by Fiona Harper
Carefully, she placed a bookmark between the pages, put her book down and picked her phone up. She let out a small sigh then swiped the screen to bring it up.
Short and sweet. This man didn’t gush, did he? The last bit made her smile.
Sorry I’m so rubbish at this …
She smiled again. He was rubbish at it. But the fact he’d owned it, rather than hidden it all behind a layer of bravado, made her like him more.
It was such a pity he was planning this all for someone else.
She sighed again. She seemed to be doing a lot of that these days.
She pressed ‘reply’ and began to type with her thumbs.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: Trip ideas
Dear Nick …
She stopped typing and backspaced, jabbing her right thumb on the right little button, hitting the ‘p’ a few more times than was strictly necessary along the way, meaning she just had to backspace all the more.
Not ‘dear’ Nick. That was too affectionate, too intimate somehow, even though it was perfectly proper. She replaced it with ‘Hi’ and carried on.
*
Dominic heard his phone chirp as he walked past where he’d thrown it on the sofa on the way to the bathroom. He picked it up and took it with him while he brushed his teeth, savouring the knowledge that she’d not only read his answer but had replied so quickly, but it wasn’t until he’d stripped off and crashed onto his bed that he read the full reply.
Hi Nick
Please don’t worry about being rubbish at all this – and I gather by ‘all this’, you mean romantic stuff. I’ll let you into a secret … Most men are. Even the ones who come to me to book their holidays. Maybe especially them, because the truly romantic ones can do it all on their own.
There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging a weakness and seeking help. No one’s good at everything, and that’s what I’m here for, after all, to help. It’s not only my job, but what I love to do.
I’ll let you into another secret: you just need to think outside the box. Most men have a very narrow definition of romance.
They think it’s flowers and chocolates and lingerie.
He sat up, his eyes suddenly wider than when he’d lain down. It wasn’t? Then why were all those things shoved in front of men’s noses at Valentine’s Day and Christmas? Was the whole retail industry cynically exploiting this error? He shook his head and read on.
Well, it can be those things …
He let out a relieved sigh and rubbed his free hand through his hair.
… but it’s also a lot more. Romance isn’t in the object itself – the gift. You’ve heard the saying ‘it’s the thought that counts’? Well, that concept goes a long way for a woman. The gift better be good, but the gift on its own isn’t enough, and sometimes the strangest of presents take on a whole new level of meaning and romance when the right thought goes behind them.
I have a friend whose husband made her chips on Valentine’s Day one year and she said it was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for her.
I can almost visualise you scratching your head, Nick. It’s very funny. Even so, I’m not going to tell you the rest of the story now. Think about it. And I’ll tell you why it was so romantic when you give me the answers to those questions.
Look forward to hearing from you soon,
Claire
Dominic flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He wondered if the flat layout was the same upstairs. If so, Claire could be up there right now, mere metres above his head. He wondered if she was still holding her phone too, if she wasn’t quite ready to let go of it yet. He brought it up in front of his face and skim read the email again.
It was strange. In person, Claire, while friendly and open, always seemed a little guarded too. There was a ‘keep off’ quality about her that wove in and out of her engaging personality. However, in her last email, unlike her stiff notes on the doorstep, he felt as if she’d let that barrier down, as if she was whispering those precious secrets she’d told him right into his ear.
He growled with frustration, even as he chuckled and slid his phone onto the bedside table and turned out the light. Now he was going to have to come up with seriously good answers to those questions, and he still had no ideas whatsoever.
Chapter Eighteen
A Woman’s Touch
Abby, Kitty and Grace turned up at Claire’s flat before the film club meeting the following Tuesday. Claire ushered them inside and up to her spare room.
‘Right,’ Kitty said, sitting down on the chair by Claire’s desk. She indicated that Grace and Abby should perch on the edge of the bed, which made Claire smile, as it seemed very much as if Kitty was a queen holding court. She stood by the door and looked on.
‘I’ve found a great dress for you,’ Kitty said to Abby. ‘Much plainer than the ones of mine I let you try on. I looked to Audrey for inspiration. She had a figure like yours, but she wasn’t quite as tall as you. Still, I’m sure this will work better.’
Claire hid a smile. Obviously, she’d done her job well if Kitty had totally forgotten that hadn’t been her idea.
Kitty nodded towards her and Claire passed her a garment bag that had been hanging on the back of the door. Abby let out a sigh of relief as Kitty pulled it from the plastic and Claire almost did too. Much better!
There was no lace, no frills, no bold patterns, just a lovely plain cream dress with a pattern of tiny white flowers on it, so pale they almost didn’t show up against the background. It had a scoop neck, capped sleeves and a thin red patent leather belt that ran round the middle. Claire was tempted to say she’d have it if Abby wasn’t interested.
Kitty motioned for Abby to stand up and start shedding her football kit.
‘Come on, girls,’ Claire said to the two vintage girls, guessing Abby would prefer a little privacy. ‘Why don’t we wait outside? If Abby needs help with the zip, she can call us.’
A minute or two later, they heard a soft, ‘Ready!’ from behind the door and Claire pushed it open so they could file back in.
Kitty squealed and clapped her hands. ‘Perfect!’ she decreed, and then she and Grace leapt into motion, fussing round Abby, doing the zip up and fluffing the full-ish skirt that came just to her knees. ‘You’ve got really great legs, you know.’
Abby looked over her shoulder to see who she was talking to, but there was no one there. ‘You mean me?’
Both girls smiled and nodded. ‘Great muscle tone,’ Grace said. ‘Must be all that football.’
‘I have great legs?’ Abby whispered.
Kitty laughed. ‘Better than mine. Why do you think I wear these long skirts? I’d kill for thighs like that.’ She stepped back and turned Abby so she could see her reflection in the full-length mirror on the wall.
Abby blinked in surprise. ‘It looks … I mean, I look … nice.’
Claire smiled. ‘I think you look beautiful.’
Abby twisted this way and that. ‘Look! I actually go in and out in the middle.’
‘That’s the magic of fashion for you, darling,’ Grace drawled.
Kitty grinned. ‘Try looking at yourself side on.’
‘Flipping hell!’ Abby exclaimed. ‘I’ve got boobs!’
‘It’s the darts in the bodice,’ Kitty told her.
Abby nodded seriously, even though Claire was sure she hadn’t a clue what a dart was, and then she frowned. ‘How much is it? Is it really expensive? I’ve only saved a hundred pounds from my part-time job at the sports centre.’
Kitty shook her head. ‘I’ve got a friend who runs a little shop in Greenwich and I’ve sent a lot of business her way, so she said she’d let me have this one at cost – if it fitted you, of course. Fifty quid. That’s okay, isn’t it?’
Abby smiled and nodded.
‘It should even leave you enough for some shoes,’ Claire said.
Abby’s face fell. ‘Sh
oes? I hadn’t thought about shoes! All I own is trainers! And I can’t walk in those things,’ she said, pointing to Kitty’s stilettos. ‘I’ll just faceplant in the middle of dance floor at Mum’s party and totally humiliate myself!
Claire looked down at her feet. ‘Ballerina pumps. That’s what’s needed here.’
Abby looked at her in horror. ‘Heels are bad enough, but ribbons?’
Kitty, and even Grace, burst into fits of laughter. ‘Oh, Abby,’ Kitty said, as she wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. ‘That’s one of the reasons we like you. You’re so funny!’
‘I’m funny too?’ she said, obviously still not having come to grips with the legs thing.
Kitty nodded. ‘Sometimes.’
Grace, however, was much more focused on the shoes. ‘Not Darcey Bussell kind of ballet shoes …’ She reached into Kitty’s suitcase and pulled out some flat black shoes with a little bow at the front. ‘These.’
‘Oh.’ Abby visibly relaxed. ‘I think I could manage those.’
‘What size are you?’
‘Seven,’ Abby said and Kitty frowned. ‘Damn. Those are a five.’
‘I have some that size,’ Claire offered. ‘They’re cream too. I’ll just go and see if I can find them.’
‘Oh, good. While you do that we can think about hair and face.’
Claire left the door open and, as she walked down the hall and into her bedroom, she heard Grace say, ‘Now, you’re going to have to keep really still. Liquid eyeliner is a pig if you don’t get it right first time.’
She returned with the shoes a few minutes later and watched as Grace worked on Abby’s face and Kitty her hair. When they were finished, they prodded their subject in the direction of the mirror again. Abby stared at herself. ‘Is that me?’ Kitty and Grace both nodded. ‘But my eyes look so big! And my lips …’
Abby was right. Her eyes did look huge and Grace had painted Abby’s full lips the only choice in her palette – pillar-box red. While they looked fabulous, full and plump like Angelina Jolie’s, Claire wasn’t sure the colour suited Abby as well as it did Grace. However, if Abby wasn’t complaining …
Abby patted the back of her head, trying to work out what Kitty had done with her hair, and discovered she’d swept it off her face and had twisted it into a bun. She then moved her hand round to the front of her head and giggled softly. ‘I don’t think I can remember the last time I saw my forehead.’
‘What do you think?’ Kitty said, and Claire heard a tremor in her usually confident, purring tone.
Abby looked at herself in the mirror again, as if she was beholding an alien being. ‘I think,’ she whispered, ‘I really do look like a girl.’
Kitty and Grace grinned at each other and then Kitty threw herself at Abby again, hugging her tightly, only to be shooed away by Grace in case she messed up the carefully applied make-up.
‘Try these,’ Claire said, and handed Abby the shoes.
Abby stood up and put them on. ‘They fit, just about. A little bit snug over the toes,’ she said, as she walked up and down beside the bed, ‘but they don’t slip too badly.
‘Perfect,’ Grace said, sighing. ‘You’re just like Cinderella!’
‘Or Calamity Jane,’ Kitty said nodding.
‘Calamity who?’
‘Doris Day film,’ Claire explained.
Abby smiled. ‘Should have known!’
‘We’re watching it in a couple of weeks,’ Claire told her, smiling back. ‘I think you’ll like Calamity. She’s a bit of a tomboy too.’
Kitty took on a dreamy expression. ‘Yes, but then there’s this scene where she goes to the dance at the fort and … Oh, when he sees her! It’s just—’ She clamped her mouth closed. ‘Whoops,’ she added. ‘Don’t want to spoil the story! You’ll see.’
Claire looked at the old-fashioned alarm clock on the bedside table. ‘Rightio. It’s just about time to get going.’
‘What?’ Abby asked, looking between them. ‘What do you mean? Going where?’
Grace blinked. ‘To the film club meeting, of course.’
Abby’s face turned as pale as her dress. ‘You want me to go out like this?’
Kitty looked confused. ‘That’s the point of all this, isn’t it? So you can go out looking nice for your mum’s party? People will see you then.’
‘But that’s weeks away! I’m not ready yet!’
‘Maybe a little practice run isn’t such a bad thing?’ Claire said. ‘If you wait until the party and do it all in one go, it might be a bit overwhelming.’
Reluctantly, Abby nodded. ‘I suppose so. I don’t want to have a stroke or a heart attack. Mum will definitely never forgive me if I steal the limelight away from her on her big night and blues and twos and a trip to A&E would definitely do that!’
Kitty and Grace burst out laughing again. ‘See? Told you you were funny,’ Kitty said when she’d regained composure. Abby looked perplexed, but pleased and, while she was in a good mood, Kitty pressed her advantage. ‘Anyway, everyone at the club really wants to see how it all turned out.’
‘You told them we were doing this?’ Abby asked.
‘Why not?’ Grace asked.
‘Of course,’ Kitty replied at the same time, but there was a look of pride in her features and Claire very quickly understood what this was all about. Good old Kitty was definitely going to enjoy all the adulation that went with being the fairy godmother of this particular Cinderella moment.
‘Come on, Abby,’ Grace said, thankfully sounding a little more genuine. ‘You know it makes sense.’
‘It does,’ Claire said firmly, even though she didn’t quite like the way the other two girls had manoeuvred Abby into this. ‘But I think you should only go dressed up if you want to.’
Abby stared at herself in the mirror once more, then nodded to herself before looking back at Claire. She swallowed. ‘No. You’re right. It’s about time Ri – I mean, some people – realised I was a woman.’
The look in her eyes tugged Claire’s heartstrings. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked softly.
Abby nodded. ‘Yeah. Let’s do it.’
Chapter Nineteen
You’re Getting to Be a Habit With Me
The familiar music to By the Light of the Silvery Moon played, and Claire hummed along inside her head. Anyone looking at her would have thought she was engrossed in the film flickering on The Glass Bottom Boat’s huge television, but while her eyes were pointed in the direction of the screen, her mind was somewhere else entirely.
She was thinking about Nick.
They’d been emailing each other since she’d asked him those questions the other day. He still hadn’t answered them, but it had led to a back and forth conversation about ideas for his trip, which had led to discussing travelling in general, which in turn had led to sharing funny trip-related anecdotes and disasters.
Nick had many more than she had. He’d been to so many places! And always the most interesting places too, places on her bucket list that she still hadn’t made firm plans to visit. While, on the one hand, the conversation about all these exotic locations thrilled her, on the other, they made her feet itch jealously.
He had such a great way of telling his stories, though, that it was hard not to be swept away by the magic of the places he’d been to – Baobab Alley in Madagascar, Machu Picchu, Victoria Falls and up into the frozen north to see the Aurora Borealis.
She smiled to herself as she remembered a silly story of his about getting lost on the Moscow Metro because he hadn’t been able to decipher the station names on the map.
If it had been anyone else she’d have wondered if he was interested in her. Sometimes, she forgot it herself when they were bantering back and forth. Every now and then she wondered if she should be communicating with him this way, but if she looked at his emails, dissected and analysed them, they weren’t flirty, just friendly, and she’d heard the way he’d talked about his girlfriend, hadn’t she? Their emails had definitely wandered from
professional into chatty, but that was where it ended.
It was just nice to have someone to tell things to. Silly things. Little things.
She shifted in her chair and tried to concentrate on the film again. They were getting to the bit where Gordon MacRae sang ‘Just One Girl’ and it was one of her favourite moments.
Most of her emailing with Nick happened late at night, messages pinging back and forth like a conversation. She didn’t know where he was when he sent them, but she was usually in bed. She’d cuddle up under her light quilt, fluff up her pillows and then open up the email app on her phone, holding her breath, and see if a message had arrived from him. There was usually one, if not two.
It was totally ridiculous, but she imagined it a bit like the split-screen phone calls between Rock Hudson and Doris Day in Pillow Talk. She’d always wanted someone to chat to like that late at night, to give her that warm feeling of talking with someone who ‘got’ the things you got, who made you feel that, after all, you were not so very alone.
That was where the similarity ended, thankfully. Nick wasn’t some nefarious womaniser, out to charm her into bed, and Claire hoped she was intelligent enough not to get duped the way poor Doris had in the film, but really … Falling for a guy who said he was from Texas and called himself Rex Stetson? How gullible could you get?
Anyway, Nick wasn’t trying to charm her into anything, was he? All his attention and focus were fixed on his other half. That’s why she didn’t feel too guilty about roping him into her ridiculous little one-sided fantasy. One day soon it would all be over. She wasn’t stupid. She knew her daydreams had a shelf life. The holiday would eventually be booked, and he’d disappear off into the sunset with his wonderful girlfriend, and then all Nick would be to her was another – hopefully – satisfied customer.