by Anna Maxted
‘Holly. A spiral is just a bit of fun. It’s not dangerous. It’s like the natural fall of a paper plane. It’s a glider movement, a natural way of swooping. It doesn’t even put stress on the plane. I thought you’d find it exhilarating. I’d never put us in danger. It’s not like a full 360. I’d never do something as brash as that. That’s best left for the circus.’
He patted my knee and I wanted to jam a pencil through his hand. ‘Stuart. You’ve forfeited your right to preach about responsibility. Back. Down. Now.’
The remainder of our flight was conducted in silence. The only talk was with air traffic. Landing was as violent as take-off, but I was too enraged to scream aloud. The rain was fierce as we touched down and we got soaked as we crossed the tarmac, but I was so delirious to be alive I didn’t care. Once we were back in Stuart’s car, he stuck the heating on high and touched my hand.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘if I scared you. I didn’t mean to. I thought you’d enjoy it eventually.’ His blue eyes looked pained, and I knew he meant it. Giddy with the euphoria of cheating death, I banished the nausea to the back of my throat, and sighed. ‘Forget it. You loon.’
Then Rachel’s dress – soaked in the downpour – started to dry, giving off, as it did so, the smell of sicked-up crayfish. That was it for me. What with the terror, the trauma and the shake it all about, the surprise bonus of eau de crayfish puke was more than my guts could handle. I projectile vomited my fry-up, mostly over the cream interior of Stuart Marshall’s Mercedes Kompressor and some over Stuart Marshall himself.
Chapter 4
HE WAS ACTUALLY very kind. I looked at him aghast, straight after I’d finished puking. I’m not sure what shocked me most. The fact that I’d been sick on a stranger and his lovely upholstery, or that so much vomit could fly that fast out of my mouth in a horizontal jet. Stuart’s face, at that moment, was a study in naked horror. The stench grabbed you by the gut and, by the speed of the pulse throbbing in his neck, I thought he might throw up too. That or punch me.
‘My fault,’ he’d said, after a terrible second. ‘Oh lordy, the car!’
Already I felt much better, if a little shaken by ‘Oh lordy’. We both leapt from the Mercedes stink prison, grateful for the fresh sting of the rain. I tore off my soiled pink jumper and Stuart pulled off his sick-splattered shirt, revealing a tight white T-shirt. Very Top Gun. I remembered the blue Speedos. I spat discreetly on the ground before speaking.
‘Stuart,’ I said. ‘I’m so embarrassed. I will, of course, pay for the car to be cleaned.’
I didn’t wish to appear excessively contrite, as privately I felt that none of this was really my digestive system’s fault. I fumbled for chewing gum, and Stuart held up a hand. I noticed that his hair was curling in the wet. My personal preference is straight hair on a man. I find curly hair less masculine. Shame on me. Nick’s hair is caramel – half-way between brown and blond – shiny, thick and straight.
‘Holly, forget it,’ replied Stuart. A moderate impression of a smile. ‘I guess I frightened you up there. As a pilot you reach a certain level of expertise. You get cocky and forget that what’s normal to you isn’t to a non-flier. Don’t fret about the Merc. Camille, my PA, will deal with it, I’ll ring her now, yes, I know – “weekend” – but she’s a saint! She’ll send for it to be picked up. We’ll get a cab to your little motor, nip home to yours, you’ll change, and then I’ll take you to a nice restaurant to make up for scaring the hell out of you.’
I couldn’t quite believe that, A, the man was suggesting food and, B, he wasn’t rabid enough to tear my head off. It didn’t make sense. He was nothing like the Stuart on his application form. That guy had standards like NASA. This one adapted. It was as if he twisted a dimmer switch in his head: FROWN, FADE – SMILE, ON. I didn’t think he was a fake (well, no more than any of us are on a first date). I thought he was reasonable. He could admit he was wrong. I liked that. It was a nice change from what I’d been living with for the past five years.
However, Stuart did not feature in my immediate plans, which were to head home alone for a long bath that would be hot enough to turn my skin pink. So, despite his curt disappointment, I said a polite goodbye at the airport. Stuart rang my mobile three times the following afternoon. (‘He wants to make good on his investment, babes,’ said Rachel.) It was my niggling guilt more than Nick’s swaggering triumph that drove me to call him back a day later. Stuart didn’t seem unpleased to hear from me, if a little piqued that I’d left it twenty-four hours, and we chatted. ‘Unfortunately’, he was off the next morning, a two-week business trip to Bolton. He was ‘gutted’ we couldn’t meet that night. Neither I – nor the agency – had heard from him since.
Despite the unprofessionalism (I shuddered at what he must think of Girl Meets Boy), I’d have left it there. Like every woman who craves respect, I’m a martyr to my career, but there are limits. Sadly, Nige and Claudia, bubbling with evil glee at my misfortune, fostered a communal fondness for the legend of Stuart and wouldn’t let the matter drop. And in a way, he was the ideal escort for me to take to the Girl Meets Boy party. After the vomit episode there was no danger of an unsolicited pounce. Yet, a repeat appearance might convince Nick of our burgeoning love.
Because, predictably, despite my bargain with fate at two thousand feet, I hadn’t marched up to Nick and said, ‘Go’. Back in the real world it wasn’t that simple. Nick hadn’t cheated on me. His sins were not tangible enough to give me the moral right to boot him out of our house. We had the ultimate in complications, a joint mortgage. Not forgetting that I’d ended our engagement and therefore, perhaps, I should have gone. But Nick had insisted I stay where I was ‘for now’. He’d move to Manjit’s. Or so he kept saying, but when? My first date with Stuart had given him a jolt. Maybe a second, albeit a month later, would see him off? I had nothing to lose, or so I thought. My best hope was to insult Nick out of my life, with Stuart’s help.
But you can understand if the prospect of seeing him again didn’t exactly thrill me.
I h’mmed. Claudia still had her legs on the desk and was staring at me expectantly. Nige was filing his nails.
‘If I ask Stuart to the Girl Meets Yob party,’ I said, ‘I’ll have to tell him who I really am. That I own the agency.’
‘So?’ said Nige, blowing fingernail dust. ‘What’s the big deal? He’ll be flattered. It’s not like we charged him for his elite date.’
‘Nige, his elite date cost him about five hundred quid in ground fees and insurance and fuel and steam cleans. He might decide to invoice me. Not that I care about that, it’s more the lie.’
‘What lie?’ said Claudia. ‘Holly, Nige did all the lying, you just turned up. Do me a favour, stop analysing and ask him to the party. We’ve got more serious things to worry about. Like what to wear.’ She swung her elegant legs off the desk and muttered, ‘It’s casual, God help me.’
I gave in and invited Stuart.
On the night of the party, Nick skulked about like a vulture waiting for an antelope to peg it. He knew Stuart was picking me up and was itching to answer the door in a proprietorial way. I was far too tired to do anything but let him. Fortunately I’d had the foresight to explain Nick’s status and mental age to Stuart. After a short, shocked silence, he’d been extremely understanding.
Nick’s feelings were, I decided, the least of my worries. In the end, Nige had convinced me to hire a room at his club. (The amusing thing about Nige’s club was that it was decorated to look about 250 years old yet it had been established for all of seven months. I couldn’t see the pinstriped young fogeys who lolled in its brown leather sofas without thinking, ‘But my dear chaps, eight months ago you didn’t have a club’. It makes me ache, how badly we all want to belong.) I still wasn’t sure it was the best venue for a party.
‘This is a cracking party venue,’ said Stuart, nodding as we stepped into the cold marble reception. ‘I like it. Nice choice, Hol. You’ve got an instinct. That’s why you run a succe
ssful business.’
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nick bristle. So there, I thought. Nick’s behaviour so far that night had been disgraceful. He’d done all he could to cause trouble. He’d begun by asking Stuart to give him a lift to the party and gone on to blurt, accidentally on purpose, that I owned Girl Meets Boy. That was a nerve-shredding moment. Like sticking the last of your rent in a fruit machine and watching your destiny spin. But Stuart had recovered admirably. As I embarked on a speedy damage limitation exercise, his scowl became a smile that spread wide across his face.
‘Well, Holly, a powerful woman like you, choosing me. I’m chuffed as a rat,’ he kept saying. ‘I’m chuffed as a rat.’
I prayed that was a good thing.
Stuart, Nick and I trooped meekly up the wide curling staircase, past a string of stern ancestral portraits – presumably secured last week from Sotheby’s – to the top floor. Oh, now this was special. A high-ceilinged room with huge French shuttered windows, blood red walls, a stone fireplace in which flickered a real fire, a glass chandelier, gilt mirrors, genteelly battered chaise longues and grand bow-legged chairs. If it weren’t for Missy Elliot grinding out orders from the stereo, I’d have felt bad for not wearing a bustle. Nige and Claw surged from the stately gloom in a joyful wave.
‘It’s fine. He knows,’ I mouthed, behind Stuart’s broad back.
Nige took this as a cue to start talking. ‘Well, Hollyberry, what do you think, isn’t it so fab? Isn’t it gorge? Roy in the kitchen says we’re going to have nibbles coming out of our ears. And there’s shedloads of booze, stacks of it. And the bar’s through those doors. No one’ll want to be the first to arrive, the vile shame of looking too eager, so I reckon we’ve got one hour max to get off our heads before the proles turn up, no offence Stuart.’ All lavishly accessorised with hand movements.
Stuart bobbed his head at the ‘no offence’ comment. I smiled and said, ‘It’s fantastic.’ Apologies to the community but the first time I met Nige I thought he was gay. He didn’t seem like a heterosexual male, he was so . . . friendly. When I discovered he was straight I felt cheated. All pizzazz, no action. Then it emerged he was an actor. Alright. Half forgiven. I worry though, that Nige thinks the phrase ‘no offence’ excuses him any slander. (Last week, I heard him on the phone, telling his bank manager he was, ‘A c* * *, no offence’.)
Claudia looked Stuart up and down, then Nick. It was hard for my little sis. She and Nick got on brilliantly, until I broke off our engagement. I knew she lost respect for him when he stayed and stayed, but while her support of my decision was hardline, bordering on virulent, I suspected that secretly she pitied his situation and felt rotten acting cool towards him. ‘Still hoping, Nicky?’ she said, not unkindly.
It was verging on awkward, when a clatter on the stairs made us all turn. The door banged open and in clomped Rachel. She wore a red silky shawl flung around her shoulders and was unbothered at five people scrutinising its stains. Rachel isn’t beautiful but she’s very striking, with fine silky hair and large dramatic features that look clumsily put together. She reminds me of a Picasso. No offence.
‘The usual suspects,’ she said to Nige and Claw, adding, ‘Mwa, mwa,’ rather than put lip to cheek. Pause. ‘Nick.’
Nick moved his head.
‘Rachel,’ I said hastily, ‘this is Stuart. Stuart, my friend Rachel.’
‘Ah-hah. You must be the pilot. The man who scared Holly sick. Not that it matters, babes – that dress has been due a dry clean since Glyndebourne. How many hours have you flown, Stuart? You must be rather advanced to pull a stunt like that.’
‘Oh, no,’ replied Stuart, grinning at his feet. ‘That’s kids’ stuff.’
‘What?’ barked Rachel, who has no concept of false modesty. ‘So you’re not advanced?’
Stuart looked annoyed.
‘Who wants a drink?’ I said. ‘Anyone?’
Nige summoned a barman. I wanted to be sober when my prodigies arrived, so I asked for an orange juice. The furore was such that you’d have thought I’d requested the fresh blood of a murdered child at room temperature, no lemon. ‘An orange juice,’ I restated, as everyone hissed. At least, their mindless communal urge to drive me to drink hacked into the awkwardness, and by the time the first guests poked their heads round the door, everyone was well on their way to getting in the mood.
Running a dating agency is like being a nursery school teacher. You can’t be friends with everyone but you have your favourites. Girl Meets Boy is supposed to be unashamedly elitist, catering for ‘those who are beautiful, inside and out’. That was our USP (excuse me for swearing). But it emerged with our first postbag that pretty much everyone thinks they’re beautiful inside and out, even people who – to quote Nige – ‘are very ugly’.
It reminded me of those self-help books on confidence, briskly advising you to stare in the mirror every day and chant ‘I am amazing’. But what if you’re not amazing?
I couldn’t bear it. I didn’t know how to reject non-beautiful people in a way that didn’t devastate. I kept sneaking them in. Nige had a fit and accused me of ‘diluting our appeal’. When I replied with a mutinous silence, he tried to make me swear I wouldn’t ‘cross-pollinate’. He wanted members to be divided into As, Bs and Cs. At first I thought he meant according to name. But his thinking was more along the lines of Brave New World. Trouble is – much as it pains me to admit it – Nige was right. Good-looking people are intolerant of being fixed up with less good-looking people. They’ll allow us a small margin of error which I push to its limit.
Samantha, for example. She crept in to the party raw with ezcema, in her trademark dungarees. Claudia nudged me. ‘How the hell does Flaky expect to get a man when she dresses like Andy Pandy?’
I sighed. Every time I see Sam, her vulnerability takes my breath away. She makes it hard for herself. There are men who regard weakness on a par with cockroach infestation. They spot it and get the urge to bash it flat with a sledgehammer. Sam applied to GMB because the love of her life ended their relationship. That was six years ago and she won’t stop talking about him.
‘He’s the man,’ she told me sadly, ‘who’s going to ruin my wedding.’ I didn’t say – although I could have – ‘What wedding?’
I was hoping, that night, to introduce Sam to a new recruit, Bernard. Bernard was rare in that he was a fortysomething male who wasn’t looking to meet a twenty-two-year-old girl. Sam was thirty-four. For a woman, in dating agency terms, that’s past it. You think I’m joking? After a year in this business I know that men would rather meet the Devil on a dark night than a thirty-four-year-old woman. To them, thirty-four spells desperate. It means she wants to be married, pop out some kids, yesterday. I like men as a gender, but sometimes I could knock their heads together.
Talking of which, I never got to introduce Sam to Bernard because I was too busy fending off Nick. As you know, Nick has an advantage: he makes me laugh. It kept us together longer than it should. I now realise that his refusal to be serious, while amusing, cut every conversation dead. I’d stop talking to laugh, then lose my train of thought. He’d never encourage me to find it again. If I ever wanted to pursue a discussion to its bitter end, I’d have to bleat, ‘But anyway, to go back to what I was saying . . .’
But after seven weeks of practised frostiness, my armour was chink-free. Nick would not make me laugh. It helped that my members kept rushing up to me, wanting to chat – every time Nick embarked on a quip he got cut off. Stuart, though, wasn’t acting as possessive as I’d hoped. He tailed me like a shadow, fetching me glass after glass – at some point, the orange turned to alcohol but it was rude to object – and resting a hand gently on my back, showing himself to be the gentleman where Nick was not. But he also seemed nervous, as if he didn’t want to trespass. He kept glancing uneasily at Nick.
I couldn’t blame him – with every fresh drink or touch, Nick twitched with menace. While Stuart’s deference was inconvenient, it endeared me to him.
I thought it showed sensitivity. I had a burst of affection. ‘Stuart,’ I said, and curled a finger at him. When he bent his head, I kissed him on the mouth.
Nick flipped.
I felt the breeze as he ran at Stuart and jammed him against the wall. ‘Stay away from her, alright, you little prick! Stay away from her! –’ boff! Through bleary eyes my blearier brain registered that ‘boff!’ was the sound of Nick’s fist making violent contact with Stuart’s mouth. My reflex thought, I’m sorry to say, was ‘Lucky it’s so loud and crowded in here, hardly anyone’s noticed’. In other words, I was less concerned that Stuart might be missing teeth than that the party wasn’t spoiled for my members.
Stuart looked terrified. ‘Take it easy, mate,’ he stammered, his shoulders hunched. ‘Take it easy.’
Now I’m the first to pass blame if I can get away with it, but this was my fault. Again.
‘Nick,’ I said, grabbing him by the collar. ‘Jesus!’ He shook me off and glared at Stuart. I had the urge to say, ‘Hang on, soldier, I thought this was about me?’
Rachel – she doesn’t miss a trick – thundered over. ‘Babes? You okay?’ I rolled my eyes and giggled. Terrible what alcohol does to you, removes your social inhibitions, revealing your more primitive self. My more primitive self is a dumb fool.
‘I’ll deal with the Ex,’ she said quietly. ‘You take the Pilot. Nightmare city.’
She frogmarched Nick to a dim corner like a cop dragging an offender away from a crime scene. I turned to Stuart. He was wiping the blood off his mouth with his sleeve.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, meaning it.
‘That bloke is a fucking nut.’
I made a sympathetic face. I mean, what do you say? Yeah, I know. I dated the man for five years, I agreed to marry him. If he was a fucking nut, it didn’t reflect well on me. But, you know, this was good. Not only did Nick lack the drive to join me in the lovely life I was forging for myself, he had just shown himself to be a thug. He would have held me back. Definitely, definitely, the right decision. All the same, I wasn’t comfortable with Stuart slagging him off. That was my job.
