Guilty Feet (3 page)

She was already laying
two
places at the kitchen table by the time he caught up with her, and this time he groaned inwardly. Hungry and grateful he might very well be, but he definitely wasn’t in the mood for company. Not Libby’s. Not anyone’s. She set the tray down in the middle of the table and whipped away the covering with the panache of a magician at a children’s party.

It did look good, though. Chicken with rice and roast vegetables.

He shrugged resignedly, and when she produced wine from a carrier bag he hadn’t noticed she’d brought with her, he found a corkscrew and took two wineglasses out of the cupboard. The fact that he had any clean glasses available was down to Libby as well. Last night she’d insisted on tidying up the flat, and although he’d found it embarrassing having someone he didn’t know very well cleaning up after him she’d refused to take no for an answer. And she’d done such a good job he could hardly complain.

‘How did it go today?’ she asked him brightly as he poured out the already chilled Australian Chevin Blanc. She was seated by now, smiling and expectant.

‘Not bad.’ He shrugged. She was talking about the book that he’d been commissioned to write, which involved a very tough deadline indeed, and he took the opportunity to slide in a pretty strong hint. ‘I’ve only got three weeks left to finish it, which is going to be tight.’

‘How come you’re being so secretive about it all?’ she asked, ignoring the hint as she flicked her hair in a distinctly flirty manner.

He sat down and carefully drew his chair back a bit, so there wouldn’t be any knee contact under the table.

‘I’m not being secretive,’ he lied. The fact was that he was being very secretive indeed, and for what he considered a very good reason. If it got out that he was doing a quick cut-and-paste job on VantagePoint, the latest five-minute-wonder boy band, then he was very much afraid that his professional credibility might be harmed. ‘I just don’t like talking about my work very much,’ he added lamely.

‘Why did you tell Aisling about it, then?’

Dan, who’d just tucked into the first delicious mouthful of chicken, took a moment to reply. He’d forgotten how prickly she could be.

‘I didn’t tell her,’ he eventually said, truthfully now. ‘I left a letter from the publisher out and she read it.’ Luckily there had been very little detail in that particular letter, but he was still mad with Aisling for being so nosy—and madder still for passing the information on to Libby.

She seemed pleased by this explanation. ‘That’s not really on, is it?’ she said. ‘Reading your private mail, I mean.’

‘It’s more than “not really on”,’ he said with feeling. ‘I’d call it bloody rude.’

Libby agreed with a nod and, relaxing now, finally picked up her own knife and fork.

‘I didn’t realise you were such a good cook,’ Dan said, because it was true and because he was keen to change the subject.

‘I do a great curry as well,’ Libby replied eagerly. ‘Made from real spices. Not one of those awful ready-made things that come in jars.’

He felt as if he was supposed to say that he’d love to try it one of these days, but he didn’t want to encourage her.

‘How’s the job going, by the way?’ he said instead, conversationally. He couldn’t actually remember what it was she did, but that didn’t matter. It was about keeping the focus on her. She had a habit of trying to wheedle information from him of a personal nature and he wasn’t in the mood for talking about himself.

‘OK,’ she said, ‘though I’ve just been moved to a different department and I don’t like my new boss very much. Her idea of managing people is to push them around.’

‘That’s what’s good about my line of work,’ he said. ‘Not much direct contact with people.’

She looked concerned about this.

‘But don’t you feel a bit isolated at times?’

He shook his head firmly. ‘Never.’

‘It must have been strange when Joanna moved out, though,’ she said in that wheedling tone that instantly put Dan back on his guard.

He put his knife and fork down and knocked back half of the wine in his glass.

‘Yeah, sure. We’d been together for quite a long time, and the flat did seem pretty empty for a while, but I’m used to it now.’ And, yes, he
was
getting used to it, but it didn’t mean that he liked it, and it certainly didn’t mean that he wanted to discuss the matter with someone he wasn’t even sure that he liked very much.

‘You don’t still miss her, then?’

‘Look,’ he said, more sharply than he’d intended, ‘I’m sorry, but I’m tired and I’d rather not get into this just now.’ In fact all he wanted to do was finish the food, do his word count, check his e-mails, maybe play some music, and get some shuteye. So he very much hoped she wasn’t planning on staying long.

‘I was only testing the water,’ she said sulkily. ‘It’s just that I’ve heard she’s seeing someone else now, and I didn’t want to say anything if I thought it was going to upset you.’

It felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach, and although he wanted to know who this ‘someone else’ was, no way was he going to ask the question. He managed a feeble shrug.

‘Well, good luck to her. Time one of us took the plunge, I suppose.’

She was watching him closely—trying to see behind the words, he suspected—and he wondered how he was going to get through the rest of the meal now that his appetite had disappeared. He wished more than ever that she’d just go away and leave him alone, but that was clearly not going to happen.

‘Why don’t you tell me something about yourself?’ he said in desperation. He realised suddenly that he knew practically nothing about his neighbour of over a year, and although he found it hard to conjure up very much interest in Libby, listening to her had to be better than having to field her intrusive line of questioning. ‘You’re not from Leeds, are you?’ She frowned at this, but he continued to make eye contact with her until she answered the question.

‘No,’ she eventually said. ‘I’m from London originally, but I prefer the North.’

It was hard work, but he managed to keep her talking about herself while he struggled to clear most of his plate. She failed to mention any men in her life, but he didn’t push her on that particular subject for fear of the conversation turning to
relationships
.

When he finally put his knife and fork together, he took a sneaky glance at his watch and noted that it was twenty past eight.

‘Would you like some more wine before we clear up?’ Libby said as he reached over the table for her plate. Despite the fact that she’d done most of the talking, she’d still finished her food long before him.

‘Not for me, thanks.’ One glass had been quite enough for Dan. He was very tired and another glass would probably knock him straight out.

‘You don’t mind if I have another, do you?’ she asked him, ever so sweetly.

‘Well, I do have some things to get on with before I can shut down my computer...’

But she was already pouring it.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Five minutes and I’ll be on my way, I promise.’ She picked up the glass by its stem and smiled, showing her slightly overlapping front teeth and a bit of roast aubergine skin that was stuck between them.

‘I wanted to ask your advice,’ she said.

‘Fire away,’ he replied, thinking that if she wasn’t gone by half past eight then he’d have to remind her that her time was up.

‘I’ve got a small collection of vintage vinyl,’ she went on coyly after a pause, ‘and I wondered if you’d be able to value it for me.’

He looked at her without understanding for a moment. ‘Are we talking
records
here?’

She nodded. ‘They were my father’s.’

She hadn’t mentioned her family before, and he assumed by her comment that her father was dead.

‘What sort of records are you talking about?’

‘LPs and singles, mostly from the Sixties and Seventies. Pretty good stuff, I think. I could go and get some of them now, if you like.’

But Dan shook his head firmly. ‘Not tonight, Libby. I’d be happy to look another time, but...’

‘That’s fine,’ she said, ever so slightly prickly again. ‘I quite understand.’

‘Maybe over the weekend,’ he said. ‘I don’t know too much about actual values, but I could probably point you in the right direction.’

She seemed quite content with that, and after knocking back the contents of her glass got up from the table.

‘Don’t worry about the washing up,’ she insisted as she moved round the table beside him. ‘You go and see to your work, and when I’ve cleared up I’ll just slip out of the door. I won’t disturb you.’

He wasn’t that happy about leaving her there in the kitchen, but he couldn’t just frog-march her out of the flat.

‘Thanks then, Libby,’ he said, somewhat overenthusiastically in his relief to be getting away. ‘It was a brilliant meal and I’m very grateful.’

‘My pleasure.’ She smiled, and then, before he knew what was happening, she reached up and kissed him. Only a peck on his cheek, but it was the way she looked at him as she planted the peck that he found so disconcerting. It was just a bit too intense and lingering, as if she was trying to tell him something he definitely didn’t want to hear.

‘Goodnight, Libby,’ he said, and moved rather too fast out of the kitchen. He kept his computer in the bedroom, and as he closed the door behind him he had the mad idea of putting a chair up against the doorknob. He told himself that he was being ridiculous, that she was hardly going to force herself on him, and even if she did he wasn’t such a wimp that he’d have to give in. He knew it was daft, but he still let out a long sigh of relief when he finally heard the click of the front door closing behind her.

At last he felt able to run his word count, which was excellent: 7,483 words. Not bad for one day, even if few of the words were actually his. The important thing was that he was well on target to meeting his deadline. It was more about deadline than content with this particular book, and that was one of the things that bothered him. It was essential to get it on the shelves fast, before the boy band peaked, and it was hard to square that with his love of good and enduring music.

He stretched his arms over his head and realised that was exactly what he needed now—some good and enduring music. He got up and went into the sitting room. It still looked so bleak in there without Jo’s things cluttering up the place—just the green sofa and a badly sprung leatherette armchair, a coffee table covered in white glass rings, his precious Martin D41 guitar, and one mother of a CD collection.

They took up the whole of the back wall in purpose-made floor-to-ceiling (and the room had very high ceilings) strips of pine shelving. There must be getting on for four thousand now, he realised, and he was fast running out of space. The CDs were in rough alphabetical order, by artist. From A Certain Ratio to ZZ Top, but not yet in dictionary or encyclopaedic form. He’d acquired such a large collection in such a relatively short time through his work. Record companies sent out piles of CDs to anyone who wrote about music in the hope of receiving a good review. Most of them had only ever been played once or twice, but there were some that he’d played nearly to death.

It was one of these that he took from the ‘H’ section now. John Lee Hooker’s best, in Dan’s opinion, his five-star 1989 album
The
Healer
. Its unique Latin-bluesy fusion found its way deep into his soul, and from the title track—a superb duet with Carlos Santana—he derived some mysterious comfort.

One of the few good things about being on his own was that he could play what he wanted, when he wanted, and as loud as he wanted. When Jo had lived there she’d insisted he put earphones on if he wanted to play anything that she didn’t like very much. And even that had sometimes annoyed her, particularly near the end. She had been forever complaining that he cared more about music than he did about her, but he realised now that it had been just one of many excuses for having simply gone off him.

Why else would she have left without any attempt at an explanation?

A sudden image of Jo came uninvited into his head—Jo with somebody else—and he shook it quickly. He did a quick U-turn out of this particular road to self-pity and turned the sound up just a tad higher, as a small act of belated defiance. Fortunately, the building was old, with thick walls and presumably ceilings. He’d occasionally heard the soft thump of drum and bass coming from Aisling’s flat below, but he’d never yet heard a sound from Libby’s upstairs. He’d assumed she didn’t go in for music much, so it was a big surprise to learn that she had a collection of vinyl.

He returned to his bedroom to check his e-mails—the last job before he shut down his computer for the night. There were only six messages waiting for his attention, so it shouldn’t take long. Two were deleted immediately as junk, and two others—from magazine editors looking for contributions—could wait until tomorrow. But there was one from Steve that required a little more thought.

Steve was an old friend he’d kept in touch with from school in the Midlands. He lived in London these days, but he definitely had a soft spot for Leeds, which he’d been visiting on and off ever since Dan got his first job on a newspaper there. The job had lasted nearly five years, until he felt confident enough to go it alone and write full time about music. And because he’d settled into the life pretty well he’d seen no reason to move on from the city.