Read The Warning for Free Online

wrong, clearly. He’s not straightforwardly soppy and romantic. Thinking about it, he says some quite jarringly unromantic things. A straight-down-the-line romantic person wouldn’t joke about stalking, murder and locking my daughter in the cellar.
    Tom Rigbey is a highly unusual man. That doesn’t mean he will never ask me to marry him. It’s more likely to mean that, if he ever does, he will do it in a highly unusual way.
    Not that I want to marry him, or would say yes. I barely know him.
    I tell him about Freya’s dad—my short relationship with him and our breakup. “That sounds tough,” he says sympathetically. Then, with a more mischievous expression on his face, he says, “But your mother’s been supportive, right? In exchange for great Wi-Fi?”
    I laugh. “Actually . . . now she’s great, and Freya’s right—she’ll babysit whenever I need her to, but that’s only since she split up with Husband Number Three. When I was on my own with a six-month-old baby, Mum had only just met Clive and was pandering to his every need all day long. He was the child she looked after—and emotionally he was such a spoilt kid. She had no time for anyone else.”
    “Could you ever pander to a Clive?” Tom wrinkles his nose. “I couldn’t. Names are important. I could pander to a Chloe, but never a Clive.”
    “What about your parents?” I ask him. I want to hear more details about his one and only serious relationship with a woman called Maddy, but he didn’t have much to say about her, and moved on quite quickly once he’d told me they’d been together for four years, but split up when she’d moved to Australia for work. I’d feel intrusive if I revisited the subject.
    I could ask about his parents instead. He hasn’t mentioned them yet, and since we’ve just been discussing my mother . . . “You said you grew up in Manchester. Are your folks still there?”
    “Did I say that?” He frowns. “When?”
    “The first time we met. You mentioned the Palace Theater, where you saw Joseph Dreamcoat .”
    “There’s going to be nothing left of that title by the time you finish with it, is there?” Tom chuckles. “Remind me if I ever need to fake my own death and invent a new ID, Joseph Dreamcoat’s my name-in-waiting. You’re quite right: I grew up in Manchester—and what an impressive memory you have! My brother Julian’s still there. He has a dentistry practice there, in Fallowfield. My parents decamped to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, five years ago, in true retired-person style. I was sunbathing by their complex’s shared swimming pool a few months ago and saw what I thought was the most enormous upright lizard—turned out to be an armadillo! I nearly freaked out, but managed to keep my cool for long enough to take a photo, which is now my Twitter avatar. Work weren’t happy, but since I tweet purely in a personal capacity . . . and I did point out that the armadillo is far more handsome than I could ever hope to be. Okay, now I’m going to leave a gaping void in my chitchat so that you can say, ‘Not at all, Tom—you are the sexiest man I’ve ever clapped eyes on.’ ”
    I smile. I might have said something—nothing nearly so extreme as his suggestion, but something in that direction—had he not made it so awkward for me to do so.
    Our main courses arrive—fishcakes for me and steak for Tom—and we carry on chatting. By the end of the meal I know that he is not interested in politics but plans to vote for Nick Clegg in the next election because “even though I have no clue what his policies are, he’s been so savaged by the mob, I feel sorry for him.” I learn, also, that Tom is fond of dogs (especially English bull terriers—as a child he had two, Butch and Sundance), a keen chess player and a cinema addict. His favorite old movie is Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? , the Joan Crawford and Bette Davis classic, and his favorite new one is Prisoners , starring Hugh Jackman and Jake