The Plus-One Agreement

by Charlotte Phillips

  So she’d dumped him.

  No one dumped him. Ever. And now she’d done it twice in the space of a couple of months.

  The confused feeling of a loss of control which had buried him the first time, back at the art gallery, kicked right back into action. Had that really only been a month or two ago? It felt like years.

  He wasn’t going to make the same mistake again—grappling for control of the situation and leaving himself open to a second body blow.

  Except it really hadn’t been just a body blow, had it?

  Let it go.

  In the first defiant moments after she’d left him to sort out the embarrassment in the restaurant that had felt doable. He didn’t need this kind of chaos in his life. That had been the whole point of keeping relationships distant. He’d had a lucky escape.

  In the ensuing days it had become more and more difficult to keep himself convinced of that. It wasn’t as if he’d let her have an access-all-areas pass to his life after all. Their paths crossed at work functions, they communicated via e-mail and the occasional phone call. Businesslike. At arm’s length. She’d visited his flat on two or three occasions—never when it was just the two of them. So it wasn’t as if her absence left a gaping hole in his life where she’d previously been. How could you miss something that you never had?

  He knew that was possible better than anyone.

  Somewhere in the depths of his consciousness he understood that what he was missing was the way she’d made him feel—the way she’d altered his take on life.

  He’d spent so long making sure no one became important to him, but she’d somehow managed to get past that barrier. She’d done it so quietly that he hadn’t realised how much he needed her until she was gone, so perfect had his conviction been that he had everything under control.

  It had seemed like the perfect solution—the perfect way to keep things at the comfortable distance he’d thought he needed. Why not just reinstate the old social agreement? Keep their relationship grounded in something that was tried and tested? Keep some areas of his life untouched rather than investing his entire soul in something that might fail?

  And in his stupid arrogance he’d just expected her to go along with his every whim, just to accept that their relationship had a work slant to it. Especially after her revelation about her age-old crush on him. She’d taken whatever he’d thrown her way for the last year, never asking for anything in return, and he saw now that he’d just taken that for granted.

  If anything he admired her all the more for finally standing up for what she wanted. She’d wanted out because she wasn’t prepared to settle for second best. After years of playing second fiddle to Adam and then being trounced by that moron Alistair Woods she’d been ready to risk everything to be with him and he’d failed her. He’d been too afraid to reciprocate.

  The flat that she’d barely visited now felt empty where it had always felt relaxing. So far removed from any family vibe, he’d been able to look around him and know he’d built a new life—one that was successful, one that couldn’t collapse under emotional rubble. The prospect of living here now felt empty. He’d had a taste of a different life. He’d tried to keep it in check. But apparently a taste was all that was needed to suck him totally in.

  He was in love with her. And it was too late now to guard against loss because the damage was done. He’d screwed up.

  He glanced around the balcony—hot tub with its cover on in the corner, railings with a sheer drop below. What had she said—his life was child-unfriendly? It was. Deliberately so. Only now he began to question whether he still wanted that. Whether he ever truly had.

  He moved back inside and slid the double doors shut. The flat was totally silent and devoid of character. No mess. No clutter.

  He could let this go. See if he couldn’t put it behind him. Hell, work had done the trick before—it might do it again. Perhaps if he ceased eating and sleeping and all other essential functions, doubled the effort with his business, he could crush her from his mind.

  Or he could take a risk.

  He glanced around him again. What, really, did he have to lose?

  * * *

  ‘...and Adam and Ernie are heading back from Mauritius. Adam’s already got a ton of interest in his new planned collection of pictures and there’s talk of them being immortalised on table mats and coasters. Can you imagine?’ Her mother paused a moment to let the enormity of that fact sink in. ‘That’s the kind of mass appeal he has.’

  Emma held the phone briefly away from her ear. Dan should have held out for a share in Adam’s business in return for helping him. He could have made a mint. Then again, it would have been another tie, another responsibility, another link to a family he wanted to keep at a distance. Of course he wouldn’t have wanted that.

  She gritted her teeth hard and forced Dan out of her mind, to which he seemed to return at the slightest opportunity.

  She put the phone back to her ear.

  ‘What about you? Any news?’ her mother was saying. ‘Is that Dan showing any signs of making an honest woman of you?’ She gave the briefest of pauses, clearly believing the answer was a foregone conclusion of a no. ‘Thought not. Work, then?’

  How many times had Emma had varying versions of this same conversation? Made the right noises just to avoid interest and interference, just to keep her comfort zone comfortable? She never had any new successes to hold up to her mother’s scrutiny, but she never had any epic failures, either. Comfortable, uncomplicated middle ground. And where exactly had it got her?

  She opened her mouth to give her mother some stock fob-off—something that would buy her another couple of months below the radar before she had to repeat this whole stupid fake conversation all over again. Probably it would be something about her legal career boring enough to have her mother fast-forwarding onto her next gossip morsel before she could scrutinise Emma’s life beyond the surface. It had worked like a dream these last few years.

  For the first time in millions of conversations she hesitated.

  She was the most miserable she could ever remember being and the hideous pain was sharpened to gut-wrenching level because she’d known that brief spell of sublime perfection before Dan had reverted to type. In actual fact there had been no reversion. He’d never left type. It had all been a façade.

  Was there any aspect of her life left that was real or of value?

  ‘Dan and I aren’t together,’ she blurted, then clapped a hand over her own mouth in shock at her own words. ‘We never were.’

  Except for a week or two when I thought I was the stand-out one who could change him.

  ‘We work together and we had an agreement to stand in as each other’s dates at parties and dinners.’

  For the first time ever there was stunned silence on the end of the phone and Emma had the oddest sensation in her stomach. A surge of off-the-wall indignant defiance. She picked it up and ran with it.

  She really had been wallowing in the role of Adam’s underachieving sibling all these years, kidding herself about how hard that was, when in reality it had been the easy option. Pigeonholing herself as failure meant she had absolutely nothing to live up to.

  She didn’t need to define herself by her childhood inadequacies—she had known that for years—but knowing it really wasn’t enough. The real issue was whether or not she’d truly bought into that. Or had a part of her remained that sweaty-palmed kid on the stage in spite of the passing years?

  For the first time she took a breath and really did buy into it. Just how much of her inadequacy was she responsible for? Who had put Adam on a gilded pedestal and kept him there? Guilty as charged. It had been easier to live in his shadow than to prove herself in her own right.

  Had it in some way been easier to accept the categorisation of herself as the clumsy one? The underachie
ver? The let-down? The singleton? No relationships for her, because that would lead to rejection. Just oodles of work, because that was the one thing she could feel good at, because it depended only on her. Had it been easier to blame her family for her failures instead of living an actual functional, healthy life?

  ‘I’m taking a sabbatical from work,’ she said. ‘I’m going travelling.’

  All that excitement she’d had about going away with Alistair, about escaping her dreary old life where everything was safe and secure and devoid of risk, made a cautious comeback. When she’d finished with him she’d finished with all of that, too. But now that Adam’s wedding was over and the train wreck that was her friendship, relationship, romance with Dan was finished—she wasn’t even sure what the bloody hell to call it—what exactly was there to keep her here? Why the hell did she need Alistair on her arm to have an adventure of her own?

  She had absolutely no idea what she wanted in life any more, so why not take the time to find out?

  * * *

  She slid her bag from her shoulder and sat down at a pavement café overlooking the harbour. She ordered coffee and watched the bustle of tourists passing by, queuing for boat trips, browsing the local shops, fishing. The sun warmed her shoulders in the simple linen dress she wore. Just time for a coffee before her own boat trip departed—a day cruise around the island.

  She looked up as someone snagged the seat opposite her with their foot, and her heart leapt as they pulled it out and sat down.

  She must be seeing things. Maybe that was what happened when you missed someone enough—no matter how stupid and pointless missing them might be.

  He took his sunglasses off and smiled at her, and she knew instantly that for all her telling herself she was way over him her thundering heart had the real measure of things.

  ‘How did you find me?’ she said.

  He motioned to the waiter, ordered coffee.

  ‘I had to ask your mother.’

  Damn, he’d been serious about tracking her down, then.

  ‘And how did that work for you?’ She kept her voice carefully neutral.

  ‘Well, it was no picnic, I can tell you.’

  ‘She doesn’t know where I’m staying,’ she said. ‘I’ve been picking up accommodation as I go along, depending where I want to go next.’

  ‘I know. Didn’t sound like you. What—no agenda? No travel itinerary?’

  She grinned at that. At how well he knew her.

  ‘My life’s been one massive agenda these last few years—all about what impression I want to give to this person or that person. I needed a change. My mistake was waiting for someone else to come along and instigate that instead of biting the bullet myself.’

  ‘She told me you’d been e-mailing her, and she knew you’d booked a boat trip from here today. She just didn’t know what time.’

  She stared at him.

  ‘You mean you’ve been hanging around here all day on the off-chance I’d show up?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘It was a good chance, according to your mother.’ He paused. ‘It was the best shot I had.’

  Bubbles of excitement were beginning to slip into her bloodstream. She gritted her teeth and took a sip of her strong coffee. Nothing had changed. Nothing would. He might have jetted out to see her but it was still the same Dan sitting opposite her. He probably just wanted the last word, as usual. He earned a fortune. A plane trip to the Balearics was hardly going to break the bank. She wasn’t going to get sucked back into this—not now.

  ‘It wasn’t particularly easy to persuade her to help me, actually,’ he added. ‘Since you told her our relationship was fake.’

  She looked sideways at him, one eye squinting against the sun.

  ‘It was, Dan,’ she said.

  He leaned forward, his elbows on the table, and for the first time she saw how strained he looked.

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘Why did you come here?’ she said. ‘To make some kind of a point? To finish things between us on your terms? Go ahead and have your say, if that’s what you need for closure. Get yourself the upper hand. I’ve got a boat to catch. I’ve got plans.’

  She moved her hands to her sides and sat on them to maintain some distance between them.

  ‘I know that’s how I’ve behaved in the past.’ He held his hands up. ‘I hated it when you met Alistair and pulled out of our stupid agreement. I’ve spent years making sure I’m in charge in every relationship I have. I’ve built a life on controlling everything around me. When you just dumped the whole thing without a moment’s thought I just couldn’t let it slide. I manipulated the situation until it worked in my favour—agreed to bring the agreement back just so that I could be the one to pull out of it. I thought I’d totally nailed why it bothered me so damn much. I thought it was about calling the shots. But really I think you’ve always meant more to me than I realised.’

  He paused, held her gaze.

  ‘I didn’t track you down so I could make some kind of a point. I came to apologise and to try and explain.’

  Her stomach was doing mad acrobatics and she moved one of her hands from underneath her legs and pressed it hard.

  ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘I told you how things were with Maggie,’ he said. ‘The thing is, it wasn’t just a break-up with Maggie—something that’s tough but that you reconcile in time. There was this underlying feeling I’ve never been able to shake—that there was my one chance and I lost it. I never had that sense of belonging when I was growing up, and when Maggie got pregnant it felt like a gift. It was my opportunity to have a family and I would have done whatever it took to protect that.’

  He sighed.

  ‘Of course what it really boiled down to was an idea. I had this whole idealistic future mapped out in my head. Birthdays, holidays, where we were going to live. My family was going to want for nothing. I think Maggie understood the two of us better. If I’m honest, when she walked away, I think losing that whole dream future I’d been cultivating hurt a hell of a lot more than losing Maggie. I knew it, too, you see. It wasn’t really working between us. If she hadn’t got pregnant we might have carried on seeing each other for a few more months, then we would have gone our separate ways—wherever our work ambitions led us. We were fun. We were no-strings. It was never meant to be anything serious. Her pregnancy changed all of that. A baby on the way is one hell of a big string attached. Maggie didn’t want me to look out for her. After we lost the baby it became very clear that for her any future we had together was gone. There was no alternative future—not for Maggie. She found it easier to cut all ties than to stick it out with me. And I knew that she was right. Because family hasn’t exactly been my finest hour, has it?’

  She held his gaze. She couldn’t stop her hand this time as she reached across the table and touched his arm lightly.

  ‘None of that means you’re some kind of failure. It just means you haven’t given yourself a proper chance.’

  ‘I had absolutely no desire to give family a proper chance. Not when it ended up like that. It just seemed easier to accept that I’m not a family guy. And there were compensations.’

  He gave her a wry smile. She smiled back.

  ‘You mean your little black book of girlies?’

  ‘I thought if I was going to cut myself off from family life I might as well make the most of what the bachelor lifestyle has to offer. Don’t get the idea that I’ve wallowed in misery for the last ten years or so, because I haven’t. I’ve had a brilliant time. It’s only very recently that...’ He trailed off.

  ‘What?’

  He looked at her then and the look in his eyes made her heart flip over.

  ‘That it began to feel...I don’t know...hollow. Nothing seemed to give me the buzz that it used to. I kept
trying to up the stakes—pitching for tougher contracts, brainstorming new business ideas. Dating just lost its appeal. I felt like I was doing the rounds—the same old thing, the same old conversations. I couldn’t work out what it was I needed to fix that. And then you met Alistair.’

  She glanced along the harbourside. The queue for her boat trip was gradually diminishing as people stepped into the boat. She should wrap this up...crack on with her plans.

  But hearing him out suddenly felt like the most important thing in the world. She told herself it didn’t mean her resolve was weakening, and for Pete’s sake there were other boat trips.

  ‘I don’t think I’d considered you in that way before. I hadn’t let myself. I’d conditioned myself to centre everything in my life on work. But suddenly you had all these big plans—you were buzzing with happiness, you were taking a risk—and I was stuck there on the same old treadmill. I didn’t like it. I think I was fed up with my own life. But it’s been so long. I’ve really typecast myself as bachelor playboy. I thought that was who I am. I didn’t think I could be anyone else.’

  She covered his hand with hers and squeezed it.

  A sympathy squeeze. Not a leaping-into-your-arms-is-imminent squeeze. The hope that had begun to grow in his heart when she hadn’t simply left the table at the get-go faltered.

  ‘Alistair did me a favour,’ she said. ‘Until I met him I think I could quite easily have carried on in that same old rut I was in, pretty much indefinitely. Thinking one day you might come to your senses and show some interest in me—’

  ‘Emma...’ he cut in urgently.

  She shook her head and held up a hand to stop him.

  ‘The crazy thing about that was that I knew exactly what you were like. I’d seen it first-hand for months. Different women, same old short-term thing... You never changed for any of them. I used to think they were mad—couldn’t they see what you were like? Didn’t they know it was a recipe for disaster, getting involved with you? And then I went right ahead and did exactly the same thing.’

  ‘It wasn’t the same. You and I are different. I’m different.’