‘Oh my goodness,’ I gasped. ‘I’m so out of shape. I’m going to have to sit down.’
‘Let me come with you,’ said Barney laughing. ‘And rest assured, young lady, you are in very decent shape.’ He ran his hand down my arm, pulling me close into his side. ‘Another bottle of champagne?’ he asked, summoning the attention of a passing waiter.
Back at the table he topped up my glass, edging his chair closer to mine again. The rest of our group was up on the floor bopping and I was glad of the chance to sit back and watch them all enjoying themselves. Barney, though, seemed intent on focusing all his attentions on me.
‘You have beautiful eyes,’ he said, leaning over and running a fingertip down my cheek. ‘A beautiful smile.’ His finger touched my lips. ‘And beautiful breasts,’ he added with glee as his gaze returned to the spot where it had been focused most of the night.
Oh good God. I wished someone would come over and rescue me. Talk to Barney and distract his attention, but everybody seemed to be giving us a very wide berth. When he leant over and planted a wet kiss on my cheek, I nearly fainted in surprise.
‘Ooohh!’ I yelped feeling a hand grab my inner thigh. ‘Barney! Stop it! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I just need to pop to the loo. Again. It’s all that champagne,’ I said, laughing uneasily.
‘Don’t be long,’ he chuckled, as I stumbled out of my seat. ‘I’ll be waiting for you!’
Threading my way through the tables, I was aware of the knowing glances and sidelong smirks coming my way. Pete, one of the sales team, grabbed me by the arm as I walked past.
‘Alice, you seem to be getting on famously with Barney. You and him an item now? Remember us when you’re on the cover of Hello magazine, won’t you?’ I scowled, but it did nothing to stop the sniggering from the occupants of the table.
‘Oh drop it, Pete,’ I snapped, more viciously than I intended. ‘I’m only doing my job and Barney Roberts is definitely not my idea of the perfect date.’
‘Ooh-er, sorry, Alice. We were only joking, we didn’t mean anything by it. Honest.’
I pushed aside the chair in my way and waltzed off, their laughter ringing after me.
Outside, I glanced at my watch. It was 11.45. From memory, Barney’s taxi had been booked for 12.30 am so I only had another three quarters of an hour of this torment to endure. Hopefully, by the time I got back to the table, he’d be busy in conversation with someone else.
I wandered outside, the rush of cold air taking my breath away, but after the crushing claustrophobia of the function room, it was a welcome sensation. Rubbing my hands up my arms to ward off the cold, I paced up and down for as long as my goose-bumped skin could bear, which was only a matter of minutes, before heading back inside.
‘Aha, so this is where you’ve been hiding?’ There really was no escaping this man.
‘Gosh, it’s cold out there,’ I said, my teeth chattering.
‘Here, let me warm you up.’ Manoeuvring me into a small passageway to the side of the cloakroom, he threw his arms around me, pushing his body hard up against me, his lips pressed firmly against mine. Oh good grief, what exactly was that sticking into me? I wriggled beneath his boozy breath using all my strength to push him away, but he was far too strong and soon his tongue was probing my mouth, his large hands lunging down my top.
‘Stop it, Barney!’ With a force I didn’t know I possessed, I slipped out from under his embrace. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ My breath was coming in short sharp spurts. ‘I’m not interested in you in that way, OK? I’ve got a boyfriend for heaven’s sake!’ I said, sounding like a virginal teenager.
‘And I’ve got a wife. But I won’t tell your boyfriend if you don’t tell my wife.’ Laughing, he grabbed me by the arm and spun me round to face him. ‘Come on, darling, you’ve been teasing me all night in that luscious dress of yours. Let’s not play games with each other.’ His hand grasped my breast while the other hand drew my head in towards him. I squeezed my mouth shut and aimed my knee very firmly in the direction of his crotch.
‘Oh feisty! I like that in a woman.’
‘Leave it, Barney!’ I stormed away, smoothing my dress down over my hips, the sight of two huge ladders in my stockings only making my mood darker. Barney followed behind.
‘What the…?’ We said it in unison, both stopping on the spot, our eyes meeting in panic. An almighty gust of wind whipped through the foyer, as the twinkly lights of the chandeliers flashed on and off. All the doors leading off the lobby rattled open and shut. Instinctively, I looked towards the glass frontage of the hotel thinking a juggernaut had crashed through the doors. Please God, not a bomb! Not with all these people around.
‘Shit!’ Barney’s brow creased as he looked one way and then the other, tucking in his shirt at the same time. ‘What the hell was that?’
‘I don’t know.’ Shivering, I looked around stunned as people filed out from the main hall to see what all the commotion was about. Goose bumps ran the length of my body. I wondered if I might be going down with something, I was that cold. What on earth was going on?
‘Je-sus Christ!’
It was Barney’s plaintive cry as suddenly he was lifted clean off his feet and catapulted into a nearby cheese plant.
‘Oh my goodness!’ I ran over, bending down to tend to him. ‘Are you OK?’ I felt the air around me vibrating. He was lying spread-eagled on the floor, the mucky brown contents of the plant pot scattered over his previously pristine white shirt.
‘Do I look bloody OK?’ He wiped his forearm across his face, revealing a thunderous expression. He rolled over onto his front and pushed himself up onto his knees, pain shadowing his every movement. ‘Someone just had a pop at me. Who the hell did that?’
‘What?’ I held out my arm for him as he struggled to his feet, but he pushed me aside, looking at me accusingly. ‘No, Barney, no one had a pop at you. I was here by your side the whole time. I don’t know what happened. I thought it was a bomb at first or an earthquake or something.’ The words tumbled out as I looked around for an explanation.
Just as he pulled himself up to his full height, his legs buckled beneath him again and he collapsed back down on the floor. Sneers of derision were wafting our way.
‘Well, it’s hardly surprising considering the amount of booze he’s been throwing down his throat all night,’ someone muttered unhelpfully from behind us.
‘Bastard!’ said another very familiar voice. ‘It’s nothing less than the creep deserves.’
There was no mistaking that voice, at all. I spun round on the spot.
‘Jimmy!’ Amongst the throng of party-goers in their dinner suits and glamorous dresses, Jimmy stood out like an angelic beacon in his scruffy jeans and T-shirt as he glowered, angelically, over the huddled figure on the floor, his mouth set firm, his eyes flaring with anger.
‘Christ, woman!’ Barney groaned from the floor. ‘You could at least get my name right.’ He struggled to his feet again, brushing away my attempts to help him up. ‘I knew I should never have taken this job on. What a bloody waste of time. I’m out of here.’
‘Did you do this?’ I said through clenched teeth to Jimmy who was shadowing Barney like a prize fighter going in for the final onslaught.
He shrugged and turned away, dropping his gaze to the floor.
‘The guy’s been out of order all night. Hassling you, coming on to you. Kissing you like that!’ Indignation mixed with fury whirled around Jimmy in a cloud. ‘It’s not as though you didn’t warn him. What did he expect? He had it coming.’
‘Oh, Jimmy,’ I whispered, reaching out a hand to touch him. ‘You shouldn’t have done this though. Look at the state of him. I had it all under control.’
‘Like hell you did! If I hadn’t stepped in when I did, God knows what would have happened.’ He pushed back his sleeves, as he paced the floor looking as if he might jump on Barney again at any moment, and then folded his arms, defiantly.
I shook my head, h
ardly believing that Jimmy could have caused so much mayhem, but feeling secretly thankful that he had. Had he been watching over me all night, my very own guardian angel? It gave me a reassuring warm glow. As I looked over at him now, he gave me a sheepish smile and shrugged. Despite myself, I couldn’t help but smile back.
‘Come on, Barney,’ I said, waving away the small crowd that had congregated in a huddled mass. ‘I think your taxi’s waiting outside. This is one night you won’t forget in a hurry!’
Chapter Seventeen
I sat in Lexie’s kitchen, mopping up chocolate brioche crumbs from an Emma Bridgewater plate, trying not to contemplate the events of the previous evening.
‘Oh hi Alice, how are you?’
The last thing I expected to see was a half-naked man wandering into the kitchen, helping himself to a banana from the fruit bowl and peeling it in a very provocative manner in front of me.
‘Phil? Phil! Nice to see you again,’ I spluttered, wiping my mouth clean with my fingers. ‘How’s things?’ I struggled to keep my gaze fixed firmly on his face.
‘Great, thanks.’ He took a glass from the cupboard and placed it under the cold water tap looking very much at home. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, apologetically ‘I’m not hanging around. I’m playing squash in half an hour.’
‘Oh OK. No worries,’ I said, wondering how long Lexie and Phil had been so well acquainted.
The sly little minx, I thought, helping myself to another chocolate brioche when Phil left the room. I’d known there’d been a bit of chemistry at work that night, but I had no idea that things had fast-forwarded to the staying over stage. Why hadn’t she told me?
‘What?’ she said, coyly, from under long lashes, after she’d seen Phil out the front door.
She gave a dismissive shrug of her shoulders, a self-indulgent smile resting on her lips.
‘It’s early days,’ she said, looking sheepish, ‘but I really like him, Alice. He seems such a genuine guy.’
‘I’m sure he is,’ I smiled, ‘especially if he’s a friend of Damon’s. I just wished you’d warned me. I wasn’t expecting to come across his half-naked form over my breakfast. It was a bit of a shock, that’s all.’
She laughed, her whole being bathed in a glow of early love, or lust, more likely.
‘Sorry, it wasn’t planned. I didn’t realise he would be here. It… um… just happened. You know what it’s like.’
No, I didn’t actually. Something like that hadn’t happened in my little world for a long time, although weird, wacky and totally unexpected things of a celestial nature were becoming something of a regular occurrence.
‘Hmmm, yeah. But I’m guessing that’s not the reason why you insisted I came round here this morning. To give the once-over to your new boyfriend?’
‘No, of course not.’ She jumped up as if suddenly remembering and walked over to her desk. Unplugging her laptop, she gathered up the cable and brought it over to where I was sitting. ‘I wanted you to see this,’ she said, lifting the lid on the computer, her fingers flying over the keyboard, ‘without Jimmy standing over us, giving us the benefit of his opinion.’
‘Oh, I see.’ I didn’t like to mention that Jimmy seemed to possess omnipresent powers and was probably watching over us this very moment. I didn’t like to consider that thought too much myself.
‘You’ll never believe this. I was googling Jimmy the other night…’
I raised my eyebrows.
‘Yes. Just to see if I could find out some more background information on him. Something that would shed some clues as to why he’s ended up in your life. You have to admit it’s all a bit strange…’
Strange was putting it mildly.
‘When I came upon this.’ She loaded YouTube and clicked the play button. She’d brought me round to her cottage on a Sunday morning to watch a video clip? ‘It’s an interview with Jimmy on one of those satellite channels.’
I recognised the interviewer, a woman in her late fifties with a neat blonde hairstyle and a warm lilting Irish accent who had rarely been off our TV screens a few years earlier, but nowadays was relegated to an afternoon chat show on one of the lesser-known channels.
‘She’s talking to Jimmy about his career,’ she explained, fast-forwarding through the clip, ‘but it’s towards the end where it gets really interesting. Here!’ she said, stopping the tape with a dramatic stab at the keyboard. ‘Just look at this.’
“So Jimmy, you’ve reached an unrivalled position in your career. You’re the nation’s number 1 TV presenter and your weekend radio show attracts listening figures that other DJs can only dream about. What’s next for you? There have been rumours that you may be leaving our shores to cross the Atlantic.”
Jimmy shrugged in that half-committal way of his, the corners of his lips twitching upwards. It was a look I’d been on the end of on numerous occasions over the last few weeks and seeing it practised on someone else, in another lifetime, stirred uncomfortable feelings.
“Is this something you’d consider? A move to the States?”
He paused, shifting in his chair and examined the backs of his hands.
“To be honest with you, Margot, although I’ve had some very tempting offers, I wouldn’t want to leave the UK. I love this country, it’s my home and I feel very privileged to be doing the job that I do. As long as the great British public are prepared to tolerate my ugly mug on their screens, then I’m happy to stay and continue doing what I love doing best.”
A spontaneous round of applause rippled around the studio.
I looked over at Lexie and I was certain that I caught a tear in her eye to match the one in my own.
“And with such a busy working schedule, Jimmy, do you find any time to pursue a personal life? We hear very little about the private side to Jimmy Mack.”
“Well to be honest, there isn’t a great deal to tell.” He laughed lightly, running a hand through his dark hair. “But it’s something I’m very conscious of. The success, the fame and all the trimmings that come with this lifestyle mean nothing without someone special to share it with. And I’m a great romantic at heart.” He exchanged a flirtatious look with Margot. “I believe there’s someone out there for each of us, someone special, your soul mate if you like. I’m still looking for mine.”
“Jimmy, I’ll be your special person!” A girl called out from the crowd to the cheers of the audience. Jimmy and Margot joined in with the laughter.
“It’s fair to say I won’t die a happy man until I’ve met the woman I’m destined to spend the rest of my life with.”
A collective ‘ahh’ went round the crowd.
Margot shuffled her papers together and looked around, a satisfied smile upon her lips as she surveyed the rapt faces looking on.
“I think you may regret uttering those words, Jimmy. Your inbox will be overflowing with all sorts of propositions by tomorrow. It’s been a pleasure talking to you, Jimmy. Thank you very much for your time.”
Lexie clicked on the screen, shutting down the programme and turned to me as if she’d suddenly discovered the meaning of the universe.
‘It’s amazing, isn’t it? Everything makes absolute sense now.’
‘It does?’ I muttered, still reeling from seeing Jimmy talking so candidly about his personal life.
‘Yes! Didn’t you hear what he said? That he wouldn’t be able to die a happy man until he met the woman of his dreams, his soul mate. Don’t you understand what it all means, Alice?’ She closed the lid on the laptop and walked across to the window, before turning round to fix her gaze on me.
‘No,’ I shrugged. ‘To be honest, I have no idea what it all means.’
‘Oh Alice, you must see. This whole thing hasn’t been about Donna, that’s just a complication. It’s about you and Jimmy. You were meant to be together. As a couple. Soul mates. It’s so romantic.’ She clasped her hands in front of her, swooning. Clearly her night with Phil had brought out her latent sentimental side.
‘You were destined to meet,’ she went on. ‘At the charity ball, no doubt. Until fate decided to put its ugly boot into the plans and kybosh the whole thing. And who knows what might have happened next?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said, unable to ignore the warm feeling of recognition in my stomach, thinking she was being anything but ridiculous.
‘Marriage? Babies?’ she continued. ‘It was all written in the stars for you. It’s just so sad that his future and more importantly your future have been snatched away. Just like that.’ She clicked her fingers, making me sit up to attention. ‘Jimmy’s obviously got stuck here, living this strange existence, not willing to move over to the other side until he’s spent some time with his true love. That’s you.’
I stood up, quickly steadying myself with my hands on the desk as my head swum in a disbelieving fog. I sat back down again, the blood rushing to somewhere below my knees.
‘It’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it?’ I stuttered. ‘You’re putting two and two together and getting five.’
‘No, I’m not, Alice. It’s the truth. And judging by your expression, you know it to be the truth too. Think about it. A larger than life ghost who can’t be seen or heard by anyone else turns up in your life and shows no sign of moving on. It’s the only plausible explanation.’
That’s when I burst into tears. It was so utterly fanciful and yet completely logical to me too. Ever since that day in the field when I first met Jimmy, I’d been fighting feelings that had been threatening to swamp me. Now, I wasn’t sure I could hold onto them a moment longer.
‘Oh Alice, I’m so sorry.’ She wrapped her arms around me. ‘Trust you,’ she said, shaking her head wryly, wiping the tears from my cheeks with a tissue. ‘You finally get to meet the man of your dreams and he turns out to be not of this world. It could only happen to you.’
Desperately Seeking Heaven Page 13
