Читать книгу Sweet Madness - Шэрон Кендрик, Sharon Kendrick - Страница 12

CHAPTER FOUR

BY THE time Sam had finished at the studio, it was getting on for eight, and she had to dash like mad to get over to the youth club where she had been helping out on a weekly basis ever since she’d first arrived in London, almost eight years ago.

The club was in a dingy part of the city where the houses were small, grey and narrow, piled on top of one another with back-yards the size of pocket handkerchiefs. Her flat in Knightsbridge seemed almost palatial in comparison to the overcrowded tower blocks here, and had caused her a pang of guilt on more than one occasion.

Sam pushed open the door of the youth centre, to find that John had already arrived.

‘Hi,’ he smiled. ‘How was your first day?’

She smiled back, pleased that he’d remembered. ‘Don’t ask.’

‘That bad, huh?’

‘I suppose there’s a price to pay for being a genius,’ she observed.

‘The genius being Declan Hunt?’

‘You’ve got it in one!’ She began to fill the giant urn with water.

‘And the price is?’

‘That he’s impossible!’

‘You should work well together, then!’

‘John!’ Sam aimed a tea-cloth at his head which he caught perfectly. ‘I am not impossible!’

‘Of course not, Sam!’

She watched him begin to fill jugs with orange and lemon squash.

Dear John. He’d been her closest friend since she’d arrived in London, still smarting with hurt and trying to get used to the fact that she wasn’t going to be Bob’s bride after all, that Charlotte had stepped in and taken over that particular role.

Angry, confused and alone, she had met John at a bus-stop near the Albert Hall in the driving rain. They had both been to the same Schumann concert and they had shared their views on the pianist over a cup of coffee which had extended into a supper of pasta, eating in John’s book-filled but untidy flat.