by Jessica Hart
* * *
She hadn’t been able to face finishing the article and had spent her time reading obsessively instead, escaping into the ordered world of her favourite Regency romances. A world where there were no exasperated civil engineers, no stupid jobs that took the hero overseas, no heartbreak that couldn’t be resolved and sealed with a waltz around a glittering ballroom.
Now, with Stella’s beady eye on her, Allegra struggled to remember that she had a job to do. ‘I just need to tidy it up.’
‘Done?’ Stella snapped. ‘How can it be done? You haven’t been to the costume ball yet.’
Allegra cleared her throat. ‘Unfortunately, we’re going to have to miss out the ball. Max can’t take part any longer. He’s gone overseas.’
‘What do you mean, he’s gone?’ Stella demanded. ‘What about the article?’
‘I thought I could end it at the Digby Fox preview.’
That didn’t go down well. Stella’s eyes bored into her. ‘The whole point was to end with the ball,’ she said icily. ‘The fairy tale/knightly quest angle only makes sense if you follow it through to the ball. Get whatever-his-name-is to come back.’
Her immaculately polished fingernails drummed on the table while the rest of the editorial staff studiously avoided looking at either her or Allegra. Stella’s displeasure could be a terrible thing to behold and nobody wanted to be associated with Allegra if she was in the firing line.
‘I can’t do that,’ Allegra protested. ‘He’s got a job to do.’
Around the table there was a collective sucking in of breath. When Stella told you to do something, you did it. You didn’t tell her that you couldn’t. Not if you wanted to keep your job, anyway.
Incredibly, Stella didn’t erupt. Her nails continued to click on the table, but her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘Then I suggest you find some way of including the ball anyway. Get Darcy to go with this new man of hers. She’s always tweeting about how perfect he is. You could compare and contrast,’ said Stella, warming to the idea. ‘Show how what’s-his-name was a failure and the new guy isn’t.’
‘His name’s Max,’ said Allegra clearly, ignoring the winces around her. ‘And he isn’t a failure!’
‘He is as far as Glitz is concerned,’ said Stella. ‘Set up the ball and take a photographer. At least this way you can salvage something from the mess this article seems to have become.’ Her eyes rested on Allegra’s outfit. ‘And sharpen yourself up if you want to stay at Glitz,’ she added. ‘You’ve let yourself go lately, Allegra. Those accessories are all wrong with that dress, and your shoes are so last season. It gives a bad impression.’
Allegra didn’t like it, but she knew Stella was right. She had let herself go. She’d been too miserable to care about what she wore, but misery wasn’t getting her anywhere. Every day when she checked her email she let the mouse hover over the ‘new message’ icon and thought about sending Max a message. She could keep it light, just ask how he was getting on. Just to hear from him.
But what would be the point? She didn’t want to hear that he was enjoying Shofrar or that he was perfectly happy without her. She didn’t want to hear that he had taken her advice and made it up with Emma. And what else could he tell her? That he loved her and missed her as much as she loved and missed him? Allegra couldn’t see Max sitting at his computer and writing anything like that, even if he felt it. It just wasn’t his style.
Once or twice, she poured out her feelings in an email, but she always came to her senses before she clicked ‘send’ and deleted it all instead. Max would be appalled, and it wasn’t fair to embarrass him like that.
No, it was time to accept that Max had gone and that he wasn’t coming back, time to stop reading and start deciding what to do with her life.
Be what you want to be. Max’s words ran round and round in her head. Somewhere between finding out who her father was and Max leaving, Allegra had lost her certainty. What if Max had been right all along and she didn’t really want to be a journalist at all?
The assignments Stella gave her now seemed increasingly silly. Allegra wrote a piece comparing the staying power of various lipglosses, and another on whether your hairdresser knew more about you than your beauty therapist. One day she did nothing but follow celebrity tweets and write a round up of all the banal things they’d said.
When Stella told her to invent some reader ‘confessions’ about their kinkiest sex exploits, Allegra couldn’t even enjoy herself. She even got to work at home so that she didn’t have to worry about anyone looking over her shoulder and raising their eyebrows. Once she would have found it fun, and let her imagination run wild, but now all she could think of was that night with Max, when they hadn’t needed handcuffs or beads or uniforms. They hadn’t needed a chandelier to swing from. They’d just needed each other.
Her blood thumped and her bones melted at the mere memory of it.
Allegra dropped her head into her hand and rubbed her forehead. Max was right about this too. She couldn’t persuade herself any longer that working for Glitz was a stepping-stone to a glittering career in serious journalism. The Financial Times seemed further off than ever.
And who was she trying to fool? She didn’t have what it took to be a serious journalist. She didn’t even want to be a serious journalist.
Now all she had to do was decide what she did want to be. Allegra pushed her laptop away and picked up a pencil. She always thought better when she drew.
Except when she drew Max, when she just missed him.
With an effort, Allegra pushed him from her mind and sketched a quick picture of Derek the Dog instead. She drew him with his head cocked, his expression alert. He looked ready and eager to go. Allegra wished she felt like that.
Smiling, she let her pen take Derek on an adventure involving a double-decker bus, a steam engine, a jumbo jet and an old tugboat, and so absorbed was she that she missed the couture debut of the funkiest new designer in town. Everyone at Glitz had been buzzing about it, and Allegra too had one of the hottest tickets in fashion history.
She looked at her watch. If she rushed, she might still be able to squeeze in at the back, but then she’d have to get changed out of her vegging wear and she just couldn’t be bothered.
Allegra sat back, startled by what she had just thought. Couldn’t be bothered for the collection of the year? She examined herself curiously. Could it be true? Had she really changed that much?
Yep, she decided, she really had. Now all she had to do was think up a convincing excuse for her absence when everyone asked the next day. It would need to be a really good reason. Being struck down by a deadly virus wouldn’t cut it. Any fashionista worth her salt would drag herself out of hospital if she had a ticket.
Allegra scratched her head with her pencil. She would just have to tell them she had been abducted by aliens— Struck by a thought, she ripped off a clean sheet from her drawing pad. Maybe it was time Derek went into space...
* * *
‘You look amazing, like a fairy tale princess,’ Allegra told Darcy. It was the night of the ball and they were squeezed in at the mirror in the Ladies’, along with all the other women who were checking their lipstick and adjusting the necklines of their ball gowns. None of them looked as stunning as Darcy, though.
‘I feel like a princess!’ Pleased, Darcy swung her full skirt. The eighteenth-century-style dress was silver, with a embroidered bodice and sleeves that ended in a froth of lace at her elbows, and the skirt was decorated with bows and ruffles. On anyone else it would have seemed ridiculous, but Darcy looked magical. ‘I always wanted to wear a dress like this when I was a kid,’ she confided.
What little girl hadn’t? Allegra had to admit to some dress envy, even though she knew she would never have been able to wear anything that fussy. She herself was in a slinky off-the-shoulder number that Dickie had foun
d in one of the closets at Glitz that morning. It was a gorgeous red and it flattered her slender figure, but Allegra was feeling too dismal to carry it off.
‘Ah, bah!’ Dickie had said when she tried to tell him that. ‘Eez parfaite for you.’
Allegra protested that she was only there as an observer to watch Darcy and William so she didn’t need a ball gown, but Dickie had thrown such a hissy fit about her ingratitude that in the end she had just taken it.
Not that it mattered what she was wearing. Next to Darcy, nobody was going to notice her. At least she wouldn’t have to watch Max dancing with her. Remembering how they had learnt to waltz together brought such a stab of longing that Allegra had to bite her lip until it passed. She had left her hair loose, the way Max liked it. Oh, God, she had to stop thinking about him...
‘Hey, I hear you wrote a book, you clever thing,’ said Darcy, leaning into the mirror and touching the tip of her ring finger to her flawless cheekbones, just to check that her make up was perfect. It was.
Allegra was startled out of her wretchedness. ‘Who told you that?’
‘William.’ Darcy practically licked her lips every time she said his name. The two of them had been inseparable ever since the preview. It was an unlikely combination, the political aide and the lingerie model, but they were clearly mad about each other. ‘Your mum told him. He says she’s boasting about you to everyone.’
‘Really?’ Allegra was surprised. Flick had been delighted to hear that her daughter was planning to resign from Glitz as soon as the Making Mr Perfect article was finished, but she was much less impressed by Allegra’s idea of working freelance until she could find a publisher for her Derek the Dog stories.
‘An illustrator?’ she had echoed in dismay, and then her mouth tightened. ‘This is because of Jago, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ said Allegra evenly, ‘I’m never going to be an artist like him, just like I’m never going to be a journalist like you.’ She thought about her old dreams. ‘I’m not a princess in disguise or a governess in a Regency romance. I’m just ordinary, and I’m going to stop trying to be anything but myself. I draw silly little pictures of animals. It’s not much, but it’s what I can do.’
Flick had been taken aback at first. ‘Well, I suppose I could introduce you to some agents,’ she had offered reluctantly at last.
‘Thanks,’ said Allegra, ‘but I’ve already approached one. She likes my illustrations, but she’s less keen on the story. She’s talking about teaming me up with a writer she knows.’
‘Oh.’
Allegra suspected Flick was rather miffed by the fact that she hadn’t traded on her famous mother’s connections, but if Flick had talked about her to William she must have come round. As far as Allegra knew, Flick had never once told anyone that she was working for Glitz. The fact that she might have done something to please her mother at last gave Allegra a warm feeling around her heart for the first time since Max had left.
William was waiting for them in the lobby of the hotel, carrying off his Prince Charming costume with aplomb. Remembering how seriously he had talked the first time she had met him, Allegra smiled to herself. He really must be smitten by Darcy if he was prepared to dress up. ‘I’d rather stick pins in my eyes,’ Max had said.
In contrast, Dom, the photographer, stood out from the crowd in his jeans and leather jacket. He took some photos of William and Darcy together and then they all moved into the ballroom, where the ball was already in full swing.
Allegra found a place on the edge of the room. It was a classic ballroom, with glittering chandeliers and a high, elaborately decorated ceiling. One wall was punctuated with elegant long windows, open in spite of the dreary November weather to let some much needed air into the crowded ballroom. An orchestra at one end was playing a vigorous waltz, and couples in gorgeous costumes whirled around the floor.
Everything was just as Allegra had always dreamed a ball would be. It was perfect—or it would have been if only Max had been there with her. The thought of him triggered a wave of loneliness that hit her with such force that she actually staggered. Her knees went weak and all the colour and gaiety and movement of the scene blurred before her eyes.
She couldn’t bear it without Max.
Blindly, she started for the doors. It was noisy and crowded and empty without him. She would wait for Dom outside. It was too painful to be here, with the music and the laughter and the memories of how she and Max had waltzed around the sitting room, of how useless they had both been, how they had laughed together.
‘Excuse me...sorry...sorry...’ Allegra squeezed her way through the throng, too intent on escaping to enjoy the fantastic costumes. She kept her head down so that no one would see the tears pooling in her eyes and it was perhaps inevitable that she ended up bumping into a solid male body.
‘Sorry...I’m so sorry...’ Desperate to get away, she barely took in more than an elaborate waistcoat. Another Prince Charming in full eighteenth-century dress, she had time to think before she side-stepped to pass him, only to be stopped by a hand on her arm.
‘Would you do me the honour of this dance?’
Allegra had already started to shake her head when something familiar about the voice filtered through the music and the chatter and her heart clenched. How cruel that her longing should make it sound so like Max’s.
Blinking back her tears, she summoned a polite smile and lifted her eyes from the waistcoat and past the extravagant cravat to Prince Charming’s face underneath his powdered wig.
‘I’m afraid I’m just lea—’ Her voice faded as her gaze reached his eyes and she blinked, certain that she must be imagining things, but when she opened her eyes again he was still there.
‘Max?’ she quavered, still not sure that her longing hadn’t conjured him up out of thin air.
‘I know, I look a prat,’ said Max.
Astonishment, joy, incredulity, shock: all jostled together in such a fierce rush that Allegra couldn’t catch her breath. For a stunned moment all she could do was stare in disbelief. Max was out in the desert, in shorts and sunglasses, not dressed up as a fairy tale prince in a crowded ballroom.
‘Max?’
‘Yes, it’s me.’ Incredibly, he looked nervous.
‘Wh...what are you doing here?’ Still unable to believe that it could really be true, she had to raise her voice above the noise in the ballroom, and Max leant closer to make sure that she could hear.
‘I’ve been doing some thinking, and I decided it would be a shame if we wasted all those waltzing lessons,’ he told her, and he held out his hand. ‘Shall we dance?’
In a blur, Allegra let him lead her onto the floor, finding a place on the edge of the other couples who were whirling around the floor in an intimidatingly professional fashion. She didn’t understand anything, but if this was a dream, she didn’t want to wake up.
Max swung her round into position. He held one of her hands in his, and set the other on his shoulder so that he could take hold of her waist. ‘Okay,’ he yelled, looking down at their feet. ‘Remember the box? Let’s go...one, two, three, one, two, three...’
They made a mess of it at first, of course. They stumbled and trod on each other’s toes, but all at once, magically, they clicked and found the rhythm. True, they could only go round and round the ‘box’ but they were on the floor and they were moving together in time to the music—sort of. Allegra’s heart was so full, she was crying and floating in delirious joy at the same time.
Laughing through her tears, she lifted her face to Max’s. ‘We’re waltzing!’ she shouted.
‘Ready to try a new manoeuvre?’ he shouted back and, without waiting for her answer, he lunged with her further into the crowd. This was a whole new step outside their safe box, as they had never really mastered turning, but Max had a determined look on his face and Allegra follow
ed as best she could.
‘Where are you going?’ she yelled in his ear.
‘Terrace,’ he said briefly, face set as he concentrated on steering her through the throng of dancers.
The terrace? Allegra thought about the chill drizzle that was falling outside, but it was too noisy to have a conversation and, anyway, Max seemed set on the idea. He danced her grimly across the floor. They’d lost their rhythm again and kept bumping into other couples, but somehow they made it to the other side. Max took a deep breath and somehow manoeuvred them through one of the windows and out onto the terrace that overlooked the hotel’s garden.
‘That was harder than I thought,’ he said, and let Allegra go.
Outside, the air was damp and cold, but it was blissfully quiet after the noise in the ballroom. Still gripped by a sense of unreality, Allegra shook her head slightly.
‘Max, what are you doing here? I thought you were in Shofrar.’
‘I was, but I told Bob that I needed to come back to London.’
She looked concerned. ‘Aren’t you enjoying the job?’
‘The job’s great.’ It was. ‘It’s everything I ever wanted to do, and the desert is beautiful. I wish you could see it, Legs. The light is extraordinary.’
‘Then why come back to London?’ she asked, puzzled.
Max took a deep breath. ‘Because you weren’t there,’ he said. ‘The thing is...’ He’d rehearsed this speech in his head but now that the moment had come, his mind had gone blank. ‘The thing is, I missed you,’ he finished simply.
‘But...what about Emma?’ Allegra’s eyes were huge. She looked as if she was unsure whether she was dreaming or not, and Max couldn’t blame her. One minute she had been heading out of the ballroom and the next she was faced with an idiot in full eighteenth-century dress.
‘She told me she wanted to say goodbye to you at the airport,’ Allegra went on. ‘I thought she was going to suggest that you got back together.’
