‘I’m so sorry,’ Rory said, wincing at me. ‘I got caught in the office with a crisis and missed your big moment. I’m a terrible, terrible boyfriend so… here are these.’ He pulled a bouquet of blue peonies from behind his back and leant forward to kiss me on the side of my head. ‘Forgive me?’
‘Don’t worry,’ I replied, not wanting to seem difficult. ‘Come in, come say hi to everyone.’ I took the flowers and pulled him into the shop with my other hand. ‘Everyone, this is Rory. Rory, this is Eugene, Norris, you’ve already met my sister Ruby, and Zach.’
‘Hello,’ Eugene said instantly, pushing in front of the others to shake his hand. Even after a long day in the office, Rory looked impressive, a day’s stubble darkening his jaw.
‘Hello again,’ said Ruby, waving at him. ‘I think you might have a small hairy rival for your girlfriend’s affections.’
‘Norris,’ said Norris, holding out a huge hand.
Which left Zach.
‘Rory Dundee, how do you do?’ said Rory, extending his arm towards him.
Zach shook his hand but I could feel disdain radiating from where I stood. ‘You missed her big moment.’
‘Argh, I know,’ Rory groaned, letting go of Zach’s hand and clapping it to his chest. ‘We just have this developing crisis in Oman.’
Zach failed to look impressed. Eugene made a strange sort of cooing noise.
‘Drink, Rory?’ Norris said, nodding at the tray of champagne.
‘Yes please, thank you. Although I hardly feel I deserve it, being this abominably late. What’s this about a rival?’ He reached around my waist and kissed my head again.
I sighed. ‘Fumi’s dog tried to have sex with my leg. On stage. In front of everyone.’
‘Sensible dog,’ Rory replied, which at least made me smile.
‘Florence was brilliant,’ went on Zach. ‘You should have seen her.’
Rory screwed up his face, ‘Ah, damn Oman. I wish I’d been here.’
‘Yes, tell us about your job, Rory,’ said Eugene, before lowering his voice conspiratorially. ‘It sounds ever so important, but only if you’re allowed; you don’t have to tell us any state secrets or anything.’
‘No, no, not important,’ Rory replied, dazzling Eugene with his widest smile, ‘a mere cog in the wheels of government.’
Zach made a snorting noise which he turned into a cough. ‘And you want to be a Conservative MP, Florence says?’
‘I do,’ replied Rory. ‘Or at least I hope to be.’
‘I’d vote for you,’ interjected Eugene.
‘Zach…’ I warned.
‘What?’ he replied, all innocence. ‘Just asking.’
‘Not a fan?’ said Rory. He was still smiling but I saw a muscle in his cheek flex.
Zach shrugged. ‘My mum’s a teacher, so not really.’
‘In that case she should be grateful.’
‘Grateful?’
‘Absolutely. We’ve invested billions in the school system and increased teachers’ pay.’ Rory sounded cool, but I could still see that tiny muscle pulsing.
‘“We?” Rory, you’re not an MP yet,’ I joked, trying to lighten the atmosphere.
‘And what do you do?’ Rory asked, his eyes remaining on Zach. ‘Florence hasn’t mentioned you.’
‘I’m a photographer, just working here to help out for a bit,’ he replied. Zach, too, was trying to sound unruffled, but his stance – as upright as a candlestick, shoulders back – gave him away. It was like watching the gorilla enclosure at London Zoo. ‘But I’m also just a decent human being so I care about those less fortunate than us.’
‘As do I,’ said Rory, flashing another smile at him.
‘Enough,’ interrupted Norris, crossing his hands in the air in front of him. ‘No bickering. Come on, this is a celebration.’ He poured the remainder of the champagne into our mugs. Norris and Rory then talked politics while I watched Ruby flick her hair all over Zach as he showed her more of his photos.
‘Right, I’m off home,’ announced Norris, not long afterwards, draining his mug.
‘Pub?’ said Eugene hopefully, looking at the rest of us.
‘Sure,’ replied Zach.
‘I’m in,’ added Ruby.
I looked up at Rory. ‘Fancy it?’
He grimaced. ‘I’d love to but this situation in the Gulf is ongoing and I’ll need to be in early. You stay. You don’t have to come back with me.’
I weighed up my options. Go to the pub where Eugene would make us drink shots (tequila, it was always tequila) and watch Ruby flirt with Zach, or go back to Rory’s and sleep next to him.
‘Let’s go back to yours,’ I said. ‘Just hang on a second while I get my bag from downstairs?’
‘Course.’
I skipped downstairs and up again in less than a minute, not wanting to leave Zach and Rory unattended.
‘Come on, you,’ Rory said, reaching his hand out for me when I reappeared.
I took it and looked back at Zach. ‘You all right to lock up?’
He nodded and we were almost through the door, Rory holding it open for me, when Zach shouted behind us, ‘Best of luck with solving the Middle East.’
Rory hailed us a cab and I seethed the whole way to Pimlico, trying to work out who I disliked more: Percy or Zach. But once in Rory’s bedroom, he pushed me back on his bed and went down on me with such thorough focus and precise attention that I forgot about both of them and almost yelled ‘Cowabunga!’ myself.
‘FLORENCE, MY DARLING,’ shouted Eugene when I arrived at work the following morning. ‘HAVE YOU SEEN YOU’RE A ME ME?’
‘Eugene, what are you going on about?’
‘You’re a me me, LOOK!’ he said, thrusting his phone at me.
I looked and felt my stomach cartwheel. There was meme after meme on Twitter of Percy shagging my foot. ‘Was it good for you too, Percy?’ said one of the memes, on a shot of Percy wrapped around my calf while I snarled, red-faced, at the audience.
Eugene scrolled down his phone. Dozens of pictures and in every one I looked desperate, my mouth turned upwards in despair and my panicked expression suggesting I was being attacked by a lion instead of a small pug.
‘Leg humping, it’s what I do,’ said another meme.
‘Look at this one, it’s brilliant, and it’s been retweeted nearly three thousand times!’ said Eugene. This was a particularly bad shot of me, taken when I was trying to pull Percy away, bearing my teeth at him like an angry gargoyle. ‘Happy hump day!’ said the caption.
‘And there are videos,’ said Eugene, delightedly, showing me a GIF of Percy’s bottom thrusting at my trainer, his tail quivering in excitement.
‘Enough,’ I said, swiping his phone away from me. ‘I can’t bear it.’
‘But you’re an internet star!’
‘Eugene, I do not wish to be an internet star because a dog fancied my shoe. I don’t want to be an internet star anyway, but I definitely don’t want to be one for this.’
The door jingled as Zach swept through it.
‘Morning, you viral sensation, what a triumph! The Instagram account has been tagged about a million times, look…’ He walked towards us and held his phone out.
‘I don’t want to see,’ I said primly, opening the drawer for the Stanley knife.
‘Oh come on, it’s funny!’ said Zach. ‘Eugene, back me up.’
‘Not interested,’ I replied, running the blade across the packing tape. ‘I knew interviewing her would be a disaster and now look what’s happened.’
‘It’s not a disaster,’ insisted Zach. ‘We couldn’t have paid for this kind of publicity. It’s amazing! And it’s all thanks to you. You and a horny pug, anyway.’
‘I don’t want to hear another word about it,’ I said. I could feel my cheeks burning again. It was all Zach’s fault. If he hadn’t started working here, there wouldn’t have been the event, and if there wasn’t the event, I wouldn’t be all over the internet being violated by a dog.
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He changed the subject. ‘I like your sister!’
‘I don’t want to hear about that, either.’
I felt Zach and Eugene exchange looks behind my back and carried on lifting books out of the box.
‘OK, if anyone needs me, I’m going to sift through my photos from last night,’ Zach announced. He thudded downstairs and I glared over my shoulder at Eugene, who was still looking at his phone with a grin.
‘Do you want to help me with these?’ I snapped, gesturing at the boxes.
He looked up from his screen of memes as if I’d just caught him sneaking a tenner from the till and slid his phone into his pocket.
‘How was the pub?’ I asked a few minutes later, trying to sound carefree while running the knife along another strip of brown tape with the intensity of a murderer.
‘Fine. Had a few shots and went home again.’
‘Nothing I should know about? No gossip?’
Eugene looked up at me blankly. ‘What sort of gossip?’
‘Never mind,’ I replied, reflecting how fortunate it was that he worked for a bookshop and not the security services.
By lunchtime, the situation hadn’t improved. Nor had my mood. If anything, both had worsened. As the memes had spread on Twitter, the shop front had come under siege from Fumi and Percy fans taking pictures outside. They posed individually and in groups, making the peace sign with their fingers underneath the Frisbee Books Ltd sign. A few of them dared come into the shop and ask if I’d be in their photo with them. The fifth time I was asked this, by a lanky boy in a Superdry T-shirt, I stomped downstairs. Zach was sitting at his laptop editing photos.
‘This is a nightmare and it needs to stop,’ I said.
He spun in his chair and stretched his hands back behind his head. ‘Listen, I’m sorry you’re upset but it’s great for the shop and it’ll all blow over in a couple of days.’
‘That’s it, is it? That’s your answer to me being harassed all morning? I’m a national laughing stock, Zach!’
He sighed and puffed out his cheeks. ‘Why don’t you go home early? Eugene and I can manage. Go home and have a drink tonight. By tomorrow it’ll be old news.’
‘Fine,’ I said. Normally my sense of duty would make me feel guilty about sloping off early but today I couldn’t give a fig. I marched back upstairs.
‘I’m off,’ I said to Eugene, reaching for my bag from behind the till. ‘See you Monday.’
I opened the door feeling like a celebrity who has to leave their hotel and face banks of waiting paparazzi and fans outside. Except there were only two girls standing there, giggling as one extended her arm to take a selfie of them both, and they didn’t notice me. Still, as I started walking home, I was livid. And I blamed Zach entirely.
Chapter Six
RORY HAD EMAILED ME a list of items to bring for our country weekend with his parents. It included wellington boots, a waterproof coat and something ‘smart’ for the evening. This panicked me into borrowing a strapless red dress from Mia.
‘Is it not a bit… red?’ I said, looking doubtfully in her full-length mirror that night. The waistband of the dress was so tight I felt like a ketchup bottle. Would I explode if I sat down? Perhaps I simply wouldn’t be able to sit all evening.
‘I know what I’m doing, Flo,’ Mia replied. ‘They’ll be the sort of people who wear black tie on the weekends and you don’t want to feel out of place, do you?’
Still, at least the red dress distracted me from the Percy debacle.
That evening, I packed it along with an old pair of wellies and a dusty Barbour that I found buried on the coat stand in the hall. Plus six pairs of knickers, two bras, one pair of pyjamas, two pairs of jeans, four different types of top that ranged from casual T-shirt to frilly peasant shirt, two jumpers, my plain black dress from Whistles (what if they went to church on Sunday?), and three pairs of shoes. Converse, black pumps and red heels to go with the dress.
These provisions meant that I arrived at King’s Cross on Saturday morning dragging a large suitcase behind me as if I was off to the South Pole for several months instead of Norfolk for one night. Still, better to be prepared. You never want to run out of knickers.
Rory laughed when he spotted me under the departures board. ‘Let me take that,’ he said, reaching for the bag.
‘Where’s your stuff?’ I asked. He had nothing with him. Just his satchel hanging over one shoulder.
‘Keep various bits and pieces at home. Christ, this is heavy.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Anything for you. Right, come on, platform eleven. Let’s go before the plebs get all the seats.’
He set off for the ticket barriers, booming ‘Excuse me, sorry, sorry, excuse me!’ at other travellers before I could tell him off for being a snob. He stowed my bag and we found a table nearby. I sat by the window while Rory took off his tweed jacket, folded it and slid it carefully on top of his satchel in the overhead rack. He sat with a book on Margaret Thatcher he’d retrieved from the satchel and rubbed a hand up and down my thigh.
‘You all right?’ he asked.
‘Yep, all good.’
‘I mean about the dog situation.’
‘Oh, that,’ I said. We’d texted about it the previous night but I’d tried to play it down. ‘Yeah, fine. I mean, there are now ninety bajillion photos of me grimacing like a gargoyle on the internet but hopefully people forget these things.’
‘I blame that character you work with. What’s he called? Jack?’
‘Zach.’
Rory scowled. ‘How did he allow the situation to get so out of control?’
‘Well, he was at the back of the room, so he cou—’
‘And did you see the way he looked at me?’ he interrupted. ‘When I mentioned what I did? I suppose he’s some sort of communist.’
‘I think Ruby’s quite keen on him.’
‘Surely your sister has more taste than that?’
I opened my mouth to reply and then looked out of the window, unsure who I should defend.
‘Anyway,’ Rory went on, his voice more conciliatory, ‘I just wanted to make sure you weren’t too humiliated. But let’s forget it all and have a decent weekend. I’m thrilled you’re here.’
‘Me too,’ I replied, although I was nervous about meeting his parents, especially his artistic mother. ‘Has nice mother,’ I’d written on my list. ‘What’s your mum like?’
‘Like? What do you mean?’
‘You know, what’s her deal? Are you close?’
Rory scratched his chin. ‘She’s quite eccentric. Her father, my grandfather, was a reasonably famous portraitist so they had a bohemian upbringing – illegitimate siblings, wine at breakfast, affairs with the nannies and so on. But I adore her. As will you,’ he said, squeezing my leg, ‘don’t worry.’
‘I’m not worrying,’ I lied. ‘And what about your dad?’
‘He’s also mad. Very English. Practically stitched into his red corduroys.’
‘Ah, so that’s where you get it from?’ I teased. Rory looked like a posh chimney sweep today, in a navy wool waistcoat over a light blue herringbone shirt, with navy trousers and a pair of suede ankle boots.
‘Maybe,’ Rory conceded, sliding his hand down my leg and pinching me around my knee.
‘Ouch!’ I said, and dived for his leg to do the same but he caught my wrist.
‘Nice try but you’re not that strong.’
‘Oww, all right, time out,’ I said, and he released my wrist. I settled back against my seat again. ‘What did your dad do?’
‘He was in the army, then left and went into the City, and now is mostly concerned with killing things. Pheasants, fish, our neighbours.’
‘Is that why they live in the country?’
He shook his head. ‘No, it’s my mother’s childhood house. She was the favourite child so it was left to her, which caused an almighty row in the family and now nobody speaks to one another.’
‘Families, huh?’
I said, leaning my head against his arm. Hearing that his were as barking mad as mine was strangely comforting.
‘Mmm.’ Then he tapped his book. ‘You happy if I read this?’
‘Oh, sure.’ Although I felt a slight pang of disappointment at this. I’d imagined my first minibreak weekend with a man would be a glorious, exhilarating adventure where nobody else in the world mattered (especially not Margaret Thatcher), and in between bouts of euphoric sex where I came every time, we’d discuss the big issues in life: religion, potential children’s names, our favourite flavour of crisps. I know I’d written ‘must like reading’ on my list but I didn’t mean he had to do it all the time.
I turned away to watch through the window as London slid by, counting the carriages of an old train as we passed it. If there were an even number, his parents would like me and I wouldn’t embarrass myself. ‘One, two, three, four, five…’
‘What are you doing?’ Rory asked, head lifting from his book.
‘Nothing,’ I replied quickly, glancing across the aisle through the other window where there were no old trains and nothing to count. No counting this weekend, Florence Fairfax. Keep that madness locked down.
Almost two hours later, we caught a cab that smelt of fried onions from Norwich station.
‘It’s about twenty minutes,’ Rory told me, before talking to the driver for the entire journey. About the weather, about the football, about the local MP who neither of them liked.
‘He talks a load of old squit,’ said the driver, before catching my eye in his mirror. ‘Excuse my language,’ he said.
I shook my head and smiled at his reflection as Rory rattled on. You could put him down on the moon and he’d find someone to chat to. He’d charmed everyone in the shop on Thursday night. Well, nearly everyone. But Zach hadn’t even given him a chance. He’d just assumed the worst about Rory and stubbornly refused to change his mind. And then he’d been busy flirting with my sister. I wondered, yet again, whether anything would happen between them and glanced at my phone. I hadn’t heard a peep from her since Thursday evening and she’d been out last night. Maybe with Zach? Maybe, right now, Zach was waking up in my house and playing hunt the tea bag in my kitchen? I narrowed my eyes at the thought as we slowed down and the taxi pulled through an old metal gate with a sign on the front of it: Rollmop Manor.
The Wish List: Escape with the most hilarious and feel-good read of 2020! Page 15