by Fiona Harper
C.
Her finger hovered above the ‘x’ on her keyboard. His might have been a throwaway gesture. Completely platonic. Knowing hers was not made her chicken out.
Nick’s reply pinged back quickly.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Did you manage to solve the problem in the end? And please don’t leave me hanging about the chips. It’s the sort of thing a guy like me might actually be able to pull off!
Claire typed again.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
I’m hoping providing some sample menus may soothe her worries. Otherwise she wants to book with someone else, which is doable, but it’ll cost more and involve an extra connection, which means they’ll lose another half day of the holiday.
Don’t suppose you fancy a trip to the Cook Islands? That would solve all our problems. I could do you and Doug a great group discount rate. You could share a villa ;-)
And if you want to know about the chips you may well have to bribe me with wine …
She closed her eyes and pressed ‘send’, then winced. Had that been too much? Had she been too cheeky, too forward?
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Ha ha. I think I’d rather take a three-week tour of the London sewer system than spend that amount of time with Doug’s mother.
Besides, I’d like to go somewhere I’ve never been before. And I reckon the wine thing is totally doable. :-)
Claire’s pulse did a little skip. They’d always been playful and chatty in their emails, but did this mean they were now flirting? It was a pity she couldn’t type lying down, because suddenly she’d come over a little dizzy.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
You’ve been to the Cook Islands? I’m so jealous. Is it really as lovely as the pictures in the brochures?
Btw, the sewer tour could be arranged, if you really want it. ;-) And you could take me out for that drink afterwards.
Oh, Lord. She hoped her instincts about the disappearing girlfriend were right, otherwise she was being very, very bad indeed.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Yep. It really is that lovely. White sand, waving palm trees, crystal water. The one place I’ve been where the brochure pics really don’t need any retouching. Unless you’re there during monsoon season. Then it’s not quite so much fun.
Btw, let’s forget the sewers and just do the wine.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
I could see that about the Cook Islands! Anyway …
Claire paused. She needed to ask this question. Even from a professional point of view she needed to ask this question, but the fact her request for information also had a personal edge made her feel a little shaky. She had to know for sure before they kept going like this. She took a deep breath and carried on typing.
… When you said you were changing the type of trip you wanted to book, was it just the overall feel, the romantic element? Or are there other changes?
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
What kind of changes?
Claire swallowed.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Like the number of people going.
There. She’d said it.
Are we still booking for two?
She pressed send.
A minute or two passed. Gran’s big old sunburst clock on the wall seemed to tick extra loudly. Claire began to get worried that she’d overstepped the mark. Had she? It had seemed an obvious question to ask, given the way the conversation had been going. She’d tried to tell herself she’d have asked it anyway, even if she hadn’t been nursing this silly crush, but she wasn’t sure if she was kidding herself or not.
Quite a few minutes slipped past and it got to the point where she suspected she’d just prompted another patch of radio silence from Nick, maybe even lost herself a customer, so when her email alert pinged quarter of an hour later she almost jumped out of the little dent she’d made for herself in her stacked-up pillows.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Good question. And one I really should have made clear before now. I didn’t realise I hadn’t.
Yes, things have changed.
Claire’s heart began to beat double time.
I’m looking at a trip for one now.
She punched the air in triumph, but then realised that was a really insensitive thing to do, even if Nick couldn’t see her.
Oh, Lord, she wanted to ask a million questions. All of them nosy. All of them inappropriate. Her fingers itched to commit every single one of them in writing. Instead, she composed something that sounded sympathetic rather than predatory, because, seriously, what guy was going to respond to a girl who threw herself at him when he was at his most low?
Okay, so a lot of guys would take that opportunity, but Nick wasn’t one of those guys, was he? He wasn’t shallow, only out for a quick fling; his devotion to his ex while he’d been trying to plan her dream holiday had proved that.
Stupid woman. Didn’t she know what she’d thrown away?
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
I’m so sorry to hear that.
And, despite her personal interest, she truly was. She knew how hard it was when a relationship you’d invested your whole self in ended, even if it wasn’t a good one. Even if it was a toxic one.
She exhaled and sank further into her pillows.
Wow. She hadn’t realised it before, but she could feel the ripples of that pain still reverberating from her break-up with Philip, even though she’d known it was the best thing for both of them, even though she’d felt so free at the time.
She started to type again, this time not thinking about what she wanted from Nick, but about what she could give him.
I know I can’t make the situation any better for you, but I can book you a wonderful relaxing holiday to help give you time to lick your wounds and come back refreshed and ready to get on with life.
In that case, I recommend we stick to Europe. No long-haul flights. Pretty easy choices with currency. Lots of great culture and perfect weather this time of year, before the summer starts to bake too hard. What do you think?
And, Nick? If you ever … Well, if you ever need a friendly ear, someone to talk to. You know I’m here.
C. x
She didn’t know why she’d written that last bit, but she’d hit send on automatic before she’d been able to stop herself. It was out there now. Nothing she could do to call it back.
She waited again. The show on the TV had changed to a nature documentary while she hadn’t been paying attention. Darn. She was going to have to go and see who won that round of the baking show on catch-up.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Thanks. N. x
His last email was proof enough that he was still feeling raw. Just that one word. And he’d proved himself a pretty chatty guy up until that point. It was time to draw this to a close this evening, wasn’t it? She’d said enough.
She composed one last email, saying she’d be in touch during the week with some ideas for his trip. She signed it without the ‘x’ she’d boldly added to her previous message and then closed down her laptop and put it on her dressing table without waiting for a reply, then she picked up the little throw cushion she kept on her bed and hugged it to herself.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Julie
The opening credits of Julie, one of Doris’s more critically acclaimed dramatic roles, were playing when Claire picked up her phone to turn it onto
silent and realised she’d missed a text from Nick. She smiled, tapped in a quick answer, then turned her attention back to the film.
There were only a couple of movies of Doris’s she’d never seen before and this was one of them. It had been hard to track down a DVD copy in Region 2 format, but eventually they’d managed it, ordering a Spanish version – El Diabólico Señor Benton – and choosing the English soundtrack and turning off the subtitles. For some reason, her grandmother hadn’t had this one in her collection. As the film progressed, Claire started to see why.
‘I can’t believe she married the psycho!’ Kitty exclaimed loudly, as the man on the screen pinned Doris down and told her he’d kill her if she ever tried to leave him. ‘I mean, how could you get that close to someone and not know? He killed her ex just to have her for goodness’ sake! And now he’s going to kill her too?’
A few of the other group members murmured their agreement, but Claire stayed quiet. So did Maggs. They looked at each other, silent agreement zapping between them, and then looked back at the screen.
Easily, Claire thought. It was too, too easy to see what you wanted to see. Thank goodness her mistake had been with a man who was just a greedy child deep inside, unable to give as well as take, but he hadn’t been violent.
After half an hour, Claire had had enough. She wanted to get up, flip the lights back on and declare the meeting over, but that wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the club members, who were enjoying a well-written ‘woman in jeopardy’ tale, and Doris was acting her socks off.
Claire decided to concentrate on that and not get sucked into the story. It wasn’t real, after all. Just people pretending to be other people, props, sets, cameras. She kept concentrating on these things, focusing on the film-making techniques, instead of looking into Doris’s eyes on the screen, instead of letting herself see the terror there. Because that felt real. Very real.
Claire knew there was a reason for that. She’d read loads of books about Doris over the years, including Doris’s autobiography, but it had been some time ago. Now pieces of information kept coming back to her about this film.
Doris, without really knowing what ‘method acting’ was, had used that technique to get into her parts, and for this one she said she’d revisited just how she’d felt when she’d been married to her first husband, when she’d lived this kind of role for real. By all accounts, filming it had left her on the edge of a breakdown. She’d been ill too, in pain and needing surgery, but her manager and third husband had refused to shut filming down so she could see her doctor. It had been a dark time for Doris. When she’d finally got to hospital, they’d found a tumour – benign, thank goodness – the size of a grapefruit inside her. She’d ended up with a hysterectomy, ending any hope of having a second child.
While it was hard to watch, brave Julie found her freedom in the end – and so had Doris. She’d made many films after this, had come through her surgery well, and carried on to live to a ripe old age.
That thought carried Claire through the rest of the film, to the credits and beyond. As she was packing away, Maggs collared her.
‘I’m coming with you on Friday morning,’ she said.
Claire shook her head. ‘No, it’s okay. I’m a big girl. I can manage seeing my father on my own.’
‘I know you can,’ Maggs said, ‘just like I can get the bus home on my own, or do my own shopping, or make myself a cake now and again, but you come and do those things for me anyway.’
Claire smiled. ‘It’s because I love you, Auntie Maggs.’
Maggs huffed. ‘You haven’t called me that in at least two decades. Anyway, that’s my point.’
Claire leaned in and gave her a kiss. Maggs wouldn’t say the words, but she knew the old lady felt them with every fibre of her being. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ll pick you up at ten.’
She was still smiling as she packed away her things, but it gradually faded. While the thought of having company on Friday was nice, her conversation with Maggs had just served to remind her the day was looming. She’d been doing very well at ignoring that up until now, thinking she’d just leave the worrying to the morning itself, but now, as she walked down stairs and out of the pub, there was a cold knot in her stomach.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Cuddle Up a Little Closer
Dominic was sitting on his sofa in just a pair of old tracksuit bottoms that had been cut down into shorts, doing research for his free-diving project on his laptop. He’d found a site outlining some of the training procedures and had become fascinated with it. He’d ended up following the instructions, just to see what it felt like, and had been doing prep exercises for the last half an hour: breathing in deeply and holding it briefly before ‘purging’, blowing it all out again. He was now ready to see how long he could go. He set his laptop aside, brought up the stopwatch on his phone and sat it down next to him on the sofa.
Keeping his body relaxed and positioning himself so he could stay still, he breathed in deep and filled his lungs to eighty-five per cent.
His efforts at holding it were ruined when, forty seconds in, an alert for an email from Claire popped up on his screen. Chips! The subject line read. He let the air out so fast that he felt a bit dizzy afterwards. He didn’t care, though. He swiped his phone to pull up the message.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Chips!
Okay, Nicholas … Is your name Nicholas? I suppose I’ve assumed it is, but it could be something entirely different, couldn’t it?
Dominic stopped breathing again, but this time it was for a very different reason. She was getting a little too close to the truth there, wasn’t she?
Anyway … I’ve decided to put you out of your misery about the chip thing, although I’m still holding you to that promise of a glass of wine!
He was counting on that. They’d been emailing back and forth for almost a week since that first chat where he’d told her he didn’t want to book a romantic trip. They’d lost all pretence of keeping it business-related now, even if a bit of travel chatter slipped in quite frequently. There was joking, there was banter. Plenty of flirting. There was more than that too.
There’d been talking. Well, typing. Proper communicating. The way he’d never been able to do before. He’d told her all sorts of things he’d never told anyone else, not even Pete. Well, maybe, especially not Pete … Somehow it was easier when it came out of his fingertips instead of his mouth, when he wasn’t looking at an angry female face that was expecting him to come up with the perfect answer right here, right now.
They’d also graduated from email to texting, although when they wanted to discuss longer subjects email was still their preferred medium. It was like they had their own private little universe going where no one else existed, no one else mattered.
Maybe that was why he’d told her about Erica. Not everything, but bits. The start of the truth. In return, she’d begun telling him about her ex-husband. The guy sounded like a real wet fish and Dominic was endlessly grateful to him for that, because if he hadn’t been such a waste of space Claire would still be married to him and he’d never have got to know her.
A part of him knew he should hold back, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. That same part knew this was dangerous. Usually he played it safe in relationships, leaving the daredevil stuff for his job. Now, however, with an absence of anything but office-based work, it seemed he was letting his daredevil urges seep into other areas of his life. Somehow he couldn’t seem to care about that either. He was having too much fun.
He shook himself and realised he’d yet to read on about these now infamous chips. He rectified that immediately:
I’m afraid after all this build-up, it’s going to seem a little bit tame, but I’ll tell the story anyway:
My friend’s husband was not the romantic sort at all, of which she complained frequently and loudly. He was also rubbish at cooking and she got fed up
having to do it night after night for the pair of them.
Anyway, one year he decided to up his game. Not only did he go an a secret cooking course on the run up to Valentine’s Day, but on the day itself he cooked her favourite meal – steak and chips, with Béarnaise sauce and everything – and the crowning glory was his artistry with the potatoes.
He didn’t just cut them into strips or wedges. He saved a few back and carved them into letters, so when he presented her with her plate of gorgeous food that she hadn’t had to lift a finger to prepare, the words ‘I love you’, were spelled out in hot, crispy potato letters across her plate.
She told me she cried for ten minutes and her steak went cold!
So there we go … There’s my ultimate example of how something as unromantic as potatoes – especially if they’re muddy – can be turned into a romantic experience to top all others. It’s all about knowing the person you’re making the gesture to and the amount of thought and effort that’s gone into it.
You’re going to tell me that’s really lame now, aren’t you?
Sigh.
Claire x
Dominic smiled as he read the end of the email. In a funny way it did make sense, but only if he thought about it very hard.
He shook his head as he read through it a second time and then let out a long, drawn-out breath. He needed to tell her, didn’t he? And he’d been planning to, but somehow all these emails had been stalling him, probably because he didn’t want it all to end.
However, he knew he couldn’t keep it up much longer. He’d had a couple of close calls in the last week, moments when he’d only just slipped inside his flat in the nick of time, or had almost run into her in the street and had to duck into someone else’s garden. He knew he was playing Russian roulette, that it was only a matter of time …