Chapter 4: The Boiler

The studio flat in Clerkenwell was colder than the street.

I stood in the doorway at ten at night with a suitcase, a laptop bag and my breath showing in front of my face.

The lights worked.

The radiators didn't.

A man was kneeling in the kitchen with his head inside a cupboard and a wrench in his hand.

"Excuse me," I said. "I think you're in my flat."

"Technically it's the studio's flat." He didn't come out of the cupboard. "You're Willa Prescott. You're early. I did say Friday."

"My email said I'd love to be on site by the fourteenth."

"And I took 'love to' as a courtesy." He backed out and stood up. "Rafe Ashworth. The email."

He was tall, in a rolled-sleeve shirt with grease on one forearm.

He had dark hair gone gray at the temples, and brown eyes that looked at me and did not look away.

"You're the managing partner," I said.

"Founding partner. Tonight I'm the boiler man. The agent's mobile goes to voicemail after six."

"I can call a plumber."

"At ten p.m. in London?" He wiped his hands on a tea towel. "You can. He'll be here Monday."

I looked at the dead radiator.

I looked at my suitcase.

"How long will this take?"

"Twenty minutes, if it's the pilot light. Forty if it's the pump. Never, if it's me." He crouched again. "Sit down. There's a kettle."

"Does the kettle work?"

"The kettle is electric. The kettle is the only thing in this flat that loves you."

I almost smiled.

I filled the kettle, mostly because I needed something to do with my hands.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Held Her Son the Night I Lost Ours from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.