It was only ten minutes. That was all it took for him to make me groan before he shouted ‘Cow-a-bung-aaaaa!’ again in my ear, his body pressing mine down. I gave it a minute or so before sliding out from underneath him and shutting myself in the bathroom.
I really needed the loo now. I could feel my stomach… moving. Those oysters, I remembered, turning on the shower to try and disguise any noises.
I sat on the loo and decided I couldn’t go. Not with his head on the other side of the wall. Too close. So I held it in and climbed over the side of the bath into the shower. Cowabunga, I kept thinking. Quite strange? But he hadn’t mentioned anything afterwards so neither had I.
‘Hey, Rory, the sex is great but can I just ask why you keep shouting like a cartoon character at the end of it?’
I wasn’t bold enough. Maybe it was one of his weird jokes? I liked him. I really liked him. I didn’t want to find a fault with something so small. It wasn’t as if it was an ex-girlfriend’s name. I rinsed my hair and turned the shower off, rough-drying it while standing on the bath mat. I wanted to saunter back into my bedroom like a bikini model, tendrils of damp hanging loose over my shoulders, instead of hair so wet and flattened I looked like Dougal from the Magic Roundabout.
But when I opened the door, he was gone. His clothes had been picked up from the bedroom floor and the bed was made. Not as perfect as I would have liked because the pillows were in the wrong place. But not bad. I went to my bedroom door and listened. From the kitchen, I could hear Mia and Ruby’s voices, so I dressed as if the attic was on fire and rubbed in some tinted moisturizer while taking the stairs down two at a time. Two, four, six, eight, repeat, before rounding the banisters and skidding towards the kitchen.
‘Morning, all,’ I said, panting. ‘This is Rory. Rory, this is Mia and Ruby.’ I put a hand on the kitchen table and leant on it to try and steady my breathing.
‘You all right?’ asked Rory.
‘Yes, all good. Just, er, a very hot shower.’ I glanced at Ruby, sitting beside the sink in her dressing gown. ‘You’re up early?’
‘I heard Mia chatting to Rory and I couldn’t miss that, could I?’
‘We’ve just been chatting about his job,’ added Mia, ‘and it sounds very interesting.’
She said this with a sly smile, which made my heart speed up. She mustn’t mention the list. On no account could Rory find out about the list. There was no sensible way of explaining that, shortly before meeting him, I’d visited a witch doctor on Harley Street and asked the universe to find me a boyfriend.
‘And all that adventurous travelling he does!’ said Ruby. ‘Plus, you probably have a lot of time for reading, Rory, with all that time on a plane?’
Rory looked from one sister to the other, momentarily confused. ‘Er, yes, yes, I have to say I do. That’s how I met Florence, did she tell you? I was in the bookshop.’
‘She did. It seems quite the coincidence.’ Ruby’s eyes, alight with mischief, danced from him to me and then back.
‘Mmm, anyway, Rory, do you want a coffee?’ I said, reaching for the kettle.
‘No, no, I’d best be off.’
‘To the office and your interesting job?’ asked Mia.
Rory laughed. ‘Yes, exactly.’ He stepped forward to kiss me on the cheek. ‘But thank you for a magnificent evening.’
I nodded up at him, briefly awed that there was a handsome man in the kitchen because of me and not one of my sisters.
‘Wonderful to meet you both,’ he said, waving a hand at them.
‘You too,’ they shouted, as I led Rory through the hall and opened the front door.
‘See you soon, I hope?’ he asked, turning back to kiss me again.
‘Sure,’ I said, smiling, which was a casual way to put it when every cell in my body was screaming ‘YES, YES, WHAT ABOUT TOMORROW? ARE YOU FREE TOMORROW, OR THE NEXT DAY, OR THE DAY AFTER THAT? OR HOW ABOUT FOR EVER? ARE YOU FREE FOR EVER?’
He left, his jacket slung over his shoulder, and I went back to the kitchen.
‘A magnificent evening, hey?’ said Ruby, still sitting on the counter. ‘You need to tell us everything right now.’
They got the edited version while I drank my coffee and made my lunch. ‘Nice dinner, no awkward silences, home,’ then, ‘yes, OK, we slept together.’ It felt strange talking to them about sex when I never had before.
‘And?’ pushed Mia. ‘Come on, I need more than that. Hugo and I normally only do it on Sunday mornings before golf and even then it’s quite quick because he never wants to miss the first tee.’
‘And nothing. It was nice,’ I said, wrapping my sandwich in clingfilm while trying to banish the mental image of Hugo having sex in his Pringle golf socks.
‘Nice?’ said Mia. ‘Just nice? Flo, a cup of tea and a piece of cake is nice. You can do better than that.’
I slid my lunch into my bag and headed for the hall, but shouted back at them over my shoulder. ‘All right, it was amazing, he spun me about like an Olympic gymnast and we did it again this morning. OK, got to go, see you guys later, bye!’
‘I’m going to tell Pat!’ Ruby shouted as I closed the door behind me.
I walked to work, thoughts rolling around my head like lottery balls.
Good things about Rory: he was hot, funny, clever, ambitious.
Bad things: ‘COWABUNGA!’
I could still hear him shouting it. But I had very little to compare last night’s performance to. Maybe that’s what everyone was doing these days? Maybe it was a thing?
I pushed open the shop door just as I remembered what I’d written on my list: ‘Oh my God, James Bond!’ I’d written ‘Bottom and sexual athleticism of James Bond’ on my list and admittedly I had fairly limited experience, but Rory had definitely put in an energetic performance. Twice.
‘I’m flattered but it’s Zach,’ said Zach, lowering his camera from his face.
I shook my head. ‘Sorry, ignore me, I was just thinking about… something.’
‘About James Bond?’
‘Sort of. Long story. Why are you in so early?’
‘Better light at this time of morning,’ he said. ‘Plus, I’m not in anybody’s way. You all right?’
‘Yes,’ I snapped. ‘How come?’
‘You look terrible.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Sorry,’ he replied. ‘Just a bit pale,’ he added, circling a finger around his own face.
‘I’m hungover,’ I said, dropping my bag behind the till.
Zach swivelled to face me. ‘Of course! The big date! How was it?’
‘Good, thank you.’
‘Sorry,’ he said again, sensing my coolness. ‘Being nosy. And sorry about yesterday too. I didn’t mean to be flippant.’ He held his hands up in the air as if surrendering. ‘It’s none of my business.’
‘That’s all right,’ I said, because it was the simplest answer and I didn’t want to talk to him. I needed a coffee.
The door jangled as the day’s deliveries arrived. Five boxes of books.
‘Can I have a chat to you about something?’ Zach asked once I’d signed for them.
‘Now?’
‘Or later if you’d prefer. Nothing urgent.’
‘Can we do it closer to lunch? I need to set this lot out,’ I said, gesturing at the boxes.
‘Sure. I’ll get out your way,’ said Zach. He went downstairs and I opened the drawer under the till for the Stanley knife. I ran it across the first box, pulled out as many books as I could with one hand and started scanning them into the system. I arranged them in even piles in front of me before reaching back into each box. Hardback fiction, non-fiction, paperback fiction, non-fiction. ‘Two, four, six, eight,’ I mumbled, double-checking each pile.
‘Why d’you do that?’ said Zach, reappearing on the stairs a few minutes later.
‘What?’
‘Count everything.’
I shrugged. ‘Just a habit.’
He put a mug down in front of m
e. It was coffee. ‘I heard you doing it while I was taking pictures yesterday and I was wondering if it was some sort of system you have. Anyway, here you go. Thought you could do with it.’
‘Thanks,’ I said simply.
Eugene was at his Romeo and Juliet audition so I busied myself with putting the books out all morning in silence. Zach appeared again just before lunch to ask if it was a ‘good moment’ for our chat.
‘Are you firing me?’ I asked, following him downstairs to the office.
He laughed. ‘I don’t think my powers extend that far.’
Norris had gone out but it still felt an awkwardly cosy space for Zach and me to squeeze into. I hovered in the doorway as Zach lowered himself into one chair, then pulled Norris’s desk chair towards him and motioned for me to sit.
‘I’ve written a plan for the shop. I’m sorting out the website. Instagram, Twitter and all that,’ he said, scrolling down a Word document on his laptop. ‘But what I was also thinking is events.’
‘Events?’
‘Yeah, like talks. Readings. Q&As. That sort of thing. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Have you ever done them here?’
‘No. Can you make much money from them though? Realistically?’ A small, ungenerous part of me wanted to pour scorn on his idea.
‘It’s not just about cash. Well, it’s partly about cash. But it also means more people through the door, more sales. And we could even record them and put them out as a podcast. It’s pretty easy, I could do it on this.’ Leaning forward in his seat to gesture at his screen, his knee touched mine and I pulled it away as if he’d given me an electric shock.
‘Sorry.’
‘Have you mentioned it to Norris?’
Zach shook his head. ‘Nah, wanted to see what you reckoned first.’
‘It might work,’ I said, trying not to sound too enthusiastic although I knew it was a good idea. When I was a teenager, I’d been considered nerdy for my excessive reading. Reading on the bus into school, reading at break, reading on the bus home again. Reading had always been the only way I could stop myself from counting. But nowadays, books had become cool and nobody was called a nerd for being into them. It was fashionable to post pictures of whatever you’d just finished reading on Instagram, to listen to podcasts about books and to buy tickets for readings by the latest millennial poet. Millennial poets! I had an idea.
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘there’s a new anthology out by Fumi next month.’
Zach frowned.
‘She’s an Instagram poet,’ I explained. ‘Posts haikus. Has a pug called Percy. People are obsessed with her, and the dog. She sold about a zillion copies of her debut last year. We could try and get her for a reading. I’m not sure she’d do it but we could ask?’
‘Yeah, that’s the kind of thing,’ said Zach, pulling his phone from his jeans pocket. ‘Fuck me, she’s got nearly a million followers.’ He moved the phone closer to his face. ‘What’s she doing with that dog?’
I peered at his screen. Fumi’s latest picture was a bathroom selfie with her pug tucked under her arm. She was pouting at the camera in a purple bomber jacket. Both she and the dog were wearing sunglasses. ‘Have a #beautiful day my babies,’ said the caption, followed by a string of purple hearts.
‘Yeah, that’s her. Might be worth trying to get them for Norris’s reaction alone.’
Zach laughed. ‘Right. So do you want to check with him or shall I?’
‘You do it,’ I said, still smarting that Norris had ignored my suggestions.
The bell rang upstairs as the door opened so I stood, keen to get out of the claustrophobic space. ‘I’d better get back.’
‘OK, cool, but you think events are a good idea?’ he asked as I was halfway through the door. ‘You know this place better than me.’
I turned back, feeling a pang of guilt that I hadn’t been supportive enough. ‘Yes, all right, very good, nice work.’
‘Just call me James Bond,’ he replied with a wink.
‘Don’t push it,’ I shouted behind me.
The rest of the afternoon dragged. I ate pink wafers surreptitiously behind the till while Eugene quizzed me about my date, although I had to pause my story every time the door jangled and another customer came in. I didn’t want to give our more elderly customers a stroke.
‘I take it all back about my mother and I hereby award you nine out of ten,’ he declared, holding an imaginary paddle up at me when I’d finished my update – Eugene was a big Strictly Come Dancing fan and had recently pinned up a calendar in the stockroom so he could cross off the days until it started again.
‘Why don’t I get ten?’ I asked, reaching for another wafer.
‘Because it’s early yet and I want to see how you progress.’ He picked his phone up from the counter. ‘What’s his surname again? I’m going to google him.’
‘Dundee.’
Eugene tapped at his phone. ‘Oooh, he is handsome. Lovely eyes. But there’s only this one picture. Can’t find much else about him.’ He frowned at me.
‘No I know, he doesn’t have social media.’ Rory had explained this over dinner. No social media meant no dodgy photos or tweets that could come back to haunt him when he became a politician. He had it all mapped out.
‘Oh but look,’ Eugene said, excitedly. ‘He’s a “rising star” on this list.’
He put on a serious voice and read from the screen. ‘“Rory Dundee, thirty-seven, went to Harrow, then landed a First in Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Cambridge. Currently works as a special advisor in the Foreign Office but has ambitions for high office. The grandson of former Tory agriculture minister Edward Dundee, Rory has impressed civil servants with his can-do attitude and ruthlessness. Whispers say that he’s headed for the top.”’
He put down his phone and clapped his hands together. ‘Ruthless, I love it! When you’re living at Downing Street, can you have me round for drinks?’
‘Eugene, do not mention drinks,’ I said, lying my head on my arms, unused to having a hangover on a weekday.
‘If you get married, you could be the First Lady,’ he went on.
‘Eugene…’
‘Can I be your dresser? You’ll need a dresser.’
‘Eugene…’
‘Can I come on your private jet?’
I lifted my head up, unable to bear it any longer. ‘Eugene, let’s not get carried away after two dates. And the prime minister doesn’t have a private jet. That’s in America.’
He pinched his finger and thumb together and ran them across his mouth. ‘All right, I’ll zip it. But I’m excited. I have a good feeling about this one.’
I got a message from Patricia that afternoon too. She’d obviously spoken to Mia. ‘Darling, he sounds PERFECT. A politician in the family! Your father will be thrilled. Keep us posted!’
‘In the family’? Patricia was deranged. Although annoyingly, I could already sense a tiny, giddy bit of me – a very, very small bit – daring to imagine what that would be like.
Chapter Four
I SAW HIM TWICE in the next two weeks. Dinner both times: once at a pizza place in Borough Market, the next at a Japanese restaurant the size of a shoebox in a Knightsbridge basement. There, we sat at a counter while the chefs passed dainty plates of sushi straight to us from the kitchen and I was so happy to be on a fourth date that I didn’t even mind eating rice, which I normally avoided on the basis it was too fiddly to count. But here, I just did it. No fuss.
I’d started noticing that people looked inquisitive when I was out with Rory. First they studied him; drawn by his accent, they’d next take in the old-fashioned trousers and the braces.
Then they’d look at me, but only briefly before their eyes flicked back to him. This applied particularly to other women but I didn’t mind. I was just proud to be there, sitting, talking, laughing in his company.
There were only a couple of things that worried me. Firstly, I often felt quiet in his presence, as if I wasn’t dazzlin
g or captivating enough while he talked about politics, about art and about the dozens of exotic cities he’d visited across the world. He seemed so much more worldly, especially when it came to his exes. He often mentioned them and there seemed to be dozens; it was ‘Tallulah this’ or ‘Sophia that’. I imagined the sort of women you see smiling from society magazines – wearing hairbands and showing off their perfect dentistry. Rory’s obvious romantic experience made me feel a tiny niggle of insecurity about my own.
Secondly, the ‘cowabunga!’ thing. It kept happening. After the Japanese, he’d slammed his hand so hard against my bedroom wall at the critical moment I worried that he’d punched through the plaster. But I didn’t want to spoil anything by asking him about it. Wimpy, I know, but what if I ruined everything?
I hurried along the pavement to my second session with Gwendolyn, keen to discuss the situation. You see very few people skipping along Harley Street. Mostly they amble along fearing the needle or a poke in the prostate. But I had questions to ask. I wasn’t sure quite how to phrase these – did you send a handsome blond man into the shop on purpose? Are you a real witch? – but I’d figure it out.
Rory had flown to Nigeria over the weekend with the Foreign Minister but WhatsApped me every day. I felt a tragic little thrill every time I saw his name pop up on my phone. He’d texted me back! And again! Byron might have written great love letters but, from Rory, even a message about what he was having for dinner or a photo of his hotel room gave me a buzz.
I counted myself upstairs to the fourth floor of the Harley Street building and knocked on Gwendolyn’s door. On her command – another shrill ‘Come i-hinnnnnn!’ – I pushed it open and winced, having forgotten the pinkness of the room.
‘Florence, poppet, wonderful to see you, have a seat,’ she said. She was dressed as if she’d just returned from her gap year in Thailand: baggy cotton trousers, white T-shirt, flip-flops, a purple bandana wrapped around her head.
The Wish List: Escape with the most hilarious and feel-good read of 2020! Page 10
