Free A Trick of the Mind by Penny Hancock Page B

have recovered already. But his voice on the phone had unsettled me. So, option three, climb straight out of the window onto the garage roof off the road.
    I stood in the water, wasting time deliberating when I should shut the door, lock it, get through the window. Then I was certain, footsteps were coming towards me across the sitting room. I was
out of the bath, grabbing a towel. I stood, the toilet brush in my hand raised, the only implement I could find with which to defend myself, a towel wrapped round me.
    A shadow fell across the gap in the bathroom door.

CHAPTER TEN
    ‘Put the toilet brush down! I surrender.’
    ‘Finn!’
    ‘Oh my God, you thought I was an intruder?’
    ‘Of course I bloody well thought you were an intruder! What’re you doing walking in like this?’
    I pressed the towel closer around me.
    ‘I came to see how it went.’
    ‘Christ! You could’ve given me some warning. Now if you’ll excuse me I need to put some clothes on.’
    ‘I’ll open a beer then.’
    My eyes prickled with tears of relief, and something else. I’d gone all weak, as if someone had been holding me up, like a marionette, and had let go of the strings. My nerves were highly
sensitised, twitchy, because of the man called Patrick, those phone calls. I’d thought Finn was him! How ridiculous when Patrick was stuck over sixty miles away in hospital.
    Finn and I had spent hours in the past naked together but I couldn’t let him see me like this now we weren’t together any more, so when I’d thrown on some clothes I joined him
in the sitting room where he was on the sofa, head bowed.
    He looked awful close up, as if he hadn’t slept for days. But that was nothing new. Finn led the kind of life where he could forget to go to bed for weeks on end. Pepper had trotted
straight over to him and jumped up onto his lap. Finn fondled his silky ears with his finger and thumb.
    ‘You brought your own beer?’
    He shrugged.
    Finn was on a permanent tight budget – his bringing beer was uncharacteristic.
    ‘Finn! I’ve got wine in the fridge, you know. You needn’t have worried.’
    ‘I can pay my way.’
    I wished what I felt for him was a wash of love. Instead what I felt was pity.
    ‘I’m not suggesting . . . oh, never mind. Anyway, it gave me a shock, your walking in like that. Where did you get the key?’
    ‘I saw Chiara in the pub. With Liam. She said she was worried about you, so I said I’d come round, and she gave me her keys.’
    ‘You should have knocked! It’s not on to just walk in like that.’
    ‘I won’t do it again.’
    ‘Please don’t, Finn.’
    There was a silence. I’d never spoken to Finn in this bossy way before. I softened.
    ‘What was Chiara worried about?’
    ‘She just thought you might avoid joining us. So I came to find you.’
    ‘I was going to come,’ I said. ‘I needed to unwind first.’
    He looked up at me through his floppy fringe. ‘Sorry to snap,’ I said. ‘It was kind of you to come.’
    ‘Not really. Selfish motives. I’ve been missing you.’
    I poured myself a glass of wine.
    ‘But next time – I do have a doorbell.’
    ‘It feels unnatural to ring the bell. I’ve never had to ring your bell before!’
    He flicked his fringe aside and looked up at me with his earnest brown eyes. His elbows rested on his knees, he looked forlorn. I had to resist the urge to feel too much sympathy for him or
I’d be tempted to crawl back to him.
    ‘Finn, things are different now. You can’t just walk into my flat any more, please accept that. It isn’t . . . easy for me, for either of us, after all this time, but we have
to give it a go, for a bit longer.’
    ‘Do we? Chiara said she thought you were forcing yourself to do something counter-intuitive, she feels it’s a forced decision, not an instinctive one, to end it with me, and I think
perhaps she’s right.’
    ‘Well she’s not. But anyway, how are you? How’re things? How was your weekend?’
    ‘Oh, you