A Passionate Love Affair with a Total Stranger

by Lucy Robinson

  ‘Yes. I started –’

  ‘Right,’ she interrupted. ‘Well, I will put you on the guest list. When will your partner return to Edinburgh?’

  Did she fancy Sam or something? There was a lovely photo of him on the website (we had had more than a few emails asking if Sam was available for dates) and I was beginning to wonder if Shelley had seen it and wanted a piece of Bowes too. Trying not to sound huffy, I told her I had no idea when Sam was returning – if he returned at all – and then she went all vague and preoccupied and ended the call. It was obvious that she had lost interest in what I was saying.

  I let it go. Our business was doing very well without her, thank you very much.

  I decided to allow myself twenty minutes to do some First Date Aid emails, perhaps to prove to Shelley that we didn’t need help. Chilling was rescheduled for later in the afternoon.

  I powered up my laptop and logged on.

  There were several emails, one of which was from a bile-spitting client about a date with a man who’d turned out to be married (this was my fault, apparently) but I was far more interested by the most recent, sent only fifteen minutes ago.

  ‘A message for Charley Lambert,’ it said in the subject line. It was from Sam. I smiled, pleased. I liked the thought of him pausing to write to me before he left the flat. It was comforting.

  I have a friend called Charley Lambert, the email began.

  Eh? Half frowning, half smiling, I read on.

  She’s a few hours into her new life of freedom. She’s said goodbye to some harmful things from the past – and some harmful people, too – and is about to start out on her own.

  Malcolm sat next to the sofa. ‘Sam’s sent me a lovely email,’ I informed him. I’d already stopped frowning and was now grinning.

  She’s afraid. She doesn’t know if she’ll make it, but I know she will. She has no idea how to just sit still (I would bet ten thousand pounds that she reads this within an hour of me sending it) but I know she’ll learn. She’s capable of anything, this girl. She’s one of the most legendary legends in, well, legend. Life without her will be just that bit colder and crapper. I will miss Charley Lambert, a lot, and I’m sad I won’t be there while she starts out on this new journey.

  I hugged myself. It was lovely to hear this from Sam. Spine-tinglingly lovely. No, scrap that: it was thrilling. He just didn’t say things like this to me in real life. It was like having William back again.

  Please tell her she’ll be OK. Because she will be. There isn’t anyone out there like her and I’m well fucking happy to have her in my life.

  Sam X

  I read the email three times, happy and alive in a way I hadn’t been since I’d been emailing William. Here was the man who’d got under my skin. Here was the man who’d turned my life upside down. Right here in my inbox. That amazing man who could read my mind and make me feel vulnerable and special and sparkly and breathless all at once.

  I realized I was crying. I realized that it didn’t matter if William, Sam or Barack sodding Obama had sent those messages. The fact of the matter was that I’d fallen in love with the man who’d written them. And, however inconvenient and improbable it might feel, that man was Sam.

  I was in love with Samuel Bowes. ‘What am I going to do, Malcolm?’ I wept. ‘I love Sam! And he’s just moved to London!’

  But Malcolm was asleep.

  Chapter Nineteen

  As my train pulled out of Waverley Station, The Fear set in. I should never have agreed to this. It had been nearly a week since I’d said goodbye to Sam and I’d thought about very little else since. It had been a rather intense time and all the evidence was pointing towards my having turned into an obsessive moron.

  I hadn’t tried to put myself off him. I couldn’t have done it if I had tried. The feelings that gripped me every time I thought about him (approximately twice a minute) were too big; they were not within my control. I’d been swept off down a river I’d never expected to navigate and the best I could hope for would be a short and relatively merciful ride.

  For a few days, I’d been cross about it all. Why Sam, of all the men in the universe? Sam and I were fundamentally incompatible, we were –

  But every time I’d gone down this road I’d stopped short. Because, actually, Sam and I were the people who had written those emails. Which meant that we were probably a lot more compatible than I’d cared to believe.

  After a while I’d dared to try imagining us as a couple; a prospect that, until only a few weeks ago, would have made me soil my pants laughing. But it was worryingly easy to imagine. Sam belonged in my life. I didn’t need to make adjustments: he was already there at the centre of my universe. I pictured us walking together in a cold, blowy field near my parents’ house, Sam throwing sticks for Malcolm. Sitting in the pub, Sam giggling about an audition and me holding his hand proudly. Most shocking of all was the ease with which I could imagine us waking up in bed together and smiling at each other like goons. That was my favourite image. The thought of him being that close to me brought on an intense longing, not the helpless horn I’d had for John but something ten times more lovely.

  And then I would feel deeply sad because I knew it would never happen. This was a one-sided fantasy. Sam was already talking about his fit co-star and he’d also commented on how hot one of my new First Date Aid clients was. And most of all, as I reminded myself throughout the day, I was not Sam’s thing and never had been. That part was underlined for emphasis. I was not Sam’s thing. He liked small girls he could throw around the bedroom. He had told me this several times over the course of our fourteen-year friendship.

  This cycle – scrummy snoggy sugary thoughts followed by sharp and crushing disappointment – was killing me. I’d escaped my Salutech prison only to check into an even more merciless jail. It was torment.

  And aside from this – beyond the obsessive cycle – I missed Sam being in my flat. I missed him like a crumble misses its custard. Arriving back to help Hailey move in last week, I’d found a pile of Sam’s boxes in the hallway and, poking out of one of them, was his teddy bear. Without stopping to think I’d whipped the bear away, named him Bowes Junior and hidden him in my bed. I let him sleep on the pillow and propped him up when I made my bed every morning. I had possibly kissed his nose once or twice.

  The fact that Sam shamelessly owned a teddy bear made me love him even more. I was bursting with it. It was awful. I prayed that it would pass soon and that I wouldn’t have to see him before it did.

  It was fairly alarming, therefore, that I found myself on a train to London ready for an entire day in his company.

  It was Shelley’s fault. She’d called a few days ago, trumpeting with excitement that she’d persuaded a friend of hers to write a feature about First Date Aid in the Sunday Times. ‘THIS IS THE CHANCE OF A LIFETIME,’ she had yelled, going on to make clear that nothing short of nuclear fall-out would be an acceptable excuse for me not to come down. ‘You’ll be doing a chummy photo-shoot with Sam,’ she added briskly, without the slightest idea how simultaneously terrifying and wonderful this sounded to me. She told me again how determined she was to help move our business along and this time I didn’t bother arguing. I was mute anyway.

  Two minutes after I’d croaked, ‘Yes,’ to Shelley, Sam called me, shrieking like a child. ‘FUUUUUUUCK!’ he’d screamed. ‘FUCKING SUNDAY TIMES!’

  ‘Fucking Sunday Times,’ I’d repeated unenthusiastically.

  I hadn’t slept last night. I was a wreck.

  Desperate to take my mind off it all, I lurched to the buffet car for a calming cup of tea – which actually just made me even more buzzy and mad – then sat down to open my post, which I’d shoved into my bag as I’d left earlier this morning. So far the old sitting-still business had proved a bit troublesome, but maybe (after opening these envelopes, dealing with anything that came up, filing my nails and then retouching my make-up) I might be able to do nothing for an hour or so. Or at least fifteen minutes.r />
  Breaking the habit of a lifetime was not proving easy. This week I had twice caught myself getting into the shower at six thirty a.m., an act that had not gone unnoticed by my new housemate. Yesterday morning Hailey had marched into the bathroom while I was mid-shower, roaring, ‘GET BACK INTO BED, YOU GREAT BIG MENTAL!’ I scrabbled around trying to cover myself up while she stood, bouncer-like, at the door, waiting for me to leave. I whimpered and left.

  First in my pile of mail: a bank statement that I didn’t look at. The prospect of life without a sturdy pay cheque was too frightening to contemplate right now. There were three letters for Sam, which I added to the pile in my bag. And then came something that made my heart stop momentarily: a letter from Salutech.

  But it was no more than an acknowledgement from HR of my resignation, finishing off with a note to say that, because of my senior role within the company, my case would be dealt with ‘by the Chief Executive Officer’.

  I swallowed nervously. What would that actually mean? Would I have to go in and talk to John?

  It was very strange, after all these years, to feel cold at the prospect of seeing him. I didn’t miss him, I didn’t want him, I didn’t even feel sorry for him when I imagined him having to deal with my departure. I just wanted to draw a line under it and forget about him as quickly as possible. It was becoming clearer by the day that he and I hadn’t stood a rat’s chance in hell. Not because he had failed to leave Susan, not because he was terrified of Chambers, not because I’d stormed out of Salutech. No, we had been doomed because I’d already fallen for someone else.

  ‘Dammit.’ I sighed. I’d lasted a whole minute without thinking about Sam.

  I filed the letter in my bag and tried to file my thoughts with it. It was super-important that Sam and I looked like the perfect business partnership during our interview and photo-shoot; Sam had promised to abstain from trumping for the afternoon and I’d promised (myself) to abstain from strange and moony behaviour around him.

  I opened the final letter, which looked a lot more interesting. It was a handwritten, very expensive envelope with something quite rigid inside. Was it an invitation to some sort of exclusive spa day? A nice big cheque? A Valentine maybe! Sent three months early just to be sure!

  It was none of these things. It was a thick, shiny card, featuring a black-and-white picture of two beautiful people holding hands on a moonlit beach, gazing into each other’s eyes. They looked like they were about to remove their clothes and hump in a very beautiful way. Behind them, a full moon cast a beautiful train of rippled light along the sea. It was all very beautiful. I looked again at the two beautiful people standing at the centre of it all. The beautiful man was Samuel Bowes and the beautiful woman was some pesky slag called Katia Johnson. THE TEMPEST: SPECIAL INVITATION was stamped in the corner of the picture in a beautiful cerise.

  I stared at the invitation and felt my heart break a tiny bit. Katia Johnson must be Miranda, Sam’s onstage lover. The one he’d mentioned in THREE EMAILS this week. And, needless to say, she was everything Sam liked. She was small and pretty and was wearing some wispy little dress that was being blown by the wind from the sea. ‘Stop looking at him like that,’ I snapped at her, disconcerted by the absolute adoration in her eyes. Sam’s face was open and vulnerable; he gazed back at her with an intensity that made me want to cry. Somehow in the course of my obsession I had forgotten that Sam was probably spending a lot of time pashing an actress at the moment. Was the pashing going beyond the confines of the rehearsal room?

  Arrgh! Stop it! I screwed my eyes shut. Please, God, help me fall in love with someone – anyone – who is not Samuel Bowes.

  ‘Hi,’ said yet another beautiful girl, wearing an assortment of furry things, ‘I’m Alice, your stylist.’ She looked no older than eighteen. I shook her hand and tried to be jolly. Why was there a stylist here? I’d spent most of the last week trying to find an outfit! I’d been into every bloody shop in Edinburgh! And Glasgow too, for that matter!

  ‘Kaveh wants you two to look really contemporary and fresh,’ she said smoothly. ‘I’ve got some great ideas for you, Charley.’ She turned to Sam, who looked extremely lovely in a pair of slim jeans, weird leather shoes and a classic tailored shirt. ‘You’re probably OK as you are,’ she told him. ‘Fab shoes.’

  I stomped off to get changed. This morning was definitely not what I’d hoped for. The ‘art director’, Kaveh, a spectacled man wearing deck shoes and ankle-length tweed trousers (in winter?), had told us that he wanted us to be spontaneous, youthful and fun. This had been a bad start. I didn’t know how to do any of these things. I’m a bloody businesswoman, I thought darkly. Not a teenage pyjama party model. Worse still, the photographer had said within seconds of my arrival that he wanted me to take my glasses off – something I never did: I looked like a mole without them – and Anna, the Sunday Times journalist, was flirting openly with Sam.

  Alice held up a very short, chiffony full-sleeved dress in a faecal colour. ‘Perfect,’ she announced. ‘We’ll put berry-coloured tights and some ankle wedges with it … Maybe I’ll get the hair-stylist to fuck up your hair a bit too,’ she mused. I fumed. I’d got up an hour early this morning to make sure my hair was as unfucked-up as possible.

  Forty-five minutes later I stared at my reflection in absolute dismay. ‘I can’t!’ I said to her, anguished. ‘I’m nearly seven foot tall!’ The ankle wedges were gigantic. I’d tower over Sam like this. The dress was nice enough but on me it barely covered my bum cheeks, and my ‘fucked-up’ hair involved a stupid bow. I looked, quite indisputably, like a massive seven-foot toddler.

  She smiled. ‘Don’t worry about your height. You’re both going to be lying down. Great legs, by the way.’

  I didn’t give a toss if we were lying down or swinging from the ceiling: I simply couldn’t go out looking like this. Sam and I were already eye to eye height-wise: I couldn’t become taller than him! I tried to talk her into giving me a pair of flats but she wouldn’t. ‘It’ll look lovely,’ she breezed. ‘Your nice long legs with the chunkiness of the heel … It’ll look all clean and angular … With lots of soft chiffony lines up top … Delish!’

  I wanted to cry.

  When I finally shuffled out, eyes fixed to the floor, Sam was already draped over a chaise-longue in the middle of a brightly lit white cube. ‘Great,’ I muttered. He seemed as natural and relaxed as Malcolm was when he snored in front of the fire.

  I tried to shuffle over to him without him seeing me – probably a rather unrealistic feat – but no sooner had the ankle wedges traversed thirty centimetres than he looked up and whistled. ‘Wow, Chas! Brother! You are WELL HOT!’

  I went bright red and immediately sensed Kaveh the art director getting angry. Bright red faces didn’t work well on stark white sets. I scuttled over and sat down at the far end of the chaise-longue, lest Sam notice how gigantic I was. ‘Look like a knob,’ I muttered to him.

  Sam’s brow creased. ‘You do not look like a knob in the slightest,’ he said firmly. ‘You look lovely. But you also look really uncomfortable.’

  I nodded miserably. ‘They won’t even let me wear my glasses.’

  Sam was puzzled. ‘But your glasses are you, Chas.’

  I shrugged. ‘They don’t want “me”.’

  Sam got up. ‘I do,’ he said. ‘This is a feature, not a fantasy.’

  I watched in amazement as he ambled over to Kaveh and gestured in my direction. After a couple of seconds Kaveh interrupted him, presumably to defend his styling, but Sam put his hand in the air to take back control. Even when the photographer got involved he just continued to shake his head, politely but firmly. They all turned to me, and then Sam was talking again, extremely confident and clever. And, try as I might, I felt a lovely sensation of warmth envelop me. Sam was up there defending me. As in the real me, not the me that Kaveh and Alice and the other trendies wanted me to be. The longing I’d felt inside me for the last week took on a whole new dimension. I was really, real
ly, really in love with Samuel Bowes.

  I bet Katia bloody Slagface the actress has got there first, I thought sadly, remembering the look of love on that invite. No actor was good enough to fake something like that.

  The shoot eventually took place, with me in the lovely tight plum-coloured trousers I’d bought, worn with a compromise top, which sat halfway between my tasteful jumper and Kate’s chiffony dress shocker. My hair had been returned to normal – save for a Kirby-grip that swept my fringe off to the side – a look I rather liked, in fact – and I was back in the flat brogues I’d rocked up in.

  Sam and I were draped artfully over each other on the couch and were instructed – repeatedly – to throw our heads back and laugh youthfully. At first, this had been excruciating and we’d looked about as youthful and carefree as a pair of Victorian state officials. But after a few attempts Sam had whispered to me that Kaveh had turned up this morning in a purple cape, and I whispered back that I’d found his teddy bear and named him Bowes Junior, and we’d got the giggles, Kaveh had got what he wanted, and the whole agonizing affair was brought to a timely end. After an ‘afternoon tea’ of tiny morsels of sushi (‘Don’t they fucking eat anything in this city?’ I muttered to Sam) we sat down for what turned out to be quite a nice interview with Anna the journalist. The more we talked about our business, the more we glowed. Watching Sam, I knew he was as proud of it as I was, and I felt even sadder that he was in the process of throwing himself back into acting. We were a brilliant team! He should be up in Edinburgh with me, making terrible omelettes and emailing mad people!

  Towards the end of our interview, a very smart woman arrived in the studio. It took a few seconds for me to work out who she was or where I knew her from but, as she whipped out her BlackBerry and started hammering out an impatient email, I remembered exactly who she was. I broke into a grin.

  ‘Shelley!’ I said, walking over to her after the interview. ‘At last!’