by Liz Fielding
It was almost irresistible. Yesterday’s cold, driving rain had cleared to one of those perfect late-autumn days. Clear and bright with an eggshell-blue sky. In the park the branches would be bare, but russet leaves would be heaped up and I could almost feel my hand clasped in his as we kicked them up like a couple of kids.
I was clearly losing my mind.
‘I’m sure you’re a man of your word,’ I said discouragingly, and finally handed him the salt. ‘Besides, I have to shop for a new suit so that I’ll look good on Monday.’
‘For the new job?’
‘For the new job,’ I confirmed. ‘In fact, I need a whole new wardrobe of working clothes.’
‘Tell me about it.’
He wanted to know about my clothes? Don never noticed what I was wearing. Don wasn’t gay, I reminded myself. Even so, he never made me feel quite this…physical.
‘Okay. Let’s see. I’m going to need a minimum of two suits, four tops…’ I was working on the same basic principle as the winter uniform provided by the bank.
‘The job,’ he said, stopping me before it got any more personal.
‘What?’
‘Tell me about the job.’
Idiot. Fool. Nincompoop. Just because he was… I stopped. I still couldn’t credit it. Cal exuded the kind of sexual masculinity that turned heads. Even in this crowded little restaurant I was aware of surreptitious glances from other women. Whatever it was that Kate could see in him, it couldn’t be that obvious. Which made me feel a little better. But not much. It wasn’t only women who were looking in our direction.
But that was beside the point. I’d been thinking in stereotypes. Why would he be in the least bit interested in my wardrobe?
‘I’m on temporary secondment,’ I said, moving swiftly on. And I told him the name of the merchant bank in the City where I had to present myself first thing on Monday morning.
He frowned. ‘I thought you said you worked in a high street bank.’
‘I do. Did.’ Then, realising he assumed I was a counter clerk, ‘I’m an FPC. A financial planning consultant. Pensions, investments…’
‘Oh, I see.’
I’d have had to be a saint not to have enjoyed the moment when he realised I wasn’t quite as stupid as I looked. But I just said, ‘I still have to wear a uniform. It’s hardly high fashion…’ it made me look nearer thirty-two than twenty-two, but that was probably the intention; in the Shires people preferred a little gravitas in their investment advisers ‘…but it made life easy. Now I have to start from scratch.’ I shrugged. ‘And to be honest I don’t know where to begin.’
‘Why don’t you ask those girls you’re sharing with to help? They’ll be able to point you in the direction of the right places to shop.’
I didn’t doubt it. I’d seen the kind of clothes they wore and, no question, they’d got shopping down to an art form.
‘Kate, maybe. Sophie…’ I pulled a face. ‘Putting myself in Sophie’s hands does not seem like a sound idea. Besides,’ I said, ‘with my hair, making an impression is not an option.’
He grinned. ‘You’re certainly difficult to ignore.’
‘That’s not a compliment, is it?’
‘I guess that depends on whether you want to be a stand-out-in-the-crowd head turner, or prefer to keep a low profile.’
‘Tiger or mouse,’ I said, more to myself than to Cal.
‘Tiger, no argument,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen a mouse with your colouring.’
I dragged both hands over my hair to flatten it against my head. It had been a personal agony from the day I’d been old enough to look in a mirror and realised that, unlike my siblings, I’d inherited my father’s ginger frizz rather than my mother’s sleek blonde locks, the kind that seemed to just leap into a perfectly coiled French pleat.
I’d tried to copy her style, skewering my hair in place with pins before plastering it down with super-hold hair spray. I’d got as far as my desk before it had exploded, showering the office with shrapnel.
‘I tried cutting it once,’ I told him, ‘hoping that, if there was less of it, it wouldn’t be so noticeable. I just looked like a ginger poodle.’ I’d hoped that by making Cal laugh, I might crack the tension that was holding us together in a force field, excluding everyone else in the café. I didn’t get so much as a flicker from him. ‘I even tried dyeing it black,’ I said, a touch desperately. ‘I had to live with the curious greenish tinge for months which, let me tell you, is no joke when you’re a teenager.’
He reached up, took hold of my wrists and drew them towards his chest. ‘Listen to me, Philly. Your hair is magnificent. Beautiful.’ His hands slid over mine and he held them in his. ‘The gaze of every man in this place has been riveted on you since we arrived. If I were to reach out, touch your hair—’ he let go of one of my hands, reached out and captured a tiny corkscrew curl, stretching it out until it was quite straight before letting it go so that it bounced back, making me jump ‘—I’d be the most envied man in the room.’
He raised a brow in an invitation to look around, check it out for myself, but I wasn’t looking anywhere but at him. And I didn’t give him an argument. I didn’t have any breath left to spare.
‘Your Don should never have let you out of his sight if he wants to keep you,’ he said. ‘And you can tell him that I said so.’ Then, as if slightly embarrassed by the intensity with which he’d spoken, he released my hand and sat back in his chair. ‘As for clothes,’ he said, in a throwaway manner, ‘asking Sophie’s advice is probably the quickest way to turn her from disgruntled flatmate into friend. Tell her that you have no idea where to shop—’
‘I haven’t.’
‘Appeal to her good taste and she won’t be able to resist the challenge.’
The challenge? I glanced down at my jacket, the expensive silk scarf, which, far from lending style and elegance to my appearance, was trailing in my breakfast. I rescued it and blotted it with a paper napkin.
‘My attempt at casual chic didn’t impress you, huh?’ I said, with what I hoped was a wry grin. It felt more like a grimace.
He returned a smile that was an essay in ‘wry’ a demonstration of how it should be done. ‘Was I supposed to be impressed?’
Oh, hell! If he were straight, we’d be flirting. But since he wasn’t, I suppose it didn’t much matter. ‘Hell, yes,’ I said.
‘You look exactly right for a wander around a street market on a Saturday morning and I—’
I waited for him to finish, but he chose discretion. I wasn’t having that. We were friends. ‘But?’ I prompted.
‘But nothing,’ he said, a little tersely. ‘This isn’t about your dress sense. It’s about having to share a flat with Sophie Harrington for six months. From everything I’ve heard about her, she lives to shop. Challenge her to make you look a million dollars on a budget and she’ll break her neck to show you just how good she is.’
‘I think perhaps “a million dollars” is expecting rather too much,’ I said, looking down at my watch so that he wouldn’t be able to read what must be clearly written in my face. That there was only one pair of eyes I wanted riveted on me. ‘But I should be getting back soon. If you’ve finished?’ Neither of us had done justice to breakfast, but he nodded.
I reached for the bill. I always shared expenses with Don, but Cal had already beaten me to the ticket machine at the underground. Bought me an expensive book. Breakfast was my shout.
But he put his hand on the bill before I could take it and forestalled any protest with a look that said ‘don’t even think about it’.
Since I’d already opened my mouth I had to say something. I said, ‘Thank you.’
Some tiger.
CHAPTER SIX
You’re writing home to your boyfriend about your new life and friends in London. How much are you going to tell him?
a. everything. He’s told you he wants to know how you’re spending every minute of the day without him. How sweet.
&nbs
p; b. everything that will interest him. Since you haven’t been to a football match, it will be a short letter.
c. everything that will make him smile. Just the zany little anecdotes that will make him remember why he loves you.
d. everything—except that you’re spending a lot of time with the dishy man who lives next door.
e. everything you can fit on a postcard. You’re having too much fun to waste time writing letters.
‘WHAT about this?’ Cal held up a bowl. ‘It’s about the right size, it’s got the same maker’s mark and the colours look about right.’
‘It’s hopeless. I haven’t got a clue what the wretched bowl looked like.’ To be brutally honest, I hadn’t even noticed it before it had smashed at my feet and, by the time Cal had walked over it, the pieces were too small to provide more than a sketchy idea of the pattern.
‘Philly,’ he said gently. ‘Don’t fret. The flat was undoubtedly furnished by a decorator and I doubt that anyone could swear exactly what that bowl looked like.’ Then he grinned. ‘Except perhaps the cleaner who dusts around it once a week.’
‘Do you think so?’ I asked doubtfully. Our home was filled with treasures gathered during my parents’ long and happy marriage. Everything was known and loved by my mother, from her precious collection of old plates to our infant-school efforts at pottery. Every chip or crack had a story.
To choose to live in surroundings designed by someone else, furnished by a stranger, was beyond imagining.
‘Really.’ Cal smiled reassuringly.
‘You’re right. I’m being a pain and you’re being very patient.’ I turned to the assistant who’d been hovering hopefully. ‘How much is this?’ I asked. She named a price that wasn’t quite as horrendous as I’d anticipated, but before I could say ‘wrap it’ Cal responded with a counter bid. There was some good-natured haggling and I suspected that his green eyes and a smile that could melt permafrost did more to knock the price down than any suggestion that it might be a touch over-priced.
Or maybe I was biased. For a smile like that, I’d have given him the wretched bowl, I thought as I stowed it carefully in my carrier, along with the book he’d bought me.
‘I don’t know how to thank you. You’ve been…’ I was going to say ‘wonderful’, but realised just in time that it sounded a bit gushing for mere friendship and I made one of those gestures that suggested I couldn’t have done it without him. Which wasn’t totally true. I’d have stressed a whole lot more and paid a little more, but I’d have managed. It had, however, been a whole lot more fun doing it with him.
‘Now you have to help me choose a peace-offering for Jay,’ he said, taking my arm and leading me out of the arcade and into the street. The sun was still shining, gleaming off copper pots and piled high trinkets on the street stalls. On the corner of the street the band was playing ‘Jingle Bells’, but just the mention of Jay’s name took the glow out of the day. ‘There’s a place that sells walking sticks and umbrellas in that gallery over there.’
I kept forgetting about Jay. Every time Cal looked at me, or touched me, or said something in that soft, gravelly voice.
My brain—the rational, thinking part of me—knew none of it meant anything. For some reason, the responsive, feeling part of me refused to cotton on.
I knew I had no right to be feeling…whatever it was I was feeling. Okay, I was fudging, here. Just because the feeling was new and unexpected didn’t mean I didn’t recognise it.
But I had no right to be feeling jealous of Jay. Any more than Don should feel jealous of Cal.
He was a friend. He was safe.
And if my insides melted like toasted marshmallow when he looked at me, when he touched my hair, well, I wasn’t going to shout it from the rooftops and make a total fool of myself, was I?
Cal stopped by one of the street stalls. It was packed with interesting old tools. ‘Do you want to look for something for Don?’
‘Don?’
He glanced down at me. ‘Just a little something to reassure him that he’s in your thoughts,’ he said, picking up a fine brass metalworking gauge. And I had the uneasy feeling that he was testing me. That he knew Don hadn’t troubled my thoughts all morning. ‘Old tools are very collectible.’
‘Are they?’ My voice came out as little more than a croak.
Whatever was the matter with me? Worse than not giving Don a thought, I hadn’t even phoned him. My last words had been to reassure him that it was all right, that I understood why he hadn’t been able to come to the station with me. That I’d call him to let him know I’d arrived safely.
At the time I’d meant it, but actually I didn’t understand and it wasn’t ‘all right’. The tiger in me was more than a little tired of coming third in his life. After his car. And his mother.
‘It won’t do him any harm to worry about that for a day or two,’ I said, rather shocking myself. For a moment I froze. But the sky didn’t fall in. The world continued to turn. Cal was still smiling despite the fact that I’d just betrayed myself as the kind of girlfriend who’d make the man in her life sweat. ‘I’ll send him a postcard from the Science Museum.’
‘Wish you were here?’
‘Enough of Don,’ I said. ‘We have to give Jay our undivided attention right now.’ And I took the brass gauge Cal was offering me and returned it to the stall without even looking at it. ‘I got the very strong impression that if you upset him, he might just chop your film into tiny little bits.’
Cal laughed. Really laughed so that several people turned to look. One, a tall and teeth-gnashingly lovely brunette, lingered beside the stall as if interested in an old spanner. And how likely was that?
Before she could play the helpless female and gain his attention by asking for his advice, I tucked my arm possessively through his and raised a ‘get lost’ eyebrow in her direction. She blinked, then gave me a you-can’t-blame-a-girl-for-trying shrug.
‘Am I right?’ I asked, turning Cal in the direction of the gallery before he could notice her. Not that it mattered. But still… ‘Or am I right?’
‘No dispute,’ he said, still grinning. ‘But Jay’s an artist. Temperament comes as standard.’
‘Rubbish. He’s just a drama queen—’ I caught myself, swallowed, but Cal didn’t look offended. On the contrary, he looked as if he was finding it hard not to laugh out loud. Encouraged, I went on. ‘The only reason he has something to work on is because you spent months up to your neck in elephant dung fighting off mosquitoes the size of bats.’
‘Very small bats,’ he said, removing his arm from mine and placing it at my back to ease me through the crowds, but as I stopped at the door to the tiny umbrella shop he caught my arm, holding me in the entrance, and I looked up. He was still smiling, but there was a look in his eyes as if he was seeing something else. Something a long way from the teeming mass of bargain hunters seeking out unusual Christmas gifts.
‘There’s a moment on the Serengeti, Philly, just as dawn breaks and the watering hole turns to liquid gold when you’re looking at the world as it was ten thousand years ago. It’s worth any amount of discomfort, any amount of pain just to be there.’ The intensity of the moment made me shiver suddenly. Cal saw it and rubbed his hand comfortingly up and down my arm. ‘No matter how brilliantly Jay edits the film, no matter how many awards are heaped on his head and mine as a result of his work, he only ever sees it second hand. He never gets to experience the reality.’
Like me? For a moment it seemed that he was trying to show me that I’d been viewing life, living life, through a net curtain.
Clearly the red wine had scrambled my brain cells. ‘All the pleasure, none of the discomfort,’ I said, with forced brightness. ‘Sounds good to me.’ Well, I was the archetypal armchair traveller.
‘Does it?’ And then he was back with me, giving me his undivided attention. Looking at me as if he wasn’t convinced and ignoring the crowds pushing past us, he said, ‘Close your eyes.’
‘But—’
‘Close your eyes.’ There was an urgency about him, a sudden intensity that was impossible to ignore, and I closed my eyes. ‘Imagine you’re sitting on a sofa, warm and comfortable in front of the fire watching film of a stormy sea breaking against a rocky coastline. Got that?’
I nodded. ‘Got it.’ It didn’t need much imagination. The sofa and I were old friends. Only the man I was sharing it with, snuggled up to in the dark, was different.
‘Now imagine standing on the cliff top, feeling the thud of it beneath your feet as it smashes against the rocks a hundred feet below, smelling wind that’s crossed a thousand miles of ocean, tasting the salt spray on your lips.’ He paused for a moment, giving me time to imagine the scene, feel it. ‘How do you feel now, Philly?’
‘Cold,’ I offered. ‘Wet.’
Alive.
It was as if I’d been feeling in monochrome and without warning Cal had tuned me into full colour. But if I said that, it was admitting that until I’d met him I’d been jogging along with my senses on a pilot light. And if I admitted that what did it say about me? About my life?
About what he was doing to me?
Way too much.
‘Is that all?’
‘What else?’ I asked as I opened my eyes. And shivered again, this time intentionally, before stepping into the shop.
He didn’t pursue it, although I sensed he wasn’t entirely convinced, instead he turned to the beautifully made old umbrellas, taking way too long, in my opinion, to choose one. What was to choose? They were all black. But he seemed in no hurry and I wasn’t in any hurry for the morning to end. The net curtain had been raised, my senses had been switched on and I was in no rush to return to the person I’d been.
He finally narrowed it down to two.
‘Which do you prefer?’
I took them from him, but I couldn’t see much difference between them. ‘Why don’t you buy both?’ I suggested. ‘Jay could choose the one he likes best and you could keep the other for yourself.’ I just hated the idea of him borrowing Jay’s again. Stupid or what?