by Fiona Harper
Well, that’s it, then, he thought as he slumped onto the sofa. He’d definitely made the right decision about this place.
He was too late. Claire obviously wasn’t sitting around moping. She was going out. Dating. He wanted to believe she was just making herself go through the motions like he was, and maybe he could have convinced himself of that – if it hadn’t been for that kiss.
He couldn’t even be furious with Doug. After all, as far as Dominic knew, the guy had no idea there’d been anything between him and Claire. He could hardly blame him for stepping in and proving himself the better man.
He put the bourbon bottle down and scrubbed his closed eyelids with the flat of his hand. This is what he’d been afraid of. That, even if he pulled this whole Doris Day trip off, he still wouldn’t be good enough for her. In his braver moments, he told himself he’d be fine, happy that he’d given it his best shot. In reality, he knew he’d be crushed.
Chapter Fifty-One
Hooray for Hollywood
The sun was just rising above the tarmac of Heathrow’s runways. Claire stood at the gate, her face close to the plate glass window, watching the planes tootle in and out. Peggy came and stood beside her. ‘Excited?’ she asked, smiling widely.
Claire nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘You’re not sounding very excited.’
Claire turned to look at her. ‘I am. It’s just …’
‘Nic,’ Peggy finished for her. ‘Or Dominic, or whatever he wants to call himself.’
Claire sighed, walked over to one of the rows of seats facing the window and dropped into one. ‘I should be over this by now. Nothing really happened. Just a few kisses. How was I so stupid, Peg?’
Instead of starting an anti-scumbag-men rant, as Claire had expected her to, maybe had even been secretly hoping for, Peggy sat down beside her. She chewed her lip for a moment. ‘Tell me the whole story again, right from the beginning.’
So that’s what Claire did. She started with takeaway leaflets and bikes and ended with the last note she’d had from him. Just as she finished their row numbers were called for boarding. They got up and shuffled through the queue to show their passports and only really had a chance to talk again when their hand luggage was stowed away in the overhead lockers and their seat belts fastened.
‘Don’t hate me for this,’ Peggy said, as she picked up the safety card and pretended to read it. ‘But I kind of understand why he did it.’
Claire was speechless. She stared at Peggy. ‘You do?’ she croaked, when she finally regained use of her vocal cords.
‘You know, sometimes you can come across as a little …’
Claire raised her eyebrows.
‘Well, a little too perfect,’ Peggy continued, with a grimace. ‘It can be a bit intimidating.’
‘Really?’ she asked, not quite able to believe it. If anyone knew they weren’t perfect, it was her. She’d been struggling against it her whole life.
‘Yeah,’ Peggy said. ‘But once people get to know you, you’re really lovely. It’s just that first impression, you know.’ She went silent for a moment as she carefully put the emergency landing card back in the pocket in front of her. ‘Did he really trick you? About everything? You said you felt there weren’t any barriers between you, that you could tell each other everything.’
‘I thought so.’ She gave Peggy a dry look. ‘But it seems there was quite a lot he left out.’
‘Details,’ Peggy said, her tone slightly dismissive.
‘Important details,’ Claire reminded her.
Peggy looked intently at her. ‘But were they really the most important ones?’
Claire didn’t want to think about that. She’d been churning that over in her head for weeks and she still hadn’t arrived at an answer. ‘How did I miss it all? Am I really that pathetic?’
Peggy shook her head. ‘I think you should give yourself a break. We’re all guilty of seeing what we want to see sometimes.’
The plane jerked as it pulled away from the stand and began to taxi towards the runway. Claire folded her hands in her lap and stared at the back of the seat in front of her as Peggy peered out the window.
Had she? Had she only seen what she’d wanted to see? Had some of the fault been hers too? She thought back over the weeks she’d known Dominic. He’d tried to tell her things a few times, hadn’t he? She’d either brushed off and hadn’t thought any more about it, or had cut him off. He’d even dropped a whopping great clanger at her feet and she still hadn’t tripped over it.
Maybe, instead of asking herself why she hadn’t picked up on the hundreds of little clues that must have been around her every day, she should ask herself why he’d done that, why he’d tried to blow his own plan to smithereens.
She shook her head. He still hadn’t done the right thing. Even if she’d helped him along in his deception. Even if Peggy was right, that he hadn’t been completely fake with her, she still wasn’t sure she could trust him ever again.
The engines began to roar and Claire’s heart began to beat that little bit faster. She always loved this bit of a plane journey, often grinned in her seat while other people gripped their armrests, and even today she felt her spirits lift a little as the jet began to surge forward.
Anyway, she was flying away from all that mess for a week, leaving it all behind. She’d work out what she thought about Mr Dominic Arden when she came home again.
*
Claire stood on one of the upper levels of Hollywood and Highland, a bustling shopping centre in the middle of Los Angeles. Around her, the crowds and tour groups came and went, but she just stood there staring at the vast ‘Hollywood’ sign off in the distance, high on one of the hills overlooking the city.
It had been an amazing couple of days. Despite the eight-hour jet lag, she and Peggy had packed a lot in. They just finished walking the length of Hollywood Boulevard, looking for Doris’s two stars, one for film and one for music. Peggy had even had a little map with the details of where each one was.
Claire had been most surprised at that, because as far as she could see Peggy really wasn’t that organised. When she’d asked where the map had come from, Peggy had just mumbled something about a ‘friend’ giving it to her. Claire hadn’t pushed it. She didn’t really care, and they’d found the stars quickly and easily, rather than having to hike round the block, inspecting however many thousand there were to find the ones that read ‘Doris Day’.
Yesterday, they’d done a limousine tour of stars’ homes, including both of Doris’s that had been in the area, then they’d gone to the Chinese Theatre, the Griffith Observatory. Earlier, they’d spent most of the day at Warner Brothers’ Studios in Burbank. Not only had the trip included a VIP tour, where they’d got to go and look at props, watch things being filmed and peek at bits the usual hoi polloi didn’t get to see, but they’d also had a special private tour too.
Their guide had been Lyle, a former employee of Warner Brothers, who had started there as a runner in the glory days of the studio. He joked that he couldn’t keep away from the place, even now he was retired. When they’d mentioned Doris his eyes had lit up. He said he’d been told that some Doris fans were coming from England and, as he showed them various sound stages and places on the back lot where Doris had made many of her early films, he told them stories of how he’d met her a few times when he’d been little more than a boy.
He’d told them about the bike Doris had loved to ride to get around the studio – the only thing she’d asked for when she’d signed her first contract – and taken them to the wardrobe department where a lovely lady called Josie had had some of Doris’s gowns for them to see. It had been amazing. They’d spent almost all day there and had come away dazed and utterly, utterly star struck.
‘Hey! You still staring at that old sign?’ Peggy said, after bouncing up beside Claire. She’d disappeared to do some shopping and now had several bags looped over her arm.
Claire nodded. ‘I always thought
it was smaller than that when I was little, and that I’d be able to stand beside it and have my picture taken. Now that I’m here I can see how immense it is.’
‘Right. Well, I can see another tour group arriving to gawp at it, so we’re going to have to move, otherwise we’re going to get crushed.’
As they left the viewing area, she turned and took one last look at the sign. It was starting to go a warm yellow as the sun started to dip towards the Pacific.
‘It’s a Thursday,’ Peggy said, ‘and you know what that means … Cocktails! I’m for Sex on the Beach. How about you?’
Claire laughed. She was glad she’d asked Peggy to come with her. She was always full of fun and energy, always ready to have a new adventure or cause a little mischief. Without her, Claire thought she might have just wandered round in a daze, not really taking anything in. For some reason, she was feeling lethargic. Maybe it was the heat of this city in late summer. She was looking forward to travelling up to the Monterey peninsula tomorrow, where they’d hopefully catch a bit of fresh sea air.
‘So,’ Peggy said, as she dragged Claire into a bar and ordered a cocktail for each of them, and a third to sit on the bar, in honour of their missing cocktail night companion. Claire had no doubt that Peggy was a good enough friend to Candy to help her drink hers once she’d dispensed with her own. ‘You never did tell me how your date with dear old Doug went.’
Claire stirred her Titanic – an iceberg-blue martini with ice and fake gems in the glass – and looked at her friend. ‘Kind of like the drink,’ she said, nodding towards it.
‘Disastrous?’ Peggy asked, wincing.
Claire gave a half-shrug. ‘More like, promising start but ended up not being quite what I’d expected or hoped.’ She gave Peggy a sideways look. ‘I kissed him. Or I let him kiss me, to be more exact.’
Peggy was so shocked she almost fell off her stool. ‘You what? I mean, how could you? I thought …’ She paused for a moment, recovered herself. ‘What I meant to say was, I thought you didn’t like him that way.’
‘I didn’t, but I wanted to.’
She’d had to do something to stop herself endlessly reaching for a mirage.
She didn’t want to, but she missed Nick. Stupid, really, as the man wasn’t real, just an invention conjured up by her downstairs neighbour so he could get his own way. It really shouldn’t be possible to ache for him the way she did. It annoyed her that she couldn’t get the fantasy of him out of her head, especially as he would keep wearing rotten, horrible Dominic Arden’s face.
‘I gave that kiss everything, Peg, but there was nothing there.’
‘Poor Doug,’ Peggy said.
‘Poor both of us,’ Claire said glumly. ‘He didn’t feel it either. Seems he’s been barking up the wrong tree all this time.’ She exhaled. ‘I suppose it at least leaves him free to continue his search for the next Mrs Martin.’
When Claire had drunk her iceberg and Peggy had worked her way through her own cocktail and Candy’s ‘Wish You Were Here’, they caught a cab back to their hotel, travelling down the avenues with the outrageously tall palm trees that waved against a painful blue sky. Claire found herself sighing. It wasn’t that she didn’t love being here. She did. It was everything she’d thought it would be and more, but that magic she’d hoped to feel was missing.
She watched the other tourists, oohing and aahing at the sights. None of them seemed to feel a vague sense of disconnection from all the glitz and glamour, and Peggy certainly seemed to be having a whale of a time doing exactly the same things she was.
As they hurried from the cab into the welcome chilliness of their air-conditioned hotel, Claire had to wonder whether it had nothing at all to do with the magic of Tinseltown being missing and everything to do with one particular down-in-the-dumps visitor. It was such a shame, especially as someone up there had served up everything she’d dreamed of and given it to her on a plate.
Chapter Fifty-Two
He’ll Have to Cross the Atlantic
At four a.m., Dominic’s phone vibrated on his bedside table, pulling him out of a patchy and unfulfilling sleep. He rubbed his eyes and reached for it. When he finally managed to focus on the screen, he found a text from Peggy that read: Studio tour done. Lyle amazing! Where did you find him?
Dominic grinned. It hadn’t hurt that he worked in the TV industry. While he was pretty disconnected from the big Hollywood studios, he’d worked with a few people over the years who did and had prodded a few contacts.
I know people who know people, he replied, and then he added, Did C like it?
His heart seemed to bang in his ears as he waited for her reply. It arrived twenty seconds later.
She LOVED it!
He texted a smiley face back and sat there in his bed, the glow from the phone screen lighting up his face, feeling pretty pleased with himself. Peggy had been keeping him updated this way since she and Claire had left for America.
He tapped in the next text: So all going well?
There was a longer wait for Peggy’s reply this time.
Yes …
Dominic stared at the little dots at the end of that lone word. They seemed to speak more than the actual letters did. What’s up?
A few seconds later, his phone rang. It was Peggy. He picked it up. ‘Is everything okay?’ he asked, frowning so deep lines appeared on his forehead.
‘Mostly,’ she replied. ‘Hang on.’
There was a lot of bumping and banging and muffled noise on the other end of the line.
‘Right. I’m out in the hotel corridor now and I can speak a bit more freely,’ Peggy said. ‘We’re just chilling in the room after having our dinner.’ She giggled. ‘All this texting back and forth with you … Claire thinks I’ve got some man wrapped around my finger. If only she knew, right?’
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Peggy? What does “mostly” mean?’
‘Ah.’
‘I know you said Claire enjoyed the tour, but is she not enjoying the trip as a whole? Is there something else I need to do?’
Cripes, this was difficult. Is this how Claire felt every time she planned a trip for someone, always worrying she’d made the perfect choices, got them their money’s worth? If it was, she never seemed fazed by it.
Peggy cleared her throat. ‘It’s something I couldn’t quite put my finger on at first. Claire just doesn’t seem her normal self.’
Dominic’s pulse started to pound. ‘Do you think she’s ill? Do you need to take her to a doctor? I got great insurance if you do!’
‘No. Nothing like that. Calm down. It’s more that I get the sense something’s missing from the trip.’
‘Well, what can I do? How can I make it right?’ He started wracking his brains for the thing he must have left off his list, the thing he needed to book to make Claire’s holiday perfect. ‘What do you think that missing thing is?’
Peggy laughed softly. ‘You, you big lummox!’
Dominic tried to process that, and failed. ‘Me?’
‘Yes, you. She’s experiencing all these emotions about these wonderful experiences you’ve been giving her and I don’t think she knows what to do with them, because the person who created it all is not here. On some deep level that I’m not even sure she’s fully aware of, I think she knows there’s more to this trip than meets the eye.’
‘Me going out there was never part of the plan,’ he said gruffly.
‘Well, change the flipping plan then!’ Peggy replied, sounding more than a little exasperated. ‘You need to get your butt on a plane right now.’
Dominic shook his head, even though a part of him was aware she couldn’t see him. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ he said slowly. Wouldn’t it just look as if he’d been manoeuvring behind Claire’s back for his own ends? She’d hardly respond well to that.
‘Dominic? What are you afraid of? Just come. She needs you.’
Then there was shuffling, scuffling noise and muffled talking. He could hear Peggy s
aying something along the lines of, ‘No … No … It’s fine … I’ll be finished in a minute.’ Then her voice came loud in his ear. ‘That’s Claire getting suspicious. Gotta go!’
And then she really was gone. He stared at his phone.
Go to LA? Was she nuts?
She’d wanted to know what he was scared of? Everything!
He had no idea if Claire was even ready to see him again, let alone speak to him, let alone turn up on her dream holiday. It was a long way to go to get shot down in flames.
He knew how badly that felt, how much it stung when you put everything you had on the line for a woman and she looked you up and down and decided to return you for a refund. But one thing that Peggy had said kept worming its way through his brain. She’d said Claire needed him.
He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had thought that about him, but he also didn’t want to be the one to let Claire down again.
While he was turning that thought over in his mind, looking at its shape from every possible angle, his gaze drifted to the indistinct lump of his rucksack that he’d slung in the corner of his bedroom.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Que Sera, Sera
Claire and Peggy had been in Carmel-by-the-Sea for a day and a half. It was the most amazing place, tucked away on the south edge of the Monterey peninsula. The drive up here in an open-topped sports car, provided as part of the competition prize, had been amazing—a winding highway, curving round a dramatic coastline with the pounding Pacific breakers below.
The town itself was unlike anything Claire had ever seen in America before, a hub for artists and creative types. The houses were small and quaint, a far cry from the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles. It sort of reminded her of the Cotswolds – on speed. There were quirky little cottages everywhere, so tiny she could hardly believe a family could fit in them. Many had tall stone chimneys and leaded windows in odd shapes and their roofs rose into high, pointed gables. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see a fairy tale princess sweeping the steps or a group of hobbits through the window, sitting round the fire and trying to outdo each other with their tall tales.
