by Wendy Holden
She took a deep breath, pulled her own copy of All Smiles out of her bag, and went over.
Dylan’s first thought was that Beatrice wasn’t normally early. Far from it, she prided herself on being late. But now he saw that the woman standing before him wasn’t Beatrice. In fact, she was about as far from Beatrice as could be imagined.
Where Beatrice was short, dark and curvy with black hair, this woman was slim and tall with hair so pale it was almost silver. It touched her very straight shoulders and framed her long white neck. Instead of Beatrice’s Venus flytrap eyelashes and painted pillow pout, a pair of wide blue eyes looked down at him from a clear, fresh face with spots of colour glowing in the cheeks.
‘Hello,’ Nell said. Her eyes gathered the details of the face tipped up to her. Long dark brows, straight nose, full lips. The dark eyes had bags beneath, which was not only unexpectedly sexy but fitted with the doctor theory. Long, long hours saving people’s lives.
‘Hello,’ Dylan answered, matching her tone of cautious friendliness. He wasn’t exactly sure what was going on here. But this girl was definitely a knockout.
‘You must be OutdoorsGuy,’ Nell went on.
‘You must be an outdoors guy,’ was how Dylan heard this sentence. It was an unexpected remark, and he still didn’t know why she was talking to him. Of course, there were reasons why a single woman might approach a single man in a big London station. But she didn’t look that sort. Far from it; her silvery fairness had something pure about it.
‘Yeah,’ he said. Sure, he was an outdoors guy. He surfed, did he not?
This brought forth from her a smile that dazzled him. He watched, spellbound, as she glanced down at the copy of All Smiles on the table. She then produced her own out of her bag.
And with that, all was clear. She was a fan, Dylan realised, disappointed. Despite the fact he no longer had a beard, she had worked out who he was. She liked his novel, that was all. No doubt she just wanted her book signed.
He was just rummaging for his pen in his bag when he heard her speak again, saying something so odd that Dylan stopped his search and looked back up at her.
‘What was that?’ he asked.
‘I think Dylan Eliot’s a great writer and I can’t wait for his next book,’ Nell repeated obligingly.
Dylan narrowed his eyes at her. Was this some strange third-person manner of addressing him? ‘I’ve heard it’s on its way,’ he said, watching her reaction.
Nell’s face lit up. ‘Great. I really enjoyed All Smiles. Didn’t you?’ she asked him.
Dylan was confused once more. So she didn’t think he was Dylan Eliot after all. But why did she think that she knew him?
‘What’s your name?’ he asked, to make it clear that he didn’t know her. Now she would realise she had mistaken him for someone else.
She didn’t seem to. ‘Nell,’ she answered, as if the question was expected.
Nell. It rang in his head like a well-tuned bell. Dylan decided that he didn’t care why she was here. He was too tired. He just wanted to look at that face, stare into those wide blue eyes.
‘Can I get you a drink?’
Nell, who had been about to make the same offer, nodded hurriedly.
Waiting at the bar, Dylan found his gaze drawn back to the gleam of her hair. Who was she, this mysterious blonde from out of the blue?
Someone who thought he was somebody else, was the only answer that mattered. The decent thing would be to admit that he knew this.
But if he did she would only leave. And he wanted her to stay and tell him her story. He was sick of thinking about his own. He wanted to know all about her.
CHAPTER 6
‘What wines do we have?’ repeated the barman incredulously to Dylan as the barflies chortled. ‘Just the two, mate. Red or white.’
‘Oh. Right. Well, white then. Thanks.’
He returned, rather abashed, to the table with the drinks. Her smile of thanks made him feel better immediately.
‘Do you work round here?’ Dylan began, just before Nell could ask the same question.
‘I work at home. I write.’
‘Write?’ Dylan repeated, suspicious again. Was that what this was about? She was a budding novelist, wanting tips?
‘Only catalogues, it’s pretty mundane really. Nothing like writing something like that.’ She gestured at his copy of All Smiles.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Dylan said feelingly, before he could stop himself. ‘Writing novels can be pretty mundane. Um, or so I’ve heard. Er, what sort of catalogues?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘They’re pretty silly, some of them. About underpants with Latin mottoes and, uh, gramophones with horns on that look Thirties but are actually cutting edge technology.’ She stopped, her face flaming. What had possessed her to talk about underpants and horns?
‘But you want to do something else?’ Dylan guessed, still braced for the declaration that she longed to be an author.
‘Yes. But I don’t know what.’
She wondered how it was that, a mere few minutes after meeting him, she was touching on such matters as this. She found herself waiting for his response as if he really had the answer.
If she really was a literary groupie, Dylan was thinking, she was taking her time to declare the fact. ‘You hadn’t thought of writing something else?’ he prompted. ‘Something a bit more . . . substantial?’
Nell shook her head. The most substantial catalogue she knew was the Argos one and that looked like a nightmare.
‘Something more . . . creative?’ Dylan suggested, still cautious but starting to feel more relaxed now.
‘Maybe,’ Nell sighed, thinking gloomily of Phoenix and the ever-receding possibility that it would rise from the ashes. Or that her life in general would.
‘Why the sigh?’ Dylan asked.
She eyed him. ‘Nothing, really. I’m fine.’ She gave him a bright smile and took a sip of wine. This was supposed to be a date, after all.
Dylan was intrigued. He batted away her attempts to be flippant. ‘Tell me about your life,’ he asked.
The pull of those dark eyes was irresistible. And he seemed so sincere. She found herself telling the truth.
‘It’s pretty lonely,’ she concluded. ‘I stay in too much. My friends have all got married. I’ve kind of lost touch with them. I’ve never been all that good with men . . . oh just listen to me. Urban cliché!’
She stopped, grinning but embarrassed. She had given away much too much. Time to return the conversation to more neutral territory. Time, in fact, to find out about him.
‘So,’ she said, glancing down at his copy of All Smiles. ‘You like reading. What else, besides Dylan Eliot?’
They were soon deep in a conversation about their favourite books. Nell’s reading, Dylan discovered, was impressively wide. She liked poetry as well as novels and she knew her Shakespeare. He laughed when she told him about the sock catalogue. His admiration grew as he listened, seeing her forget herself and glow with enthusiasm as she described her favourite literary heroes and heroines.
‘I’m glad you haven’t included Mr Darcy,’ he remarked when she paused for breath. ‘Everyone else always does. It’s pretty boring, I think.’
‘A bit hackneyed,’ Nell agreed. ‘Darcy’s not my ideal sort of man anyway. Too cold and snobbish.’ He watched her tuck a bright strand of hair behind an ear.
‘Who is your ideal sort of man?’ he asked before he could stop himself.
They looked at each other. Heat flashed through Nell’s cheeks. Dylan, meanwhile, felt he wanted to take this woman in his arms and hold tightly on to her as if she were a rock in a rough sea.
They sat, locked in each other’s gazes. They might have remained that way for ever had two dramatic events not followed each other in quick success
ion.
The first Nell knew of it was a loud, foreign-sounding female exclamation followed by a rush of overpowering scent. She blinked and realised that OutdoorsGuy was no longer there. Or, at least, was no longer visible.
Someone was between him and her. A woman who had come from nowhere and who seemed all heels and hair. She had leapt on OutdoorsGuy and began writhing on his knee; straddling him in the tightest, blackest, shiniest trousers. Her arms were wrapped round his neck and her breasts – largely exposed in a half-buttoned blouse – practically in his face.
‘Excuse me,’ said a voice, even as Nell was taking all this in. She looked up to see a face peering down at her. A diffident, pasty face, attached to a skinny body which was clutching to it a copy of All Smiles.
‘Are you CityGirl? Sorry I’m so late. The tube . . .’ His voice was grating and his smile was a yellow grimace. There was a patch of spittle on his lower lip.
Nell sprang to her feet, the chair clattering to the floor. The long-haired woman was still writhing on OutdoorsGuy’s knee. He was clutching her in response; at least that was what it looked like. ‘Are you all right?’ asked the real OutdoorsGuy. He was a good six inches smaller than her.
Nell’s chest was tight and her breath was coming fast and hard. Non-OutdoorsGuy was staring at her now over the top of the woman’s breasts, his features purple and contorted in what might have been laughter.
Laughing at her, Nell supposed. He had obviously been stringing her along for his own amusement. Killing time by getting the poor single woman to unburden herself while he waited for the predatory creature now grinding herself into his groin.
Hurling Dylan a glare straight from the red-hot heart of her anger, Nell wrenched herself around. Then, without so much as looking at OutdoorsGuy (the real one), she rushed out of the pub and into the crowd.
CHAPTER 7
Dylan watched helplessly from behind Beatrice’s smothering breasts as Nell ran through the doorway and disappeared. Then, with a mighty effort, he wrestled free and shot on to the concourse.
He could see a teeming crowd, but no Nell. She had gone.
‘Was it something I said?’ a querulous voice asked beside him. Dylan glanced down. It was the weaselly little man who had turned up at the end.
‘How do you know her?’ Dylan asked. They seemed an unlikely pair.
The other shook his head. ‘I don’t. We met online. My first attempt. Not sure I’ll be trying it again though.’
Dylan had spotted the book in his hand. Yet another copy of All Smiles. What was this? Some existential joke?
‘It was the signal,’ the weasel explained, raising the familiar volume. ‘The way we’d recognise each other. Not the aptest of titles, as it turned out.’
As he watched the other walk off, Dylan wanted to kick himself. So the beautiful blonde had thought he was her date. If only he had been honest. If only he’d had the courage to put her right. She might even have seen the funny side.
How he wished she really had been his date, instead of Beatrice!
He turned glumly back into the pub. Where, waiting for him, and watched by an admiring audience of gawping barflies, was the furious Frenchwoman.
While Nell was there she had been laughing – the maddening, insincere theatrical laugh that he hated. But Beatrice was not laughing any more. Her eyes burned, the very ends of her hair flickered with fury.
‘Who was zat?’ she spat. The barflies all cheered; Act Two of the afternoon’s unscheduled drama was about to begin.
Something snapped in Dylan. Enough was enough. He would not wait until after the book was finished to end it with Beatrice. He would end it now.
It was Beatrice who had ruined it all. Had she not turned up and forced his mouth into her cleavage so he could neither breathe nor speak, he would have been able to explain himself – at least to some extent. But the chance had gone and he would never see Nell again.
He took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. He held the spark-spitting eyes with his own.
‘I’m going back alone,’ Dylan said steadily. ‘You aren’t coming with me, Beatrice. It’s over.’
He waited for the explosion he felt sure must come. To his surprise, it did not. Beatrice merely picked up her handbag, flicked her hair over her shoulders and clacked out of the Apples and Pears. Dylan watched her melt into the hubbub of the concourse, expecting her, at any moment, to turn round, run back and hurl herself upon him, tooth and claw. But instead, crowds closed behind her, like water. Beatrice, like Nell before her, was gone.
That really was it. It really was over. He could go back to Cornwall and finish his novel in peace and quiet.
That night, on the train, he slept deeply and dreamlessly. He did not even awake when Penzance was reached and everyone else got off. ‘You seemed like you needed the kip,’ said the guard, who woke him only when the train was being prepared to make the return journey.
Striding out of the station into the bright Cornish morning, Dylan looked up at the cawing gulls wheeling in the clear sky. He breathed deeply, pulling the tangy, sea-scented air into his lungs.
There was but one cloud in the blue; the shadow of yesterday’s encounter with Nell. It felt like such a missed opportunity, but he would just have to let it go. There was nothing on earth he could do about it. The incident had, at least, spurred him to finally make the break with Beatrice.
And now, Dylan resolved as he unlocked his car in the station car park, he would return to the cottage and finish Charm Itself.
Back within sight of Bosun’s Whistle, Dylan whistled himself as the car bumped up the sunny track, through the farm gate and over the glossy green grass to where the cottage crouched on the cliff edge.
For two days afterwards, resisting the call of the surf and the sea, he worked at his desk. In the afternoon of the third day he finished and emailed the document to Julian.
It was done! Dylan leaned back in his chair, stretched and enjoyed a rush of relief and elation. Now, finally, he could get on with the rest of his life.
And go out on his surfboard. It was the perfect afternoon for it: bright and wild with racing clouds and a buffeting, bracing wind.
As he parked at the beach he called his agent. Julian seemed less excited to hear him than he expected.
‘Did you get it?’ Dylan prompted eagerly.
‘Get what?’
Dylan checked the email on his phone. His message to Julian, plus its precious attachment, had vanished without trace. There was nothing in the Sent box even. His system must have frozen, right at the crucial moment.
‘Rural broadband,’ he groaned, adding that he’d try again later.
‘Send it now!’ urged Julian, champing at the bit.
Dylan glanced through the windscreen at the great wide stretch of pale golden beach and the rearing waves bucking and plunging towards it. He could already feel the icy thrill of the water over his shoulders; the slap of salt spray in his face. There was no way he was turning his back on all this and returning to Bosun’s Whistle.
‘Later,’ he repeated, grinning. ‘Surf’s up.’
It was, too, spectacularly. The waves were on excellent form; huge walls of water which picked him up and flung him down and gripped him with thick green muscles. They crashed in his ears, boomed in his heart, salted his eyes and sent agonising acid streams down his nose. Heaven.
Afterwards, he bumped into Neil, his former surf instructor. Neil was pleased to hear Dylan had finished his novel at last. ‘Good for you, mate,’ he drawled in his warm Australian accent. ‘Never managed to finish one yet. Not much of a reader, me.’ They went to celebrate at the Westward Ho, the pub nearest the beach.
The exertion of surfing, the whipping, sunny wind and the beer all combined to produce a feeling of simple good cheer that Dylan was reluctant to call ti
me on.
He didn’t want to go back to the cottage just yet. He wanted to stay, unwind, relax, and Neil had no plans either.
After a couple of beers they went up the hill overlooking the bay and sat in the spiky salt-grass by the old gun battery, smoking the joint Neil always had about his person. Even in his wetsuit, it seemed.
‘Jeez, man, this is good.’ Neil breathed out a thick and acrid plume of marijuana smoke.
The afternoon passed to early evening. Dylan was dimly aware of the sea turning from violet through forget-me-not to a shimmering white and the sun starting to dim rather than sink; no coral spectacular tonight.
The pot was overpoweringly strong, but so was Dylan’s sense of relief. Beatrice was off his back – and every other part of his anatomy. The burden of the novel was finally off his shoulders. He had fulfilled his obligations to Julian and Eve and now he could think about what he wanted to do next. Although, with Neil’s weed on board, it was hard to think of anything.
He had almost dozed off when he heard Neil give a whistle of appreciation.
Dylan stirred in the warm grass. ‘What’s up?’
Neil waved the joint between his fingers. Dylan looked out to sea. There were a number of black-clad figures in the waves, battling manfully to remain on their surfboards.
‘That girl. Tasha.’
Dylan shifted in the grass a little, as if the mere adjusting of his position would help him to pick out one identical rubbered figure from another. Neil’s ability to tell who someone was from this distance was one of the strange skills of a surf instructor, the same way a sailor knew his own ship on the horizon.
‘She’s hot,’ Neil continued.
Dylan did not comment. He’d had enough of hot women in black rubber.
‘From London.’ Neil exhaled in a rush and handed the joint to Dylan. ‘Poor woman.’
Dylan could only agree. ‘Absolutely. Who’d want to live in London?’
