Was it my husband?
I might be the only wife in the world who couldn’t recognise her own husband’s body.
I didn’t think that staring at it any longer would help me work it out. Although, it had to be said, it was very nice to stare at. I’d married a beautiful-looking man.
Phew.
Right, Emma, stop ogling and do something. You’ve got two options.
Either I ran back to the sofa and pretended this never happened, or risked this being Cooper, and slipped into the other side of the bed.
Either way I wouldn’t be getting any sleep that night.
Of course, I ran away.
Except that in order to ensure he didn’t know I’d seen him naked, I had to step into the room to pull the door closed again.
And, perhaps inevitably, that was the moment he decided to wake up.
Wake up, spring out of bed like a ninja, grab a cricket bat from the floor by his bed and thrust it at me.
‘It’s me!’ I squeaked, flapping my arm in a cross between a deranged hello and an attempt to stop him charging me.
‘Eh?’ the man mumbled, peering at me through the semi-darkness of his bedroom. ‘Emma?’
He took a step closer, bringing his face and all other body parts into the light, some of which he swiftly covered with the bat, thank goodness.
Oh, great.
I threw both hands over my face and spun around, but not too late to see the enormous grin break out on Ben’s face.
‘Can I help you at all?’
‘I was looking for Cooper. He didn’t answer his phone.’
‘He’s doing an all-nighter in the lab. Prof called with some emergency.’
‘Oh. He never told me.’That he was working all night with Bridget.
More to the point, Bridget never mentioned that she’d be with Cooper. For maybe the first time since getting married, I felt a flash of jealousy about my sister’s friendship. I hadn’t thought it would matter. If anything, it would be a positive. But having my sister like my husband was one thing. Her spending all day and all night with him and me not knowing about it, that was different.
‘Well, I guess you never told him you were moving in tonight,’ Ben said.
‘Fair enough.’
‘Maybe you both need to learn to be accountable to someone else.’
‘If it helps avoid moments like this one, then definitely.’
‘You can turn around now.’
‘I’m not sure I want to.’
‘Don’t worry, it’s all good.’
‘And by that you mean you’re fully dressed?’
‘A vision of respectability.’ Giving up waiting for me to brave dropping my hands from my eyes and turning round, Ben nudged past me and walked towards the kitchen. ‘I don’t know about you, but after a shock like that I need a drink.’
