by Fiona Harper
She seemed to be getting a little irritated with him. He’d probably broken one of those mysterious female rules, the kind that only women knew about, but still prosecuted guys for relentlessly when they broke them.
She sat back in her chair, folded her hands in her lap. ‘Is this trip a surprise?’
He let out a rough bark of laughter. ‘You bet it is!’ he said, and then realised what she meant. Oh. A surprise for her, the non-existent woman he was supposed to be going away with. ‘Why do you ask?’
She gave him an ‘isn’t it obvious?’ kind of look. ‘Well, if it wasn’t, I’d assume your girlfriend would be here with you.’
Great. Now he’d saddled himself with a girlfriend. This was so not how he’d envisaged this meeting going. If he asked Claire out now, she’d think he was a total and utter slimeball. He sighed. Just for a moment, he wished the non-existent girlfriend was real. Then she’d be able to answer Claire’s rapid-fire questions and he’d have a chance to think. That was the reason he’d backed himself into this corner in the first place.
‘Good point,’ he said, even though he’d already forgotten what she’d just said. There had to be some way to talk himself out of this, hadn’t there?
‘Well, if you don’t know what you want,’ Claire said, ‘and this is supposed to be a special romantic trip, perhaps you need to think about what she would want?’
Now she just didn’t seem mildly irritated, she was getting a little snippy. Instantly, he could hear the same voice in his head as there had been when he’d read the notes she’d left on his doorstep.
‘I’m kind of stuck,’ he mumbled, meaning that he’d dug himself into a hole during the last five minutes, one he was becoming increasingly fearful he was never going to scramble out of. Claire, however, took it another way. The expression on her face softened a little. Odd. When he tried to charm her, she just clammed up, but when he let a little bit of the desperation underneath show, it had the opposite effect.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. Her voice was gentle, understanding, but there was a distance in her manner too. ‘Lots of men get paralysed by the pressure of a romantic holiday. We’ll take it step by step.’
‘Just the men? Don’t the women feel the same way?’
She shook her head. ‘Nope. They pretty much have it all worked out. Women tend to pay attention to stuff.’
‘What kind of stuff?’
She gave a little shrug. ‘Details. Little snippets of information they store away during a relationship to use later.’
Dominic nodded. He knew all about that. Only Erica hadn’t stored away things that would help her book a holiday. No, what she’d hung on to was every transgression he’d ever made in word or deed, all neatly catalogued and labelled in her memory, so they were readily accessed every time they’d had a fight. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said grudgingly.
Claire nodded. ‘Women remember those little things about their partners – a favourite song or dish, somewhere they once said in passing they’d really like to visit. Men? Well, they tend to be more … oblivious.’
He disagreed with her on principle more than because he actually had a winnable case. ‘No we aren’t.’
She folded her arms across her chest. ‘Then why haven’t you got the faintest idea where, when you’ve got the choice of the whole wide world, your girlfriend would want to go?’
He had to come up with a good idea. Right now. Somewhere seriously romantic. If he didn’t buck his ideas up, she’d think ‘Nick’ was just as much of a loser as her downstairs neighbour and both his plans to win her round would have bombed out in one morning.
Come on, Dominic. You can be romantic if you try! And there’s no one that knows destinations like you. You’ve got to be able to come up with something.
Claire was still looking at him. ‘Any ideas?’
‘Venice,’ he said briskly, almost on reflex. His shoulder muscles unbunched. There. That was a seriously romantic place.
She blinked. ‘Did you say that because it’s really her dream destination, or because it was the first thing that came into your head?’
The momentary soaring feeling he’d had faded. He was so busted. For some reason, he found that really funny. Laughing to himself, his bowed his head, shaking it. When he looked up again, she wasn’t smiling. ‘I panicked,’ he said.
Claire just stared at him. He quickly swallowed his laughter and straightened his features. For some reason that just made him want to laugh all the harder. She could see it too, which only made her eyes narrow.
‘What kind of woman is she?’ Claire asked, starchily, pushing the end of a mechanical pencil so a razor-sharp point appeared. ‘Tell me something about her. That will help me come up with some less obvious suggestions, but if Venice turns out to be the perfect fit, then I’ll help you do Venice in total, drop-dead style. Okay?’ She waited, pencil poised above her pad.
Dominic nodded. Flip, he should have quit when he was ahead. It was bad enough when he’d had to answer questions about places – and he was good with places – but now he had to describe a woman, a thing, according to all sorts of people, he clearly knew nothing about. He might as well confess right here and now to stealing Claire’s milk a fortnight ago.
He tried to picture her, this phantom woman, tried to work out if she’d be brunette or blonde, tall or short, fat or thin, but she just stayed a fuzzy lump in his imagination. He searched the posters on the walls for inspiration, but the women he saw were all flat, two-dimensional creatures and, try as he might, he couldn’t imagine them any other way. And then his eyes drifted back to Claire, looking calm and very three-dimensional on the other side of the desk.
Why not?
She was the one he was trying to win over, after all. What better way to redeem himself in her eyes than by planning the kind of romantic trip she’d like? He looked at Claire. Really looked at her.
For a moment there was only silence between them, then he started to talk.
‘She’s bright and friendly,’ he said, mentioning the first things that popped into his head about her and, surprisingly, instead of having to root desperately around for more words, they were ready and waiting on the tip of his tongue. ‘She’s intelligent,’ he added, his voice firm and decisive. ‘She seems reserved when you first meet her – maybe even a little prickly – but once you get past that, she’s warm and funny.’
Claire’s blank expression thawed. Her brow smoothed and her eyes widened. She cleared her throat. ‘Those are lovely things to say about someone,’ she said, her voice a little husky.
Yes, they were, weren’t they? Dominic was pretty pleased with himself. When Erica had been in one of her Tell me why you love me? moods, his brain had always frozen, and he’d learned the hard way that mentioning great boobs did not go down well. He was good with pictures, not words. He’d known that he’d loved her, had told her frequently. Why hadn’t that been enough?
However, Claire wasn’t wearing that same pinched expression Erica used to have. She had her elbows on the desk, and she was leaning forward, hands clasped, looking at him. He realised that finally, and quite accidentally, he’d said something to impress her.
His plan was working. A warm glow spread inside his stomach. At least, it did until he realised what a doofus he’d been already.
Fabulous, Dominic. Well done. You might be winning her over, but you’ve gone and invented a fake girlfriend she now thinks you’re in love with. He’d really outdone himself in the ‘jumping in without thinking’ stakes this time, hadn’t he?
Well, he might as well book the holiday. At first, he’d just thought about talking it through with her, then he’d realised what he’d said at the party was true: he hadn’t travelled purely for pleasure in a long while, and he had plenty of time on his hands at the moment. Maybe a week away somewhere he would never usually go wouldn’t be such a bad thing. He could relax and let his shoulder finish healing, just like the doc had said. He’d work out what to do abo
ut the fake girlfriend later. At least the holiday idea would give him an opportunity to interact with Claire, show her he wasn’t the no-brain caveman she’d taken him for.
‘Can I take one of those brochures?’ he said, nodding at the rack behind her. ‘It might spark some ideas.’
Claire stood, fetched one and handed it to him wearily. ‘Let’s hope.’
Chapter Sixteen
There Once Was a Man
Claire almost missed her stop on the bus journey home. She’d been staring out of the window, so she really should have noticed where she was, but she had to push her way off the double-decker at the last moment, gaining herself a few tuts and dirty looks from the other passengers.
However, when she got to her front door, she discovered she had no desire whatsoever to go inside. She stood there, remembering it had once belonged to someone else, someone she’d loved very much. Emptiness radiated from behind the closed door.
She would have phoned Candy or Peggy for a pep talk, but Candy was probably rushing round cooking the kids’ dinner or ferrying them to after-school clubs, and Peggy was out doing a proposal at the London Eye that evening.
In the end, Claire dipped inside her flat for a few seconds, where she dropped off her work bag and picked up the flowers and chocolates she’d discovered on her doorstep the previous morning. She hadn’t lied in her note to the suddenly – and rather strangely – solicitous Mr Arden. She did know someone who needed cheering up. She transferred her purse, phone and keys into smaller handbag, picked the gifts up and set off for Maggs’s house.
She decided to walk. It would be a shame to be stuck inside the car on an evening like this. An inauspicious morning had cleared into yet another glorious afternoon. Besides, parking in Maggs’s road was a nightmare and she’d probably have to find a space five minutes’ walk away as it was. The whole journey on foot from her flat would probably only take double that, and she liked walking through the streets of Highbury and Islington.
It wasn’t long before she was knocking on Maggs’s front door, ready to flourish her gifts. When Maggs opened it, she looked first at Claire and then at the flowers and the Hotel Chocolat gift bag. ‘What’s all this in aid of?’ she asked, but Claire saw the warmth in her eyes as she stepped past her into the house.
‘It’s most odd,’ she said, as she headed through to the kitchen. She put the bouquet and chocolates on the table and started to fill the kettle. ‘My downstairs neighbour has suddenly turned over a new leaf. I haven’t heard a peep out of him for a week, his bike has been noticeably absent from the hallway and he keeps leaving me presents.’
‘Nice flowers,’ Maggs said, as she peered into the tissue in cellophane. ‘Don’t you want them?’
Claire shook her head. ‘They’re very pretty, but I can’t help feeling there’s something fishy going on, that he’s being too nice. Keeping them feels as if I’m agreeing with that, falling for it. I’d be much more comfortable to see them going to a good home.’
Maggs reached for the kitchen scissors and sliced expertly through the wrapping, saving the little sachet of flower food. She shook her head. ‘You’re far too suspicious for a girl your age,’ she said.
Claire rested her bottom against the kitchen counter and watched the old furred-up kettle start to jiggle and groan as the water began to boil. ‘I’m not suspicious. I’m just realistic,’ she replied. ‘Not sure the leopard downstairs can change his spots, that’s all.’
Maggs fetched a cut-glass vase from a bottom cupboard and placed it on the table. ‘Maybe that last note of yours did the trick and made him see what a first-class prat he was being.’
Claire pressed her lips together and thought for a moment. ‘Maybe,’ she said, nodding. ‘Maybe I should give Mr Arden the benefit of the doubt. That’s what Doris would do, wouldn’t she?’
Maggs nodded. ‘Probably.’
Claire nodded again. Somehow, through all that she’d been through, Doris hadn’t lost her faith in human nature. Somehow, it had helped her stay strong. Claire didn’t really understand that. She just kept seeing the stupid, pointless, selfish things people did to each other and it made her cross. Really cross. But she was fed up being angry and sad at the world. It didn’t make her any happier. So she’d tried to take a leaf out of her idol’s book, change her outlook; she was sure that was the root of her problem.
Maggs started arranging the flowers in the vase, cutting the stems at an angle. She nodded at the now quiet kettle. Claire blinked. She hadn’t even noticed it had finished doing its job. Taking Maggs’s silent cue, she pulled two mugs from the cupboard and made them both a cup of tea.
‘Remember what your gran used to say?’ Maggs asked, as she put a pale pink rose amongst the eucalyptus and laurel twigs in the vase.
Claire nodded as she placed Maggs’s mug on the table. ‘People are like icebergs – there’s always more beneath the surface than you realise.’
Maggs held her gaze for a couple of seconds then went back to arranging the flowers. ‘That’s right. So, while your Mr Arden is puzzling you at the moment, there’s an explanation for it. You just don’t know it yet.’
Claire took a sip of her tea. ‘I suppose that makes sense.’
‘And it might be a less nefarious reason than you suspect.’
Claire didn’t say anything, so Maggs glanced over her shoulder at her.
‘Maybe,’ Claire finally admitted, but the syllables felt as if they’d been dragged from behind her teeth. She shook her head and made a dismissive noise. ‘Ignore me. I’m just in a bad mood because I’d met someone nice and I’d thought he liked me too. Seems I was wrong about him. So maybe – and I’m still saying it’s a stretch – maybe I’m wrong about Mr Nightmare From Downstairs too.’
Maggs stopped what she was doing. ‘Do tell!’
‘Well, I suppose the whole bike thing could have been a misunderstanding—’
Maggs shooed away her answer with an impatient hand. ‘Not that! About the other thing! The other man … Was it this rich fellow who took you to that party?’
Claire shook her head. ‘It would be easier if it was. I don’t think Doug would ever surprise or disappoint me. But, no, it was someone else at the party.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, he came into the shop today, asked for my help booking a holiday.’
Maggs blinked. ‘And that’s a bad thing? It might just have been an excuse to see you again.’
Claire let out a huge sigh. ‘Yes. I thought so too at first, but then he said he’d come to me because of the sort of holidays I specialised in booking. Turns out he has a girlfriend. One he’s very keen to impress, by the sounds of it.’
‘Ah,’ Maggs said.
Claire nodded. ‘I know. You should have heard the way he talked about her too.’ She sighed again. ‘Oh, well. I should have taken Gran’s advice, shouldn’t I, and looked a little deeper? I’d have probably read the signals if I’d been paying proper attention, not getting all caught up in the way his eyes crinkle at the edges when he smiles.’
Maggs nodded sagely. ‘The smile. It’ll do it to you every time. That’s how Sid won me over, you know. I told him I wasn’t interested, but he just kept coming around, smiling that smile of his at me, and before I knew it I was trotting down the aisle!’
Claire smiled. ‘It worked out okay in the end, though, didn’t it?’
Maggs gave her a weak smile back. ‘Yes. Yes it did.’
‘I don’t know what it is. I know you say I’m suspicious – and I suppose I am – but never when it comes to love. It’s like I’m colour-blind, except only I’m man-blind. I have no depth perception where they’re concerned. I mean, look at Philip.’
Maggs walked over and rubbed her arm. ‘We were all fooled by Philip. Don’t you fret about him. Everyone’s got a secret side, Claire. Even you. Even me.’
An image of Maggs’s hip flask, shiny and secret, flashed through Claire’s mind. She started to think she should be more worried about th
at than she’d allowed herself to be. How had she missed that? How had she not seen what was building in front of her nose?
Maggs nodded to herself as she walked back over to the table and got going with the flowers again. ‘And you can’t know everything about a person when you first meet them. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to work it all out.’
‘That’s what makes it all so difficult. The whole thing’s such a risk. I thought I was ready to try again, but … after this … maybe I’m not.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ Maggs said, sounding much more like her usual self. ‘At least you know you need to look deeper. Knowing the problem is half the solution.’ As she finished speaking, her eyes fell on Claire’s handbag. ‘And there’s another thing you’re obviously ready to look below the surface of.’
‘What do you mean?’ Claire asked, but then she saw the corner of a crumpled envelope sticking out of the side pocket and she knew exactly what Maggs meant. She put her mug down and shook her head from side to side. ‘No. You’ve got it wrong. I haven’t read it. I haven’t even looked at it since you gave it to me that night. It’s just been sitting there forgotten in that handbag. It doesn’t mean anything.’
Maggs put down the large fluffy thistle head she was holding and turned to face Claire. ‘It doesn’t mean anything that you’ve been carrying his letter round for the last two weeks?’
‘No.’ Claire frowned. ‘Don’t look at me like that. It doesn’t.’
‘There’s more going on below the surface in everyone, Claire. Even you.’
Claire picked up her tea again and sipped it, welcoming the scalding liquid down her throat. All the while she peered at Maggs over the rim of her mug. ‘Not everything has a meaning. Some things, yes, but not everything. Not that. It’s just I haven’t used this handbag since that night. I haven’t even thought about it – about him. Not really.’
‘Then there’s probably a reason for that too.’
Claire looked away. ‘Now you’re just being awkward.’