Louise Bentley is a feisty, wild, 'let's-go-to-Capri-for-the-weekend-yeah?' kind of girl. She spends her days working at a party-planning company. Oh, and she never wants kids. Ever.
Ben Langford is a studious, quiet, 'I'm-busy-reading' sort of man...
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She wasn't sleeping.
Ben frowned at his stack of papers, neatly arranged on his desk. His fountain pens were lined up in varying shades of blue: navy, cerulean, cobalt... He selected the last shade, tapping it against his desk. Then he paused. Tapped again.
"You alright?" Aman asked.
His secretary was dressed in a bright yellow shirt today, chewing bubblegum in the way that some people chain-smoked. With Aman's Essex accent, the word came out more like you'o'ride?
"Fine," Ben grunted.
There was a pause. Ben began to count. One, two—
"It's just that you look proper grumpy," Aman added.
Ben tapped the pen. "I didn't get much sleep."
That wasn't strictly true. Ben had slept well, but Louise hadn't; he'd woken up around five o'clock to find her staring at the ceiling. The image had bothered him all day: Bentley, her dark hair splayed out around her, her hands resting on her stomach in the same way that funeral homes positioned corpses.
Ben frowned. Had she slept at all recently? Was it the accident, or sharing a bed with him? Did he insist that she take the master bedroom?
The questions gnawed away at him.
Not, Ben thought, that he was about to admit any of this to Aman.
His secretary nodded sagely, interlacing his fingers. "The boss gave you more work then, did he?"
Ben shuffled some papers. He could see why Aman would think that; Victor White was always giving him work.
"It's the kids, actually," Ben said. "They're very... energetic."
Again, not a lie. Aman studied him closely. Or maybe, Ben reflected, Aman was studying his white-shirt-and-navy-tie combo closely; his secretary had once told Ben that his wardrobe was so plain that it made cream crackers look exciting.
"Ah," Aman said. "You know what I think?" The word came out as fink. "Give them a load of sugar in the morning. I'm talking Coco Pops and hot chocolate. Get them proper worked up. They'll be knackered by dinner and then you can go to bed." Aman spun in his swivelled chair, kicking his legs up on the desk. "Sorted."
Ben blinked. "You know, that's a good idea."
Aman beamed. "It is, innit?"
His secretary leaned forward, rearranging a card with a burger on it that said, "Nice Buns, Honey." His desk was littered with hamburger-related items today, a veritable sea of novelty socks and bunting. Ben gestured at it with the pen.
"What's the occasion today, then?" he asked.
Aman didn't look up. "National Cheeseburger Day."
"Right," Ben said dryly. "How silly of me to forget."
