Love and Devotion Read Online Free PDF Page A

to do this. I’m giving us exactly one hour to sort through everything and then we’re going to load up the car, drop everything off where necessary and then the three of us are going for lunch. How does that sound?’
     
    In the end it was only Dora and Eileen who went for lunch. Harriet excused herself by saying she had a phone call to make. She hadn’t seen or spoken to Spencer in three weeks because he’d been away in South Africa visiting distant cousins. It was a trip he’d arranged just days before they’d started seeing each other. Today was his first day back in the office.
    Spencer had asked her out three months before Felicity’s death (everything was now measured in terms of pre or post Felicity’s death) and initially they’d kept their relationship from everyone at work - an office romance was such a cliché. When they went public everyone laughed at them. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Harriet,’ Adrian, her immediate boss had said, ‘but it’s hardly the breaking-news item you clearly thought it was.’
    What’s more, Ron, the graduate trainee programmer who was supposed to be nestling under her wing while she taught him all she knew, had opened a book on how soon it would be before they came clean. ‘And who won the bet?’ she’d asked, her hackles rising.
    ‘I did,’ he said proudly.
    ‘Well, Ron, seeing as you’re such a clever dick, you can put your cleverness to good use and get me my coffee. White, no sugar. And make sure the mug’s clean.’ She’d never pulled rank before, but now seemed as good a time as any to shake the dust from her epaulettes and bring them to his attention.
    ‘Go easy on the poor lad,’ Spencer had said during lunch, ‘it’s just an office thing. A bit of a lark.’
    She knew he was right, but her privacy was important to her.
    Spencer had only been at C.K. Support Services for five months, whereas Harriet had been there for five years. It was her second job since leaving university, but despite the lack of career opportunities within the small software house, she hadn’t foreseen a time when she would want to quit. The work, and the level she was at — Senior Analyst - suited her perfectly. She was good at her job, could run rings round most of her colleagues, and so long as they left her to get on with what she was paid to do and didn’t force her to get involved with management decisions or in-house politics, she derived enormous satisfaction from what she did. Some would say that she did nothing but sit with her feet up on the desk staring at a blank computer screen for most of the day. And they’d be right. But that was when she was at her most creative. Computer programming involved a lot of thinking. In fact, the bulk of what she did was in her head. Occasionally, though, she was dragged kicking and screaming away from her desk to help install the software she’d designed.
    The first time she’d met Spencer, he’d been sitting with his feet up on the desk, his eyes closed, his fingers drumming rhythmically on the arm of his chair. She’d recognised a kindred spirit and wondered if this would be the meeting of minds she’d always craved. It was no secret amongst her friends that she didn’t suffer fools gladly. ‘Your bog-standard lager-loving footie fanatic stands no chance with you, does he?’ Erin had once remarked. Erin was the same age as Harriet and lived in the flat above hers; she had no qualms about who she came home with after a drunken night out.
    As she got to know Spencer, Harriet realised he ticked a good number of boxes, but when he started dropping hints about them moving in together, she instinctively backed off. Living with someone scared her. All that sharing. All that tiptoeing round one another’s feelings. All those arguments over hairs in plugholes and dishes left in sinks. The unmade bed. The wet towels on the bathroom floor. The rolled-up sock stuffed under a cushion. The shoes left just where she’d fall over