It's Not Me, It's You
Page 37
‘Really,’ Adam said, looking perplexed. ‘Why have you left Paul?’
‘Because I didn’t want to marry him. You’re not pleased to see me?’ Delia asked.
‘I’m overwhelmed to see you. But whether that’s a good or bad overwhelmed is conditional on what you’re here to say,’ Adam said, more gently.
Delia took a deep breath.
‘I came to tell you I’m in love with you, too,’ she said.
Adam swallowed and cleared his throat.
‘OK, now I wish I hadn’t been so arsey.’
He grinned and Delia let out a sob-laugh.
‘Although you realise this is rank madness. You’ve never been in love before. What if you realise next month it was another fad?’
‘Jeez, I know I once told you I bought a wanker’s car but I’m not Toad of Toad Hall,’ Adam said. The shared joy and anticipation fizzed and snapped between them as they both laughed. It was hands down the happiest moment of Delia’s life. ‘Delia. You’ve spent most of the time I’ve known you hung up on someone else. You don’t have the monopoly on insecurity. I wouldn’t say I felt those things about you without being very sure I mean them, and will carry on meaning them.’
She nodded.
‘… The things about wanting a life together. I know we’ve barely started out, I don’t want to rush it. But I’m thirty-three.’
‘I’m thirty-four, so I win.’
‘Yes but you’re a man. You can keep ejaculating indefinitely.’
‘I’m guessing we’re into the part of the speech you didn’t plan?’
‘No, this is all from my notes,’ Delia said, and Adam grinned a grin that lit her up. ‘Staying in love isn’t the same as falling in love. It won’t be dressed-as-giant-animal spy antics and doing it three-and-a-half times in one night and restaurants with flower canopies. It’s arguing over whose turn it was to buy dishwasher tablets.’
‘I get Ocado deliveries. You should look into it. Also, half? Show your working.’
Delia laughed. ‘I’m serious!’
‘So am I. I know what you’re saying. I don’t want intense and unreal and short-lived. I want all day, every day normal. I want the same chance you gave Paul.’
That was what Delia needed to hear.
Adam said: ‘Come here please,’ and pulled her into an embrace so hard it almost winded her, then they kissed.
It was the greatest, most thrilling, most promising kiss of Delia’s life, one that tasted of red wine and toothpaste and a new life where this was the person she always kissed.
‘Thank you for coming back. Thank you so much,’ Adam said into her hair as he held her tightly.
‘Sorry it took me this long. I’d only just begun working us out when Paul appeared …’
Adam pulled back and his expression tightened at mention of Paul.
‘Things are definitely over between you this time?’
‘Yes.’
‘There is one thing, though,’ Delia said.
‘Oh?’
‘I’m not sure I want to live in London. Would you move to Newcastle?’
‘In a heartbeat.’
Delia was slightly stunned. Adam seemed as much a London landscape fixture as the red buses.
‘You’d do that?’
‘Sure. I could rent this room out. I’ve only been there once years ago, seems a good city. If quite cold. Why not? Give it a go.’
‘I can’t believe you’d do that for me. You’d leave your home for me?’
‘Home is you,’ Adam said, putting his hand to her face.
Outside the window, the city was starting to wake up to a cloudy late summer day. There had been heavy rain overnight, it would leave the greenery looking jungly and make the streets smell steamy. Most people had been asleep and missed it. Delia and Adam had listened to it for an hour, wrapped around each other.
‘Adam?’
‘Delia.’
‘When did you know you were in love with me? I can sort of better imagine you being in love with me than saying to yourself: wait! Guess what. I think I’ve fallen for that ginger PR bird. Davina. You always thought I was silly.’
‘No, I thought your job was silly. I thought you were the most intriguing, infuriating, interesting person I’d ever met. Every time I spent any time with you, it wasn’t enough.’
‘Apart from when you were tongue-lashing me, thinking I was Kurt’s knock-off.’
‘Ugh, that was horrible. I kicked a lot of furniture and swore constantly and played a lot of aggressive contact sports afterwards. I went to see my sister and in the middle of a tirade of abuse about your moral degeneracy, I said: It’s so messed-up she’s with him. She should be with me. There it was. I didn’t even know I was going to say it.’
‘Haha! What did Alice say?’
‘She said, oh dear, you’ve fallen in love with her, you idiot. I said no, no, no, absolutely not. I’m simply experiencing an overpowering level of irrational emotion that makes me want to roll a rock over the door like a Flintstone and imprison her, until she realises she must choose me. I won’t be a cruel jailer, she will get fed and can take supervised baths. My sister said, yeah, that’s love. You?’
‘It was when you told me you were rich. I saw your sensitive side.’
They laughed.
‘I knew I was in love with you when I thought about you every forty-eight seconds. Adam tinnitus. I couldn’t be walking down the aisle, wondering about how you were spending your weekend.’
Adam said ‘hah’, but Delia sensed it was still too fresh in the memory to mention the wedding plans.
She spoke more carefully. ‘When I read your card, I couldn’t stop re-reading it. Eventually I admitted, this isn’t only about how he feels about you, this is how you feel about him. You said to me, You can’t help who you’re in love with. You meant you didn’t blame me for being with Paul. Instead it exactly described why I should be with you.’
‘Wow. It wasn’t written with the hope of you coming back. It was a straight goodbye.’
‘I know. That’s why it was so effective,’ Delia smiled.
She knew that even if it didn’t work out with Adam, she would never regret taking this chance. It was already worth it.
‘Not that it’s a competition, but would you have ever come looking for me, if I hadn’t written to you?’ he said.
‘I know for sure I would have,’ Delia said, her eyes momentarily dazzled by the light glowing through the red curtains, so Adam was only a silhouette in the blue of the room.
‘You do? How?’
‘I’d started writing you into my story.’
‘Think of the great duos of history. We’re just like them.’
‘You mean like Kylie and Jason? Torvill and Dean? Sonny and Cher?’
‘I think you’ve missed the point, Rachel.’
Rachel and Ben. Ben and Rachel. It was them against the world. Until it all fell apart. It’s been a decade since they last spoke, but when Rachel bumps into Ben one rainy day, the years melt away.
They’d been partners in crime and the best of friends. But life has moved on: Ben is married. Rachel is not. Yet in that split second, Rachel feels the old friendship return. And along with it, the broken heart she’s never been able to mend.
Hilarious, heartbreaking and everything in between, you’ll be hooked from their first ‘hello’.
Click here to buy now
Anna Alessi – history expert, possessor of a lot of hair and an occasionally filthy mouth – seeks nice man for intelligent conversation and Mills & Boon moments.
Despite the oddballs that keep turning up on her dates, Anna couldn’t be happier. As a 30-something with a job she loves, life has turned out better than she dared dream. However, things weren’t always this way, and her years spent as the ‘Italian Galleon’ of an East London comprehensive are ones she’d rather forget.
So when James Fraser – the architect of Anna’s final humiliation at school – walks back into her l
ife, her world is turned upside down. But James seems a changed man. Polite. Mature. Funny, even. People can change, right? So why does Anna feel like she’s a fool to trust him?
Hilarious and poignant, ‘Here’s Looking At You’ will have you laughing one minute and crying the next. The new must-read novel from #1 bestseller Mhairi McFarlane.
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It would’ve been impossible to think at the start of this year that we’d say goodbye to my incredible literary agent, Ali Gunn, but we did, and the loss is still taking some getting used to. RIP Ali, I owe you so much and the world is duller without you.
In her absence, Doug Kean at Gunn Media has been even more heroic than he usually is, and a lovely friend as well as a dynamic repping force.
Huge thanks as always to my wonderful editor, Helen Bolton: it’s now our third rodeo and my gratitude for your dedication to making the book the best it can be only increases. This time I also benefited from the skills of Martha Ashby and Kimberley Young at HarperFiction: thank you for your hard work! Keshini Naidoo’s copy edit was, as usual, brilliantly effective and entertaining and the art department did me very proud with this cover. A big cheers to the whole HarperCollins family for such enthusiasm and support. And the parties, with all that champagne.
Thanks to Chris King, whose illustrations brought The Fox to life so brilliantly: I’m lucky to work with such talented people. I also work with people, like my screen agent Mark Casarotto at Casarotto Ramsay & Associates. (Haha! Only kidding, Marco. Oh come on, don’t sulk. Thanks to your big talent too.)
People who read early drafts and say nice things help me more than they know: cheers to my brother Ewan, Sean Hewitt, Tara de Cozar, Jenny Howe, Jennifer Whitehead, Mark Casarotto, Tim Lee and Kristy Berry. I bare-thefted a joke from Tom Bennett, the super teacher – let me know if you ever need me to do a lesson plan in return or whatever. And one from James Donaghy, TV critic extraordinaire. I couldn’t do Aerial Telly reviews justice though, so I’ll send you some dusted Lindt truffles.
Thanks to Andy Welch, top journalist and all round good egg who kindly and very entertainingly helped me with the world of press and PRs.
Computer genius and definite Welshman Colin Jones aided me with the practicalities of writing Peshwari Naan; thank you for covering my shame with your big brain.
Bon viveur and proper restaurant critic Jay Rayner provided the idea of the superb pizza-ordering stunt; I owe you, sir (and for what it’s worth, I think you should definitely do this).
Serena Mandair gave me her lawyerly counsel on the logistics of reporting an imaginary flasher, and never said: ‘Are you sure this is for a book, V?’
Thank you to Rachael Burns, who doesn’t even know she helped by liking Cherry Amaretto Sours, cooking lots and generally being cool and Delia-ish, and similarly, Katie de Cozar Rushforth for being wildly Emma-ish, even if she is the enemy of livers.
Lastly but mostly, thanks to Alex, whose assistance in the ‘creative process’ this time round has been amazing.
And thank you if you bought this! Having readers is the most amazing privilege, and I try not to waste your time if I can possibly help it.
About the Author
Mhairi was born in Scotland in 1976 and her unnecessarily confusing name is pronounced Vah-Ree.
After some efforts at journalism, she started writing novels. It’s Not Me, It’s You is her third book. She lives in Nottingham, with a man and a cat.
Also by Mhairi McFarlane
You Had Me At Hello
Here’s Looking At You
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