Page 19 of The Woman Who Said Yes

Yeah I agree.

Then, conscious of the way she jibes him over his three-word messages, he’d added:

Sam

Think he might be with someone? Have a partner I mean?

Andie

Yes! That’s how it sounded.

Sam

But how is that possible? They’re getting married!

Andie

I know what I heard Sam.

Sam

Why would he want to marry Eva if he’s already attached?

Andie

No idea! People do weird things, don’t they?

They certainly do, Sam reflects as Theo throws the radio another fierce glare. Why is the track currently playing so offensive to him? It’s not avant-garde opera or the Nepalese throat singers he’d bought an album of once, thinking it’d be ‘interesting’. It’s Nina Simone! A man of modest tastes and demands, all Sam wants at this precise moment is to have his favourite Sunday morning show playing quietly in the background.

Sam has always loved radio, from when he had a little transistor device as a kid. To him, it not only entertains but soothes and comforts. Crucially, it doesn’t shoot him disparaging looks whenever he finds himself humming along to Bobby Womack, or make him feel like an intruder in his own home. However, right now you’d think the radio was emitting not just the presenter’s homely chatter but a particularly rancid stink. Sam is almost tempted to turn it up, just to rile Theo further – but that would be petty and ridiculous and he’d never stoop to that. He has fantasies, though, of bringing in more radios to position all over the flat, all tuned to different stations. These would be special radios with no ‘off’ buttons! The concept cheers him immensely.

‘What is it?’ Theo frowns at him across the table.

Sam erases his smile along with the image he’d conjured up of himself dad-dancing to a cacophony of noise in their kitchen. ‘Nothing,’ he says.

With breakfast over, and Theo having retired to his room, Sam indulges himself by singing along to a favourite track, his spirits lifted by the morning’s plan. He is looking forward to some company of less hostile nature.

Right on cue, the door buzzer sounds. ‘Someone’s at the door!’ Theo calls out sharply, as if Sam might be considering shirking his duties by not answering it.

‘Yes, I heard. I’m getting it.’ Saluting the invisible sergeant-major in his kitchen, he checks the front of his T-shirt for toast crumbs before going to buzz Andie in.

There’s an urgency about her today, Sam notices. He hands her a coffee and they settle side by side on kitchen chairs, his laptop open between them on the table. There’s been no idle gossip about this and that. Clearly, it’s straight down to business, and after Andie’s sighting of Dom, Sam is fully on board. Even if there’s a perfectly innocent explanation for that conversation he was having, they need to know at least a little more about the man Eva is planning to marry in less than two months’ time.

‘So, where d’you think we should start?’ Andie pulls her chair a little closer to Sam’s.

‘Let’s check out his Facebook again,’ he says. To him this is familiar territory. Old-people-Facebook, as Theo terms it, disparagingly. Is it old-people-radio too?

Sam navigates to Dominic Alcock’s page and they take a moment to study his profile photo. That smug half-smile and flattering lighting; it looks as if he took care to get the right shot. Sam’s profile picture is a blurry snap from the Knitwits’ trip to Barcelona a few years ago. ‘God, you look haggard in that,’ Eva teased him – but Sam didn’t care. They’d been up until three at some salsa club; an old-style ballroom with a live band and balconies dripping with golden carvings. It had been one of the most memorable nights of his life.

Andie looks round as Theo wanders back in. ‘Hi, Andie,’ he offers.

‘Oh hello, love! I didn’t know you were home.’ She jumps up, and Sam hopes she doesn’t detect his awkwardness as she wraps her arms around him. These days, Theo seems to regard hugging older adults in the same way as playing chess with his dad; i.e., tolerable when he was twelve years old but not something he wants to involve himself with now. He steps back and goes to grab a drink from the fridge.

‘How’s it going?’ Andie asks.

Theo shrugs. ‘All right.’

‘College okay?’ she asks brightly.