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deep and soundless sleep of the drugged, and then helps me carry Oskar upstairs. All of a sudden he is inside my flat again. They both are.
    “Make yourselves at home. I’ll go sort us out some food.” I wave my hands vaguely toward the living room and then vanish into the kitchen to try and deal with how I feel about this and to think about what I’m going to do. I can’t chuck Oskar out with a broken foot— especially when I broke it —but I really don’t like the thought of him staying here either. I don’t know anything about him. And more than that, he’s in my space. I need to be on my own. It’s how I have learned to function.
    I pull some noodles and various vegetables out of the fridge and stare blankly at them until some sort of autopilot takes over.
    Cooking takes me away from thinking, and I become immersed in what I’m doing—chopping, stirring, adding a bit of spice, a bit of rice wine, looking for enough plates and glasses in the cupboard above the sink….
    I don’t realize Angus is standing in the doorway watching me until it’s too late, and I inhale sharply and stumble against the cooker in shock.
    “Um, Oskar’s shaking pretty bad. Do you have some dry clothes he could wear?” he asks hesitantly, looking everywhere but at me.
    Okay, so we’re back to being weird , I think resignedly.
    “Yeah, just stir this, and I’ll go get some,” I say, pointing at the pan.
    I come back with some pajama bottoms I have never worn in my life, a T-shirt I wouldn’t be caught dead in, and a fur-lined hooded top I actually quite like.
    “Here.” I hold out the clothes to Angus who, to my mortification, is no longer watching the pan on the stove but instead peering at the walls.
    “ Oh ,” he breathes, almost as if he doesn’t want me to hear him.
    Fuck, I forgot.
    I collect myself enough to roll my eyes. “Don’t tell me you’ve never read any erotic fiction before?”
    I actually hear him swallow. He shakes his head and mumbles, “No. Not even… watched any porn. Dad would’ve killed me.”
    “Well, you’re not staying in my kitchen all night to make up for it,” I say matter-of-factly. “Take these through to Oskar.”
    “Why did you put it all over your kitchen walls?” he asks, carefully taking the clothes from me.
    “Why not? Beautiful writing pleases me wherever it is,” I say as coolly as I can, moving back to my position in front of the cooker so that I can pretend it’s the heat of the flames that’s making me flushed.
    The food is ready and doesn’t need stirring, but stirring it gives me something to focus on, something to do with my hands.
    “Oh… you didn’t like the coffee,” he says quietly.
    Swinging round, I catch his disappointed expression before he can hide it.
    Mentally I kick myself for leaving everything sitting on the table, exactly where it was when I left for work this morning.
    Sighing, I turn the cooker off. I never know what to say, but right now I feel like I should be as honest with him as I can. He looks upset.
    “Angus, I just couldn’t work out why you’d brought me breakfast. Last night shouldn’t have happened. I shouldn’t have let it. It was a mistake. But you did nothing wrong.”
    I find myself staring at his neck, but his jumper comes up too high to see the skin I marked, the only evidence of our brief encounter.
    He shrugs self-consciously.
    “I just wanted you to….”
    He doesn’t finish the sentence, but he doesn’t have to. I know what he was going to say; it’s written all over his face.
    I do like you , a traitorous voice in my head cries. I like you so fucking much. I close my eyes trying to shut it out, trying to clamp down on the feelings that threaten to rise up.
    Briskly, I grab a plate and dish up the food onto it. “I’m going to take this through to Oskar,” I say without looking back.

Chapter 3
     
     
    I T IS eight o’clock on a Sunday morning, and yet I have work in half an hour. It just seems wrong.