Worth Waiting For: A heart-warming and feel-good romantic comedy

by Tilly Tennant

  ‘Did Patrick phone?’ Ellie asked.

  ‘No,’ Ange said. ‘You could text him? He’s very likely stopped off at Costa for his lunch first.’

  Ellie dragged her mobile across the desk. If there was one person she wanted to see right now, it was Patrick.

  Where are you?

  As she waited for a reply, Ellie scrolled down to check her emails.

  Jethro McCoy has tagged you on Facebook.

  Ellie opened the message and followed the link to her profile page. Jethro had posted a photo of a nightclub, lit up by pink and yellow fluorescent lasers and a caption that read:

  Ready to dance your feet off, Ellie Newton? Can’t wait to take you here for a night of wild debauchery. Hurry up Saturday! x

  God, in all the drama Ellie had almost forgotten about that. Right now, a rowdy nightclub was the last thing she needed. She would have to text him later. She’d still go down to see him, but suggest something a bit quieter for them to do.

  Her mobile bleeped the arrival of Patrick’s response.

  I’m getting lunch. Want to meet me in Costa? We can go on to the hospital from there.

  The hospital? I thought we were doing Businessman of the Year?

  Haven’t you checked your emails? There’s been a mix up on the maternity unit – nearly ended up with some woman taking the wrong baby home. You want to cover it, right?

  Ellie checked the rest of her list and found the email he’d been talking about. It was the sort of story that, on any other day, would have had Ellie leaping up for her coat and car keys. But today it only vaguely kindled her interest.

  ‘Ange, have you seen this about the hospital mix up?’

  Ange looked around. ‘Yeah. I thought you and Patrick had it covered though.’

  ‘I was just checking you didn’t want it.’

  Ange turned back to her screen. ‘Not especially – knock yourself out.’

  Ellie grabbed her phone and replied to Patrick.

  See you in ten minutes.

  Ellie found Patrick at his usual table. He smiled brightly as he spotted her, making space on the leather sofa he had been sprawled across as he sipped his Americano and read the first edition of the day’s paper.

  ‘Working lunch?’ Ellie asked as she squeezed in alongside him.

  ‘Of course. You want a drink?’

  Ellie shook her head. ‘I’m OK. How long do you think we’ll be missing this afternoon?’

  ‘Hard to say. We have to see this woman about the baby swap and take some photos at the maternity block – although I could do those by myself if you don’t have time. Then we still need to get to our business guy.’ He threw Ellie a questioning sideways glance. ‘Why do you need to know? You don’t normally worry about how long we’re out.’

  ‘I might need to see Vernon this afternoon.’

  ‘About Gemma Fox?’ Patrick looked over the rim of his cup as he took a gulp.

  Ellie stared at him. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘You forget, I hear about everything on that paper.’

  Ellie smiled slightly. ‘Rosie told you she’d been in.’

  ‘Yup.’ Patrick pulled out his phone. ‘Text message came through at 1:03 precisely. I have a very effective spy network, you know.’

  ‘That’s because all the women in that place are in love with you.’

  Patrick threw back his head in a flirtatious half-laugh, half-giggle. He winked at Ellie. ‘Only the silly ones. Not you, though.’

  ‘Damn straight. I put up with you all day; I couldn’t do it when I went home as well.’

  ‘Don’t try to deny it, you love being out with me.’

  ‘I refute that allegation.’

  Patrick grinned and then picked up his cup to drain the last of his drink. ‘We’d better get weaving if you need to get back.’

  ‘What exactly did Rosie tell you?’

  ‘Just that Gemma had come to reception and asked to speak to you in private.’ Patrick held her in a measured gaze. ‘What did she want?’

  Ellie sighed. ‘To ruin my life, I think.’

  Patrick set his cup down and put his arm around her. ‘She doesn’t seem like the type. A bit of a media whore, maybe, but harmless enough. You’re not worried, are you?’

  ‘I’d be lying if I said no. She says she’ll make a formal complaint to Vernon about me if she thinks I’m after her boyfriend.’

  ‘Bloody hell! But Vernon wouldn’t swallow that? He knows you too well.’

  ‘I don’t know. Someone told her I’d been there all night and that I’d kissed him.’

  Patrick raised an eyebrow. ‘You kissed him?’

  ‘Patrick! Of course I didn’t.’

  ‘Still…’ Patrick sniffed as he sat back in the seat again, ‘I don’t think Vernon would buy it. I think you’re worrying about nothing. Stay out of their way and everything will be fine.’

  Ellie’s gaze dropped to the floor. ‘I hope you’re right,’ she said quietly.

  Ellie and Patrick had spent a subdued afternoon together, Ellie lost in her own thoughts as she worked and Patrick maintaining a respectful distance to let her. He cracked his usual jokes, of course, and employed his legendary charm wherever it was called for, but he had clearly toned it down and Ellie, although she didn’t say it, appreciated his muted company more than she could convey. When they returned to the office just after five, it transpired that Vernon had been in briefly, packed his things, and headed for home again. With nothing else to be done, Ellie did the same.

  She spent a restless night, beating the alarm by an hour to wake the next morning, shower and dress, and head into work as early as she could.

  ‘Ellie… my wayward protégé,’ Vernon announced as she entered the office. ‘I don’t suppose you can spare a moment for a private chat?’

  Ellie nodded, her stomach lurching. From the corner of her eye she noticed Ange throw a sharp glance in her direction.

  ‘Good girl. We’ll use a spare conference room, eh?’ Vernon continued.

  Ellie followed quietly as he led her downstairs, past the now sleepy newsroom and the advertising department where few of the staff had arrived yet – the ones that had yawning at their desks over freshly made cups of coffee. Vernon opened the door for Ellie and waited until she was seated before shutting it behind them. He didn’t look angry as he took a seat of his own across from her, but his expression was suitably sombre.

  ‘I think you know what this is about,’ he said, folding his hands over one another on the table before him.

  ‘Do I?’ Ellie replied faintly, hoping that she was on the wrong track.

  ‘Ben Kelly and his girlfriend…’

  Ellie felt as though someone had stolen the sensation from her limbs as she waited for him to continue.

  ‘I wanted to say how impressed I’ve been with the energy and enthusiasm with which you covered the story. I know things haven’t been easy for you lately…’

  ‘Oh,’ Ellie replied in a daze. ‘I’m not sure I follow.’

  ‘Don’t think I don’t know about your little excursions out during work hours.’ The shadow of a smile played about Vernon’s lips. ‘But I understand that you have a lot of family issues at the moment. You should have come to me and I would have been only too happy to sort something with you officially.’

  Ellie chewed her lip. She had a great deal of respect for Vernon who, despite the jokes and Frank Spencer-esque mishaps, was an astute, clever man who had got to the top by keeping his wits about him and doing a brilliant job. She didn’t want to lie to him. ‘I’m sorry. I should have been straight with you. Do you want me to leave?’

  ‘What? Leave the Echo?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Over my dead body, Ellie Newton. You’re the biggest breath of fresh air my team has had in a long time. You’re keen, energetic, sharp… No, I don’t want you to leave. I do, however, want you to come to me if your personal life presents problems for your work life again.’ Vernon studied her thoughtfull
y for a moment. The slow smile that had been threatening to break emerged. ‘This is awkward for me, Ellie,’ he said, biting it back. ‘I’ve become very fond of you and I know you have what it takes to take over from me one day. I want you to be squeaky clean from now on so we have no more of these conversations.’

  Ellie heaved a sigh of relief. A compliment like that from Vernon would have made her delirious with joy on any other day. But today, she just prayed her legs wouldn’t give way when she had to leave the conference room.

  ‘Right…’ Vernon said briskly as he pushed himself up from the chair. ‘Go and find me some more cracking stories.’ He turned and grinned with his hand on the door handle. ‘There must be some drama or other going on in Millrise today.’

  Ellie watched him go. There was some drama alright. He simply had no idea how close he had been sitting to it.

  Ellie tried to keep busy and out of Vernon’s way for the remainder of the week, though his schedule was so packed that it wasn’t hard. Once Ellie had returned to her desk after their meeting, she considered writing a letter of apology to Gemma, just to clear things up once and for all. It seemed like the safest bet to prevent the complaint that hung over her.

  It took many attempts – when she felt it was sincere she didn’t sound sorry enough and when she sounded sorry it was transparently obvious that she didn’t mean a word of it. In the end she had settled on a few stiff lines expressing sorrow for any misunderstanding and assuring Gemma that no malice was intended in her actions. Which was sort of true and didn’t broach the subject of her personal feelings or opinions about Gemma at all. But then Ellie had backed out at the last moment, and thrown the letter in the bin. What she really wanted, more than anything now, was not to think about either of them.

  Life carried on. Ange got herself embroiled in some juicy local witchcraft/MP/orgy scandal, and the Ben and Gemma Show became suspiciously quiet. During that week, Hazel and Ellie’s mother had argued over the details of the hospice, sending Hazel into a spasm of coughing that had turned her blue and Miranda dashing to phone the ambulance. Hazel had been rushed into hospital and Miranda had been beside herself with remorse and grief. Ellie’s dad had fallen into a semi-fugue state, in which he conveniently forgot that he was supposed to be cleaning up his act and trying to win his wife back and had promptly regressed to his previous distressed bachelor lifestyle, fixing together a flat-pack wardrobe to take his mind off things and nailing his thumb to a back panel.

  The one bright spot of the week was that Hazel had been discharged from hospital quickly and seemed better than Ellie had seen her in many months. She had gone over with her mum and the three of them had giggled like children as they pored over old photos, packing each album away in boxes afterwards with a faint stab of regret. None of them spoke of the reason; packing just seemed easier that way. Ellie had promised to take some personal things back to her house and put it all safely away for whichever generation came next (if Ellie ever found time to produce offspring, Hazel teased). They had stopped often for small portions of ice-cream or custard – just about the only foods Hazel ever wanted to eat now – and then dived back into the next box of mementos. Evening had turned to night and by the time Ellie fell into her bed, tired but happy, it had gone midnight. Sleep, however, was kept at bay by the warning that kept sneaking back into her thoughts, the one her mum had issued in the car on the way home.

  ‘They say people who are dying of a terminal illness are often really well just before it happens.’

  Ellie had not known what to say in reply, and so said nothing.

  By the time she stepped off the train at Euston on Saturday afternoon, Ellie was completely exhausted. But when she had expressed her concerns about how people would cope if she went off for the weekend again to Hazel over a lunchtime visit, Hazel had some choice swearwords for Ellie’s parents and had made Ellie solemnly promise to go to London, even if the four horsemen of the apocalypse rode into Millrise on carnival floats singing Highway to Hell.

  Jethro spotted her emerging from the direction of the train platforms and jogged over.

  ‘How’s it going? Better journey this time?’

  Ellie laughed as he grabbed her overnight bag from her. ‘Not really. Today I had the loudest woman in the world phoning everyone she knows to tell them about her appearance on Dragon’s Den.’

  ‘But did she get the money?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Loser,’ Jethro grinned. ‘I’d want to keep that to myself.’

  ‘I think that might be difficult, as the entire nation will see it on TV.’

  ‘Ha ha, even bigger loser then.’

  Ellie giggled as Jethro led them to the escalators.

  ‘Got your dancing feet with you?’

  Ellie hesitated.

  ‘What?’ Jethro looked sharply at her.

  ‘You know how we were meant to go to that new club?’ Ellie looked up at him as they stepped onto the escalators.

  ‘Yeah…’

  ‘I know it’s boring, but I’ve had a really tough week and I would much rather do something quieter.’

  ‘You mean go somewhere where we can actually hear each other speak, where we don’t get doused in other people’s sweat dripping from the ceiling and accosted at least once an hour by shifty looking people trying to sell us illegal and dangerous mind-altering substances?’

  Ellie nodded.

  ‘Well…’ Jethro said, letting out a bemused breath and rubbing a hand through his thick hair. ‘It’ll be a novelty I suppose. Should we stop off and buy you some slippers on the way to the flat – really go to town?’

  Ellie slapped his arm playfully. ‘Sarky git!’

  He flashed her a brilliant grin. ‘I’m sure we can think of a pursuit more suited to a woman of your advanced years.’

  ‘Oi, you’re only funny for so long, you know.’

  ‘It’s strange,’ he said, pretending to be thoughtful, ‘but that’s the last sentence every one of my ex-girlfriends uttered before they knee’d me in the nuts and nicked back all the CDs I’d nicked from them in the first place.’ He scratched his head theatrically and pulled a comical face. ‘Do you think that’s where I’m going wrong?’

  ‘That you’re opening your mouth at all is where you’re going wrong,’ Ellie said, biting back laughter.

  The sun shone kindly on them for the remainder of the afternoon, meaning that once they had dropped Ellie’s bag at Jethro’s flat, he could take her on the promised mini-tour of his neighbourhood that she’d been too hungover to undertake on her last visit. They wandered through Peckham Rye Park where the trees were budding with the first knots of new growth and families and couples sauntered down the paths. Jethro threw in a titbit of history or an odd fact about the place now and again, like how the common had been used as a prisoner-of-war camp for Italian prisoners during the Second World War or the dates that different sections had been opened. Ellie listened with genuine interest, glad to be thinking about things so completely unconnected to anything happening in Millrise and impressed by his knowledge and the fact that he could be bothered to retain the information at all. On the surface, Jethro always pretended to be the cool, laid-back party dude, but Ellie knew that underneath all that, he was keenly intelligent with an insatiable curiosity about the world around him. It was what made him so good at his job in television research. He was so unlike many of the men she met back home on now rare outings to nightclubs; often their primary concerns were what time the kebab shop closed or the latest football scores. It was no wonder Ellie had never found suitable boyfriend material amongst them.

  They had coffee and cake at the Rye Café as Jethro told Ellie the latest goings on at his job, filled her in on the events of his huge crazy family (six sisters, three brothers, and parents who had met on an exchange trip to Finland). Then Ellie took her turn to tell Jethro about her parents’ continued estrangement, Hazel’s illness and who, out of the people she still knew from their course, was getting married, gett
ing divorced, having affairs or having surprise babies.

  Later, they trawled the high street, Jethro introducing Ellie to the delights of an Iranian store that sold all sorts of curiosities, a vintage shop that had her almost hyperventilating and wishing her credit card wasn’t quite so full, and the most incredible chocolate shop.

  Later still, as they idled away the time between the high street darkening and the bars and restaurants coming alive for the evening, Ellie beat Jethro soundly at Mario Kart and had a very noisy play on his drum kit, wondering how often he practised on it and quite how unpopular he was with his neighbours.

  Jethro wandered through into his tiny kitchen in nothing but his boxers, rubbing a towel over his wet hair. Ellie looked up from a magazine she had been reading at the table.

  ‘Good God, cover yourself up,’ she laughed.

  ‘What’s the matter? Do I make you horny, baby?’

  ‘No. You’re giving me a weird hankering for spare ribs.’ She frowned. ‘Jesus, Jethro, don’t you eat?’

  ‘Constantly. It’s not my fault I have the sort of metabolism that can set off nuclear reactions.’

  ‘Well… it’s just wrong.’

  He took a seat at the table and lounged back, splaying his legs out. ‘If it makes you feel better, you can wander around in your underwear too. You know, just so we’re even.’

  Ellie closed her magazine. ‘And that’s why we should always have Kasumi with us.’

  ‘So she can join in the underwear parade too? Sounds fine by me.’

  ‘Urgh! You’re so disgusting!’

  Jethro laid a hand over his heart. ‘I’m mortally wounded by that remark.’

  Ellie laughed and swatted the rolled up magazine over his head. ‘So, where are you taking me tonight?’