But as Samantha’s new tenant, one who was currently reliant on her friend’s good will, Ros knew she had to tread carefully, otherwise she would be back in Teddington, listening to her grandfather’s snoring.
‘I should have told you earlier,’ said Sam quietly.
‘I’m sure you had your reasons.’
‘I didn’t want to say anything until we were sure about our relationship.’
Ros kept quiet until she had collected her thoughts.
‘I want you to be happy, Sam. I’m just worried about conflict in the office.’
‘Conflict?’ smiled Sam. ‘As you said, I’m happy. We’re very happy.’
‘But what if you break up?’
‘Come on, Ros. I’ve only just started seeing him and already you’re talking about it being over.’
‘I’m just being practical.’
Sam folded her arms in front of her. ‘Ros, we work for the DAG for free. I love my job. I enjoy working with you, and the idea that we can change things makes me excited whenever I go into the office. But it’s not everything, and if it comes to a choice, then I choose having a personal life,’ she said, the threat subtle but unmistakable.
Ros felt cold at the prospect of Sam, or even Brian, leaving the DAG. How could she have a pressure group that comprised a single person?
She looked at her friend – the carefully applied make-up, the smart dress – and felt a crushing disappointment that she could sell out for a man.
‘I’m just watching out for everyone,’ she replied, deciding that tonight was not the time to discuss it.
‘Don’t worry. I’m a big girl,’ said Sam more good-naturedly.
‘Have fun tonight. Say hi to Brian.’
‘I will. Make yourself at home.’
‘Thank you. Thanks again for everything,’ said Ros as the door closed behind Sam.
When the front door slammed shut fifteen minutes later, Ros peered out of the window and watched the tail lights of Brian’s Hillman Minx disappearing into the encroaching night.
She frowned, still not able to understand how she had been blindsided by Sam’s revelation, but decided to unpack before she gave it any more thought.
She squatted down on her haunches and popped open her suitcase, pulling out the contents and arranging her clothes into piles on the bed. She was not a naturally organised person, but sometimes she liked bringing strict order into her life to make her feel more in control.
She hung up her skirts and blouses and her one good coat in the small wardrobe, put everything else in the oak armoire, then sat on the bed feeling restless.
Sam’s Primrose Hill house suddenly felt very large and quiet. She picked up the bottle of wine and went to go and find the kitchen, pausing at the bookcase in the hall to pick something to read; her own box of books was due to arrive on Sunday, when her father had promised to deliver the rest of her possessions.
A short rummage around the kitchen drawer yielded a corkscrew and a goblet. She opened the bottle, poured herself a glass and took a sip, feeling her shoulders slump.
She had been excited about moving into Sam’s, not just because it resolved a problem, but because she secretly liked the idea of more freedom. Even at university, she had lived at home, aware that money was tight, aware that a student flat share was profligate and that staying with her parents was the more practical solution. She had thrown herself into student life as much as she could, but having to get the last train home to Teddington had certainly limited her opportunities.
Now that she had moved to Primrose Hill, she didn’t exactly want to make up for lost time – how could she possibly lead the Direct Action Group if she had a midweek hangover? Even so, she’d had visions of spending weekends with Sam discussing books and jazz and art and visiting clubs, museums and galleries to make those conversations come alive.
Now that Brian was on the scene, that particular fantasy was unlikely.
A distant ringing of the phone shook her from her thoughts. Locating the sound in the hall, she ran to answer it, picking up a pen in preparation for taking a message.
‘Hello, Campbell residence,’ she said as politely as she could.
‘Is it possible to speak to Rosamund Bailey?’ came the reply.
She put the pen down in surprise.
‘This is she.’
‘It’s Dominic Blake. From Capital magazine.’
‘Dominic Blake?’ she said in confusion. ‘How on earth did you find me here?’
‘You gave me this number.’
‘I did,’ she responded quickly, remembering the copy she had filed and the accompanying note with her new contact details.
There was a moment’s silence.
‘Thank you for the piece.’
‘How was it?’ she replied anxiously.
‘You didn’t let me down.’
‘You liked it?’ she said, her voice rising in excitement.
‘It needs a bit of editing. Perhaps a couple of paragraphs need expanding to extend the points you make, but I enjoyed it very much. We should probably arrange a time to knock heads to discuss it. Are you in a rush? Are you still at work?’
‘No. Our office doesn’t have its own phone. This is my home number.’
‘Then I’m sorry for intruding. On a Friday night as well. I lost track of the time. Sometimes we work ridiculously long hours here because of the small team.’
Ros laughed. ‘Don’t worry about it. I was only unpacking.’
‘Unpacking?’
‘I’ve just moved to London.’
‘Where were you before?’
‘Teddington,’ she replied.
‘Exotic Middlesex.’
‘You’re laughing at me.’
‘I know it’s more than my life’s worth. So it’s your first evening in London,’ he added after a moment.
‘You make that sound like something to celebrate.’
‘It is. I remember the night I arrived in London. I changed my shirt and went out until dawn. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more excited about life and the promise it held than when I walked over Waterloo Bridge at midnight.’
‘Well my housemate’s gone out, so it’s just me and a bottle of claret. Unless you wanted to discuss my article,’ she quipped before she had even realised what she’d said.
‘You want to talk through your article over a bottle of claret?’
There was a hint of amusement in his voice and it embarrassed her.
‘No, it’s Friday night. Of course you’ve got plans,’ she backtracked.
‘That depends.’
‘Depends on what?’ she asked, her heart beating hard from excitement and awkwardness.
‘Is it good claret?’
‘It almost bankrupted me.’
‘Then you should probably keep hold of it.’
‘Of course,’ she said softly, aware that he was letting her down gently.
‘We’ll just have to go to the pub then,’ he added.
‘To discuss the piece?’
‘Of course.’
She glanced at her watch: 6.30.
‘Where are you?’ he asked.
‘Primrose Hill. I could get to Soho for eight o’clock.’
‘Or I could come to you. I’d hate to be responsible for a young lady walking around Soho on her own at night.’
‘I can look after myself.’
‘I’m sure. But I have wheels. How about I pick you up in an hour?’
Chapter Nine
Principles? Rosamund wasn’t sure she had any. Not real convictions anyway, she mused as she allowed Dominic Blake to hold the passenger door open for her.
She certainly hadn’t been robust enough with Sam about her relationship with Brian, and here she was, on a Friday night, about to go out with a practical stranger because it had seemed easier to just say yes.
Dominic walked round to the driver’s side and hopped in to the tiny interior of the racing-green Stag. The chassis of the car was so low-slu
ng that Ros thought her bottom might drag along the road, and her arm brushed against Dominic’s as soon as he sat down.
‘Well this is a change from the last time we met,’ she said as he fired the engine.
‘I was hoping you’d be a little less angry with me by now,’ he replied with a sidewards glance and a grin.
‘So that’s why I’m getting a one-on-one with the editor on a Friday night?’
‘You make my motives sound suspect.’
Ros looked at him – his smooth profile, his easy confidence at the wheel – and decided she was not going to let him think she was the sort of girl who would fall so easily for his charms.
‘I think you’re someone who probably needs to be liked,’ she observed, noticing that he’d had his hair cut since the last time they had met.
‘Or perhaps I think we got off on the wrong foot. And that I see Capital writers as friends. Besides, it was you who suggested meeting up, if I remember rightly . . .’
‘To discuss the article.’
‘Of course,’ he replied.
She sank back in her seat feeling embarrassed, wishing that the cabin of the car wasn’t quite so small, wishing she wasn’t breathing in his clean, fresh smell, a soft scent of soap and cologne.
‘So where are we going?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said honestly. ‘I don’t really know this part of town.’
‘Why, where do you live?’
‘Tavistock Square. Do you know it?’
‘Charles Dickens used to live there.’
‘You do know it,’ he smiled.
‘I like walking around London reading the blue plaques.’
‘How about here?’ he asked screeching the car to a halt outside a traditional-looking pub with hanging flower baskets.
Ros looked behind her and laughed.
‘We haven’t even come a hundred yards.’
‘Yes, but it’s cold and I need a drink.’
‘And you wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity to show off your car.’
Ros paused for a moment at the doorway of the pub and looked inside. She had no idea what to expect of her local drinking den. After all, she had only lived in Primrose Hill for an hour and didn’t know whether this was a reputable place to drink or the local gangsters’ pub. But the scene inside was soft and warm, with tables of old men, beatniks and bearded intellectuals sitting alongside one another in a good-natured Friday night fug. In his navy Crombie coat, Dominic looked right at home.
As he went to the bar, Ros scolded herself for being so chippy with him. It had taken her a week to pluck up the courage to call him, but when she had done so yesterday, and pitched him an idea about the contraceptive pill transforming the economy, he had commissioned it on the spot. Her copy deadline had been two weeks hence, but she had gone back to Teddington and fired off one thousand words that evening, her thoughts and arguments pouring out of her and slotting together like the simplest of jigsaw puzzles, even though it was her last night at home. She had arrived at the DAG office at seven o’clock that morning to type it up, and when she had hand-delivered it to the Capital offices at lunchtime, she had felt pure exhilaration and the desire to do it all over again.
She looked up and saw Dominic chatting to the barmaid. He was only buying two pints of cider, but from the conversation he appeared to be having with her, it was as if they were old friends. As he returned to the table, Ros watched the barmaid’s eyes follow her most handsome customer.
‘So you liked the piece?’ she said, taking a sip of her pint.
‘I called you as soon as I’d read it. You have a natural talent, Ros.’
‘I’m just glad you don’t think I’m a promiscuous bohemian,’ she said with a sigh of relief.
‘Pardon?’ he said, almost spluttering out his drink.
‘Maintaining that the pill will be a good thing for society,’ she replied quickly, not quite believing that she had referred to herself as promiscuous in her first five minutes of conversation.
‘No, I don’t think you’re a promiscuous bohemian,’ he laughed, looking at her from under those dark, disconcerting eyelashes. ‘Although I do believe you’ve got the potential to be a very astute economist. What was it you said about the pill getting a generation of women to work, putting women in government, on to boards, in power . . . Macmillan will bring its release on to the NHS forward by six months once he reads this. Or maybe not,’ he added with a cynical smile.
He pulled the article from the inside pocket of his jacket and reread it.
‘You didn’t submit a title. Got any ideas?’
‘How about “Women on Top”?’ she suggested, before realising the double entrendre. ‘Or maybe not.’
‘No. That’s brilliant,’ he said, scribbling the words on the top of the feature and handing it back to her. ‘It’s going to get the Capital readers a bit hot under the collar already, so in for a penny, in for a pound and all that.’
Still flushing with embarrassment, Ros skim-read the notes and suggestions that had been written all over the page in red pen. There were so many of them, she thought her piece must have been absolutely hopeless, and it took another minute of reassurance from Dominic before she understood that these were simple editing points.
He took off his coat and sat back in his chair, his arm resting along the top the banquette.
‘So when are you going to write something else for us?’
‘Is that what this is? A job interview?’
‘Something like that,’ he said, not taking his eyes off her.
‘As long as you don’t slot my column next to some dreadful right-wing piece about capital punishment or fox-hunting.’
‘And perhaps I’ll only think about recommissioning you if you stop being so bloody sharp with me.’
‘Girl Guide’s honour,’ she said, trying to shift the conversation on to more light-hearted ground.
She felt the mood shift.
‘Don’t tell me you were a Girl Guide?’ he smiled, pausing to light a cigarette.
‘Why not? It’s a positive social programme based on military principles. Chairman Mao would approve,’ she said more knowingly.
‘He wouldn’t approve of you marching into church carrying the Union Jack every Sunday.’
‘Well, I was exempted from all that church parade nonsense.’
Dominic nodded. ‘Of course, you free-thinkers view religion as the opium of the masses.’
‘Opiate,’ she corrected. ‘It’s not that, though. My dad’s Jewish, and my parents made a pact to observe customs from both religions once they had children. So we have Hanukkah and Christmas, Sunday lunch and a Sabbath dinner. In fact it feels weird being in a pub on a Friday night and not at home eating chicken soup and challah.’
‘Even stranger that you’re with a man you publicly attacked barely a week ago.’
She allowed herself a smile, and folded up her feature and put it in her bag.
‘I reread your piece on Indian repatriation. It was interesting.’
‘Is that an apology?’ he smiled.
‘Let’s just say I don’t generally share Capital magazine’s views, but I was a little hasty with my protest the other day, yes.’
She looked at him and it was as if his grey eyes were dancing. They were certainly teasing her. Men like Dominic Blake were clearly used to women fawning over them, and she didn’t want to be so obvious. But she couldn’t deny that she liked this man.
‘How long have you been involved with the DAG?’
‘Two years in June. How long have you been editing Capital?’
‘Six years. Since I raised the finance and launched it.’
‘You own it?’ she said with surprise.
‘A slice of it. I had to borrow money to set it up, and when you do that, you have to give away your baby. But I always say it’s better to fund a business with other people’s money.’
‘Well the DAG is a purely self-funded organisation,’ she quipped, trying t
o impress him. ‘We don’t want to lose control of what we’re doing.’
Dominic smiled at her. ‘You don’t have to. Not if you’re clever.’
‘I’ll ignore the implication of that comment,’ said Ros tartly.
Aware that things were not going well, she decided to keep quiet for a few moments and hear what he had to say, not her default setting by any stretch, but Dominic Blake, with his easy confidence and wit, made it easy for someone to sit back and listen to him.
He was not, it transpired, the editor of Capital any longer, but the more grandly titled editor-in-chief, handing over the more hands-on work to his former features editor Robert Webb. This apparently allowed him to spend more time schmoozing advertisers, keeping his backers happy, and doing what he actually loved most about journalism – writing. Plus he was able to do more travelling. He wasn’t a tourist, but an adventurer, he explained as he told her about trips to the Bolivian salt flats and the African plains.
‘Ever since I was a little boy I have always wanted to be a writer. But the problem with your passion being your job is that you need another hobby. Everyone needs something in their life that’s not work, and for me that thing is travel. Not just Paris or Rome, but the bigger, undiscovered places. I love the excitement of the fresh and the new.’
He made it all sound so fabulous and exciting that Ros suddenly imagined herself on a boat, exploring some remote Pacific island, a warm breeze in her hair, the sun on her face and Dominic Blake handing her a cold beer at her side. She stamped out the image as quickly as it appeared and cleared her throat.
‘I haven’t travelled much,’ she admitted. ‘My parents came over from Hungary when I was three and we only ever went to Brighton after that. But I would love to travel the world.’ Just saying the words out loud made her horizons feel very narrow indeed.
‘What’s stopping you?’ asked Dominic.
‘Money,’ she said simply. ‘Working for the DAG has meant sacrifice.’
The Last Kiss Goodbye Page 8
