A Passionate Love Affair with a Total Stranger

by Lucy Robinson

  But since I’d been back he had seemed interested. Very interested, actually. There had been all the usual flirting, leg-groping and X-ray smiles, but I had also caught him watching me a few times in a way that seemed – dare I say it? – tender. Yesterday I’d gone outside to sit on a bench among the yellow sycamore leaves and call for an update on Granny Helen. As I’d chatted to Mum, I’d suddenly sensed I was being watched. And there he was, standing in a window on the third floor, smiling at me in a kindly way. As I’d walked back through Reception a few minutes later, the lift doors had opened and out he’d strode.

  ‘Come for a walk!’ he’d said, taking me by the elbow and guiding me outside. This was surprising behaviour. John worked as hard and obsessively as I did; he was not one for autumnal strolls. I glanced up at him and he smiled back in his usual naughty fashion. We set off along the drive under the trees.

  ‘Lambert … you looked very romantic out there on the bench in your autumn woollens.’ He beamed. ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said shortly. I didn’t know what he was up to but I knew I had to try not to flirt.

  John put his hands into his pockets and his cheeky X-ray smile faded. ‘Have you found a boyfriend, Lambert?’ he asked suddenly.

  I was shocked. He had never asked about my love life. He’d always just carried on as if I was single. Once again, my head started ticking. Why was he asking? Was this significant? Should I say ‘yes’ to see what happened? Shut up, I told myself. Shut up.

  But it was too late. I was already intoxicated by the possibility of John being jealous and so, rather than denying it, I made a noncommittal face. ‘Why do you ask?’

  It was his turn to look surprised. He’d obviously expected me to say no.

  ‘Oh. Well, you looked very into the phone call you were having,’ he said. For the first time in the history of John MacAllister, he’d sounded a bit awkward.

  I began to smile. He really might be jealous! This was extraordinary! ‘John,’ I said gently, ‘it was my mother. My grandmother’s had a stroke and just got out of hospital today. I was ringing to find out how she was.’

  John raised an eyebrow and, for a second, I saw something that looked suspiciously like relief. But it was fleeting.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it, Lambert. Why, in the name of God, didn’t you tell me? What can I do?’

  I was touched. ‘Nothing. It’s a stroke. You know the score.’

  John had stopped walking. ‘Please, Lambert,’ he’d said softly. ‘Allow me to help you sometimes.’

  Now Sam was watching me curiously.

  ‘Er, they’re from John, actually,’ I said. My face coloured.

  Sam looked surprised. ‘That still rumbling on?’

  I still felt embarrassed that I’d accused him of buying me flowers. What if Sam thought I wanted him to buy me flowers? Arrgh! At this moment John felt like a very useful decoy. ‘John and I will always be rumbling on.’ I smiled secretively.

  Sam shook his head, grinning. ‘You dirty dog,’ he said, and for the third time that morning, he left the house to go for a run.

  I sat down, got out my Salutech folder and worked for six hours without a break. Ness and I were going home to see Granny Helen tonight: I didn’t want any confusing thoughts about men to be present in my head. And, as usual, work put paid to any such nonsense. By the time I met Ness I was clear and focused once more. I was Charley Lambert.

  We sat on the back seat of the 44D bus, like we had as teenagers on the way home from school. Ness was on the phone to her girlfriend, Sarah, and I was slumped against the window, watching East Lothian slide past: darkening potato plantations, the odd ruined castle and now-grey hills rolling away in every direction. Although I was itching to drive again I was quite enjoying all of the bus journeys. It had been years since I’d stopped to notice the view.

  I was tired but I felt great. Positively tingling, in fact. I’d caught up on a lot of Salutech stuff today and was rather chuffed that my swansong for First Date Aid was Project William and Shelley. It felt good to be helping someone for once.

  Sam, as discussed, had written back to Shelley, suggesting they meet on Friday night instead of Thursday and I was awaiting her next manic and excitable call from New York. I grinned as we trundled through Haddington, wondering if I could set aside a little bit of time for First Date Aid each day. Just so I could keep my hand in …

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Ness asked, ending her call. She was wearing Aztec-patterned culottes with thick tights and looked delectable.

  ‘About the fact that I’m a workaholic, actually.’

  ‘Oh. Blimey. And?’

  ‘And I feel good about it. It makes me feel alive.’

  Ness nodded, although it was clear she didn’t approve. ‘Workaholics end up grinding to a halt eventually,’ she said, after a pause. ‘I don’t want that to happen to you.’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘How are your working hours at the moment?’

  ‘They’re exactly as you’d expect a week before we launch the biggest product ever. Ness, please don’t lecture me. I’m tired.’

  Ness didn’t say, ‘Exactly.’ I felt grateful for her ability to refrain from interfering. It was not a trait that was readily available in our family. We lapsed into a companionable silence.

  We were travelling fast towards East Linton now and my phone signal was down to three blocks. Shelley Cartwright, running around New York, must have known because she chose that moment to call me.

  ‘CHARLOTTE,’ she roared, in her normal welcoming tones.

  ‘Shelley.’

  ‘He’s REJECTED MEEEEEEEEE,’ she cried. Dammit. What had Bowes done now?

  ‘Er, how?’ I asked.

  The bus stopped in the centre of town and Ness guided me off as I juggled my bags and John’s flowers without dropping the phone. We walked at a snail’s pace along the street as Shelley wailed. ‘ARRGHH!’ she screamed down the phone. Ness looked alarmed. ‘I suggested Thursday and he suggested Friday instead! SHIIIIIIIIIT!’

  ‘I … I don’t understand what the problem is,’ I said gently. ‘Friday’s a great date night!’

  ‘Yes, but he REJECTED ME for Thursday! I put myself out on a limb and he said no! If he was interested he’d cancel whatever he’s doing! He’s going on another date! I know it!’

  I found myself momentarily speechless: Shelley was actually insane. I felt markedly better about the shady activities I’d indulged in recently. Apparently love could turn even the steeliest of businesswomen into mad, howling wretches. ‘I don’t think that’s true,’ I replied, as levelly as I could. ‘William could be doing all number of things on Thursday. He could be at a funeral for all we know!’ I added brightly.

  ‘He’s on a date,’ she insisted. ‘I knew it wouldn’t last. It was those awful emails I sent before I hired you!’

  ‘Nonsense, Shelley. It’s very obvious that he likes you. Are you free next Friday?’

  ‘Er, yes,’ she said sheepishly. ‘But that’s not the point. The point is he –’

  ‘No, that is the point,’ I said firmly. ‘If you’re free, meet him.’

  I heard Shelley take a glug of something. Great, she was drunk too. ‘OK,’ she said meekly. ‘But can you tell him no at first? And then email back an hour later saying yes? Tell him my original plans were cancelled or something. He mustn’t think I’m free on a Friday night.’

  I sighed. ‘Sure. I have to go, Shelley. Have a nice afternoon.’

  ‘What in the name of Jiminy Cricket was that?’ Ness asked. She looked like an outraged pixie. I loved my sister.

  We’d been standing outside our parents’ front door for nearly five minutes now. A few late roses were clinging grimly to the wall by the front door and the smell of fish pie was wafting out of the open kitchen window. ‘Ah, nothing,’ I said. I didn’t even know where to begin.

  Ness laughed. ‘Whatever it was, it was not nothing. Come on, spill the beans.’

 
; I’d been sitting with the knowledge that William was Sam for three days now; I was desperate to confide in someone. I looked at Ness and knew I could tell her anything. So I spilled.

  ‘You think I’ve lost it, don’t you?’ I said, a few minutes later.

  Ness looked puzzled. ‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘But I – The thing with Sam, Charley, what’s with that?’

  ‘There is no thing with Sam,’ I said. ‘We were ghost-writing to each other without knowing it. And now we know. It was embarrassing for five minutes and then we decided to help get these two people together. The end.’

  ‘But … but there was so much chemistry, Charley. I saw those emails. You don’t think you and Sam could –’

  ‘No,’ I replied firmly. ‘Never. In a trillion years, never.’

  Ness shook her head, as if recovering from a trance. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Sam is a dirty tramp.’ Hearing Nessie’s little voice calling Sam a ‘dirty tramp’ gave me the giggles, which turned into belly laughs.

  ‘What’s going on out there?’ Granny Helen’s voice shrilled, out of the kitchen window. ‘Is that the bloody Jehovah’s Witnesses or is it my granddaughters?’

  We grinned at each other and walked inside.

  ‘She’s doing better than we expected,’ Mum whispered, as she poured us some wine in the warm, steamy kitchen. ‘She slept for ten hours last night and woke up demanding a kipper sandwich served with kiwis.’

  Mum and Dad had taken Granny Helen to California some years ago during one of their ‘new age’ holidays that involved comfortable hotels and luxury transfers. Granny Helen had fallen in love with kiwis there and ever since – long before kiwis had become voguish in the UK – she had sent Mum and Dad to a supermarket twenty-five miles away every week to buy them. When Mum forgot to buy kiwis one Christmas, Granny Helen went on strike and set up a picket line outside the kitchen. ‘Don’t go in there,’ she’d said loudly. ‘That woman is stuck in the past. Won’t even serve a bloody kiwi for breakfast.’

  ‘Sounds positive?’ I said uncertainly.

  ‘Definitely,’ Mum agreed. ‘She whacked your father round the backside with her stick when he told her she couldn’t let Malcolm sleep on the bed with her. Said that if he couldn’t allow a dying woman one last wish then he deserved to have his ears boxed.’

  I felt a bit happier. ‘She doesn’t sound like a dying woman to me.’

  ‘No,’ Mum said wryly. ‘No, I don’t think she’s a dying woman right now. But … Well, a stroke at her age can’t just pass without consequence.’

  Granny Helen was as sharp as a nail one minute, tired and vague the next. Dad, meanwhile, was doing his best to behave as if nothing had happened. He wore an expression of forced jollity all evening and cracked lots of bad jokes in Granny Helen’s direction, most of which she met with her customary scorn. ‘See?’ his face said, when she cut him down to size. ‘See? She’s fine!’ After the fish pie Mum served a special kiwi pavlova in Granny Helen’s honour (‘I don’t have much of a sweet tooth,’ Granny Helen sniffed, eating four slices in a row) and Dad treated us to a spectacular rendition of ‘Ring of Fire’ on his banjo. His playing had improved significantly but it was still very far from good. Malcolm, clearly in agreement, went off to bed and put a big brown paw over his ear. Granny Helen fell asleep in her chair.

  When I watched Dad scoop up Granny Helen’s tiny body and carry her next door to her cottage, my breath caught in my throat. ‘She’s totally back to normal,’ he remarked, to no one in particular.

  After the door shut behind them, there was a long silence. ‘Dad’s in denial,’ Ness announced.

  Mum shrugged. ‘He is a doctor, Nessie,’ she said. ‘He knows better than us.’

  ‘Oh, Mum, come on. Granny Helen’s ninety-one. You know what a stroke means at her age,’ Ness said.

  I was surprised. Ness was rarely so blunt.

  ‘The reason I’m saying this,’ Ness said, as if reading my mind, ‘is that I’m properly worried about Dad.’

  ‘Me too,’ Mum replied, after a pause. ‘He’s incredibly attached to her. I don’t know what we’ll do when she …’ She trailed off.

  We looked at her sharply. Mum always knew what to do. She avoided our eyes and started clearing plates. ‘We’ll just all have to keep our fingers crossed for her,’ she said briskly. She put the kettle on and Ness and I knew the subject was closed.

  As I drifted off to sleep in my higgledy-piggledy bedroom, I became aware of a vibrating sensation in the region of my left leg. ‘Fuck off,’ I muttered, trying to find my phone.

  ‘Oh, no, really fuck off,’ I said, seeing Shelley’s name on my caller ID.

  YOU HAVEN’T REPLIED TO WILLIAM YET???? she texted, a few seconds later. I ignored her. Some things were bigger than finding love for a stranger.

  My phone started ringing again and I sat up, enraged. ‘Shelley, it’s eleven fifty-two p.m. and I am with my family. I will reply tomorrow, OK?’

  ‘Um … Hi, Chas?’

  I looked at my phone. Oh, balls. There was Sam’s name with an accompanying picture of him wearing a condom on his head. ‘Sorry, Bowes.’

  ‘Good customer-relations chat you’ve got there,’ he remarked mildly.

  ‘Sorry, I just – she – urgh.’

  Sam chuckled softly. ‘I know. William’s as bad. They’re driving me mad already.’

  ‘Is that why you’re calling me? Has William been on your back?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Sam sounded hurt. ‘I just wanted to check you’re all OK. I’ve been worried about Granny Helen.’ There was a silence. ‘I like to keep an eye on you weird bunch of Lamberts,’ he said.

  I was touched. ‘That’s really sweet.’ I smiled. ‘Thank you. Well, Granny Helen’s sort of not great, Dad’s in denial, Mum’s stressed about Dad, I’m tired … Ness is as gorgeous as ever, though.’

  ‘Chasmonger, sounds tough. Get some sleep …’ This was probably getting a bit too close to a soft ’n’ gentle chat for Sam and he stopped talking.

  ‘Thanks for calling, Bowes. I’m surprised you’re not out chatting up laydeez, it being Saturday night and all.’

  ‘Ah. Well, actually I am. I’m having a drink with someone. But I wanted to check you’re OK.’

  ‘That’s very kind. Now get back to work.’

  ‘Aye-aye. Night, Chas.’

  I smiled and rolled over. Sam was a dirty dog but he was also the sweetest man on earth at times. It still surprised me.

  Chapter Eleven

  The sound of a distant train whirring across to Dunbar and the rhythmic thump of Malcolm’s tail against the kitchen dresser woke me the next morning. A lie-in was tempting but I had a mountain of work to do for next Friday’s Simitol launch and, of course, a dating email to write. It was Shelley’s turn to message William, and overnight she had sent me three increasingly crazed emails begging me to reply to him right now because if I didn’t reply soon he’d decide she’d gone off him and back off. Apparently. I’d read them this morning, amazed. Shelley might be a kick-ass businesswoman with the demeanour of a police truncheon but her self-esteem was on the floor.

  ‘We’re far better off out of all of that relationship bollocks,’ I told Malcolm a little later. ‘Turns us all into mentals.’ I’d tried to sneak off to Edinburgh early but had been unable to resist his beseeching face. ‘Love me,’ it had said. ‘Feed me. Walk me.’

  Coming home early, I texted Sam, as Malcolm jumped gleefully into the River Linn, paddling around like a big brown smiling seal. Pls evict any loose women from the flat so we can sort out W&S.

  Malcolm climbed out of the river and shook himself dry all over me.

  ‘You stinker!’ I laughed, clipping on his lead. He beamed up at me, as loving as ever. No human being made me laugh as much as Malcolm could. There was a lot to worry about at the moment but Malcolm was definitely helping.

  By the time I got back, Mum and Ness were looking confusedly at what appeared to be a large sunken teacake. Mum shru
gged helplessly as Dad burst in whistling. ‘I’ve made a special breakfast loaf, girls! I’m calling it Barbados Roll,’ he added, as if this somehow explained things.

  Just over an hour later I hobbled down Broughton Street where van drivers were still loading cheeses and complicated-looking bread into delis and cafés. The air was sharp and the wind from the east made my cheeks smart. As I rounded the corner of Forth Street, I spied a petite young girl in full Saturday-night attire letting herself out of my front door. She barely noticed me as she staggered past on her spiky heels. I grimaced, genuinely disgusted. It had been a while since I’d seen this, and for that reason it felt even more tawdry than it used to in the days before Yvonne.

  ‘Good night?’ I asked Sam, as I arrived in the living room. To my surprise, I found him sitting at the table, typing away on his laptop.

  ‘Surprise!’ he said, showing me an area of bookshelf that he’d cleared and filled with lever arch files complete with proper printed First Date Aid labels. Enjoying my astonishment, he then pointed at two stacks of business cards, which sat in a Perspex box. I was gobsmacked. How had he done all of that? And so quickly? Sam’s interactions with technology seldom stretched beyond the cheese toaster!

  ‘So … we got our first male client overnight!’ he reported.

  ‘Wow! Less than twelve hours after you updated the website?’

  ‘Yes! Marcus. Banter skills of a jolly frog. Well-meaning but excitable and ridiculous. I’m looking forward to helping him, actually.’

  I sat down and beamed at Sam. He was surprising me at every turn: I had a sudden urge to run over and squeeze him. But, for obvious reasons, I resisted. There could be no confusion between us at the moment.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘I wanted to talk to you about our rates. I think we can and should increase them. Oh, and William and Shelley, why haven’t you replied yet? William texted me at midnight asking if I thought Shelley had forgotten about him and was banging some Manhattanite in a bar!’