Love

by Clare Naylor

  The curry was declared a success and faxes of the recipe promised to at least three friends’ offices the next morning and the gathering of the clan transported itself to the living room.

  “Amy, I can’t believe you’ve got this great career now, you were always the flakiest of us all and look at you—high flying and living the glamorous life.”

  “Don’t be silly, Alex, it’s so unglamorous that you wouldn’t believe it. Anyway I only earn about five pence a year.”

  “Which is more than I get in publishing,” moaned Charlie.

  “Yes, but at least you get to meet people with functioning brains,” said Zoe, who’d just started work in the City.

  “I wish. Just lots of lecherous poets.” Charlie tossed her hair back and longed for an office full of stockbrokers to take her mind off books. “Who would be in your fantasy workmate league?” she asked Zoe.

  “Definitely Ken Livingstone,” piped in Sally, “for sheer loveliness value.”

  “Oooh yes, I’d be very happy to share my printer with Red Ken.” Charlie smiled.

  “Oh, come on, girls, what about someone younger?” Zoe said, topping up each glass as though it were a party trick to fill each to the brim.

  “Sting,” Alex thought. “Something about the English teacher in him, d’you know what I mean?” They did and nodded agreement.

  “Chris Evans. You always need someone anarchic in the office.” Charlie had made her choice.

  “Yeah, but wouldn’t it piss you off after a while?” Amy said, piling the plates up in the middle of the table.

  “I think we need someone more decorative, too,” Sally decided, reaching over to take the last chicken breast before Amy whisked it away to the kitchen.

  “Tom Cruise.”

  “God, such a hackneyed choice, Alex, what about someone British?” said Zoe. “What about Rufus Sewell. Or whatshisname, the intense-looking one?”

  “Which intense-looking one?” Amy was about to run to the kitchen as she knew what was coming next, but something glued her to her chair. She changed the CD as a compromise.

  “Orlando Rock?” asked Alex. At which point the music stopped. Amy hiccuped in the corner.

  “Don’t go any further with that one,” she said. They were all looking at her now. What to say? She couldn’t bear to hear anything said about Orlando in her own living room, it would be weird beyond belief. And part of her still had a longing to talk about it. To cast it to her friends like a Frisbee and see what they made of it all. She tried to play down the anticipation, which was just hanging there. “Oh, it’s nothing really, just that, well, I was kind of seeing Orlando. I mean, I’m not anymore, so it doesn’t really matter what you say about him. But, I just thought you should know.” She reached for her glass.

  “Not Orlando Rock, Orlando Rock,” Sally squealed, just checking. Amy nodded.

  “But didn’t I see him in the paper the other day, with what’s her name Swann?”

  “Tiffany Swann,” Amy tried for the casual approach.

  “That’s the one.”

  “Yeah, I’m not really sure what to think. Maybe it was innocent, but still …” She trailed off, not wanting to share her humiliation with so many people just yet, and most of all not wanting any sympathy. If they started to cluck and fuss, she’d probably cry.

  “Wow, lucky you,” said Sally admiringly. Yes, lucky me, thought Amy dryly.

  “So?”

  “So what?” asked Amy.

  “So tell all,” pestered Alex.

  “Well, we met in Dorset, and I saw him in a play, and then bumped into him on a shoot and then the Conran Shop …”

  “Spare us the boring details, Ames, just tell us the scandal.”

  “Nothing, except he took me on holiday to Australia and I thought it was going well but …” Amy’s eyes began to well up. Stop it, Amy, you’re stronger than that. The girls sensed her discomfort and rallied to her rescue. Old chestnuts fell thick and fast but she began to feel better.

  “There’s plenty more fish in the sea.”

  “What a rotten bastard, men just can’t help themselves, can they?”

  “Anyway, he’s not such a great actor. He got a terrible review for something in Time Out the other day.”

  The vitriol flowed along with the wine and soon turned to mirth as anecdotes about the general inferiority of the male population were volleyed back and forth. They were momentarily interrupted by the doorbell, but Amy slipped away to answer it and the battle raged on.

  “Hang on a minute,” she yelled down the stairs. But she couldn’t remember anyone ordering a cab so maybe it was someone’s boyfriend come to infiltrate the ranks on the pretext of being a lift home. She opened the door and nearly shut it again. Orlando. Her heart soared. This was not something that had ever happened to her before. She’d imagined it was just a thing that happened in bad fiction. But here it was going on inside her rib cage. He looked so tired and beautiful she almost couldn’t help herself. But what was he doing here? She couldn’t remember him ever having left his record collection so he couldn’t be coming to collect it. Kiss him? No! Smile? No! Give him hell? The only way to teach them, I’m afraid.

  “Amy.”

  “What the hell?…”

  “I’ve come to explain.”

  “You’re supposed to be in New Zealand.”

  “I came to see you, I tried for days to get through but …”

  “I was away … staying with friends.”

  “Look, do I have to stand here all night or will you invite me in?”

  “It’s a bit awkward, I’m having a dinner party …” So much for giving him hell, darling. Amy could scarcely believe that here he was, large as life on her doorstep, Orlando Rock. The last time they’d seen one another there’d been tears in their eyes and the weeks couldn’t pass quickly enough until they were together again. But now—now Amy was in heightened single mode, he’d abused her loyalty, and (let’s ignore for the minute her own minor aberration in the nightclub) just what was he doing here?

  A face appeared round the wall behind her.

  “Come on, Amy, you’re missing all the juicy bits about Sally’s lingerie party.”

  Alex fell stone silent as she saw Orlando Rock standing in the doorway, barely recognizable behind his tatty beard and oldest overcoat. She sloped off back into the living room and within seconds the laughter upstairs stopped, replaced by expectant silence. Amy and Orlando looked at one another, and she realized that he was in fact fantastically handsome and his eyelashes were all spiky and little-boyish, so she let him in, just to hear what he had to say, mind you.

  “Guys, I’m just going to go upstairs with Orlando for a bit of a chat. You know where the wine is, help yourselves. I’m sure I won’t be long,” said Amy to an expectant room of surprised faces. Well, imagine how you’d feel if you went for supper at your friend’s house and Brad Pitt turned up on the doorstep only to be whisked to the hostess’s bedroom moments later, without so much as a how’s-your-father. They didn’t blame her though, really, they knew it was important and that ordinarily Amy wouldn’t blow out her mates for a man, even Mel Gibson. So with a few of the psychic thought waves that girls, like dolphins, are so adept at they wished her well and she thanked them.

  “It’s this one, isn’t it?” Orlando hesitantly pushed open Amy’s bedroom door.

  “Oh, I really wouldn’t expect you to remember, the amount of bedrooms you have to visit, I’m sure they all start to look the same after a while.” Amy was on fighting form, bolstered by the telepathic moral-support waves coming from the living room. Orlando pretended not to hear the bitterness in her voice and launched into the monologue he’d been planning since yesterday morning when Bill decided he wasn’t any good to them on set because he was behaving like a big girl’s blouse, so put him on a plane to England for a few days’ sabbatical.

  “Amy, I know how it must look and I can’t begin to imagine how you felt when you picked up the newspaper and saw
that picture …”

  “Plural, Orlando, I picked up four newspapers and saw that picture.”

  “Amy, please, can I just explain. If it had been me, I’d probably never have spoken to you again, but you have to believe me, nothing happened between me and Tiffany Swann. Absolutely nothing. She’s been quite persistent but I’m not remotely interested.”

  “Have you any idea how humiliated I’ve felt? How one minute I’m supposed to be going out with the great Orlando Rock and the next he’s carousing round the world with some … some slut of an actress for my friends, colleagues, even my mother to see!”

  “Amy, stop just one minute. Do you believe me?”

  “Do I believe what?” Her voice was so loaded with venom that he instinctively recoiled, reminded of his constant battles with Joanna. But this is different, he told himself, she has every right to be angry.

  “Do you believe that nothing happened, that it was just an unfortunate moment, but perfectly innocent nonetheless, and just happened to be captured on film?”

  “Then why didn’t you phone me when you saw it, let me know all this instead of leaving me to think that if you gave a damn, you’d phone and tell me there was nothing to worry about?”

  “Amy, I did phone, I left two messages on your answer-phone telling you to call me back. When you didn’t I presumed you didn’t want to speak to me.”

  “Which is why you flew all the way here, because you thought I didn’t want to speak to you. That makes sense,” she said sarcastically. Lowest form of wit, Amy.

  “No, I flew here because I like you a hell of a lot and wanted you to hear my apology. I couldn’t just sit around thinking of you being unhappy.”

  “Anyway, you can’t have left any messages, you liar. No one told me.”

  “Hand on my heart, Amy, I left two.” He sensed that her anger was abating a bit and tried to catch hold of her hand, but she snatched it away.

  “Don’t come here with your acting and try to get round me. I’m not stupid, you know.”

  “I know you’re not stupid, darling, but I need to know if you believe me or not.”

  Darling, thought Amy, he called me darling. It had the same effect as a wink does on some people. Ooh, I rather like that, she thought, suddenly seeing his passion in all its wuthering glory. Hmmm, Rochester, very sexy. So it was not because of Orlando Rock’s powers of reasoning or persuasion that he managed on this occasion to win Amy around, although he thought so. Rather it was because, for an instant, in the dim light of her bedroom he looked so like her arch-hero Mr. Rochester that … well, she was putty in his hands.

  “Yes, I believe you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  Orlando’s stomach did cartwheels, and although he sensed that he hadn’t quite heard the last of it, that there would be the odd revisiting of his alleged misbehavior, he was too relieved to care right now. Amy sat there looking as appealing as she could muster in her caftan, and Orlando leaned over and took her hands. She kissed him and thought, wow, this is much nicer than the sweaty Australian kiss, and he thought, thank God I’m here with her and not tormenting myself in deepest New Zealand. And they both forgot about the guests sitting downstairs running out of red wine.

  Until … there was an outbreak of frenetic coughing at the foot of the stairs and only after it had been going on for about five minutes did Orlando and Amy notice. He could tell she’d noticed because her kiss turned into a smile and she slid away shyly.

  “Oh, heavens, I forgot about my party.”

  “They’ll be fine, sweetheart, I’m sure they can let themselves out.” Ever noticed how men will blatantly lie, cheat, or kill to keep the object of their desire in bed once they’re there? No? Try interrupting at half time and your normally honest lesser spotted male will turn into a cross between a member of M15 and Captain Caveman, all scurrilous deception and macho insistence. Just an observation.

  “I can’t just leave them there,” said Amy, scurrying round on the floor trying to find her caftan. “They might need me for something.”

  “And so might I,” said Orlando to himself as she drifted out of the bedroom.

  Her friends stood in a cluster at the bottom of the stairs and were both relieved and impressed to witness her crumpled state.

  “Glad to see someone’s been enjoying themselves,” said Alex with a wink.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, really. Have you had a horrible time?” Amy’s hostess-guilt reared its head, and knowing that if they stayed, they’d be in for a ceaseless barrage of apologies and I’m so terribles, they decided to leave forthwith.

  “No, Amy, it’s been fun. You must all come to me next time.”

  “Yes, none of you have seen my new place—maybe I’ll have a soirée.”

  “Byee, Amy, thanks a lot.”

  “Yeah, the curry was lovely, don’t forget to fax me with the recipe.”

  And they were gone. Scarpered. Every last one. Silence reigned and Amy went back to her room and the dulcet tones of Orlando’s snores.

  “Poor baby, he must be exhausted,” whispered Amy. I think we can also take it from that he was forgiven.

  CHAPTER 24

  It didn’t really occur to Amy and Orlando to wonder why she’d never got the messages he left on the answer-phone; they were too giddy with bliss and relief to care. Perhaps had they had half a brain between them they could have saved a little heartache later, but we have to make allowances for love and hope that the lesson they learn won’t be too painful.

  The flat monsters were just getting ready for work as Amy ventured into the bathroom. Keeping Orlando secret became a full-scale military operation. She closed her bedroom door firmly behind and hoped that Orlando wouldn’t have a sudden urge to shave or shower. No cheery top o’ the mornings to you in this household, that’s for sure. Thank God. Amy tried not to act suspicious as she squeezed back into her room, balancing two cups of coffee on a tray, through a crack about half an inch wide. She’d made it, she’d been over the top and was safely back in the trenches.

  “Let’s go out tonight, somewhere really special,” said Orlando, his head propped against the pillow sipping his coffee.

  “Sounds lovely. Where to?” said Amy, bending over the bottom of the bed looking for the magazine section of the newspaper.

  “I don’t know, we’ll think of somewhere.”

  “Orlando, I’m just going to nip down and phone Lucinda, have a quick chat.”

  “Why not ask her and Benjy out with us tonight?”

  “How do you know Benjy?”

  “ ’Cause he’s Lily’s older brother, we’ve known each other since we were knee-high.”

  “Of course, I forgot. All that whinging I did about you in their kitchen, he’s not a very loyal friend to you—he just agreed with every insult I hurled in your direction.”

  “Probably had more sense than to argue with you, darling,” Orlando said placatingly.

  Amy threw the travel section at him and went to phone Lucinda.

  “Luce, it’s Amy. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

  “No, I was just leaving for work.”

  “Oh, God, it’s Friday, I thought it was Saturday.”

  “Someone had a good night then,” said Lucinda, glad to see old Amy back on form.

  “Luce, I’ll probably be a bit late for work … Orlando’s here.”

  “What? Where?”

  “In my bedroom.” Amy giggled sheepishly.

  “Oh my God, you old fox, what’s going on? One minute you’re cooking curry to mend a broken heart, the next there’s a strange man in your bed!”

  “He turned up, just like that. It was all a mistake, that newspaper story, Luce, really,” Amy reassured her friend.

  “I’m glad, but why didn’t he just phone? Did he come all the way from New Zealand to tell you that?”

  “Yup,” said Amy, proudly ignoring the first question. “Look, we were wondering if you wanted to come out with us tonight, dinner?”r />
  “Love to. You arrange it with Orlando and tell me when you get in to work … shall I expect you at lunchtime?”

  “Okeydokey.”

  Amy went to the kitchen and squeezed some oranges and, in the absence of any random fresh croissants, poured two bowls of shredded wheat instead. Can’t have it all ways, she thought, spontaneity and preprepared sophistication don’t go hand in hand.

  “You mean you don’t always have ready-made postcoital breakfasts prepared just in case?” said Orlando as she told him of the quandary he’d put her in.

  “ ’Fraid not. If you will turn up on my doorstep at eleven o’clock at night, you can eat your shredded wheat and be thankful.”

  “I think not. Get dressed and let’s go out to breakfast,” he instructed.

  Glamour, thought Amy, wondering if people still wore twinsets to Claridges for breakfast.

  “Where to?” she asked hopefully.

  “There’s this amazing greasy spoon in Balham. Let’s splash out and take a taxi.”

  “God, you really know how to woo a girl, Orlando Rock. You’d better be careful or I’ll sell my ‘Mean Love Rat Only Bought Me Breakfast in Joe’s Caff’ story to the Sun,” Amy laughed.

  So they hopped in a cab and the taxi driver insisted on opening the glass flap.

  “You’re that Rock bloke from the papers, aren’t you?”

  “Something like that,” obliged Orlando.

  “ ’Ere, that bird you was with in the paper the other morning … very tasty,” he said approvingly, seeming not to notice that Amy was a living, breathing, thinking individual. Or maybe he thinks I’m Orlando’s sister, we do look quite alike. Like those narcissistic lovers who go out with their spitting image. No, we don’t look remotely alike. Miserable sod, she cursed the driver. Orlando squeezed her hand and kissed her cheek reassuringly, then he slammed closed the cabdriver’s window, not really caring about the inevitable tales that would be bandied around every passenger from here to kingdom come about the “bit of a miserable git really, that Oliver Rock.” Amy trembled at his moodiness and was glad to be on the receiving end of his devotion. Mr. Darcy strikes again, only this time Amy witnessed him in all his splendor. God, he’s sexy, she thought, placing her hand firmly on his thigh.