Page 29 of Love Unlocked

‘She what?’ Melody asks him, though she knows he is none the wiser. How dare Prunella try to poach Melody’s bridge guy? Her bridge guy who is grinning at her knowingly, his tongue in his cheek. He sits back in his chair, long leg crossed over another, lord of his bridge tower. She can’t help but laugh.

‘Prunella wants me on her show,’ he teases. ‘But you don’t want me on your show.’

‘I might want you on my, our, show.’

She laughs at his playfulness, enjoying it. He knows how to push her buttons.

‘I’ve been stabbed in the back by my own colleague,’ she says, trying to be playful but it comes out harder. She is so angry with Prunella for contacting Al behind her back after they’d agreed it was her story.

‘I know how that feels.’ His smile fades, the playfulness, the light in his blue eyes, all immediately gone, it’s like the light has gone out in him. He seems sad, as if there are two versions of him that rapidly keep switching places. ‘I would love to help you,’ he says earnestly. ‘But I don’t know what you want and frankly I don’t think you do either.’

If anyone could have hit the nail any harder on the head. His comment stings.

Everyone always says that she doesn’t know what she wants, especially after her break-up with Sam. She knows she wants to be left alone – unless it’s night time and then she very much doesn’t want to be alone. So that’s quite a specific, if slightly impossible, desire.

She stands up, feeling cold, and grabs her coat. ‘Thank you for your time.’

He looks confused and backpedals quickly. ‘I meant yet. You don’t know yet. If you figure out what you wa—’

‘No,’ she says, holding her hand up. ‘Please don’t say that again.’ She leaves. ‘Bye, Natasha, it was nice to meet you.’

She goes directly for the stairs. Al was right, but wrong of course. She doesn’t know what she wants from him, but she thought she could arrive and figure it out. Besides, they don’t interview people on the show; it’s discussion-based. So why had Prunella contacted him? The conniving little … they had specifically agreed to leave this to Melody. She thinks of all the things she should have asked the bridge guy – Al – instead of messing around with bridge questions. He’d distracted her, she hadn’t been able to think straight. She’d quite fancied him and lost her train of thought, some journalist she is. She mulls over his comment and the comment that’s frequently echoed by friends and her mum.

She doesn’t know what she wants.

By the time she reaches the ground floor she’s exhausted and feeling every single missed minute of sleep. She also knows she’s facing a night alone and she hasn’t the energy to make arrangements. She hopes Filip Wozniak would like to go to a late-night movie at the cinema with no talking at all. At the end of the stairs Al stands with her scooter in one hand, and her pink helmet in the other. He lifts the scooter up with one hand, his biceps bulging through his shirt, as if it’s the weight of a tin of beans. It’s folded and it looks like a child’s scooter in his hands.

She makes the final round of steps while he watches her.

‘You forgot these,’ he says, handing them over.

‘Thank you.’

‘I didn’t mean to offend you. You took off quickly,’ he says, concerned.

‘I know you didn’t.’ She’d gotten offended all by herself. ‘It’s just that everyone I know tells me I don’t know what I want, and to use a word that I think should be removed from the English language, it triggered me.’ She sighs, she’s oversharing, but he’s taken it well.

‘I’m sorry for making the t-word happen to you, I think anyone who uses it should immediately be punched in the face. Not your face, obviously.’

‘Obviously.’

She sighs. She doesn’t want to leave again, why did she leave in the first place? But he doesn’t seem in any rush either. ‘I had six flights of stairs to think of a strategy. I want to help people. I want to get the locks back. Ideally we could put them back on the Grace Plunkett Bridge.’

He shakes his head.

‘Could you do something to the bridge that makes it stronger, so it can take the weight? Like steel girders or something?’

He laughs.

‘I don’t know what that means but it seems like something that should be on a bridge. Steel girder,’ she says, deepening her voice and tensing her muscles.

He shakes his head again, still chuckling.

‘Could we put the love locks somewhere else, on another bridge?’

‘Moving the locks to another bridge would have the same effect. The locks are too heavy, they compromise the bridge’s structural integrity, making it a risk for the bridge and anyone who walks across it. Even with your macho steel girders,’ he smiles.

Gosh he’s sexy when he talks about integrity, even if it is a bridge’s.