At First Sight by Hannah Sunderland (latest novels to read TXT) 📕

to the olive bowl and unsheathed a toothpick from the surrounding saucer, twiddling it between his fingers.

‘I enjoy it,’ I said. ‘My job, I mean. It’s not like I feel that I’m owed anything for helping people.’

‘And that is why you’re a significantly better person than the rest of us.’ He smiled and ran a hand through his hair. ‘You’ve enough patience for ten people. You’re a good egg.’

A good egg? Sexy, I thought.

‘I have this one caller. I’ve been talking to him for years and whenever he calls, he only ever wants to talk to me.’

‘Well, I can certainly understand that.’ He gave me a subtle smile and an intensely blue stare that made my chest flutter. The neck of his T-shirt was stretched from overwear, the deep curve of it hanging lower than normal and showing the smattering of dark hair that sat on his sternum. I paused for a moment while I regained control of my thoughts, dragging them out of the gutter and back to the moment in hand.

‘He’s my favourite caller,’ I said when I finally found my voice.

‘I’ll try not to get offended by that.’

‘Present company excluded, obviously.’

‘Do yer think you’ll do it your whole life, or is this just a steppin’ stone?’

‘I never planned on staying this long,’ I admitted. ‘I feel like there’s so much more I want to do, but I worry about what would happen if I left.’

‘What do yer mean?’ He leaned forward and crossed his arms, resting them on the edge of the table.

I stopped twiddling the toothpick and stabbed a green olive, as the black ones always tasted as if they were going off to me. ‘I wanted to work with people, not phone lines. Like with Jac—’ I stopped talking, realising just in time that I was about to violate Jackson’s confidentiality. ‘Like with my favourite caller. I know him so intimately and I’d go as far to class him as a buddy, yet I’ve never met him. I’ve helped him so much over the years, all from the other end of a phone. Imagine what I could have done had we been in the same room.’

He nodded understandingly.

‘And lately I’ve kinda been thinking …’ I stopped and looked down at my hands, not knowing if what I was about to say was going to sound stupid or not. ‘I’ve been thinking about going back to uni and finishing the course I started.’

‘I think that’s a great idea. Why did you quit in the first place?’ he asked.

I flinched at the word ‘quit’. It sounded so aggressively final. ‘I don’t think I was ready. I had no idea what I was doing and I saw my friends from school having the quintessential university experience and that’s just not what was happening for me. But I feel like the pressure to go out and get drunk and act like an idiot wouldn’t apply to me now that I’m older. I actually think I might enjoy learning again. But I don’t know if I can leave.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Because what happens to my callers if I go? What happens to Ned?’

‘Ned’s a big boy. He’ll cope. Granted, the caller situation is a tough one, but couldn’t you keep in touch?’

‘It’s not really allowed – not that I haven’t broken the rules before.’ I smirked his way, placed the olive into my mouth and rolled the bitter little ovoid around on my tongue. ‘Anyway, that’s enough talk about work. Switch off, Nell,’ I said, the olive still clutched between my molars.

The waiter returned with our bottle of wine and two glasses. He poured a small amount into my glass, stopped and looked at me expectantly. I looked worriedly at Charlie, lifted the glass, took a sip and then looked at the expectant waiter’s face with slight panic. I nodded. ‘Yep, that’s wine.’

‘Eccellente.’ He chuckled. I did wonder if this man was actually Italian or if he was required as part of the job description to pretend. Was he really Luca from Sicily, as his name tag and accent suggested, or was he something far less impressive, like Kyle from Small Heath?

‘Luca’ grinned from ear to ear and topped up my glass before pouring Charlie’s and trotting off to the kitchen.

‘What shall we toast to?’ I asked, holding my glass ceremoniously up in the air.

He looked a frown my way as he thought, before he too raised his glass up to join mine. ‘To whoever slapped that sticker on the clock tower,’ he said.

I winced a little at the thought of what would have happened if that sticker hadn’t been there and he hadn’t had easy access to our number. It was a miracle really that it was there. The person who’d put it there was the one who’d really saved Charlie’s life. ‘To the phantom sticker slapper,’ I said, chinking my glass to his.

Charlie raised the glass to his lips and took a large swig, his pupils upturned to the ceiling as if he was nervous. ‘You okay?’ I asked, taking a sip myself and washing the bitter olive flavour from my tongue.

‘Mmm-hmm.’ He swallowed and placed the glass down on the table, but held on to it with delicate, nervous fingers.

‘What is it?’ I asked, sitting forward.

‘See.’ He sighed. ‘Part of the reason I wanted to bring yer here tonight was to tell yer what yer want to know, about why I was at the tower that night and the time before, but now I feel like a jackass because we’re havin’ a nice time and this is a nice place and I don’t want yer to forever think of this place as the place that I told yer that my wife died.’ I felt a weight drop into my stomach. ‘Ah feck!’

‘You had a wife and she …?’ I managed to say before my voice failed me.

‘Died, yes.’

‘W-what? When?’ was all I managed to say.

‘Two years ago, next Saturday.’ He raised a black olive, slick with oil and