By lunchtime, I’d already decided I had to feedback and suggest we change these sessions. I wasn’t going to work hard recruiting amazing new staff only for them to waste a week of their lives like this. I wrote a bunch of notes about how the information could be cut down and the training made shorter and more interactive.
I did learn an awful lot of facts about the company and its board of directors though, so I couldn’t say it wasn’t informative. Just boring as hell and not particularly inspiring.
Lunch was better than I expected; fish finger and tartar sauce sandwiches for me and a text from Tom to make me smile:
Hope you’re having a good day x
By five, I was about ready to slap Cathy, and I’m not usually a violent person. Finally, she told us to go and enjoy dinner at the hotel and that she’d see us in the morning. Ten weary bodies lifted themselves up and we made our way to the hotel next door. We agreed to freshen up and meet in the hotel restaurant at seven.
“Frankly, I think we all need a drink!” Sam, a man as big as a bear who’d looked like he might nod off throughout the whole day, told the group as we headed off to our separate bedrooms.
I went up to my room and flopped on the bed. I’d never exactly felt like I was living the dream with my chosen career, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever had a day quite as boring as this one.
I was just wondering what Tom was doing that very moment when he rang me.
“Hi,” I said, excited to hear his voice.
“Hello, you okay?”
“Yeah, you?”
“I’m great.”
Huh. Great without me? That hardly seemed worth stating. He shouldn’t sound so upbeat.
“Good journey?”
“Come down to reception.”
“What?”
“I’m in reception!”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
He hung up and I stared at my phone for a moment. I rushed to my bag, pulled out a change of clothes, checked my face in the mirror, smoothed my hair down with my hands and rushed out of my room and down the hotel stairs. I didn’t take lifts these days, too scared of them breaking down. Luckily I was only on the second floor so hopefully I didn’t look too red and flustered as I burst into the lobby to see Tom talking to some woman about my age and scribbling an autograph on a piece of paper for her. She very gratefully thanked him and he turned away to face me.
“Don’t hug me right now,” he said, touching my arm. “She’s still watching.”
I glanced over his shoulder. He was right. “Let’s walk to my car.”
“I just need to tell the others…”
He waited and I left a hasty message with reception to let my colleagues know I’d see them in the morning.
Oh wow. He was here. Tom had stayed. Was it for me, or had his meeting been cancelled anyway?
“Right,” I said turning back to him. He grinned at me.
“Dinner? At the original hotel?”
“Please!”
He led the way out to the street and to his waiting Porsche. “Hop in.”
“I love your car,” I told him, sliding into the comfiest seat I’d ever had in a vehicle. Maybe even the comfiest seat I’d ever had, anywhere.
“Thanks. I like it. Now greet me properly.”
I leaned across and kissed him on the lips. I needed to tell him about being a Four Apes fan before I chickened out. I promised myself I’d do it before we reached the hotel.
He started up the engine and pulled away.
“Sorry about that, in the hotel I mean. It doesn’t happen very often anymore, but that woman was an old Four Apes fan and she wanted an autograph. She was a bit over-excited.”
“That’s okay. It must be pretty nice meeting fans even after all this time?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes. Trouble is, they think they already know me, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said. I realised I thought the same thing, once. Now I’d spent time with him, I realised that I didn’t really know him before. I knew facts but I didn’t know him as a person.
“Have you ever dated a fan?” I asked, not sure what I wanted his answer to be.
“Sure, at the beginning. But then it got a bit odd, and you never knew if they really liked you or they just wanted to be with the guy in the band, you know?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And so I kind of promised myself I wouldn’t ever do that again. Ever.”
Hmm. He won’t ever date a fan. Ever. He’d said ‘ever’ twice so he must have been pretty sure on that point.
So, I was going to have to rethink that whole truth thing.
“Fair enough.” This was about all I could think of to say.
“Are you happy to eat at the hotel again?”
“There’s still lots of things on the menu I want to try.”
“Great. We could walk around the lake, after. Then I’ll drop you back, or you could stay with me and I’ll drive you back in the morning.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d love to stay.”
“Good. I’d like that.” He squeezed my thigh without looking away from the road.
“I love this song,” he said, turning the radio up. I’d barely noticed it was on, I was so in awe of his presence again. I let him enjoy the song, singing along in his amazing voice. Such a wasted talent that he wasn’t still recording.
“Why did you stop? I mean, singing? You could’ve gone solo like Jasper,” I told him.
“I did. I released a solo album. It tanked.”
How did I not know that? Why didn’t I buy it? Too much obsession for Jasper that I forgot the others? I felt bad now.
“Why? I mean, you guys were huge, weren’t you?”
“Yeah, we did well. But I wasn’t the star like Jasper. It’s fine, I prefer writing.”
We pulled into the long sweeping driveway and I saw the hotel again.
“It’s so lovely here,” I said, remembering the first time I’d seen it. We got out of the car and walked down to the lake holding hands.
“So, how come you’re not in London?”
“I moved my meeting to next week.”
“Why?”
I thought I knew why, but I didn’t want to be presumptuous.
“Sit with me.”
We sank to the grass and sat with our knees bent, facing the water.
“Truth?”
That was beginning to be our catchphrase and I felt a little guilty that I hadn’t exactly given him the whole truth. But I hadn’t lied, had I? He’d never asked me if I’d been a fan. He’d never asked me if I’d met Jasper. I was just omitting a few facts. Omission is way better than lying. Right?
“Of course. Go ahead. Truth,” I told him.
“I know this might sound really corny, but I wanted to spend more time with you. I know you’ve got your training course to go to each day and I can only see you in the evenings, and if this is too much and you’d like me to give you some space that’s fine. But I didn’t want to go, if I’m honest. I thought I’d miss you too much. I know we only met a few days ago but I’m not ready to drive away from you right now. How’s that for a truth?”
I looked at him, in shock, hardly believing what he’d said. He’d spurned Beyoncé – or some other less exciting star probably, but still – for me?
“Is that okay?”
I nodded.
“Say something.”
“I’m very happy that you stayed.” I smiled at him.
He let out a sigh of relief. “Good.”
I rested my head on his shoulder and didn’t care about the dampness seeking through from the grass to my bottom. I didn’t care about Jasper Ryan or Four Apes or ex-Jon or work or anything. Only me and Tom. Falling in love. That’s what this was, wasn’t it?
“Sorry, we’re getting wet aren’t we?” Tom said, lifting me up. I pulled him back down and we lay on our backs. “I don’t care,” I told him.
The sky was a beautiful shade of blue and we watch
ed the clouds for a while, Tom pointing out shapes and making me laugh.
“That one there definitely looks like a frog,” he said, pointing up.
“If you say so,” I told him, trying to see it.
“And that there, looks like a massive cock.”
I giggled. We stared up for a while in silence.
“Come on, sit up, we’ll get a chill.”
He got up and held out his hand to pull me up with him, then we went and sat on the bench where we’d first met.
“So how was your day?”
“Boring as hell.”
“You should feed that back.”
“I’m going to. I’m going to get it changed as soon as I get back.”
“Good for you.”
“At least I have the evenings to look forward to now.”
He turned his head to look at me and I looked right back.
“Hungry?”
“Starving.”
Chapter Ten
The restaurant was as lush as ever, as was the bedroom fun we had straight afterwards. No matter how many times we made love, each time he made me gasp. Each time he found a new area of my body he claimed he hadn’t given enough attention to yet. He made me feel worshipped. And sexy. And amazing.
The rest of the week passed by with much of the same routine. Tom would drive me into Carlisle each morning, I’d do my best to try and not fall asleep while Cathy – and occasionally someone else – droned on and attempted to teach us every detail about the company since some man named Dan Lindo had started it, back in 1983.
The other newbies were a nice enough bunch. There was Rosalie from Marketing in the California office, she was chirpy but missing her family and talked non-stop about her kids during our lunch breaks. Sam and Mike, also from Milton Keynes, worked in IT. Rainer from Germany worked in finance, Sue was from Birmingham and barely spoke to any of the rest of us, and Vince, from London, was cute and a flirt and would’ve been my crush for the week had I not met Tom first.
At the end of each day Tom waited outside for me in his Porsche and we’d go back to his hotel, eat, walk around the lake if it wasn’t raining, then go up to his bedroom. The days dragged on and the evenings raced by far too quickly.
Friday came and finally my induction was over. I thanked Cathy and arranged for a telephone call to discuss improvements to the week when I got back to the office, which I was dreading. I had to find a nice way to tell her that the induction sucked big time and she needed to liven it up.
I worried every day about how I’d possibly make things work with Tom when we got home. Different worlds, different lives. I had a job to go to, I ate Pot Noodles for dinner regularly. I had my ordinary routine. He had meetings with pop stars, ate at the Ivy regularly, and had a routine that consisted of flitting between his luxury London pad and his villa in the south of France. How different could two worlds be? How could we merge them?
I wanted to talk to him, but not scare him off. I tried to live for the day, but it was hard not to worry about how less perfect it’d be when he wasn’t around all the time.
Although I’d told Tom to go ahead without me, he was waiting outside the hotel ready for me to follow him home in convoy. I’d warned him my little car couldn’t go as fast as his, but he didn’t seem to mind. We stopped a few times for a break and finally made it back to my house about eight in the evening.
“This is cute,” he said, taking it in as he got out of his car. I was pretty sure I’d never seen anyone park a Porsche in my street before. In fact, I was pretty sure no one who’d penned seven number one singles had ever parked in my street before.
“You mean small,” I said, grinning at him.
He walked up my driveway and put his arm around me. “Big enough for two?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s big enough.”
I let him in and he stood looking at the books on my shelves while I made us a cup of tea. I silently thanked my previous self for putting all my CDs into a box in the loft when I’d made the move to digital music. He didn’t need to see I had every single CD Four Apes or Jasper Ryan had ever released.
“Chinese, pizza, Indian?” I asked him, holding up my takeaway menus.
“Chinese?”
We spent a while deciding what to have before I ordered it, then sat down together on my little brown leather sofa. It felt kind of surreal, to take him away from that grand hotel and put him in my house. Was this really happening?
“I like what you’ve done with the space,” he told me. “It’s nice.”
“It’s fine, I guess.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“About eight months.”
“Before that?”
“I lived with my ex. Jon. He… well, he dumped me. He wasn’t who I thought he was.”
“His loss, my gain.”
“You say very sweet things.”
“Just the truth.”
“You should write mushy love songs.”
He laughed. “Good idea, I’ll give it a go.”
“This is weird isn’t it, being here? Being in normality after the grandeur of the hotel grounds?”
“Yeah it is a bit, but you know something? This is better.”
“Really?”
I couldn’t see how.
“This is real life. That was just a holiday. This is real now.”
“This?”
“Us.”
I smiled and looked away.
“Sorry, am I getting too serious?”
“No, not that at all. Truth?”
“Always.”
“This has been the best week of my life.”
“Truth?”
“Always.”
“Mine too.”
“Oh come on, Tom. You’ve travelled the world. You’ve probably played all these amazing concert venues…” There was no probably; I could list most of them. How could hanging out with me, eating lobster and staring out at the Cumbrian rain compare to singing on stage at Madison Square Garden? “You’ve met all these celebrities and done all these incredible things.”
“Ellen.”
“Yes.”
“Stop.”
“What?”
“Trying to get me to prove it to you.”
“Prove what?”
“How I feel about you.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You seem to be worried that I don’t mean what I say, that I’ll run away or stop calling or not turn up. I know it’s a bit scary, but this past week has been the best of my life too and I’m not going anywhere. So relax.”
So, I did. I sat back on my little sofa, in my little house that I could only just afford with the man who could probably afford any house on the market, at least in this locale; with the man who used to be plastered on my bedroom wall. Whose face featured on calendars and in magazines and on mugs. Who wrote songs I knew every lyric to. Who I’d kept all this from, and I decided to let go. He liked me. A lot. He’d proven it, and he was right: I shouldn’t keep needing his reassurance.
We sipped our tea and gave each other goofy grins. The doorbell rang and I jumped up to get our Chinese, which would have tasted better had I not been eating in a five star hotel all week. An hour later and we were all ‘noodled out’. I’d shared the horror story that featured the estate agent from hell, while trying sort out moving into this place.
“Were you hurt, when Jon ended it?”
I hesitated.
“I was heart-broken,” I admitted. “I didn’t see it coming, you know? I thought we were happy. He just blurted it out one evening after we’d got back from my parents’ house. He said he didn’t love me. That he wanted me to move out. And maybe it’d be a good idea for me to find a new job.”
“Wow. Harsh.”
I shrugged. “I’ve felt quite bitter ever since, but you know what? He couldn’t help the way he felt. If he didn’t love me, then he didn’t deserve me.”
Wow, I actually
sounded quite mature. Had I finally moved on?
“Very rational. My ex told me she thought I didn’t have enough purpose in my life. That I drifted too much.”
“And, do you?”
“She was right. And we weren’t a great couple. I let her go and actually felt quite relieved.”
“Things just go stale after a while, I guess.”
He nodded. I wondered for a moment how long I had until he got bored of me, then remembered my ‘let it go’ plan and tried to think more positively.
“You want to go to bed?” I asked him. “I mean, if you still want to stay?”
“Of course,” Tom said, getting up taking our plates out to the kitchen. He washed them up while I wiped up the mess I’d made when serving our food. Then I turned off all the lights and he followed me up my narrow stairs.
“Bathroom, bedroom.” I told him, pointing to the only two doors on the landing.
“Got it!” He said, grinning.
I wondered if he’d ever been in a one bedroom house before; after all, I hadn’t until I viewed this one. He went into the bedroom, shut my curtains and climbed into the left side of the bed; we already had sides after just a week together, and I climbed in beside him and turned off the lamps.
“Truth?” I said.
“Truth.”
“I’m so tired, do you mind if we just go to sleep?”
He laughed. “Of course not.”
He turned to face me in the dark and gave me a gentle kiss.
“My truth now.”
“Yes?”
“This mattress is horrible and tomorrow I’m buying you a new one.”
I giggled. “Sorry about that. You don’t need to buy me anything though.”
“Well if I’m going to be staying here a lot, and I’d like to think I will, then I need a comfy bed. So it’s not just for you.”
“Fair enough,” I told him, kissing his forehead and snuggling into his chest. It’d been a long, long time since I’d had a man in this bed. It’d been the only piece of furniture Jon had let me take; probably because the mattress was, indeed, crap.
“Good night, lovely Ellen.”
He squeezed me tight. All the happy hormones my body could produce were released at once and I felt an overwhelming natural high spread over me.
The Truth About Ellen: A feel-good romantic comedy Page 6
