From The Heart Read Free Page A

laughed. ‘What’s the problem!?’
    ‘There is, obviously, a problem,’ he said. ‘Otherwise you’d have left the station and come to the pub.’ He waved at Topsie’s which was only a few yards away and clearly visible through the rails. ‘I heard the train on the phone at the same time as I saw it go by and realised you must be here.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ve had a shit day.’
    ‘I have those all the time.’ He grinned.
    ‘And I really can’t have dinner with you because I have athlete’s foot in my hair and no shoes.’
    He looked at me in puzzlement. ‘Would you like to run that by me again?’
    So I explained about working late and the mix up with the sprays and falling off the train, and I could see him trying very hard not to laugh and I wanted to curl up in a ball and die.
    ‘I guess Dan McCormack wouldn’t be too impressed if I brought a woman with a headful of athlete’s foot into the restaurant,’ he agreed.
    ‘Anyway, I’m not really your sort of girl,’ I told Richard. ‘This kind of thing happens to me a lot. I’m a walking disaster area. I split up with my last boyfriend because I reversed his car into a bus stop.’
    This time he did laugh. It was gorgeous and sexy. Naturally.
    ‘Besides,’ I told him. ‘Everyone thinks you’re too good-looking to be decent boyfriend material.’
    ‘That’s a bummer,’ he said. ‘Besides, who said anything about boyfriends?’
    I winced. He was a fuckwit. And so was I.
    ‘Can you walk at all?’ he asked.
    ‘I can hobble,’ I told him. ‘My ankle is sore. And I only have one shoe.’
    He looked at me appraisingly. ‘We can make it as far as the car park,’ he said. ‘Which is where I’m parked. And then I’ll drive you back to my place and I’ll strap up your ankle and we can order a takeaway. If that’s all right?’
    Gosh, I thought. How decisive. That’s probably why he was one of the top guys in the company. He didn’t mess about.
    ‘I don’t sleep with people on the first date,’ I said.
    His deep blue eyes opened wider. ‘Neither do I.’
    I winced again. I’d wanted to sound as decisive as him but maybe I’d just been a bit silly.
    ‘Can you hop?’ he asked. ‘Or do you want me to carry you?’
    ‘I can hop.’ Although the thought of being carried was pretty appealing.
    He helped me into the car and then turned to me.
    ‘I thought you’d stood me up,’ he said.
    ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ I told him.
    ‘That’s what I reckoned.’ He smiled at me. ‘That’s why I like you, Sadie. That’s why I asked you out. You seem a really nice person.’
    ‘A bit of a walking nightmare though,’ I said.
    ‘Not so much of the walking.’ He laughed as he started the car.
    He wasn’t an emotional wreck. He was gorgeous and funny and just plain nice. I wasn’t too emotionally wrecked either. I didn’t sleep with him on the first date. Because there were lots of other dates to follow. I didn’t try as hard for those and I didn’t have any disasters either (well, not major ones – there was the night when I thought we were supposed to be meeting in the Morrison whereas he’d said Morrissey’s but we sorted that out). There were other ups and downs, of course. He wasn’t perfect and neither was I. But we managed to work things out. Which just goes to show that sometimes the really gorgeous blokes are meant for people like me after all. And I mustn’t have been Cleopatra in a previous life. Maybe I was her assistant.

A Peaceful Christmas
    The idea of going away for Christmas was enticing, but it was something that Jim and Laura couldn’t really afford. Adding to their debt wasn’t reasonable, Jim told himself as he read the ads on the back page of the newspaper, and he was usually a reasonable man. A few years earlier he wouldn’t even have noticed the cost of a couple of days away, but times were tougher now and nobody was spending money on stuff they couldn’t afford. Least of all people who