‘Is it the shock?’ Gabe squeezes my hand.
I nod mutely. Shocked? I’m bloody mortified.
One minute, there I was in my Holland Park pad, with my Italian villa and my new Aston Martin, and now – poof – it’s all gone. Along with my wallet, keys, mobile, Filofax – which has my address in it, which means I’ll have to change the locks. At this rate that ticket is going to end up costing me a fortune . . .
‘I know it sucks,’ Gabe is saying, ‘but there’s not much we can do here. We should head back to the flat, report it stolen to the cops.’
‘Actually, I might as well go straight to the police station,’ I say, trying not to think about how much I wanted to go for a walk on the Heath with Gabe and how it’s all been spoiled. ‘But you don’t have to come with me.’
‘Hey, of course I will.’
‘No, honestly, it’s fine. Enjoy the rest of the day, go fly a kite,’ I tease weakly, gesturing towards the Heath.
‘Well, if you’re sure . . .’
‘I’m sure,’ I say firmly. ‘The bank will need a crime reference number so I’ll have to fill in a report – might as well get the boring paperwork over with now.’ Great. Just how I wanted to spend my Sunday afternoon.
‘Oh, OK . . .’ There’s a pause, and then he adds shyly, ‘Look, I don’t know if you’re interested, but I’m meeting my uncle later at some comedy club he knows about. It’s open mike tonight and I could use a little practice . . . you’re more than welcome to join us?’
I’m flattered by his invitation, but the words ‘open mike’ are enough to bring me out in hives. Thankfully, however, I already have an excuse. ‘Thanks, but I’m seeing James,’ I remind him.
‘Oh, yeah, I forgot – duh . . .’ For a second I swear I see a flash of disappointment in his eyes, but now he’s smiling and saying, ‘Maybe next time, huh?’
‘Yeah, next time.’ I nod, trying not to think of how I’m going to get out of it.
‘Well, I guess I’ll see you later.’ Gabe moves towards me and, presuming he’s going to kiss my cheek I move my face to one side. Only it goes wrong and, bumping noses, our lips collide. We jump back as if we’ve been stung.
‘Oops! Sorry about that.’ I laugh uncomfortably.
‘Don’t worry, it’s the big schnoz.’ Gabe grins, but I’m sure he’s as embarrassed as I am.
‘Well, ’bye then,’ I say briskly.
‘Er, yeah . . . ’bye.’ He waves awkwardly.
Left behind on the pavement, I watch him striding out towards the Heath, mingling among the dozens of people heading for a lazy afternoon lying on the grass. Feeling a stab of envy, I curse the thieves who stole my bag. And then, completely out of the blue, I remember something Ed said that night in the pub: Be careful what you wish for. His words make me strangely uneasy. Did wishing I could win the lottery somehow cause my bag to be stolen? Was it because the ticket was in my wallet?
Or because my wish was about simply winning the lottery, not about keeping it?
As the thought strikes I feel a spark of panic. Of responsibility. Fear. But then I catch myself. Honestly, Heather, since when did you ever listen to anything your brother said? And feeling foolish for even considering his words, I march resignedly to the tube.
Chapter Nineteen
‘So, what did you think of the film?’
It’s later that evening and James and I have just been on our second date – to the cinema – and are driving back in his Range Rover, him at the wheel, me in the leather passenger seat trying not to stare at his broad linen-coated shoulders, perfect Roman nose and a jawline that any leading man would kill for.
‘I really enjoyed it,’ he replies, taking his eyes off the road and catching me staring.
Damn.
‘I thought Renée was really funny, and that bit with the adorable little girl . . .’ He laughs faintly. ‘Hilarious.’
I feel like the cat that’s got the cream. Not only is this man drop-dead gorgeous he also loves romantic comedies. Can you believe it? A man who likes romantic comedies? And he’s not gay. Vague memories of Daniel and me arguing over Bridget Jones versus The Thin Red Line in Blockbuster begin to stir . . .
‘What about you, darling?’ James is saying, as he indicates left, then drives down our street. ‘What do you think?’
That we’re outside your flat and I’m wondering if you’re going to invite me in for coffee, I think lustfully. But instead I reply, ‘It was great.’
He swings into a parking space, switches off the engine and turns to me. It’s quiet now, without the radio or the noise of the four-cylinder engine, and I feel a flutter of anticipation. But instead of kissing me he says, ‘I’m afraid I’ve got a confession.’
‘Oh.’
‘Uh-huh.’ He’s holding my gaze. ‘I don’t have any coffee.’
‘Oh.’ The man has reduced me to monosyllables.
‘So I don’t have any excuse to invite you up.’
I feel crushing disappointment. Followed by tingles all through my body as he strokes the side of my face. I can feel his breath on my cheek and then, before I know what’s happening, he’s kissing me. Light feathery kisses behind my earlobe, along my collarbone, the nape of my neck . . .
‘Do I need one?’
He pulls away and my breath catches in the back of my throat. Struggling to find my voice, I smile shyly. And only then do I finally manage to squeak, ‘No.’
Which, of course, means yes to everything else. Yes, to kissing in his hallway, yes, to his hands running up the back of my T-shirt, yes, to him pushing me against the radiator and grinding his hard-on into my pelvis . . .
Well, it would be yes if any of this was happening.
But it’s not – unless you count my imagination. Instead he unlocks the door to his flat, takes my coat politely and offers me a nightcap.
‘Cheers.’ He passes me a glass of champagne and clinks his glass against mine. We’re standing by the fireplace in his living room, which I’ve glimpsed dozens of times from my bedroom across the street. Only this time I’m on the inside.
Surprisingly, his flat isn’t anything like I imagined. Instead of being modern, it’s traditional, with old-style standard lamps, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a gilt-edged mirror hanging over the fireplace. It’s also immaculate. I feel secretly pleased. I’ve always wished I could meet a man who’s neat and tidy. And, hey presto, here he is.
‘Cheers.’
I go to take a sip when James stops me with a hand on my arm. ‘You didn’t look me in the eye,’ he protests.
‘I didn’t?’ I presume he’s joking, then realise he’s serious.
‘No,’ he says, looking at me intently. ‘We’ll have to do it again.’
This time I meet his gaze and he holds it for just a moment longer than necessary, which, of course, is incredibly sexy, before we clink glasses and I take a gulp of champagne. To be honest, I’d have preferred coffee, but this is all very romantic, isn’t it? I watch James walk over to his rack of neatly stacked CDs.
‘What do you feel like listening to?’ he asks.
‘Whatcha got?’ I quip.
‘Is that a band or an album?’
‘Oh, no, I meant . . .’ I start to explain, then decide against it. ‘What about The White Stripes?’ I suggest.
He looks at me doubtfully. ‘Actually I don’t think I have anything of theirs,’ he says, running his finger along the spines of his CDs – in alphabetical order I notice, unlike mine, which are piled in a messy jumble on the shelves, minus their cases.
‘Oh . . . well, why don’t you choose something?’ I say brightly.
‘OK, let’s see . . .’ He begins to throw out names: ‘Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Coldplay, Sting, Madonna . . .’ As he reels off one name after another he could almost be reading out my own CD collection, minus the White Stripes and a few quirky entries such as my beloved Billie Jo Spears album. Mum adored her. I remember her singing along to ‘Blanket On The Grou
nd’ at the top of her voice while she was doing the ironing. The memory gets me right in the throat, like a boxer’s jab, and I have to swallow to stop my eyes watering. It’s always the silly little things that remind me. Everyone assumes its birthdays and Christmas, but it’s in the everyday details that I miss her most.
‘. . . Roxy Music, The Best of Spandau Ballet . . .’ James glances sideways at me, and I quickly fight down the lump in my throat. ‘OK, I’d better confess my guilty secret.’
James has a guilty secret?
‘I used to be a New Romantic. If you want to leave now and never see me again I’ll understand.’
‘What a coincidence. I was Duran Duran’s biggest fan.’ I grin.
He laughs and I feel a buzz of happiness. I’ve always wished I could meet a man who shared my taste in music but most of my old boyfriends liked completely different bands from me. There was John who loved punk, Marcus who was into jazz, and then there was Daniel. I have a flashback of us driving to Cornwall, arguing over whether we’d listen to his Snoop Dogg CD, or my Norah Jones.
‘What about Dido?’
‘Perfect.’ I beam.
James looks relieved.
He’s adorable when his face is all scrunched up with worry, and I resist the urge to go over and kiss him. It’s not easy.
He slides open the CD drive, opens the case and frowns. ‘Damn. After all that there’s a different CD in here.’
His expression is so hangdog I start to laugh. ‘Oh, don’t worry, that happens to me all the time.’
‘Well, it doesn’t happen to me,’ he grumbles, staring at the disk in confusion.
‘Perhaps you put it back in the wrong case by accident,’ I suggest.
‘But that’s impossible,’ he protests. ‘I’d never do that.’
My smile fades. Surely one CD in the wrong case isn’t going to throw him into a bad mood? ‘Why don’t we listen to that CD anyway?’ I say. I’m fast regretting wishing he could be neat and tidy.
He glares accusingly at the silver disk in his hand as he puts it into the player. ‘This should be interesting . . .’
From concealed speakers swell the opening chords of a guitar, and a woman’s voice, soft and sexy. She’s singing in French. ‘Who’s this?’
James’s face is flooded with recognition. ‘Emmanuelle. She’s an old friend of mine – she used to play in clubs in Paris. Crikey, I’d forgotten I had this.’
‘You lived in Paris?’
‘For a couple of years after university.’ The memory seems to make him forget his annoyance and re-embrace our earlier flirtation. ‘A long time ago.’ Slipping his fingers through mine, he leads me over to the large suede sofa.
‘Wow, how exciting,’ I blurt, more out of nerves than anything else as now we’re sitting on the sofa and he’s slipping his arm around my shoulders and pulling me towards him. I inhale the scent of his faded aftershave, butter popcorn and underarm deodorant. It’s unbelievably erotic.
‘So do you speak French?’ I ask, trying to steer my thoughts away from X-rated ones.
James lifts my chin with a finger and gabbles something that I, at rusty O-level standard, can make no sense of whatsoever. ‘Do you want me to translate?’ he murmurs softly.
No, not really. I’m content to listen to his sexy French accent and not understand what he’s saying. I open my mouth to reply. But then, when I’m least expecting it, he kisses me full on the lips.
Wow. Me likee this translation. Me want you to translate a bit more, I muse, kissing him back. It’s been so long since I’ve been kissed by someone I’ve forgotten how thrilling it is, and for the next few moments I don’t ever want this to stop.
Only my bladder’s got other ideas.
It twinges. I try to ignore it and not to think about the litre of Diet Pepsi I drank in the cinema. Instead I cross my legs and concentrate on James’s tongue, his hands, which are wandering round my ribcage and, hopefully, any time soon, up my T-shirt . . .
But it’s no good. My bladder feels as if it’s about to burst. ‘Where’s your bathroom?’ I ask, pulling away reluctantly.
‘On the right, through the bedroom – it’s en suite.’ He smiles up at me, untangling his hand from behind my neck as I stand up.
‘Won’t be a minute,’ I whisper, and attempt a flirtatious smile as I sashay across the living room.
Once out of sight in the hallway I make a mad dash for the bedroom. Like the rest of his flat, it’s immaculate. No overflowing drawers, no clothes or shoes strewn on the floor, which is sort of how I left my own. And then I notice the bed: with crisp cotton bed linen that looks suspiciously as if it might have been ironed, and pillows that have been plumped to an inch of their lives, it stares up at me from the middle of the room.
Despite my bladder, I stare back approvingly. In my limited experience single men and beds do not go together. More often than not it’s just a mattress on the floor, and as for the bed linen . . . it’s either something horribly frilly their mother bought for them or some tattered remnants from their student days. And they never change it. In fact, most single men have no idea that a bad bed can make or break a budding relationship. But then, James isn’t most men.
Feeling a tingle of excitement as I imagine us in his bed later, I hurry through to the bathroom and flick on the light. Aaaah, the relief. With my jeans round my ankles, I glance idly at the clawfoot bath, shiny round silver wash-basin, magazines stacked neatly in the rack next to me. I have a quick rifle through – Investment Today, a Relais Châteaux brochure, Toilet Humour, which is one of those cartoon books you always find in bathrooms – and then, satisfied that I haven’t found anything dodgy, like a dog-eared porno mag, I flush the loo and go to wash my hands.
As I turn on the taps, I check my reflection in the mirror of the bathroom cabinet.
The bathroom cabinet.
Curiosity prickles. But I resist. I can’t possibly look inside his bathroom cabinet. That’s snooping. Who knows what I’ll find?
No sooner has that thought popped into my head than I remember Jess telling me about the time she ‘just-so-happened’ to look under the basin of a man she was dating and found a violet lace bra stuffed next to the spare bog rolls. She was devastated. Not because he was cheating on her with a pretentious wannabe novelist called Sabrina but because Sabrina was a pert little B cup.
And then I have another thought; only this time it’s me and I’m rummaging through Daniel’s glove compartment and finding the packet of condoms . . .
Actually, on second thoughts, maybe I should take a quick look – just as a safeguard.
Opening the door I glance inside. I’m relieved to see it’s all perfectly normal and innocent. Toothpaste, dental floss, Band-aids . . . Oh, hang on, what’s that? Spying a tube at the back I reach for it, and knock over a bottle of aspirin. It crashes into the basin. Oh, shit! I stuff it back on the shelf and glance at the tube in my hand – vitamin E cream.
Which is when I feel guilty. What am I doing? I shouldn’t be rifling through James’s toiletries. I wouldn’t want him looking through my bathroom cabinet, discovering my secret box of Jolen bleach, the emergency tube of Canesten, or the big, unsexy sanitary towels I wear to bed during my period. Shuddering, I shut the door and busily apply a fresh coat of lipgloss. Anyway, why am I bothering about what’s in his bathroom cabinet when he’s out there waiting for me? And blotting my lips with a tissue I hurriedly turn off the light.
I walk back into the living room with an empty bladder and a pair of lips all pink and glossy and ready to be kissed. The sofa is empty.
Oh.
Standing alone in the living room I feel a twang of disappointment, then notice a light in the small office at the end of the hallway. I wander in and find James bent over his laptop, his fingers flying over the keyboard. He looks up. ‘Just dealing with a few emails.’ He extends a hand towards me. ‘I’ve got a client in Sydney, a very impatient client,’ he adds, interlacing his fingers with mine and pulling m
e towards him.
I plop on to his lap and curl an arm round his shoulders in no doubt that this impatient client is going to have to wait. In fact, my mind is already fast-forwarding and I’m debating whether or not I should stay with him tonight or if he’ll respect me more if I go home, when he says, ‘Darling, would you mind if we leave tonight to be continued?’ I’m obviously looking as confused as I feel because he adds, ‘Australia’s nine hours ahead. If I wait until tomorrow morning it will be too late – I’m afraid I really need to work on this tonight.’
Ha, ha, very funny. I search his eyes for a dart of humour, but all I see is his laptop screen reflected back at me. Which is when I know he’s not joking. I’m disappointed and frustrated all at once. ‘Yeah . . . of course,’ I say. ‘That’s fine.’ I force a smile and try not to think of how excited I was about tonight, about all the effort I’ve gone to: shaving my legs, waxing my bikini line, putting on my sexiest underwear just in case. But I can’t help it. I’m miffed. And bloody uncomfortable. Wriggling on James’s knee I try to free my lacy G-string, which has trapped itself up my bottom, but it remains wedged. ‘Actually, I could do with an early night anyway,’ I lie, pretending to yawn.
Brushing my hair out of my eyes, he smiles. ‘So, are you free tomorrow night?’
‘Sorry, I’m busy.’ I’m about to explain that Lionel and I are going to see a new art exhibition in Kensington then decide not to. Childish, I know, but I can’t help feeling a little indignant that James is sending me home and not even trying to persuade me to stay. Honestly, sometimes you can be too much of a perfect gentleman.
‘What about the night after?’
‘I have to work.’
He raises his eyebrows with interest.
‘A mock-Tudor wedding at Hampton Court,’ I elaborate, stiffly.
‘Oh, right,’ he nods seriously, his mouth twitching with amusement. ‘Well, unfortunately I have to go to Zürich on Wednesday for a couple of days.’ He’s looking at me as if he’s weighing up what my reaction will be when he says, ‘What about Friday?’
Be Careful What You Wish For Page 15
