Lucy in the Sky

by Paige Toon

  First published in Great Britain by Pocket Books UK, 2007

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Paige Toon, 2007

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

  Pocket Books & Design is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  The right of Paige Toon to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  Africa House

  64-78 Kingsway

  London WC2B 6AH

  Simon & Schuster Australia

  Sydney

  www.simonsays.co.uk

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN-10: 1-84739-503-1

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84739-503-0

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  For my gorgeous husband, Greg.

  And for my dad Vern, my mum Jenny, my brother Kerrin, and

  my two best friends from childhood, Bridie and Naomi.

  I still miss you all, every day.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Sydney

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  London

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Lucy in the Sky

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  London to Singapore

  Friday: Depart London Heathrow at 2105

  Saturday: Arrive Singapore at 1750

  Duration: 12 hrs 45 mins

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, would you please fasten your seat belts, stow away your tray tables and put your seats in the upright position. All electronic equipment must be turned off during take-off and landing, and mobile phones must be switched off until you’re safely inside the terminal at Singapore International Airport, as this can interfere with the aircraft navigation systems…’

  Oh, bugger it, I think I’ve left my phone on. Bollocks! It’s in the overhead locker. I weigh up my options: ask the fat bloke next to me to move or cause a possible plane crash? Fat bloke? Plane crash? Better not risk it.

  ‘Excuse me, please.’

  He looks confused.

  ‘I’ve left my phone on.’

  Grunting unhappily, he nudges at his skinny wife to move. Then, huffing and puffing, he hauls himself from his seat. Now all he has to do is edge sideways and we’ll be home and free. Argh, this is taking forever! Wonder if he’d be quicker in an emergency? I’m starting to regret my decision to have a window seat.

  Path cleared at last, I quickly locate my phone in my bag and see that a text message has come in. My finger hovers over the off button, but that tiny blinking envelope is far too inviting. Nope, I can’t resist. Aah, it’s from James.

  HI LUCY! JUST SHAGGED JAMES IN UR BED. THOUGHT U SHOULD KNOW. 4 TIMES THIS MONTH. NICE SHEETS! XXX

  It doesn’t compute. I don’t understand. It’s from James. What does he mean, just shagged James…Oh, no. My stomach feels like it’s plummeted 10,000 feet but the plane hasn’t even taken off yet.

  An air hostess hovers in the aisle. ‘Miss, would you take your seat, please? The aircraft is about to depart.’

  I can’t. My feet are frozen to the spot. I look at her in alarm, my grip tight on the phone.

  ‘You need to turn that off.’ Her tone is steely as she nods towards the phone’s glowing screen.

  ‘Please. I just have to make—’

  She shakes her head, slowly, adamantly, and Fatso heaves a heavy sigh. I feel the weight of dozens of pairs of eyes staring at me as I stagger, stunned, into my seat. The whole row quakes and judders as my hefty neighbour manoeuvres himself back in beside me.

  ‘Miss. Your phone.’

  I glance up at the unsmiling air hostess, then back down to my mobile. The message screams out at me.

  HI LUCY! JUST SHAGGED JAMES IN UR BED.

  But I have no choice. With her beady eyes watching me like a hawk, my finger slowly presses down on the little red button. There’s no nuclear explosion. No one dies. The light on the phone merely dims and my heart sinks.

  James has cheated on me.

  And the slag had the gall to text me from his mobile phone.

  The plane is taxiing to the runway. Outside the window it’s a cold and windy English winter night. I’m on my way to Australia for the wedding of my two best friends, Molly and Sam. And some summer sunshine…

  But right now I don’t know how I’ll ever be warm again. I feel like someone has ripped out my intestines and replaced them with shards of ice.

  My gorgeous sandy-haired boyfriend has been having sex with another girl.

  The image of him in bed with someone else slams into my mind. Someone else running her fingers through his hair. Someone else gazing into his blue, blue eyes. Someone else writhing up against him, their bodies bathed in sweat…

  I think I’m going to throw up. I rummage around the seat pocket in front of me and manage to find a sick bag. But the feeling passes and I force myself to take a couple of deep breaths. Oh, God, this is a thirteen-hour flight! I don’t know how I’m going to cope.

  The plane lurches forward and forces me backwards into my seat as it zooms off down the runway. Suddenly we’re in the air, and we’re climbing, climbing, climbing, and leaving the lights of London far behind us. Then abruptly there’s cloud and it all goes dark outside.

  My mind whirrs into action. Who is she? Have they been seeing each other long? How many times have they slept together? Is she better in bed than me? Is she slimmer? Taller? Sexier? Does he love her? Oh, God. Oh, God. How could he do this to me?

  Nausea rockets back through me and this time I really do throw up.

  ‘Urgh.’ Fatso flinches in disgust, while his anorexic wife peeps at me nervously from behind his great hulk of a frame.

  Ding. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has switched off the fasten seat belt sign and you are now free to move around the cabin…’

  ‘Excuse me.’

  It’s uncanny how much quicker my neighbour moves when the stench of vomit is filling the air. Sick bag in one hand, phone in the other, I edge out and begin to walk uphill to the toilet as the aircraft continues to climb. As soon as I’m inside, I lock the door and empty the revolting contents of the bag down the pan, before rinsing my mouth out with water. The diamond earrings that James bought me for my twenty-fifth birthday last October glint back at me in the mirror.

  ‘Hey, baby…Lucy, wake up…’

  ‘Urgh.’

  ‘Happy birthday.’ James smiles, kissing my forehead. I wrestle myself awake and look at him, deep blue eyes peering eagerly into mine.

  ‘I’m so tired. What time is it?’

  ‘Six thirty.’
<
br />   ‘James, six thirty? I don’t have to get up for another hour!’

  ‘I know, but I have to go into work early. I wanted to give you this.’

  He places a silver gift box on my stomach, on top of the downy duvet. Looking at his expectant face, it’s impossible not to forgive him for the early morning wake-up call. I sit up in bed and smile at him.

  ‘I hope you like them.’

  Them? I lift off the lid to find a black velvet box. Nestling inside is a pair of diamond solitaire earrings.

  Now I’m awake.

  ‘James, these are beautiful! They must’ve cost a fortune!’

  He flashes me a mischievous grin and takes the box, carefully lifting the earrings out.

  ‘Will you put them on? I want to see what they look like.’ He hands them to me, one by one, while I fasten them to my earlobes. Then he leans back and nods his approval.

  ‘Stunning. They suit you.’

  I climb out of bed excitedly and go to the wardrobe mirror, while James flicks the bedroom halogens on. The earrings immediately sparkle, white diamonds perfectly set off against my dark hair. They’re heavy, but I love them so much I don’t think I’ll ever take them off.

  ‘Thank you.’ I turn back to him, tears welling up in my eyes. He holds his hand out to me and I crawl back under the covers and into his warm arms.

  ‘Do you really have to go into work early?’ I ask, as he starts to kiss my neck.

  ‘Nah. Well, not this early.’

  ‘You little sod…’

  He grins and undresses me until the only thing I’m left wearing are the diamonds on my ears…

  I switch my phone back on, needing to read that message again, whatever the consequences. I look at the time it came in: 9 p.m. I tried to call him on my way to the departure gate at Heathrow. He didn’t answer. Now I know why. I crouch over the pan and throw up again.

  Fatso is sitting in the aisle seat when I get back, and grumbles about me being up and down all night.

  I ignore him, while his wife smiles at me apologetically. ‘Are you alright, love?’ she asks, as soon as I’m seated. The small act of kindness breaks me. I answer ‘No’ in a small voice, and the floodgates open.

  It’s the worst flight of my life. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I can’t concentrate on any of the films. I take a sleeping pill and as I curl my legs up underneath the window, and in between terrible dreams and recurring pins and needles, I manage to doze off. Every time I wake up, stark reality hits me and I check the time on the digital flight chart to see how much longer I have to wait before we arrive in Singapore and I can call him.

  Ten hours and fifty-one minutes…

  Seven hours and thirteen minutes…

  Four hours and twenty minutes…

  It’s agony. What if he doesn’t answer? No, I can’t think about that right now.

  James and I met at a party in London three years ago, introduced by a friend of a friend. He was already working as a corporate lawyer, while I was barely out of university. I didn’t even fancy him at first. Fairly tall at six foot, well built with shortish, sandy blond hair, he was still wearing his dark grey work suit with a white shirt unbuttoned at the top. He’d taken his tie off so he didn’t look too City Boy. But his cheeky smile reeled me in. That and his blue, blue eyes.

  On our first date he took me to the Oxo Tower, where we drank champagne looking down over the city of London and the boats on the Thames. We made love four days later in a flat that he shared in Clapham with a South African bloke named Alyn. Two months after that, I moved in and Alyn moved out. Some people thought we’d moved too quickly. I couldn’t move quickly enough.

  James paid the lion’s share of the rent while I pulled warm pints in a pub most evenings and did work experience at Mandy Nim PR, a public relations firm which promotes everything from vodka to lipgloss. After eleven weeks–one week short of the time I’d given myself to find a ‘proper job’–I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time and landed a junior position there. Now I work as a senior PR and my friends tell me I’ve got the best job: taking home all the freebies I could ever dream of.

  Thinking about it now, even in those early days James would often arrive home later than I did after my shifts down the pub. Were all those late nights at the office really necessary? Surely he wasn’t cheating on me back then…

  No. No. It’s not possible. I just don’t get it. He would never cheat! Would he?

  Oh, Christ, I don’t understand. Maybe there’s been some mistake with that text. Maybe his friends sent it! That could be it. Maybe he was down the pub and they grabbed his phone when he went to the Gents. That’s possible, isn’t it?

  But in my heart of hearts I know that’s simply not true.

  Fatso is guffawing at some joke on the TV screen. His wife whimpers in her sleep. I wonder if she’s getting a better night’s kip sitting upright in a chair than she would at home in bed where the gravity of his body weight must pull her in. She looks fairly peaceful.

  I stretch my legs out under the seat in front of me and flex my feet. I’d like to go for a walk up and down the aisle but I can’t be bothered going through the rigmarole of getting out past Fatso again.

  Oh, bugger him! I ease myself up and over his sleeping wife. ‘Don’t get up!’ I whisper loudly as he looks at me in surprise. I tread carefully, toes nudging aside his flabby flesh that was spilling over onto the armrests. Finally I’m free.

  I pace the aisles for a couple of minutes before starting to feel self-conscious. Eventually I go and lock myself in one of the toilets. I look tired, drawn. My eyes are red and puffy.

  Oh, James…I love you. I don’t want to lose you. This flight is taking forever. I’ve never gone so long without being able to use my phone. I sit down on the toilet seat and start to weep with frustration.

  What am I going to do? The thought of moving all my stuff out of our flat…

  Our lovely, lovely flat. We bought it last summer. It’s in Marylebone, just off the High Street. It’s only a small one-bedroom, but I adore it.

  For a short, sharp moment, anger surges through me. No. He should move. Bastard! If he’s been shagging around…

  But my rage soon dissolves back into despair. Where would I go? Would he move in with her? I couldn’t even afford the mortgage on my own. If I moved out, would she move in? What would I do with all my stuff? How would we divide our CDs? DVDs? Who would get the sofa? The TV? The bed? Oh, no, the bed. Please don’t let me think about it.

  There was a night back in January, when I woke up at two o’clock in the morning to see James at the foot of the bed taking off his suit trousers, seemingly trying not to fall over. He’d told me he was working late, but the stench of cigarette smoke and alcohol filled the air. I pretended to be asleep because I didn’t want to talk to him when he was drunk. The next morning he denied he had a hangover, even though his face was practically grey. He insisted he’d had only two drinks after getting his work done. I don’t know why he lied. It was obvious that he went out and got hammered. But sometimes it simply isn’t worth arguing with him.

  Just the other evening I was searching through the kitchen cupboards for my box of chocolate cherry liqueurs. I knew James hadn’t eaten them because he doesn’t like them, but I asked if he knew where they were, anyway.

  ‘No,’ he’d replied.

  ‘I can’t find them anywhere.’

  ‘Oh, shit, that’s right, I gave them away.’

  ‘You what? Who to? There were hardly any left!’

  ‘A tramp.’

  ‘A tramp?’ I asked in disbelief.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Oh, please.’ I shook my head.

  ‘It’s true! He was rummaging around the black bin bags on the pavement downstairs and making a right mess. I ran back up and grabbed the first thing I could find to get him to bugger off.’

  ‘James, cut it out. Where have you put them? Stop winding me up.’

  ‘Lucy, I’m not j
oking. Why would I lie?’

  ‘I don’t bloody know. Anyway why would you give liqueurs to a tramp? He might’ve already had a drinking problem and there’s you encouraging it.’

  ‘Yeah, it probably wasn’t very smart, was it?’ he relented. ‘But I wasn’t really thinking.’

  What a load of bullshit. There is no way he gave away my chocolate cherries to a tramp. I bet the bitch he’s been shagging scoffed them.

  I get back to my seat feeling nauseous, and the smell of the greasy food on the trolley coming through the cabin doesn’t help. I won’t be eating anything. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat chocolate cherry liqueurs again, either.

  Which is just brilliant.

  Who the hell is this slag? Someone he works with? A memory suddenly comes back to me of James’s office Christmas party a couple of months ago. He left me chatting to one of the firm’s secretaries as he went to get us something to drink. Ten minutes later he still hadn’t returned so I set off to find him. He was standing by the bar talking a little too intimately, I thought at the time, to a tall, slim brunette. Their body language was close, and I remember feeling a white stab of jealousy. But when he glanced up and saw me he didn’t look guilty. ‘Lucy, there you are! I was just talking to, er, Zoe here.’