In the fifteen minutes since Peter had become Patrick I’d grown a hundred times older and wiser. And boiling mad to boot.
I opened the door and made a grand sweeping gesture. And, no, I didn’t feel awkward about turning Patrick out of his own home. After all, he deserved this, didn’t he?
As he moved past me in the doorway, I caught a hint of his special scent. I don’t know if that scent is just the way his skin smells naturally, or if it’s the cologne he uses. If it is cologne, it’s nicer than any male cologne I’ve ever smelled before. Whatever it is, it’s fine-tuned to my senses and fills me with longing.
I sucked in my breath and gripped the door handle to stop myself from leaning in to him.
On the doorstep he turned to me. ‘Molly, I’m very sorry I’ve hurt you. It’s the last, the very last thing I wanted.’
Yeah, you and me both, I thought. But I couldn’t respond. I was too busy concentrating on not leaning any closer.
‘Yoo-hoo, Patrick!’ a voice called suddenly.
It was Mrs Blake, Patrick’s elderly neighbour, popping her head over the neatly clipped hedge that divided their front gardens.
‘Oh, it is you, Patrick,’ she gushed. ‘I thought I saw you get out of that lovely sports car!’
In the outdoor light I could see that Patrick looked pale and upset, but I steeled my heart.
As always, he was unfailingly polite.
‘Good morning, Eleanor.’
Honestly, the neighbour must be at least eighty, but she was ogling Patrick with all the shameless delight of a tweeny fan-girl.
‘You’re back earlier than we expected.’ She beamed. ‘How absolutely lovely to see you, my dear. How was Australia?’
As if that wasn’t bad enough, from across the street another woman (middle aged and in a floral dress of pleated chiffon with strings of pearls) started waving madly.
‘Halloo, there, Patrick,’ she called.
Charming, lovable Patrick Knight. If only they knew how dangerous this adorable, two-faced man could be.
I shut the door very quickly. OK, yes—I confess I probably slammed it.
Molly’s Diary, May 31st
I’m sorry to report that my life is not back to normal.
I was going to try to pretend that everything’s fine now, but I can’t do it. I’ve always hated pretence, and since the Patrick-Peter debacle I’ve developed a particular sensitivity to any whiff of falsehood.
So this diary is going to remain brutally honest. I am still hurt and devastated, and terribly, terribly angry. So, as you can imagine, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind first thing yesterday morning, when a delivery guy from a florist’s shop tried to deliver armfuls of roses, carnations, lilies and daffodils. Honestly, there were enough flowers to fill every bathtub in the house.
But how could I accept them?
Under any other circumstances (i.e. circumstances that did not involve my faith in men being ripped wide open) I would have been ecstatic, but I told the delivery man he had the wrong address.
He wouldn’t believe me. He showed me the address on the docket, and he even offered to ring the store to double-check. So then I had to tell him that I simply couldn’t accept the flowers.
I told him I was very sorry, but I was allergic to pollen. I asked him to take them to the hospital, or to give them to his girlfriend or his grandmother, or to anyone he knew who’d appreciate them.
I thought my pollen excuse sounded plausible, but he shrugged and said I wasn’t the first young lady who’d refused a delivery of flowers.
‘I understand, ducks,’ he said as he carried the gorgeous armfuls back to the van. ‘Some dimwits never get it through their thick heads that flowers can’t make up for each and every sin.’
Too true.
I suppose Patrick expected that these over-the-top and gorgeous flowers would make amends for his deception. Hasn’t he any idea how very real my pain is?
If only he knew that over the weekend I’ve toyed with some terribly wicked ideas for retribution. I’ve considered:
• Repainting his bedroom hot pink with black polka dots
• Super-gluing his remote control to the top of his TV set
• Using a pair of pinking shears to cut out the crotch of the expensive Italian trousers in his wardrobe
• Sprinkling chilli powder on his toilet paper roll (just before I leave)
These were actually the nicer possibilities, but unfortunately they’ve only given me a momentary glimmer of satisfaction. I suspect that revenge doesn’t really suit my personality, because while I was dreaming up these evil schemes one corner of my mind was also busily wishing that there’d been no trickery and I’d gone off to Cornwall.
Duh.
Anyway, after the flowers had gone yesterday (and that was an incident that caused several curtains in Alice Grove to twitch) I decided to get out of the house. I’ve always preferred to sulk out of doors.
So I went for a long walk along the Chelsea Embankment and all over Battersea Park, trying to shake off my angry mood.
But wouldn’t you know it? Everywhere I went there were happy couples. Old, young and every age in between. Jogging together, strolling arm-in-arm, walking his-and-her dogs, pushing babies in prams, sitting on park benches, lying on the grass and gazing into each other’s eyes. I swear no matter where I walked I was surrounded by images of blissful, idyllic, dreamy romance!
And of course no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t stop my mind from going over and over my own tragic non-romance. So many sweet memories—my first sight of Peter on the doorstep, our London explorations, Westminster and Big Ben, that fabulous night at Covent Garden.
That kiss! Quite possibly the most fabulous kiss in all of history—certainly in all of my history.
I put so much emotional energy into my time with Peter (alias Patrick), and ever since he left I’ve been fighting useless regrets for what might have/could have/should have happened. How crazy is that? How can I wish for romance with him when I’m mad enough to wring his neck?
The thing is, a part of me can’t help wishing he’d never told me the truth on Saturday morning. I was so poised for the thrill of a lifetime—the sports car, the beautiful rural English countryside, the night in a Cornish B&B with my dream man.
If only, if only…
The unrealised romantic potential of that lost weekend in Cornwall haunts me like a tune I can’t get out of my head.
And so do all kinds of questions—endless questions that have no answers—questions I wish I’d put to Patrick before I showed him the door.
The biggie that’s really bugging me is why he waited until we were leaving for Cornwall to tell me who he was. Why did he wait until after he’d already kissed me?
Come to think of it, why did he ask me to go to Cornwall at all?
He’d already taken me out on the so-called ‘dream date’. The deception had been successfully accomplished and his role as my companion was over.
I suppose he’d been planning to exploit the situation. After our kiss, he knew I was ripe for the plucking. But then his conscience probably got the better of him.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This anger isn’t doing me or my diary any good. I just ripped a blooming great hole in the page with my pen.
I need to calm down. I need to be kind to myself.
I have to remember that I’ve had a lucky escape and should be celebrating. I should also remember that I was having a great time in London before a certain tall, dark and incredibly handsome man landed on the doorstep, and that I can have a great time again.
I just won’t share my future great times with Patrick—the Knight whose armour is no longer shining but severely tarnished and dented.
I shudder when I think of all the things I’ve told him in my previous e-mails. I just opened my heart and let it all out. He knows so much about me (in particular my penchant for English gentlemen in three-piece suits with lovely plummy voices). I tru
sted him, and he betrayed that trust.
I think that’s what’s hurt me most.
The terrible thing is Patrick warned me that an expensive suit and well-bred accent did not turn a man into a gentleman, and I still fell into the trap.
Let’s be honest—a true gentleman would never be deceitful.
Even if he was trying to do someone a good turn.
Would he?
Private Writing Journal, June 2nd
I’ve been back in Australia for three days now, and I still haven’t written to Molly. It’s more than possible that whatever I say will upset her. The pollen allergy excuse that the florist kindly passed on shows how persona non grata I am. That’s why I’ve resorted to this journal again. If I’m going to try to make amends, it might be easier to get my thoughts clear on paper before I commit them to e-mail.
I’m pretty sure it’s up to me (as the offender) to make the first move towards reconciliation, and I doubt that either Molly or I will enjoy the rest of our house swap if we continue in uncomfortable silence. But after the way we parted, what can I say to mollify her? (Oh, God, terrible pun.)
Can I offer yet another apology? Try to set things straight? Should I attempt to justify exactly why I started the whole subterfuge fiasco?
Do I actually have a decent excuse for totally stuffing up a perfectly happy girl’s life?
It’s not the first time I’ve been accused of doing that, of course, but in the past I’ve mainly committed sins of omission (e.g. last-minute cancellations of dates). This time I went to the trouble of manufacturing a perfect date, only to have it turn into a perfect disaster.
Molly has every right to ask why. I only wish I knew the right answer, or rather I wish I had an answer that she’d find acceptable.
When I started out on the flight back to the UK my plan was simply to knock on Molly’s door and to say hello (yes, as Patrick, not Peter) and to satisfy my curiosity. But as the time to meet Molly drew closer I kept thinking about her big dating dreams. At some hazy point the Peter Kingston scheme emerged, but it wasn’t till I saw Molly that I seized on it.
Why?
I suspect I was trying to protect myself. I’d already been entranced by Molly’s personality, even though I’d only met her in e-mails, but I was reluctant to get too personally involved. After all, we are house swappers from different worlds, almost different planets. We had no plans for a relationship.
The truth is, I honestly did want that night at Covent Garden to be perfect. Molly had such high expectations of her dream date, and I was sure that she couldn’t possibly be happy with a compromise date with a house swapper who’d read all her self-revealing e-mails. I was sure she’d assume I had pegged her as desperate and dateless, that I’d taken pity on her.
So my original motives were chivalrous—or so I thought—but my mistake was to get in deeper, when a ten-year-old could have told me I was asking for trouble.
Of course I should never have kissed her. I should have known that those soft, pink, talkative lips would be my undoing. Of course I should have known that kissing Molly would be beyond amazing and that one kiss could never be enough.
Instead I let the kiss get out of hand (almost), and that led me to an even bigger mistake—the proposed weekend in Cornwall.
How do I explain that one?
I suppose I could claim a longing to share in Molly’s enthusiasm for new discoveries, but who’s going to believe me? Certainly not Molly. Not after that kiss.
The crazy thing was I trapped myself. I fell for her harder and faster than I would have believed possible. I became the one who was desperate, but I couldn’t contemplate sleeping with her without telling her who I really was. I may be casual in my relationships, but I’ve never been a con man.
And yet telling the truth meant bursting Molly’s fantasy bubble.
That was my Waterloo. Thanks to my poor handling of this, our dream date was reduced to a pity date in Molly’s eyes. And I was forced to accept that I had fallen for a warm, lovely, real girl, who in turn was in love with a dream.
Molly didn’t want reality. How else can I explain her horror at discovering the truth that Peter and I were one and the same?
How could I possibly tell her how I felt when she was looking at me as if I’d murdered someone? (And I suppose I had. I’d murdered her fantasy.)
Now Molly has sent me the strongest possible negative messages—not with words but through her actions. She showed me the door. She refused the flowers. She stopped writing e-mails.
A man doesn’t expose himself and declare his feelings unless he’s pretty damn sure he will be well received, so all things considered it’s pretty clear that continued silence is my wisest option.
Molly’s Diary, June 6th
I’ve kept myself deliberately busy this past week, especially over the weekend, taking on as many shifts at the Empty Bottle as they’ll give me. It helps to have something else to think about besides you-know-who.
This morning I’m finally feeling strong enough (or at least I hope I am) to open my laptop and take a peek to see if any e-mails have arrived. I can’t help being curious.
OK—I’ve looked. There’s only one e-mail and it’s from Karli. Yay! I’m so pleased to hear from her at last.
I think I’m relieved that there’s no word from Patrick. I’m sure he’s OK. Of course he is.
To: Molly Cooper
From: Karli Henderson
Subject: Back online!!
Hi Molly
Sorry I’ve taken so long to get back to you. Jimbo and I are at last settled in Cairns, but it’s been a mad month, what with packing up and starting new jobs and finding somewhere to live. Yes, I’ve got a job, too—in the office at the same boatyard where Jimbo works as a shipwright. So we’re set, but I haven’t had time to scratch myself.
We have a nice flat, and wages coming in, so we’re very happy. We bought a second-hand computer (it works most of the time), and we’ve already made a few new friends. (Although no one will ever replace you as my best friend, Mozza.)
How are you? How’s London? Have you found your dream British gentleman? I’ve been thinking about you so much even though I couldn’t write.
Actually, I’ve just been looking back over our old e-mails (saved on a USB stick), and I’ve realised that you probably still have no idea what your house swapper looks like. So, honey, I guess it’s finally time to satisfy your curiosity. Let me tell you. You might want to come rushing home.
Patrick’s tall and dark. (Not a bad start, huh?) His hair was short when he got here, but it quickly started to grow and curl on the ends. (Very cute.) He has dark chocolate eyes with extra-long lashes. Jodie G verified this when she got a close-up look at him at the party he held after the toad races. But, honestly, I was there, too, and she didn’t get as close to him as she likes to make out.
He has a good jawline, and when I saw him there was just the right amount of stubble. (So, yes, your Patrick is smoking hot. Are you drooling yet?) Oh, and he has wide shoulders and a six-pack. (We’ve seen him walking on the beach with his shirt off.)
So I guess it’s no surprise that he’s also good at sports. You know how Jimbo always plays in the Bay of Origin rugby league competition? Well, because we were leaving the island, the Sapphire Bay team was one player short. Your Patrick has only played rugby union, not league, but he volunteered to fill in and managed to catch on very quickly.
So, despite our initial concern that he might be a bit aloof, he’s turned out to be a great mixer. Actually, he must have been a real bonus to our team, because we won for the first time in about three seasons. Jimbo has his nose out of joint about that. Guys and their tender egos—you’ve gotta love ‘em.
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