my fingers, knowing it would tickle and the reflex would force him
to relax. He didn’t need washboard abs to turn me on.

“How’s the writing going?” he asked.

“Slowly. I was hoping to have the edits finished by
now, and the manuscript returned for the next round, but with all these
interviews I’m doing, I’ve barely had a chance to look at it.”

“I saw one on Sunday.”

“Oh?”

“Mmhm. In the
Mail
. It looked good.”

“Don’t tell me you read the
Mail
?” I used
his hip for leverage as I sat up and glared at him.

Magnus laughed throatily. “Not usually. But you
mentioned last week you’d be in that one, so I bought a copy.”

“You did?”

He looked surprised. “Of course I did. A newspaper
did an article on you, Owen. I was proud of you.”

“Have you still got it?” I asked curiously. Max had
offered me copies of the interviews once they appeared in print, but I hadn’t
accepted any. It felt too egotistical, collecting articles about myself.

Magnus looked abashed as he set the laptop down and
rose. He took a hardbound book from the drawer of the table on my side of the
couch, opened it, and produced a newspaper clipping from inside the cover. Another
paper fell and drifted to the floor as he held it out to me, and I snatched
that one up first.

“This isn’t the
Mail
,” I said, holding the
page. It had the flimsy quality of a newspaper, not a Sunday supplement. A
quick glance showed it was from
The Times
. “You read more than one?”

Silently, Magnus handed the book over. Inside were half
a dozen different pages from various publications, each one an interview I’d
given over the previous fortnight. He had them all.

A lump lodged in my throat as I looked at him. “You’re
keeping them?”

Scuffing his feet on the carpet, Magnus crossed in
front of me and sat, not meeting my eye. “I couldn’t resist,” he admitted, his
voice gruff. He hunched his shoulders and tucked his chin into his chest. The
tips of his ears were pink. “Do you mind?”

“Why would I mind?” I asked. Getting no response, I
placed the papers back inside the book and set in on the table. Gently, I took
his hand. “I don’t even think Ryan’s read all of them,” I said. “It means a lot
to me that you have.”

“You don’t think it’s weird? I mean, I know that’s
not really you, it’s some reporter’s impression of what you’re told to say, but
I saw the first one, and I couldn’t resist.” He spoke quickly, like he wanted
to distance himself from his words. He seemed… embarrassed. Like a little boy
caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Settling more firmly facing him, I tightened my
grip on his hand and kissed his cheek. “I think it’s the sweetest thing any guy
ever did for me.”