Don't Flirt with My Brother

Sophia found me on the terrace before breakfast, two mugs of tea in her hands and trouble written all over her face.

"Don't flirt with my brother," she said, sitting down beside me on the stone wall. "I mean it, Nikki. He's had a hell of a year."

I wrapped my fingers around the mug to stop them shaking. "I wasn't planning to."

"I know you weren't. I'm saying it anyway." She blew on her tea. "He's been a wreck since this girl he was seeing online cut him off. Months of it. He won't talk about it, but Mother says he barely sleeps."

The tea scalded my tongue. I made myself swallow. "Online?"

"Some woman he met on one of those apps. He never even met her in person." Sophia shook her head. "And here's the mad part — he's had Marco going through everything. Every account she used, every device, every scrap she left behind. He's been trying to work out who she was. Her name turned out to be invented. Her age. The photographs." She gave a hollow little laugh. "Every single thing she told him was a lie, and he still can't let it go."

The mug was warm against my palms. My palms were colder than the mug. "That's — that's a lot of effort for a stranger."

"That's what I said. He looked at me like I'd insulted his mother." She nudged my shoulder. "So, yes. Don't flirt with him. He's not in his right mind about women at the moment, and you're my best friend. I'm not having you become collateral."

"I won't," I said, and the lie sat in my mouth like a stone.

---

He came in from the garden at half nine, sleeves rolled to the elbow, and stopped dead when he saw me at the kitchen island.

Sophia was upstairs fetching her tennis bag. We were alone.

"Miss Hartley."

"Mr Duca."

He didn't move towards the coffee. He just looked at me — the way he'd looked at me in the corridor, like he was turning a key in a lock he'd almost given up on. "Have we met before?"

My heart went so hard I felt it in my throat. "I don't think so."

"You don't *think* so."

"We've been introduced twice in two days. Perhaps that's what you're remembering."

"No." He said it flatly, no room in it. "I'd remember an introduction. I'm asking whether we've met somewhere else. Somewhere I'm not placing." He tilted his head. "Your voice."

"What about it?"

"It's familiar." He took a step closer, and the kitchen felt suddenly very small. "I've heard it before. Not here. Not recently."

I picked up a knife and started cutting the loaf on the board because my hands needed something to do that wasn't trembling. "I've got one of those voices. Teachers used to say it carried."

"This isn't a voice that carries. It's a voice I've listened to." He was quiet for a moment. "At length. In the dark. At two in the morning."

The knife slipped. I felt the sting before I saw the blood, a bright line across the pad of my thumb.

"Let me—" He was already there, his hand closing round my wrist, turning my palm up. He reached past me for the roll of kitchen paper and pressed a wad of it against the cut. His fingers were warm. Mine were not.

"It's nothing," I said.

"It's not nothing." He held my wrist a beat longer than the wound required. Then he let go, and stepped back, and the room came back to its proper size. "I'm looking for someone," he said. "I imagine you've heard that from my sister by now."

"I've heard you've been unwell."

"I've been thorough." A flicker of something crossed his face — not a smile. "I don't have a name. I don't have a face. I have a way of writing, and a way of speaking, and a song, and a set of hours when she was awake. That's all. I've spent months trying to make that into a person."

"That sounds like torture."

"It's the only thing I've wanted in years." He said it plainly, without drama, which was somehow worse. "So if you ever get the feeling that you know me from somewhere, Miss Hartley — tell me. Don't spare my feelings. I've stopped having any."

Sophia's footsteps rang down the stairs. William stepped away from the island, picked up a cup, and was a different man by the time she appeared in the doorway.

"Ready?" she said to me.

"Ready."

I followed her out. At the door I glanced back. He was watching me over the rim of his cup, and he wasn't drinking.

He was listening.