Familiar Rooms in Darkness by Caro Fraser

stopped.
    â€˜Taking advantage of me?’ Her voice was wry.
    He nodded. ‘I had hoped to elevate you to pedestal status and leave you there.’
    â€˜Oh God.’ From where he lay, Adam could see the swell and curve of one delectable breast, the nipple stiffened. If she didn’t go now –
    She stood up and pulled her robe together.
    â€˜Don’t be cross,’ said Adam, studying her face.
    Bella ran a hand through her cropped, soft hair, shook her head, and left the room.
    Adam lay awake for a long time, reflecting on the odd occurrence, trying to derive some consolation from the knowledge that at least he had done the right thing.
    *
    Next morning, Adam awoke at six to the steady cheeping of the alarm on his mobile phone. He dressed and went downstairs quietly. The household still slept. The front door had been locked by some process which Adam couldn’t fathom, so he went through to the kitchen. Pausing to leave a note on the table for Briony, thanking her and explaining that he had to leave early, he walked through the scullery to the back door. The large metal key was still in the lock. He turned it, and stepped out into the chilly dawn. He made his way to the front of the house and crossed the gravel driveway to where his car stood. The engine coughed a couple of times before starting, and he glanced up at the house, hoping he hadn’t woken anyone. But no one appeared. He put the car in gear, and headed back to London.

3
    Three weeks later, Adam was sitting with a photographer in the lobby of a West End hotel. They were there to interview an American Pulitzer Prize-winning author who had kept them waiting for over half an hour. Adam picked up a copy of
Hello!
from a nearby table and flicked through it. Bella was featured twice in
Diary of the Week
– once, attending the premiere of yet another lottery-funded British no-hoper movie, and then at the opening of some Sloaney friend’s new jewellery shop. You could see why photographers loved her. He stared intently at both pictures of her. In one she was laughing with two other girls, and in the other she was talking to an actor called Bruce Redmond, saying something in his ear. He was smiling. It looked very intimate.
    Adam folded the magazine and showed the page to Dan, his photographer. ‘Bella Day. What d’you think?’
    Dan considered the pictures. ‘Yeah. Wouldn’t kick her out of bed, that’s for sure.’
    Adam closed the magazine and sighed.
    When he got back to his flat that afternoon, Adam played back his messages. The third was from Bella. After the night at Gandercleugh, he had hardly expected to hear from her again.
    â€˜Adam, this is Bella Day. You didn’t say whether or notyou had my mother’s number.’ There followed Cecile’s phone number, and nothing more. That was the content of the message.
    He sat down and went back, for the thousandth time, over the conversation they had had in his bedroom at Gandercleugh. Not really a conversation, more a fragment of one, mere words, two people not quite making sense to one another. Leaving the fact of Megan aside, his response to her availability had been instinctively truthful. She was insecure, flaky, and she had come on to him purely out of boredom. How many other men did she offer herself to on first acquaintance? Dozens, probably. A strange girl. You would think someone as beautiful as that would have a stronger sense of self-regard. He could wish the incident had never happened, given that he wanted to be able to talk to her easily and equably about what it was like being Harry Day’s daughter. Then again, it had possessed a bizarre eroticism which he found difficult to put from his mind.
    That evening he and Megan lay on the sofa after supper, Adam flicking through television channels, his shoes off, feet on the coffee table.
    â€˜I still don’t know what to wear to Jo’s wedding,’ said Megan