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I took the chain off and opened the door.
Kat was sitting on the carpet in the corridor with her back against the wall, holding a bottle of red wine by the neck. She was wearing a grey hoodie and joggers, her hair loose, no make-up, and she looked younger and more tired and a great deal less like a woman who had ever beaten me at anything.
She got up slowly. She took in the T-shirt, my bare legs, the wet hair, and I watched her swallow.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
“I’ve got one glass,” she said. “Obviously I didn’t plan this well.”
I stepped aside and let her in.
She apologised properly, sitting on the end of the bed with the bottle between her knees. She’d always gone hard on me because she’d seen what I could do and it scared her. She’d gone for every promotion because she’d thought I’d get there first. She’d called me “Dani” in that tone a hundred times because it was the only way she could say my name without it coming out soft.
“You could have just said that,” I said.
“You’d have hit me with a stapler.”
“Probably.”
She laughed. I laughed. I took the bottle off her and drank from it, and she watched my throat move. Then she put her hand on my bare knee, quite lightly, and waited.
“I don’t want to fight tonight,” she said. “Unless you do.”
My heart was going like a drum. I could let her kiss me and make this tender. Or I could pick up the pillow beside me and hit her with it.