A Perfect Life by Raffaella Barker Page B

pair of shorts and a purple T-shirt. Oh God, no knickers and she has already put on the shorts. No time to change. Shit. Now she looks deliberately provocative. Mind you – how can he know that she has no underwear on?
    The car door slams and she hears Jake coming through the open front door. Suddenly it seems suggestive to be running downstairs from her bedroom. Too embarrassing. Thinking quickly, Angel darts through to the back of the house and hurries down the dairy stairs into the laundry room. The door from this room through to the front part of the house is shut, and she opens it, arming herself with yet more sweet peas, today’s crop from the relentless harvest, left until now, gasping for water on a chair by the washing machine.
    Jake is sitting on the front doorstep reading a newspaper.
    â€˜Hi there.’ Angel crouches next to him then wishes she hadn’t and stands up again. He looks up her bare legs and slowly brings his gaze up to her face.He stands up too, and kisses her cheek. Angel blushes, and excitement courses through her. They look at one another and Angel smiles and half turns and he takes her hand and kisses the other cheek. Oh God. Angel bites her bottom lip and looks away, then back at Jake. He lets go of her hand slowly, still looking at her. His eyes are green and changing like a moving kaleidoscope, pulling her in. What else could he have done to greet her in the heat, the closeness, with Angel barefoot in skimpy, hippy clothes he has never seen a colleague wearing before? Shaking hands would have been absurd, doing nothing too suggestive.
    â€˜Good T-shirt,’ he says, still not moving away. Angel flushes again – the T-shirt has ‘Bitch 1’ written in white flowing script over the right tit. Angel can hardly breathe or move; she is melting with heat, Jake’s focused interest, the beating of her pulse and the heady scent of the flowers in her hands.
    â€˜It’s not mine, it’s my daughter’s – not the little one, obviously,’ she gabbles. ‘Anyway – do you like sweet peas?’
    Jake laughs, snapping the tension. ‘I love them. Did you pick them especially for me?’
    Angel steps back, and pulls herself together. ‘Of course.’ She unclips the clasp from her pinned-up hair and looks straight at him. ‘Come on. Let’s put them in some water. Then we can go to the beach to collect the children.’
    â€˜OK. I’ll brief you on work on the way, shall I?’ Jake walks back to his car and reaches in through the openwindow for his sunglasses, still talking. ‘The beach sounds great – can we swim?’
    â€˜Yes, I think the tide will be coming in by now,’ says Angel. ‘I’ll just get some paper for these to go in.’
    Angel retreats to the kitchen and leans against the closed door for a moment, glad to have breathing space. She walks back outside, blinking in the bright light and heat. Jake goes round to the other side of the car and opens the door for her.
    â€˜Ready?’ he says, grinning.
    Angel imagines a parallel scene where he pulls her towards him by the belt loops on her shorts until they are touching all the way up their bodies, and their eyes meet and then their mouths.
    â€˜Almost.’ She suddenly realises she hasn’t got a towel or her handbag or anything.
    â€˜I’ve just got to get my stuff,’ she calls, retreating into the house again, needing to escape the intensity coursing between them.
    Nineteen years ago Angel was escaping something else the day she met Nick Stone. A wrong love affair that lasted three weeks, so never had real wings on which to fly. Angel didn’t know she was pregnant when she got on the train to return home to her parents, having said goodbye to Ranim. He was returning to India, he was never coming back, he lived in an ashram there and his expansive views on free love got Angel into bed the first night she met him.