Talk to Me

by Jules Wake

  Looking around the room he saw the DJ methodically packing up his kit with the kind of fierce concentration that said, ‘I’m off duty and headed home’. It was that time of night. Even the waitresses had been roused from their earlier resigned inertia and were whipping glasses off tables with super-heroic speed.

  Across the table, Olivia and her sister had their heads together, tawny blonde and glossy brunette. His eyes narrowed as he watched Olivia lift her half-full wine glass. Her heart wasn’t in it. She’d been putting on a brave face all day. He felt for her but it went with the territory. This was what she’d signed up for. As she took another sip she looked up and caught him watching. A tight-lipped smile flashed across her face.

  Served her right and then he immediately regretted the thought. Unkind and unfair. No one deserved to be unhappy but God he wanted to shake her. Getting herself into such a mess.

  Women, he’d never understand them, although he’d always thought he got Olivia. Straight arrow. Sensible, down to earth. He winced. Made her sound boring and she wasn’t. How long was it that they’d known each other now? Since the second term of the first year at university. She was a fixture in so many of his memories. The voice of reason on nights out when student antics threatened to go too far. Calming things down in curry houses when the laddish behaviour overstepped the mark. And yet she always achieved it with humour and authority, without coming across like a Head Girl.

  Daniel could see where she got those traits. Her family all had that same natural ability to lead without appearing overbearing.

  Shit, what would her parents say if they knew? With a marriage as solid as theirs, he felt sure they would be horrified if they heard their daughter was going out with a married man. He could barely believe it himself. He sighed and felt Emily wriggle as he tightened his arm around her.

  He gave himself a mental shake. Nothing to do with him. She was a grown woman and had made her bed. Good job Emily had tipped him off that night at the party otherwise he’d have gone ahead and made a right dick of himself. You thought you knew people. Just went to show you didn’t always know them as well as you thought. Emily had sworn him to secrecy, making him promise not to tell Olivia he knew. Something he regretted. Part of him wanted to remind her how awful it had been when his mother had an affair and the other part, the one that wanted to shake the living daylights out of her, couldn’t believe she could forget. It felt like a betrayal.

  He shook his head trying to shake away the hollow feeling. Olivia had to really love this guy.

  Daniel gritted his teeth at the memory of the near miss. Emily’s hand fluttered along the length of his tense jaw and then down over his thigh. He had a good idea where it was headed. Simple and uncomplicated, that’s what he wanted. He certainly didn’t want to be sitting here dwelling on the past and wondering what the hell Olivia was playing at.

  Emily’s hand moved up, her fingers sliding into the waistband of his trousers. He looked down to see the suggestive tilt of her eyebrow and her rosebud mouth pursed in invitation. He bent his head to kiss her. Yes, Olivia had made her bed, it was nothing to do with him.

  Chapter Two

  As he and Emily collected their breakfast from the extensive buffet, he caught sight of the two sisters and headed over to the table they’d commandeered in the corner of the dining room. Olivia looked a bit wan this morning. Not that it seemed to have affected her appetite; she seemed absorbed in mopping up the last dregs of fried egg with a piece of bread.

  ‘Do I detect that you’ve just scoffed a full English?’ he teased, feeling guilty that he’d not made more effort to talk to her the previous evening.

  She looked up, her eyes darting away briefly before they slid back to make contact. She did that a lot these days. Guilty conscience.

  ‘Golly, Sherlock.’ Her smile was feeble but that wasn’t unexpected. She’d never worn hangovers particularly well. ‘No flies on you.’

  ‘Did you really eat a full cooked breakfast?’ asked Emily, her eyes widening as she slipped into a chair and tucked into a solitary croissant. In her dainty hands it looked huge as she nibbled it delicately. ‘Gosh, I don’t know how you could.’

  Startled he glanced at Emily wondering if there was more to her words but there was a dimple in her cheek and her blue eyes were guileless.

  ‘Lucky Olivia has such a fast metabolism,’ Kate’s voice floated out from the business section of the Sunday Times.

  He smiled. Kate could be such a bruiser. So different from Olivia. Tact had bypassed Kate. She said what she thought, whereas Olivia always managed to find something positive in people. Obviously where she was going wrong with her married man. He was bound to be a wanker.

  ‘Our Olivia’s always been a tall, skinny wench,’ Kate continued in a mock Yorkshire accent. Then she gave a sigh and rustled the paper.

  Olivia smiled reluctantly as she caught his eye. It was all show. They both knew Kate only ever read the fashion pages.

  ‘Just as well,’ he said, helping himself to a coffee, his hand edging towards the sports section of Kate’s paper. ‘Seeing how she’s always been partial to a post-hangover fry-up.’

  ‘And you weren’t?’ Olivia snapped.

  God she was moody these days.

  ‘Who was it introduced me to Big Al’s greasy spoon? Remember the night after the May Ball, Daniel?’

  He didn’t remember that particular night but so many had ended in a similar vein. The usual gang staggering down Magdalen Street in Norwich, the girls carrying their heels, packs of Marlborough tucked into their cleavages and the guys’ dicky bows stuffed in pockets, leading the way determined on a full English in the hope it might make a dent in the inevitable hangovers.

  ‘Olivia, do you always have to drag up the ancient history of your time at university?’ Emily’s voice was sharp. ‘For God’s sake, you left years ago! It’s so boring,’ she snapped.

  ‘Sorry, Emily, it’s just that mornings after the nights before always bring back memories of the famous Al’s fried bread,’ replied Kate, unusually trying to diffuse the situation.

  ‘So that’s why you visited Olivia so often.’ With his words he gave Emily a conspiratorial wink to include her. She pouted for a moment and then her face softened with a grateful smile. He must remember that it had to be difficult for her, all this shared history stuff. She was bound to feel a bit left out.

  ‘Why else?’ Kate answered with a smile.

  ‘Thanks.’ Olivia took mock offence. ‘Nothing to do with sisterly love then?’

  He caught her shooting Kate a sharp glance.

  Awkward undercurrents he wasn’t party to swirled and he took the line of least resistance and turned to the football pages, propping them up in front of him against the coffee pot.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kate check her watch and pull a face. ‘I have to head off. I’m going back with the folks. Dad wants to get home for lunch. Goodbye, Emily,’ she said. ‘Bye Daniel. Nice to see you again.’

  He stood to kiss her.

  ‘Good luck with the Old Bodgers cricket match,’ said Kate. ‘I hear Dad’s looking forward to trouncing you!’

  Emily’s eyes tightened.

  Shit, thanks Kate. He’d really hoped to break that one gently. Cricket matches were hell on long distance relationships. Took up far too much of the weekend and Emily wasn’t that keen on coming down to watch. Not that he lived that far from the girls’ flat in London – only the other side of Maidenhead – but Emily didn’t like the idea of coming out and commuting back to work in the morning. She relied on him coming over to her.

  ‘What match?’ Her soft voice sounded hurt already. He’d meant to talk to her about it, explain this wasn’t your ordinary match, but much more of a social occasion and would be a lot more fun for her.

  ‘It’s a bit of an annual event in the village,�
�� explained Olivia. ‘A couple of years ago Dad’s team was supposed to be playing a fundraising cricket match, but the other side let them down at the last minute. Daniel rounded up a replacement team—’

  ‘A team of young, fit—’ interrupted Daniel.

  Olivia poked her tongue out at him. ‘Yes, and who made the mistake of suggesting to Dad that perhaps you should mix up the teams so that you wouldn’t have the unfair advantage of youth on your side?’

  He laughed and Emily looked even more confused.

  ‘Red rag to a bull casting aspersions on their age,’ he explained.

  Emily looked none the wiser.

  ‘That’s where the name came from,’ said Olivia. ‘Dad decided that his Old Bodgers team had wisdom and experience on their side—’

  ‘And got trounced,’ added Daniel with satisfaction. ‘So, of course, we had to have a rematch the next year … and the next year.’

  ‘It’s a great day. We have a barbecue afterwards and—’

  ‘Cricket,’ said Emily, scrunching her face in dismay. ‘I don’t think so. It’s so boring.’

  He shrugged her comments off, laughing at her expression.

  ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ Olivia said. ‘You don’t actually have to watch the game. You can help me with the teas and there are lots of—’

  ‘Teas? Do you wear a “naice” pinny à la nineteen fifties?’ There was no mistaking her disdain. ‘Olivia, you need to get a life. There’s no way I would be seen dead.’

  He watched Olivia’s mouth snap shut. Oops, he was pretty sure Emily hadn’t meant to be so disparaging about Olivia helping with teas at the club but Emily did begrudge the amount of the weekend his cricket took up. It had become an increasing bone of contention. The fact that Olivia embraced the social life there didn’t help.

  He was going to have some bridges to build with Emily later.

  It was as if fate was determined to keep throwing him and Olivia together. She was at reception when he went to pay his bill.

  The blonde receptionist in her tidy uniform with her keen-to-please smile that had a genuine ring of sincerity was talking to her. ‘A taxi to Reading station, you said. And the London train?’

  ‘You are bloody joking.’ The words came out before he could stop them, but for crying out loud she was doing his head in.

  He felt her stiffen beside him and to his surprise she looked a bit hurt.

  ‘Christ, Olivia. Are you going back to London?’

  She nodded, looking disconcerted and so she bloody should. Why was she playing games? So the boyfriend hadn’t turned up and her lift had fallen through. Why the hell couldn’t she just say so and ask to go back with him and Emily? Their destination was the same.

  ‘What my car not good enough for you?’ Then it struck him that maybe she wasn’t going home.

  ‘No, I just didn’t want to play gooseberry,’ she said, lifting her chin.

  ‘So you are going back to the flat?’ God he sounded accusing, he had to remember he wasn’t supposed to know and it wasn’t as if he was her keeper.

  ‘Where else would I be going?’ she asked all innocence, and for a moment he almost believed her.

  ‘Well, why the hell didn’t you ask for a lift back then?’

  She blushed. It confirmed everything and with a flash of awareness, he realised he’d been hoping that Emily might have got things wrong and there was no married lover tucked away somewhere.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he rolled his eyes in mock disgust and turned to the receptionist. ‘Don’t worry, she doesn’t need a taxi. She can have a lift with me.’

  Memories of a hundred and one other journeys slipped into his head and without thinking he turned back to Olivia and quipped, ‘You can go in the front with the window open.’

  ‘Oy.’ She slapped at his arm and grinned at him. ‘I’m not that bad any more.’

  He raised an eyebrow and shook his head at the receptionist. ‘World’s worst traveller, this one. Don’t suppose you’ve got any spare sick bags in the back there?’

  ‘’Fraid not.’ She smiled warmly at him, clearly approving. ‘Have a nice trip home.’

  A queue was building behind them and they moved into the wide lobby area.

  ‘Right, I’ll go see how Emily’s getting on. I’ll see you back here in ten minutes.’

  ‘Are you sure this is OK? I mean, I don’t want to cramp yours and Emily’s style. I was trying to give the two of you some space.’

  Staring at her earnest face, he gripped the car keys in the palm of his hand, feeling the metal bite. When had she turned into such a good liar?

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he snapped and turned on his heel.

  Although I really didn’t want to travel home with Daniel and Emily, it was the most logical thing to do. Perhaps I could doze off in the back without feeling sick. I knew it was a hopeless wish.

  ‘But, Daniel …’ said Emily, her voice quavering with the unfairness of it as we left the hotel reception. She wasn’t happy that he’d relegated her to the back seat.

  ‘If Olivia goes in the back seat we’ll have to stop every few minutes because she’ll feel like throwing up. Believe me, we have history.’

  I winced. Did he have to say that? Emily was twitchy enough about our long-standing friendship without being reminded of it at every turn.

  ‘We’ll be lucky to make it back without at least one stop as it is.’

  I felt like the troublesome family dog.

  The tree-shaded car park was almost deserted when we got to Daniel’s Audi, most of the wedding guests having already departed.

  I climbed into the passenger seat, feeling guilty.

  ‘Got your two pences?’ asked Daniel in a clipped voice, as he slid into the driver’s seat.

  ‘No … good idea.’

  He beat me to it, producing two shiny copper coins from his wallet before I could open my bag. ‘Here you go. Don’t spend it all at once.’ He handed them over, with the semblance of a smile and started the engine.

  I watched as he put the car into gear, his tanned, capable forearm scant inches from my knee and then held onto my breath a second too long as he put his arm across the back of my seat to reverse out of the car park.

  I closed my eyes momentarily.

  It wasn’t fair. With his tousled blond hair, twinkling blue eyes and that endearing slightly chipped front tooth which showed when he smiled, why did he have to be so damned irresistible?

  The first time I met him I’d gone all gooey.

  There’d been a card on the Student Union noticeboard: Available – lift share to Maidenhead area. Half petrol costs. It didn’t say people with chronic carsickness need not apply.

  When he pulled up in his tiny Mini he had to ask twice if I was Olivia. My tongue had glued itself to the roof of my mouth. Wearing loose, faded jeans and a Diesel T-shirt, he’d unfolded his six-foot frame from the car and given my hand a firm shake. At that point I’d have said yes if he’d asked if I was Edna from Edinburgh.

  Him being the perfect gentleman was an added bonus. He stopped three times on that first journey to let me heave up my breakfast.

  You’d think I wouldn’t see him for dust after that but no, he kept offering me lifts, cementing a strong friendship. Let’s face it, you cover an awful lot of ground in a three hour car journey and you can’t help but love a guy who brings you a new travel sickness remedy to try each time. We went through wristbands, Joy-Rides, ginger biscuits – which I later discovered are for morning sickness – and mint tea before discovering that, for me, clutching copper coins works best. In my defence, I’m OK on short hops, when I’m driving or in the dark, but any journey as a passenger longer than an hour and my stomach starts to misbehave.

  ‘Any ideas, Olivia?’ asked Emily, once we
were speeding along the M4.

  ‘Uh – sorry, I was miles away.’ I was concentrating on Windsor Castle on the horizon, another motion sickness essential.

  ‘Come on. Please help me,’ she wheedled. ‘Fiona wants a proposal for tomorrow’s meeting. I should have done it last week. It’s not fair. She’s always on my back.’

  Fiona McIntyre, Emily’s boss and high-flying head of beauty public relations at Organic PR, didn’t suffer fools gladly or otherwise.

  ‘How am I supposed to think of a new way to launch lipstick?’ Emily asked, wrinkling her china doll nose as if perplexed that the task had fallen to her.

  I bit back the obvious, ‘Because it’s your job.’ Emily always got very stressed when she had to present her work to Fiona. Instead I said, ‘Well, what’s different about it? Can’t you just say it does what it says on the tube?’

  Daniel didn’t join in. He seemed to be concentrating on his driving.

  Emily gave an exasperated huff and shifted in her seat. ‘You’ve spent too much time working on construction accounts.’

  She didn’t consider what I did to be proper PR. My job at Organic was very tedious compared to hers. She worked on glamorous beauty accounts and thanks to all the freebies she brought home, our bathroom could give Boots a good run for its money. Attending sparkly launches of new make-up and skincare products in the sorts of places where you’d rub shoulders with A-list celebrities sipping their mohitos was all in a day’s work for her.

  Not me. I spent my days trudging around thirty foot trenches wearing wellies three sizes too big. No comparison really. I can’t think of a single perk of doing the PR for a major road-building company – unless you’re partial to the odd yellow hard hat.

  ‘The Marketing Director at Beautiful Babes Luscious Lips wants it to be an aspirational brand. The celebrity’s favourite. This lipstick’s going to be the summer’s hottest new product. Beautiful Babes isn’t selling to a bunch of guys with their bums hanging out of their jeans.’

  ‘Ooh, I don’t know. Think of it as a unique strategy. Transvestite builders. You’re targeting a whole new market.’ I caught Daniel’s eye and he gave me a tiny smile. I heaved an internal sigh of relief. His mood seemed to be lightening. I had no idea what had made him so cross earlier.