‘I’m sure you’re being hard on yourself. I’ll bet your plates are perfectly intact.’
‘Believe me, my plates are cracking up. A bit like me.’
He laughs a big, natural laugh, the sound of which warms my belly. I feel suddenly and dramatically good about myself. I want to make him do it again.
‘What do you do for a living?’
‘I’m a journalist,’ he replies.
‘Oh . . .’ So that was him on the search engine. Harry Pfeiffer – journalist.
‘Do you still live in Liverpool?’ he asks.
‘You recognised the accent then?’
‘Of course.’
‘No, I’ve lived in London for years.’
‘Oh, whereabouts? I’m in Putney.’
I feel a smile creeping to my lips, happier about this than I should be. ‘Not far from me. I’m in Wandsworth.’
‘Nice.’ His smile prompts a flush of heat to creep around my neck.
‘You wouldn’t say that if you saw my flat.’ I wonder tipsily what it would be like to be friends with him, to replay this conversation in years to come. (‘You were such a flirt!’ ‘You were the one who invited me to your flat!’ ‘It was not an invitation!’ ‘Yeah, right!’)
‘Well, I would’ve loved to see your flat, but London and I are parting ways very soon.’
My fantasy disintegrates. ‘Really?’
‘I’m moving home to Aberdeen to be with my mum. In fact, I’m flying directly there after this trip.’
‘Oh . . . how come?’ I hope the dismay isn’t showing on my face as much as it’s revealed by my voice.
‘It’s a bit complicated.’ He sighs a little. ‘I left home when I was twenty-two and made a promise to her that I’d be back in ten years. She brought up me and my sister single-handedly after my dad left, so I always told myself I’d stick to it. Of course, when I was twenty-two I felt like that day would never come. Only now it’s here.’
‘Wow. And she’s holding you to your word?’
‘Well, she used to remind me every time I saw her. Now I’ve actually handed in my notice on the flat and am due to move there in less than a week, she’s gone quiet. Basically, she feels guilty. But I don’t want her to. Aberdeen’s great – and I owe this to her. Besides, she needs me right now, put it that way,’ he says.
‘What about your sister?’
‘She lives in Australia. They come back to visit once a year, but that’s it.’
I take this in. ‘It’s incredibly . . . noble of you.’
‘Not really,’ he replies with a laugh. ‘“Noble” isn’t a word I’ve ever thought about applying to myself, to be honest.’
As the night progresses, there are moments when I’m so nervous that I actually want this to be over. I think constantly about making an excuse and heading back to my room to get my breath back, to go back to the world to which I’m used. But then he laughs at something I say, or asks questions about my job – detailed, genuinely interested questions – and everything changes. I start to feel amazing around this man: witty, warm, interesting and – at those moments when he allows his smile to linger just a little too long – attractive.
There are few quiet corners of the party, but we manage to find one – an enclave of soft sofas and twinkling candlelight overlooking the sea. And we talk. Really talk. About the Barcelona sights I’m still determined to see; about Florence; about his reading material (it’s the second time he’s read The Book Thief); about where else he’s been in the world that he loves. I even get some things off my chest about the PR hell I’ve been dumped in – and discover that he’s a fantastic listener.
I’m enjoying the whole thing so much that, when I receive several (increasingly hysterical) texts from David, I resist replying all but once, when I write:
D – relax! I’m not AT ALL worried xxx
Which is true. God, I love Piña Coladas.
And, suddenly, I love Harry Pfeiffer’s mouth. I can’t keep my eyes off it, its delicious curves that, when he smiles, make my insides swirl with pleasure.
‘You don’t believe in thunderbolts?’ he asks. I don’t even know how the conversation meandered here, except that it started with the 1990s, then moved on to Hugh Grant, then Four Weddings and a Funeral, then . . . well, here we are.
‘Of course not.’ I’m very drunk by now. Very, very drunk. My lips are moving but I have virtually no control over them.
‘Haven’t you read Sense and Sensibility? Or Catch-22? Or Cinderella?’ Harry’s enthusiasm lights up his eyes.
‘You’re telling me to base life decisions on fairy stories now?’
‘I can’t believe you’re knocking Cinderella.’
‘Actually, I’ve modelled myself on her for some time now. Right down to losing my shoe.’ I untuck my bare foot – which I’ve been hiding – and hold it out to him.
‘Oh, dear.’ He bursts out laughing. ‘Where on earth have you left that?’
‘Don’t ask. I’m not even thinking about it until the morning. When, no doubt, Meredith will attempt to kill me.’
He raises his brow.
‘They’re not mine,’ I explain.
Then he looks into my eyes, suddenly serious. And, as the light from the moon casts shadows on his beautiful features, I wonder what on earth he’s going to ask me.
‘Can you still dance with only one shoe?’
I swallow. ‘I can’t dance with one shoe, two shoes or no shoes.’
‘Oh, come on! Stop with the false modesty!’ He grins.
‘It’s true! I don’t dance. Honestly, I don’t. I have absolutely zero coordination.’
I’m about to protest again when I look up and see something that brings me down to earth with an unpleasant bump: Clipboard Barbie is sashaying towards us. And she has no clipboard. In fact, she has a glint in her eye that very clearly means business.
‘’Arry, I wondered if—’
‘Okay,’ I splutter, standing up and kicking off my singular shoe. They both look at me. ‘Let’s dance.’
Harry smiles. ‘Was it urgent?’ he asks Clipboard Barbie.
‘Well . . .’ She pouts, but is forced to shake her head.
So Harry takes me by the hand and leads me to the dance floor next to the infinity pool.
My heart is racing as the heat from his touch creeps up my arm. I look at the men and women around me. They all look so unbelievably agile, sexy, stylish. I hesitate, unable to move. Because, I just don’t do dancing like this . . . I don’t know how.
Harry starts moving his hips effortlessly as I stand, immobile, like an overgrown toddler playing a game of Musical Statues. He senses my unease and does something that makes my breath hover in my throat, unable to escape: he reaches out for my hand, clasping my fingers as he pulls me towards him.
My head moves into his chest and I breathe in the salty, clean scent of his skin as we sway silently, ignoring the tempo of the music. It doesn’t matter that the air is throbbing with staccato beats; we are dancing the slowest of slow dances, our bodies touching in places that make me feel indecent if I think about them.
But I’m not thinking. Not really. I’m completely swept up in the moment. All I can concentrate on is the feel of his chest against me, his hands on the small of my back. My skin tingles with longing. And, suddenly, I am overcome by an urge to do something I haven’t done for a very long time.
I lift my head slightly, pulling back at an angle that invites him to look at me. He obliges. Our eyes lock and my lips part inexplicably. I am trembling as I urge him to move closer. I want to feel his lips on mine. His pupils dilate.
‘Imogen!’
I leap away from him like I’ve been caught reading someone’s diary.
Nicola is out of breath, holding out my phone. The first thing that flashes into my mind makes me feel sick with fear.
‘Florence?’
‘No,’ she hisses, covering the handset. ‘I didn’t know what to do. It’s the Daily Sun. They want to s
peak to you. Now.’
Chapter 24
The journalist’s voice sounds unexpectedly affable. Not that that makes him any less likely to stitch me up. I stand listening to him repeat himself, trying to focus as I sway like a grass skirt in a force nine hurricane.
‘Hello? Hi – are you there?’
Nausea rises into my throat. ‘Yesh,’ I croak. ‘Yesh, I am. But I can’t hear you over the music.’
‘Can you go somewhere quiet? This is quite important.’
I mouth something probably completely unintelligible to Nicola and Harry and stumble off towards the doors, into the lobby, where it’s slightly less ear-splitting. I lean on the wall and focus on the floor with a vivid sense of déjà vu from when I was last in a fairground crazy house.
‘This is Jeremy Morgan,’ he announces. ‘I’m a freelance journalist working on a story for the Daily Sun about Peebles. Is this Imogen Copeland?’
I gaze woozily at myself in the mirror behind the bar. ‘Yes. No. I mean . . . I’m not available.’
He pauses. ‘Er . . . right. Well, I think we’re going to have to run with our story, anyway. We’ve gone to great lengths to get a quote, and haven’t even had our calls returned from Ace Communications. We’ll just have to go with what we’ve got and say a spokesman was unavailable.’
‘NOOOO!’ I shriek, causing the bartender, who’s spent the last few minutes demonstrating perfect Tom Cruise-style cocktail acrobatics, to drop his shaker. ‘It’s . . . hang on – I’ll get her for you.’
I thrust my phone inside my bag and rustle it around among the tissues and make-up, before shoving it against my ear and taking a deep breath.
‘Imogen speaking,’ I say, two octaves higher.
‘Ah – at last.’
‘I believe this is a pressh call,’ I continue, as professionally as possible, ‘and for that you need to be speaking to our new PR agency, Peterhouse Deevy. They have something for you. A really good . . . scoop. In fact, someone left a message for you, I understand.’
‘From Peterhouse Deevy? I did have something from them, but not about this. It was some dippy bloke called Cosmic or something. He said he was phoning about pan scourers.’
I suddenly feel more desperate and drunk than ever before.
‘To be honest, the story is nearly there,’ he continues. ‘All we need is a quote from you, then I’m sending it to the news desk.’
‘You know who it was, then?’ I croak.
He hesitates. ‘I . . . might. Do you?’
‘I . . . might.’
‘Really?’
‘No. I meant no.’
‘Hmm.’
I have a moment of brilliance. ‘You show me yours and I’ll tell you . . . I mean, you tell me mine and I’ll . . . eurgh. Who do you think it is, exactly?’
I hear a few clicks, as if he’s tapping something into a computer keyboard. ‘J. Meyer,’ he announces.
Our gay operations director? ‘No,’ I reply, bewildered.
‘Okay . . . G. Basterfield,’ he tries, as I hear several more taps on the keyboard.
I narrow my eyes. ‘Wrong.’
‘I. Copeland.’
‘That’s me!’ I protest, as it dawns on me foggily that he’s simply scrolling through the names on our company website. ‘And it’s not, just for the record,’ I add, huffily.
‘Look, let me level with you,’ he continues. ‘It’s a game, this. You help me and I’ll help you. Give me the name of whoever it is and I’ll make sure Peebles’s statement is right up there at the top of the story. You’ll come out smelling of roses.’
I’m drunk, but I’m not drunk enough to believe this. ‘I need to get my PR firm on the case.’
‘You don’t mean Cosmic?’
‘It’s Cosmo. Cosimodo. Cos—oh, look, he’ll phone you back.’
‘I already tried phoning him as he’d been in touch about a Peebles story – although not this one. I’d thought he might be a way forward, only I got a message saying he’s on holiday until a week on Tuesday.’
‘What?’
‘Seriously. Try him yourself.’
Panic floods through me. ‘Okay. Please just bear with me. Please. I’ll do anything to make sure Peebles gets through this. It’s such a cock-up, the whole thing. Frankly, I feel like crying.’
‘I take it this conversation is on the record?’
‘NO! No! Look, just say this instead . . .’
He hesitates, clearly poised with his pen. ‘Yes?’
I open my mouth, ready to give him his quote. Then something happens as if I’m having an out-of-body experience: someone ends the call.
It appears to be me.
I collapse on the floor in a heap, wondering how I’m going to get out of this one.
I spend twenty inebriated minutes phoning Cosimo’s mobile number, only to get the same message the journalist did: he’s on holiday.
Emotion has just begun to overcome me when my phone rings again. It’s David. He’s devastatingly pissed and, for that reason, strangely easy to communicate with, compared to everyone else.
‘Tell me you have good newzz!’
‘Errr . . .’
‘Before you answer, I have this friend at my golf club, Charles Blackman. He runs a PR agency. I know you said you’re confident in the people you’ve got but—’
‘Get him on board!’
‘Who? Eh?’
‘Your pal. Get him on the case. That’d be great! Just fantastic,’ I gabble.
‘Right. Okay . . . good . . . AMAZEBALLS! Glad you’ve said that, I’ll get him to give you a ring as soon as I’ve put the phone down. Oh, Imogen, it’sh terrible. I can’t shleep. I’ve got through half a bottle of cooking sherry tonight.’
‘Why cooking sherry?’
‘I’m meant to be on the Atkinssh Diet and I don’t want to give the game away to Carmel. Still . . . I alwaysh have been good at holding my drink.’
Charles Blackman is having a peculiar affect on my head. The more noise he makes, the blurrier, spinier and more generally confusing everything gets.
‘Details! I need details. Fill me in on everything you know.’
So I do. Everything. And by the end of our thirty-minute phone call, I’m feeling almost sober. He sounds like he knows what he’s doing and, for the first time since this whole debacle began, I feel a small sense of relief as I end the call.
I lean on the wall while I compose myself and my thoughts turn immediately to Harry. Will he still be at the party? Will he be waiting for me? I think about how close I came to kissing him, and the thought is like a cattle prod in my behind.
I straighten my back, fluff up my hair, breathe deeply and attempt to pout as I head towards the doors, consumed by the thought of how his skin felt next to mine. I have my hand against the door when Meredith and Nicola appear.
‘You’re not heading to bed, are you?’ I ask, glancing over Meredith’s shoulder to search out Harry.
‘Oh . . . I’m bushed!’ replies Meredith, grabbing me by the shoulder and spinning me round. ‘And there’s absolutely zero sign of James Franco. Lots of footballers and that film star that arrived when we did, and various models, but no James.’
‘Can’t we just stay for one more drink?’ I suggest. ‘I was hoping to speak to—’
‘Harry’s gone to bed.’ Nicola interrupts me, but there’s something about the way she looks at me as she says this that makes me uneasy.
‘Let me check.’ I push past her.
I only have to go through the door to see him. With Clipboard Barbie. In the corner. The quiet corner. Our corner. I can only see his legs: the rest of him is shielded by her as she crosses her ankle seductively over his.
They couldn’t be any closer. And I couldn’t feel more like vomiting.
Chapter 25
Meredith doesn’t snore all night. Nor break wind. Yet do I enjoy a peaceful night’s sleep? I do not. And all because of a little-discussed pregnancy side-effect, caused by the Molotov co
cktail of hormones swimming around her body.
‘The bigger my bump gets, the hornier I am,’ she once confessed to me airily, adding that she couldn’t get enough of Nathan even on the days when she’d happily stab him with a dessert fork.
That was about five months ago. The bump is now BIG and, judging by her sleeptalking, she wasn’t wrong about the correlation.
‘There . . .YES! . . . Oooh!’ she groans exuberantly.
I shove a pillow over my head and close my eyes, attempting to force more palatable thoughts into my mind. They instantly drift to Harry and the delicious and impossible feelings he stirred in me tonight.
I’m partly glad he went off with Clipboard Barbie, for a multitude of reasons. I remove my pillow from my face in an attempt to draw breath and immediately regret it.
‘Where’s the paddle, Christian? Ooooowww . . . YES!’
I don’t remember feeling that frisky when I was pregnant. Although I wouldn’t have done under the circumstances . . . Not when Roberto was there one minute and gone the next. Not when the pregnancy itself set off a chain of events that ultimately meant I wouldn’t get to spend the rest of my life with him, as I’d always assumed I would.
Conceiving Florence hadn’t been planned, obviously. It was a surprise in every sense of the word and, right up until the moment I saw the results of the test, I’d hardly given the possibility a second thought.
Aware that I may have been a few days late, I’d idly thrown a Clearblue pack into my trolley at Tesco earlier in the week, before it sat in my bedside drawer for three days. I’d stumbled across it on Saturday morning after I’d returned from the gym and Roberto was out buying ingredients for dinner.
I opened the packet and took the test feeling certain it wouldn’t be positive, because although my period seemed late, my cycle has never run like clockwork. My complacency was such that I’d cleaned the windows, paid a gas bill and was dancing around the kitchen to Scissor Sisters when I remembered it. I high-kicked my way into the bathroom, pirouetted to the loo and there it was.
I screamed. A proper, throat-splitting squawk, capable of breaking the shaving mirror.
The Time of Our Lives Page 14
