by Emma Grey
‘Just leave it at the door,’ she orders. He doesn’t respond.
‘Tilly, come on,’ he says. She notices the lack of apology. No, ‘sorry for being an arrogant tosser and insinuating you’re not a real writer’.
Tosser. Isn’t that what they say here? Not that he’d exactly said those words, but she’s not stupid. She can read between the lines.
Curiosity eventually lures her off the bed and to the door, which she opens just enough for Reuben to slot an express delivery box through the crack, before she shuts the door in his face again.
‘You’re welcome!’ he mutters. She waits for the sound of footsteps leaving but doesn’t hear it. Whatever. She sits on the bed and examines the package. No sender details. Just a rectangular box addressed to T. Maguire and marked URGENT. Weird. She tears away the white plastic wrap, and a layer of bubble wrap.
‘What?’ she whispers, when she sees the familiar silver logo gleaming on crisp, matt-white packaging.
‘It’s a laptop,’ Reuben says softly, from the other side of the door. ‘And a peace offering.’
He arranged this?
He opens the door slightly, and when she doesn’t object he pushes it all the way and stands there, clearly not quite brave enough to cross her threshold. Vulnerability looks good on him, she thinks, before berating herself for noticing.
‘I thought, since you’re stuck here with me with no internet and hundreds of story ideas . . .’
This is for her novel? The one he thinks she’s just playing around with?
‘Why would you waste this much money on someone who only imagines she’s a writer?’ she asks. ‘You made it clear you don’t think I can do it.’
‘Oh, I think you can do it,’ he says, stifling a smile. ‘All that crazy ranting outside, kicking hedges – that wasn’t about me.’
‘It was!’ And she wasn’t ranting.
‘The truth hurts,’ he says. ‘It’s frustrating.’
What’s frustrating is when he’s totally right and she can’t think of a comeback.
‘I bet you’ve got whole worlds inside you . . .’ he goes on.
Her secret worlds. Imaginary places she’s visited since she was little. Places she went to all through school, when she was accused of daydreaming, or when things got difficult or worrying or scary. She’s not about to share her private imaginings with him. Or with anyone. How dare he get so dangerously close?
‘What are you afraid of, Tilly?’ he asks. He’s still not coming into the bedroom properly, although his presence in the doorway is intimidating enough. ‘Someone might actually see you?’
Yes! That’s exactly what she’s afraid of, levelled at her in one eloquent observation. Being seen. At all. How does he know?
‘Are you a pop star or pop psychologist?’
He laughs. ‘I just know what it’s like.’
He has got to be kidding. All the Grammys? The American Music Awards. The platinum albums.
‘It’s three o’clock,’ he says. ‘Why don’t we go into Wallingford tonight and get something to eat? You can spend the afternoon christening the laptop and then we’ll go out. But only after you’ve written a thousand words.’
She laughs. ‘What are you? My editor?’
He looks nervous. Reuben Vaughan is not supposed to look nervous with a girl. She caresses the matt finish of the laptop’s lid.
‘I don’t have anything to wear,’ she says truthfully. Besides, a night in with a new laptop is hugely appealing.
He takes in the sight of his mismatched, oversized clothes on her. ‘I dunno,’ he observes. ‘You look all right in that . . .’
And he winks. The simple action sends the pit of her stomach lurching through the floor. She is furious with her body for responding to him like this. Or like anything.
‘I can get some clothes sent over,’ he offers. ‘Anything you like.’
What it must be like to live like this.
‘But won’t people see us?’
‘I know a really quiet restaurant on the edge of town. The band knows the owner. We have an agreement. Back door into a private room. It should be safe.’
Tilly frowns. She isn’t ready to face the world yet. Even a tame restaurant owner. But the idea of proper food is enticing.
‘How do you know what clothes I like?’
‘I’ll get them to send everything . . .’
Get who to send everything from where? This is getting out of hand. ‘Reuben! I just need something simple. Seriously. You bought me a laptop. I don’t want to owe you.’
‘Tell you what. You can have the laptop on loan. Pay me back out of your first big advance, okay?’
An advance? Like a proper writer? The notion of really being able to do that buries itself in her imagination and takes hold.
‘A thousand words, Maguire. And then a reward.’
A thousand words of a brand-new story. It’s the most intoxicating thought, and Reuben looks at her like he’s not joking. Like he genuinely wants her to write. And like he really believes she can do it, which is probably because he can’t see just how terrified she is underneath. Or maybe because he can. If this goes wrong, she’ll have nothing left to dream about. There’s never been any other choice for her but writing.
‘Ready or not, Tilly.’
He’s dismantling her usual excuses with precision.
‘I’ll write a thousand words,’ she says, ‘but don’t expect to read any of them.’ If she shows him her story he might break it.
She crosses her legs on the bed, takes her thick hair and twists it up into a bun on her head, tucking the ends in so it holds itself there. Reuben wordlessly backs out of the doorway and closes the door. She can’t believe she is really going to do this. Can’t believe he’s talked her into it.
Can’t believe she has a completely blank page and All The Words to play with!
Chapter 14
Reuben paces the living room a couple of hours later. He’ll have to tell her about the paparazzi before tonight. There is no way he can drag her into a trap like this. It isn’t fair. But if he tells her, there’s no way she’ll go. And if they don’t go, the papers will stay full of headlines about the juicier of the two stories – the one involving a princess who unarguably has much more to risk.
His loyalty has to be to his long-term friend. He hasn’t even known Tilly a full day yet. He feels like he’s swept up in a bad episode of Love Island. Not that he’s going to couple up with either girl, obviously.
It’s not like Tilly hasn’t brought all of this on herself, accidentally or not. It would be short-term pain and then it would all go away. People would forget her. She’d just be that unknown girl a pop star allegedly hooked up with for a bit.
Reuben glances out the window and spots Angie’s orange VW zipping up the driveway towards the house. The classic Beetle is one of the two retro vehicles she and her mechanically minded mother have worked on together. The other is a vintage motorbike, which Reuben had scored for her in an online auction of old Hollywood props. He’d wanted to give her something amazing as a Christmas bonus, for her work during a world tour that had been particularly gruelling on the staff, when the band’s fame had skyrocketed in ways none of them were yet equipped to manage. Buying the vintage bike was the most fun he’d ever had shopping. It was also the best fun he’d had watching someone receive a gift. She’d been beside herself over the pile of junk. Apparently, she and her mum were almost ready for the ‘big reveal’.
‘Hey, lover boy,’ she teases brightly, jumping out of the driver’s seat of the car when he goes outside to meet her. She’s wearing an outfit that wouldn’t be out of place if she were hosting a children’s TV show. It’s all bright, block colours, and dots and stripes. ‘You do wind up in the craziest situations, y’know!’
‘Think how boring your job would be without all this mayhem, Ange.’
‘Yeah. I might even get the odd weekend off!’
He winces, and feels guilty.
&nb
sp; Angie punches him fondly in the arm. ‘I’ve spent an hour shopping. Can’t complain!’
‘Cup of tea?’ he asks hopefully. He could do with a friendly face, and Angie’s is about as friendly as they come. Just having her here makes a difference. There’s something inherently ‘sunshiny’ about Angie Logan. Cute blonde bob. Quirky fashion. Can-do attitude. He’s more comfortable in her presence than in anyone else’s. He puts a kettle on the hob and she sits at the kitchen table, flicking through the copy of Now she’s brought with her. He shudders to think who’ll be plastered across the cover next week.
‘Tell me about Tilly,’ she says eagerly, putting down the magazine. ‘Tell me everything.’
He frowns. Do they have to do this? Angie waits, chin cradled in her palms, desperate for goss.
Where to begin? The Tilly Maguire highlights reel flicks across his brain. Sprawled across the back seat in the car. Kicking hedges. Yelling. Slamming doors. Twisting curls on top of her head and having them stay there as if by magic. Green eyes sparkling at the thought of a fresh page . . .
‘I think you’re up to speed,’ he says, turning towards the kitchen splashback in case his face gives something away, although exactly what that something might be isn’t entirely clear, even to him. After the episode with the shoe on the front steps of the museum, he admits he’d been intrigued. He’d noticed her, standing to the side, fidgeting with a dress she wasn’t comfortable in at all. Not just the dress. The whole event. He’d decided in that moment that she was more the book-club type. Jeans and a jumper in a cosy pub by a roaring fire —
‘Reuben! Hello?’ Angie says, snapping him from the memory. ‘What’s she really like?’
He shrugs. ‘Nothing like Belle.’
‘Obviously!’
Nothing like Belle in a good way, he realises, not that he’ll say so aloud. Angie needs no further encouragement to find fault with Belle. The girls had been best friends at school until shortly after Belle’s twin sister, Olivia, had died when they were fifteen, just before he met them. It had all somehow cooled, and Reuben had never been able to work out why.
There’s a slam of a door upstairs. More chaos! Can he take it?
Urgent footsteps pound down the staircase, louder and louder, until Tilly bursts cyclonically into the room with an enormous grin spread across her face and screams. The kind of wild, triumphant scream that most people would perform only in private, and after they’d won the lottery. But Tilly is not most people.
‘Two thousand words!’ she shouts excitedly. ‘Two thousand! And, Reuben, I think it’s good. Oh my God. Thank you!’ She is lit up.
He tries to stammer a response, but finds himself unable to form a sentence. This is such a contradiction from the snarling earlier. It seems to dawn on Tilly that she’s invaded his space, and screamed like a maniac. She takes a flustered step back, then notices Angie at the table, positively devouring the entire scene.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ Tilly says, looking mortified. ‘I’m interrupting!’
‘Angie, you remember Tilly?’ Reuben asks, like he is producing Exhibit A. Angie swallows a giggle. ‘Angie’s my right-hand person,’ he explains to Tilly. ‘And my friend. I can’t function without her. She’s brought you some clothes.’
Angie is up from the table in a flash, cup of tea forgotten. ‘I literally cannot wait to show you what I dug up in that boutique! Not that you’re not rocking the Vaughan signature look here.’ Both girls laugh. Then Angie threads her arm through Tilly’s as if they are old friends, and indicates that Reuben ought to make himself useful and help them upstairs with the boxes of loot then leave them to it.
He doesn’t want to. There is something about the idea of Angie and Tilly acting all close and conspiratorial that puts him inexplicably on edge. He’d trust Angie with his life. She’d never organise anything that wasn’t absolutely in his best interests. Maybe that’s it. Maybe he’s nervous about what she’s going to line up for him here. Or who.
Chapter 15
‘So you’re a writer!’ Angie exclaims, clapping her hands deliciously and jumping onto the bed as if they’ve known each other since kindergarten. ‘That’s perfect, because I’m a reader! Can I?’
Tilly is horrified. She lurches for the laptop. ‘No!’
‘You said it was good.’
‘Not good enough to show anyone!’
Angie pouts. ‘Will you show him?’
Reuben?
‘He’d tell you exactly like it is,’ Angie explains. ‘No sugarcoating. Speaking of which, what do you think of this?’ She pulls a deep-red jersey dress out of a box dramatically, springs off the bed again, and holds it against herself in the mirror.
Nope. Tilly does not wear red. She does not wear jersey. She doesn’t like —
‘Try it on!’ Angie insists, pushing her towards the en suite.
‘Red’s not my —’
‘Come on!’
No wonder Angie got a job managing a pop star. She’s unrelenting.
‘I’ll try it on, but I’m not wearing it. It’s just dinner in a village, in secret. I could go in my pyjamas and no one would notice —’
‘If you had some! It’s the one thing I forgot to pick up. And it’s actually quite an upmarket restaurant.’
Tilly frowns. The dress looks unremarkable enough on the hanger. Sleeves to the elbow. Hem below the knee. But body-con? And red? With her hair? She’ll feel like a stop sign.
In the bathroom, she slips off the borrowed clothes and steps into the dress, pulling it up over her hips and threading her arms through the sleeves. Angie bursts in unannounced before she’s finished, and offers to do up the zip because this whole reveal thing is taking far too long. Does she have no personal boundaries at all?
‘Here! Just put these heels on. They should be the right size. I collected your abandoned shoes at the ball . . .’
She what?
‘Now turn around,’ Angie orders, clasping her hands with glee. ‘YES!’
‘No.’ Absolutely no way.
‘It would be a crime not to!’
Angie drags the free-standing mirror into view, and forces Tilly to look at herself, long and hard. She immediately realises the problem. ‘It’s too . . .’
‘Eye-poppingly stunning?’
Exactly. This is a dress that parts crowds, silences a room and announces, ‘Look at me!’ Tilly usually goes for something a bit more, ‘I’ll be in the corner if you need me, probably playing with a cat.’
‘Do you ever straighten your hair?’ Angie asks, accepting the outfit as a fait accompli. ‘Because I absolutely adore a challenge!’
Tilly doesn’t doubt it. She just has no intention of offering her head up on a plate to satisfy Angie’s desire for personal growth.
Forty-five minutes later, she is staring in the mirror at a low, artfully subtle chignon of the kind that graces high-end models in glossy magazines. She’d always thought the style was impossible for someone with hair as out of control as hers. That, and ‘just a touch of really subtle makeup, okay, Tilly? The no-makeup look. I promise, you’ll barely know it’s there . . .’
The entire process is accompanied by a bubbly monologue that leaves Tilly wondering if this is Boss Appreciation Week. If Angie isn’t raving about Reuben’s musical prowess she’s on about his charity work, or all the times he visits sick fans without cameras, or the birthday gifts he chooses for his staff, or how funny he is and how intelligent, and doesn’t Tilly think he is gorgeous?
She’s sideswiped by the question. ‘Doesn’t everyone?’ she answers vaguely.
It feels like Year 7. Tilly wants to explain that she has zero interest in Reuben Vaughan and his glamorous lifestyle, but the words won’t come out of her mouth before Angie presses on.
‘If you want my advice . . .’
She really doesn’t.
‘Just play the part. Pretend to be one of your characters. Find out what it’s like to be out on a date with one of the most eligible guys in the world
.’
This is not a date.
‘You might actually enjoy it,’ Angie coaxes.
That’s the thing, though. Tilly is a writer. She doesn’t need to go out and live someone else’s life to enjoy herself. She only has to close her eyes and imagine it.
Can’t they just order pizza?
Chapter 16
It’s past the time they were meant to leave for dinner, and there’s still no sign of Tilly downstairs. Angie had told Reuben she was completely ready an hour ago, and instructed him not to play any stupid games. She’d asked him twice if he realised just how different Tilly was from the girls he usually dated, not that Tilly saw him as a date – she’d made that very clear.
He’d assured her he did know that and it didn’t matter, because he was as disinterested in Tilly as she was in him, so there was nothing at all to worry about. This was all a temporary arrangement. To help Belle.
As was always the case when Reuben mentioned Belle, Angie had rolled her eyes and whinged about the princess being big enough to look after herself. Why was he always pandering to her? According to Angie it was ‘beyond nauseating’.
He’d nodded his head the way he always did when Angie was on one of her anti-Belle jags. Then she’d gone, and he’d showered and dressed in dark trousers and an open-necked white shirt, and stoked the fire, and scanned the news, read a chapter of a thriller and checked the time again. Maybe she isn’t coming?
Maybe he’d just check. He starts walking to the doorway, only to have Tilly walk through it at the same time – carrying the open laptop, which she pushes into his arms, as she shuts her eyes, smiles and says, ‘Ooh, I might regret this, but I have to show someone!’
What. Is. Happening? He holds the computer in his hands and stares at her. She’s the same girl from the kitchen earlier, obsessed and on a creative high . . . and seemingly oblivious to the fact that she is no longer standing here in Uggs and flannelette, but in all of . . . this.
Her green eyes open, lit with creativity. ‘Reuben, I cannot begin to tell you how I feel, right now. It’s like I’m a completely different person!’