by Pippa Wright
I turned to see Matt behind me, head inclined again in that confiding way.
‘Cheers,’ he said, clinking his bottle of Star against mine.
‘Cheers,’ I said, eyeing him warily. Behind him I could see the massed ranks of the cameramen watching our conversation, Chris in particular.
‘I can see you want to get back to your friends,’ said Matt, looking backwards over his shoulder at the table. ‘I just wanted to thank you for helping me earlier – and sorry for hassling you, I know it’s been a bit of a nightmare show. I didn’t mean to make things harder for you.’
‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘It’s my job.’ But I couldn’t help smiling at him a bit. He was awfully good-looking. Now that I looked closer, his eyes were a dark, dark blue.
‘Maybe I should get you a drink,’ he offered. ‘To say thanks.’
‘Er, it’s a free bar, Matt.’ I laughed. ‘And I’ve got a bottle of Star on the go.’
‘Maybe I should take you out for a drink when we get home, then?’ Matt suggested. ‘I’m sure I can get some Star sent to London, what with all my great new friends at Airtel.’ He waved over towards one of the sponsors, who waved back, grinning. ‘See? Joseph over there would be only too happy to help.’
Matt made a thumbs-up sign, and Joseph signalled back. Matt raised an eyebrow at me.
‘Star for life. Sorted.’
‘Matt, sorry to disappoint you, what with your impressive Nigerian connections and all, but I’ll be happy if I never see another bottle of Star for as long as I live,’ I said.
‘Even though it will always be a special reminder of how you and I met?’ Matt teased. ‘Over a bottle of Star, some African superstars and a blackmail plot against the head of Talent?’
‘Not even for that,’ I said, grimacing as I drained the remnants of my warm beer. I was surprised to find that I was having fun. I guessed Matt was used to putting people at ease. He had an easy sort of charm that, while I could see it was practised, felt entirely natural. I was happy to let myself be charmed, for once, instead of being the one who had to smooth everything over.
‘Ah, well, I guess it will only be meaningful to me, then,’ sighed Matt. ‘You’re a tough woman to please, Basher Bailey. I guess it’s a good job you’re pretty enough to make up for it.’
I considered him from under my fringe, my eyes narrowed. ‘What do you want?’
Matt looked momentarily startled, before bursting out laughing. ‘Can’t a compliment just be a compliment?’
‘It so rarely is,’ I said smoothly. ‘Everyone’s usually out for something.’
‘Well, maybe I am out for something then,’ said Matt. I suddenly noticed that by leaning in towards me he’d made me inch myself back into a corner that was slightly secluded from the rest of the bar.
‘Oh yes?’ I said. My voice was steady but I could feel a blush stealing up the back of my ears, threatening to give me away. Was Matt flirting with me, or was he about to hit me with another annoying request from his sponsors?
‘Yes,’ said Matt, moving closer. I stepped away again and found the wall of a small alcove at my back. My heart started beating faster, as if I was trapped. Matt just gave me a lazy smile and raised his eyebrows.
‘I need a drink,’ I blurted, waving my empty beer bottle in front of my face.
‘Okay,’ Matt said, his easy grin unperturbed. ‘Another Star?’
‘No,’ I said, flirtatiously challenging. ‘Something else. You choose.’
I twisted around and put my empty beer bottle in the alcove by my head. As I turned back to face him, Matt lurched towards me, his eyes wide. I flinched backwards – was he really going to try to kiss me now? In front of everyone? But instead he pushed past me and caught the beer bottle just before it hit the floor.
‘Reflexes of a ninja!’ he exclaimed, straightening himself up, and pushing his hair out of his eyes. He’d moved closer to catch the falling bottle, but he didn’t move away from me now that he had it.
‘Impressive stuff,’ I said, my heart beating faster. ‘No wonder they made you head of marketing with skills like that.’
‘Oh I don’t put my ninja skills on my CV,’ said Matt. ‘I only show them to a select few.’
‘Then I’m honoured.’
‘Okay. To the bar. No Star. Are you saying you’re ready to move onto the hard stuff?’ Matt asked, raising an eyebrow. He was only saved from being off-puttingly cheesy by the spark of amusement in his eyes that told me he wasn’t taking any of this too seriously.
Two can play at that game.
‘Oh definitely,’ I replied, holding his gaze. ‘The harder the better, frankly.’
‘Wait there,’ said Matt. He’d only been gone a second when he returned, catching hold of my chin with the fingers of one hand and tilting my face up towards his. ‘Promise me you’ll wait?’
His conspiratorial grin was infectious. I felt drawn in to a secret exchange. ‘I promise.’
‘Good,’ he said, ‘because when I come back I’m going to kiss you, Kate Bailey.’
When I thought about it afterwards, it was the best line I’d ever heard. And of course it was a line. He’d stated his intention with the certain knowledge that if I was there when he got back from the bar, I was up for being kissed. And if I wasn’t there – well, he’d have saved himself an embarrassing turn-down.
My head felt giddy, as if I’d had far more than one bottle of beer. Did I want to kiss Matt Martell? Only this morning he’d been nothing more than the annoying new boy who sent me too many emails. But now . . . He winked at me from the bar.
‘Hey, Kate,’ Chris appeared at my side, grabbing hold of my upper arm. ‘’Scuse me for interrupting your little conversation, but there’s a whisky over at our table with your name on it.’
‘Oh,’ I turned to face him. I was embarrassingly aware that I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. A smile that had nothing to do with him. ‘I’m okay, thanks. Matt’s getting me a drink.’
‘Yeah,’ said Chris, frowning darkly. ‘Matt.’
‘What?’ I asked crossly. It was a bit late for Chris to start getting jealous. It wasn’t like he’d made any effort until he saw Matt chatting me up. Chris’s eyes flicked over to Matt, and then back to me.
‘Look, Kate, no offence,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘But that Matt Martell’s a total wanker. He flirts with everyone, but you know he’s going out with Ailsa Logan, right?’
‘Ailsa Logan?’ I echoed. This must be a mistake.
‘Yeah,’ said Danny, appearing at my other shoulder. ‘Ailsa Logan off Rise & Shine. That fit TV bird.’
‘Are you sure?’ I said. ‘He said he didn’t have a girlfriend.’
The two cameramen exchanged a glance.
Chris scoffed. ‘Well, he wouldn’t, would he? But I saw pictures of them together at the British Television Awards just last week. It was in the paper on the plane over.’
I felt my cheeks flame with anger. As the queen of location flings, I should have recognized a kindred spirit. What happens on location stays on location, right? But a girl has to have standards. I’d never knowingly slept with someone who was in a relationship, and I wasn’t about to start now.
Over at the bar Matt had worked his way to the front, his broad shoulders forcing a space in the crowd. He turned to look over his shoulder at me. When he saw that I was flanked by two burly cameramen, he looked puzzled and raised a hand in a hesitant half wave.
‘The nerve of him,’ said Danny, linking his arm with mine.
‘That bastard,’ said Chris, taking my other arm.
I couldn’t disagree.
And I let them lead me away from Matt Martell and straight into a welcoming vat of appalling Nigerian whisky.
7
I can’t deny that I am intrigued to meet the mysterious Ben. Although I suppose he’s only mysterious to me, since Mum and Dad must have met him plenty of times. It’s the first time a boyfriend of Prue’s has taken an interest in the business, and for my parents t
o have allowed him to get involved they must think it’s a serious relationship. They’ve been running the business ever since Dad gave up being a roadie when Prue was born; I don’t think she understands that they’d already lived a big life by the time they came to Lyme. Their ambitions for excitement had been fulfilled by years of travelling and hanging out with rock stars. They moved to Dorset for the quiet life. I guess I got a little taste of the travel and glamour – I was six by the time we moved here, when they were looking for schools and stability. Prue, on the other hand, has known nothing but the quiet life, so she can’t help but try to push Baileys’ into the limelight all the time.
The back door is still open and I can hear noises from next door’s garden; Eddy’s granny must be up too. I’m wary of calling to her over the garden fence, since I have no wish to see her topple backwards off a ladder again. But the noises in the garden sound high-pitched, excited, not the usual mild chatter of an old lady talking to herself. I pour hot water into the cafetière and leave it to sit while I step outside.
‘No, you’re the nasty queen and I am the princess,’ declares a voice that very definitely does not belong to Mrs Curtis.
‘I don’t want to be the nasty queen, I am going to be the prince who is going to save the princess,’ someone else answers.
‘You can’t be a prince, stupid, you’re a girl.’
‘Then I’m going to be a princess who saves the princess.’
‘It doesn’t work like that, the princess has to be saved by a prince.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says everyone, actually, and anyway I don’t want to be saved by you – I’m the oldest.’
‘Girls?’ says a man’s voice from inside next door. Eddy’s, I realize.
‘Daddy,’ the younger voice pleads. ‘Daddy, we can both be princesses, can’t we?’
I hear Eddy step out into the garden.
‘You’re both my princesses, Grace, course you are,’ he says, affectionate but dismissive, not realizing the sisterly argument at stake.
How strange that Eddy should have children. Proper school-aged children, not the tiny, squalling babies that some of my friends have lately produced, but little girls who are old enough to have fights and opinions. Eddy, who used to scrawl band names on his school bag in biro, who used to drive a battered orange VW beetle with a bent wire coat hanger for an aerial, whose party piece was rolling a spliff with one hand. This is the Eddy Curtis that I knew; and now he’s a father. A proper grown-up. I didn’t even know he was married.
‘Ow, stop it,’ shrieks one of the girls, and Minnie, startled, begins to bark.
‘A dog!’ exclaims Eddy’s younger daughter, Grace, I think.
‘Kate?’ Eddy calls over the fence. ‘Kate, sorry, it’s really early, did we wake you?’
‘Hi Eddy,’ I call back. ‘You didn’t wake me, I was already up, honestly.’
‘Eight thirty on a Saturday.’ Eddy laughs. ‘Things have changed a bit since I last knew you.’
I hardly know how to answer that. It feels like everything has changed and yet nothing has at all. Here I am back in Lyme, chatting to Eddy Curtis. Next we’ll be jumping into his car to go to some party we’ve heard might be happening outside Axminster.
‘Daddy,’ a voice whispers urgently. ‘Has she got a dog?’
‘Better than that,’ I call over the fence. ‘I’ve got a puppy. Would you like to meet her?’
Eddy’s girls are in my garden before I’ve had a chance to remember that I am still in my pyjamas, without having so much as cleaned my teeth. Not that they would notice, they have eyes only for Minnie, who leaps all over them in excited welcome; she loves children. But Eddy looks embarrassed, and I’m not sure how to behave. My London manners feel all wrong – I can’t air kiss him hello when I’ve most likely got morning breath. So much for the glamorous Kate Bailey he’s imagined; I must look a right state.
‘Sorry to barge in on you like this,’ he says, avoiding looking directly at me. ‘We collect my granny from swimming on Saturday mornings – it’s a bit of an early start for all of us.’
‘Is there a pool in Lyme now?’ I ask. I wouldn’t mind a swim myself once in a while. Something to pass the time.
Eddy grins and rubs the top of his head with his knuckles. ‘Nope. Not for my Grandma. It’s the sea or nothing.’
‘The sea?’ I gasp. ‘But it’s October! It must be freezing.’
‘Bracing, according to her,’ says Eddy with a wry smile. ‘She used to go every day. Has done for years. But she got caught in a current a while ago – she’s not as strong as she thought she was – and someone called the Coastguard.’
‘Oh my God, was she okay?’
‘She was completely fine by the time they arrived, just furious about all the fuss. Especially when they took her off in an ambulance for a check-up. The coastguards gave her a ticking off about swimming by herself at her age. You can imagine how well that went down.’
‘But she still goes in?’
‘We’ve struck a deal – she swims on Saturday mornings only and the girls and I go, too. To watch, you understand. Just spectators. Not in any way keeping an eye on an eighty-year-old woman submerged in the sea by herself.’
‘Obviously.’ I can’t help but be impressed by Mrs Curtis’s hearty ways, so at odds with her wiry appearance.
Eddy smiles. ‘But I’m not totally sure she’s sticking to her side of the bargain, judging by what you said the other day about her swimming hat.’
‘Unless she was just, er, wearing in a new one?’ I suggest, suddenly overcome with belated neighbourly loyalty.
‘Oh I see,’ says Eddy, raising an eyebrow. ‘I thought you’d be my ally in this, and here you are taking her side already.’
Eddy and I both watch the girls, shrieking as Minnie chases them around the garden.
‘Eddy Curtis, a dad,’ I say. ‘I can’t believe it.’
He looks at me quizzically. ‘It’s not that weird, you know. I’m thirty-four, not thirteen.’
‘I know.’ I laugh. ‘I suppose I still think of you as a teenager. You’re not weird at all. I’m weird.’
‘Why are you weird?’ he asks, looking amused.
I shrug. ‘Oh, you know, it’s weird, I mean. Life’s weird. You’re a dad; Dready Eddy is a dad. And I’m, well, I’m living in my granny’s bungalow.’
Eddy shifts from foot to foot on the paving stones. ‘Yeah, sorry, I heard about, er, your husband.’
‘It’s fine,’ I say, glad he’s brave enough to say it straight out instead of hedging with euphemisms and platitudes, like most people. ‘Not every marriage is meant to last.’
He barks a sharp laugh, as if it’s been punched out of him. ‘No.’
The youngest girl comes running up to us, breathless and excited.
‘Daddy, can we stay here with the puppy? Can we?’
Her sister, who can’t be more than eight, rolls her eyes in a distinctly teenaged manner.
‘Grace, we have things to do. Don’t we, Daddy? It can’t all be fun and games.’
I stifle a smirk at her world-weary air.
‘Charlotte’s right, sweetheart,’ says Eddy, pulling gently on Grace’s plait. ‘I’ve got to get you back to Mummy’s house by eight thirty so she can take you both to ballet.’
‘But I don’t want to go to ballet,’ wails Grace, her eyes filling with tears. ‘I want to stay with you, and with the puppy.’
Eddy tenses up next to me. Back to Mummy’s house? He offers me a rueful half smile.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Life is weird. Come on, girls. We have to go and say goodbye to Great-grandma or we’re going to be late.’
‘Can we come and see the puppy again?’ asks Grace, clutching at my hand and gazing up at me imploringly. Charlotte tries to look more aloof, as if she doesn’t care, but I can see that she’s every bit as keen to be invited back. Acting cool doesn’t fool me; I’ve done too much of that myself to fall for it from other people.
‘Of course you can,’ I say. ‘Next time you visit we can take her for a walk, if you like.’
Eddy’s already at the side gate. ‘Stop bothering poor Kate, girls,’ he calls. ‘Off we go.’
They run out of the gate, waving, and I have to catch Minnie by the collar to stop her from following.
‘Sorry, Mins,’ I say. ‘You’ve got to stay here with me.’
She whines as the gate closes, and I feel like whining too. I’d rather be off with Eddy and his children, chaotic and complicated as it all sounds, than here alone with another day to fill. I wonder how different things would have been if Matt and I had had children. We weren’t torn apart by the pressures of a young family. No, we didn’t have that excuse. We can’t blame the failure of our marriage on anyone but ourselves.
8
When I left every means of communication on the kitchen table in London, it had felt like a dramatic statement of intent. Screw you, Matt Martell, you have no way of contacting me ever again. But, like most dramatic statements, one short week later it feels like lunacy. Of course it has kept Matt away from me, but it has also kept me away from everything else. It’s not like I was expecting the emails to have built up or anything, or as if I had important business to attend to – let’s be honest, the most urgent emails I receive these days are ones about the Ocado delivery – but I hadn’t remembered that I’d need to check my bank account, if only to watch the money drain out of it, and pay bills and generally remember that I am actually a grown-up and not the Lyme Regis teenager I once was.
I left Minnie at home this morning while I trawled the streets of Lyme to see if I could find an internet cafe. Yes, I know, the internet cafe has gone the way of AOL and Yahoo Answers, but this is Lyme Regis and I lived in hope that there might be a fossilized millennial internet cafe somewhere around, even if it was just in the Senior Citizens’ Centre. Mum offered me the use of one of the work computers, but when I realized she meant I’d have to come into the office I decided I’d rather take my chances elsewhere. Somewhere I might get a bit of privacy.
It seems there’s no shortage of cafes offering WiFi, but everyone expects you to have your own laptop these days. Even here. I finally admit defeat in a chintzy tea house, and order a cup of tea to mollify the sullen teenaged waitress who has so grudgingly answered my questions. There isn’t a single other customer in here, so it’s hard to see from what urgent tasks I could have distracted her.