After the One, Cass Lester [top romance novels .txt] 📗

plastered everywhere, was now less Magnolia with a Hint of Peach and more Grey with a Hint of Grime.

‘You’ll have to get a double bed,’ said Tara, wandering off on a tour of inspection round the rest of the flat.

‘But it’s a single room!’ protested Charley, following her. ‘I’m not having a couple.’

‘No, but there might be a boyfriend, or girlfriend… or whatever. Unless you have a “no bonking” clause,’ laughed Tara. ‘Or let the room out to a nun.’

Charley suddenly got cold feet, icy-cold feet. Two people meant she’d be outnumbered in her own flat.

Tara carried on obliviously, ‘And of course you’ll have to let them use the kitchen and the bathroom, and probably the living room, too. You can’t expect them to spend all their time in their room. Unless you gave them your room?’ Tara hummed in apparent consideration. ‘That might be big enough to put a sofa in as well as a bed.’

‘No!’ Charley said fiercely, so fiercely that Tara looked round at her in surprise. But there was absolutely no way she was giving up her and Josh’s room to a couple of strangers.

‘In that case you’ll have to share the living room as well,’ said Tara, not unreasonably.

‘But that’s the whole flat!’ It was going to be more like a full-scale invasion than a room-let.

Charley spent the entire weekend in an agony of indecision. Never having shared a flat with anyone other than Josh, the logical practicalities of the term ‘room-let’ had simply not occurred to her – she’d interpreted the phrase literally. Having lived at home until she’d moved in with Josh, she hadn’t understood the inevitably invasive nature of letting out a room. In theory, getting a lodger seemed to be the perfect solution to her money worries, but in practice… in practice, the thought of sharing her home, no, her and Josh’s home, with a total stranger appalled her. There’d be someone else’s toast crumbs in the butter, their dirty dishes in her sink and takeaway cartons in the pedal bin and her whole flat would reek of other people’s cooking smells. They’d probably leave underwear on the bathroom floor, disposable razors by the bath and shampoo in the shower. And she’d have to put up with them sitting on her sofa, sitting at her kitchen table, not to mention them sitting on her bloody toilet for crying out loud. Charley shuddered at the thought. She didn’t think she was being overdramatically squeamish, but these would be total strangers and she wasn’t at all sure she could put up with that, even if it was the perfect – the only – solution to her money worries.

Chapter Six

On the Monday morning Charley woke to find a storm that had raged overnight, waking her with its ferocity, had blown the garden fence down. ‘Bloody, bloody hell! More expense,’ she groaned, cradling her hot coffee mug in both hands and gazing helplessly at the damage. Annoyingly, since it was the back fence, she couldn’t even ask a neighbour to share the cost of replacing it. But, looking on the bright side, she told herself, at least the back fence is shorter than the side fence, so it’ll be cheaper to fix. The thought didn’t actually succeed in making her feel all that much better – but it was a good try.

After breakfast she called Tara to ask if Baz could get her some fencing panels, since he could get them cheaper through his building firm.

‘’Course he will. I’ll get him to come over and put it up for you.’

‘I don’t expect him to do that!’

Tara laughed. ‘No, but I do!’

The broken fence forced Charley to make a decision about the lodger. She ordered a bed – a double – then, after breakfast, she made herself go into the spare room and start clearing it out. She was dreading it, but perhaps it would be easier now, especially if she cut herself some slack and allowed herself to keep a few special things, like the Arctic Monkeys Tour T-shirt she’d bought Josh at Reading Festival, the Italian leather belt from Venice, his Hugo Boss body spray…

Sitting cross-legged on the floor she picked a bag at random and pulled out a pair of jeans and a couple of T-shirts. The jeans, she decided, were too tatty for a charity shop. ‘Bin,’ she decided, but the T-shirts were okay. ‘Charity shop,’ she said, starting a different pile. Pulling open another bag she took out a bubble-wrapped package. Without even opening it, she knew what was inside – a pair of engraved crystal wedding flutes. Carefully unwrapping them she held them up to the light to read the inscriptions: one said ‘Love and Laughter’ and the other ‘Happy Ever After’. Josh had given them to her on their honeymoon and although the memory brought a brief, tender smile to her face she also felt a twinge of sadness deep inside.

In an uncharacteristically romantic gesture, Josh had hidden the flutes in his rucksack and had dug them out and presented them to her as they’d stood on the Rialto Bridge overlooking the canal in Venice. He’d then produced a bottle of Prosecco also stashed in his pack and solemnly poured them both a glass. She remembered laughing as the warm fizz had foamed up, spilled over and frothed onto her hand. It had been late in the afternoon and they’d stayed on the bridge, leaning on the cool stone balustrade, soaking up the warm sun, sipping the Prosecco and letting life go by all around them. She’d asked a passing tourist to take a photo of them. As the sky had darkened to the blue of Venetian glass, the city had lit up, lights reflecting on the dark water, and the lanterns hanging front and aft of the gondolas had hinted at a magical city full of romance, and so, when the bottle was empty, they’d kissed and headed through the narrow streets back to the hotel.

She never