A Passionate Love Affair with a Total Stranger

by Lucy Robinson

  Alan sounded like he was puffing at a pipe. It wouldn’t have surprised me; I’d once taken him for lunch near his office in King’s Cross and he’d been wearing carpet slippers.

  ‘Sure thing, Charley. Although your colleague – what’s her name? Melissa? – called this morning to say her phone extension had changed but all press calls were still to come to her.’

  There was an uncomfortable pause, which Alan filled with wheezy laughter. ‘I’ll take it you weren’t expecting that. Oh dear. Well, Charley, you’re the boss. I’ll be sure to call you if I need anything.’

  ‘Thanks, Alan,’ I said, in as calm a voice as I could muster. ‘Yes, I’m still the boss. See you end of next week for the press conference.’

  Before I stormed over to Margot’s desk and swung for her, I called a random selection of other newspapers. All had had the same call from Margot. I dug my fingernails into my palms and boiled with anger. How dare she?

  Furious, I pushed my chair back to get up. But without a decent left leg to counter the chair’s movement, I shot backwards and found myself crashing onto the floor with a savage exclamation of pain.

  ‘Shit, Charley!’ Cassie, my PA, came running into my office. ‘What happened?’

  I was crimson. ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ I said, feigning laughter but managing only to make a hollow braying sound. Tears, over which I had absolutely no control, were gathering fast in my eyes. ‘Just tried to get up too quickly! I’m fine!’

  ‘No, you’re not.’ Cassie helped me up and popped me expertly back onto the chair, which she steadied with her leg. I felt excruciatingly stupid, embarrassed even to call myself her boss. ‘Charley, please call me if you need help,’ she said. ‘You’ve come back pretty early.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I whispered, still scarlet. I looked at Margot who was on the phone, leaning back in her chair and watching the whole humiliating scene with pleasure written on her face.

  When she came off the phone, I buzzed her. ‘Could you come through, please?’

  A few minutes later she wandered in with a cup of tea. Only one, of course.

  ‘Margot, the medical press inform me that you have contacted them in the last twenty-four hours to tell them that you are the first port of call for questions.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘The problem is, you’re not. I am.’

  ‘Since when did press calls go straight through to the director of comms?’ she asked. ‘There’re ten people in this office who take calls before you do. You only get them if they’re serious. That’s your system, Charley.’ She took a sip from her mug and stared at me, unsmiling.

  Technically, she was right. But we both knew exactly what she was doing. The slippery little seahorse.

  ‘Well,’ I said, as calmly as I could, ‘the usual rules do not apply at the moment. We’re launching a huge product. Anything regarding Simitol comes to me first.’

  Margot shrugged. ‘Fine, however you want it.’ She strolled out, completely unbothered, and I found myself, once again, on the brink of tears. I wanted to be in bed. My suit was chafing at the waist where I’d put on weight eating Sam’s dinners and doing no exercise all these weeks, and my skin felt as if someone had held a blowtorch to it after just a few hours under the sterile breeze of the air-conditioning system.

  ‘Good day?’ Graham from Security had offered to drive me home. I rested my head against the window of his car, barely able to sit up straight.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Dreadful.’

  Graham made a tutting noise. ‘Margot’s kept things well, though, aye? Worked hard, that one!’

  I stared vacantly at the crowds crossing Leith Walk in front of us. ‘Yeah. Everything seems to be in good shape. I think she’s done a great job. Great.’

  ‘She’s quite a little piece,’ Graham said slyly.

  I looked sideways at him. ‘Piece?’

  He grinned. ‘Aye, piece. I find her rather attractive.’

  I paused before I put the key into my front-door lock, unsure as to how to deal with the volatile wreck that Sam had become since splitting up with Yvonne. During the five days since his surprise announcement, he’d been drinking too much and now he was florid and unhealthy; his nightly meals had stopped and the Nutella and cheap bread were back. I’d grown to rather enjoy our chats over his grey macaroni cheese, his cabbage and Edam salads, and his wonderful attempts at home baking. But now the vibe in the flat was mostly silence or bad music.

  Sam, in short, was absolutely devastated. All he’d told me was that Yvonne had caught him cheating. When, how or with whom I had yet to fathom but I’d been shocked, not just that he had cheated on her but that he had managed to do so without my noticing. How had he got away with it? Easily, I’d realized. He’s a pro!

  It felt impossibly sad that bubbly, silly, tiny Yvonne, with her excitable squeaks, was probably now reduced to a grieving heap on the floor. The poor girl. Had her tough little mum not threatened to ‘beat tha livin’ fuck’ out of Sam if he came anywhere near her, I’d probably have tried to call her.

  I put the key into the lock. Please, God, I prayed, can Sam not be sitting around in a cloud of doom and stale fart. Please, God.

  I walked in. And for the first time that day my prayers were answered. Sam was not sitting in a cloud of doom and stale fart. Rather than his bread and Nutella on the coffee-table, I saw, with pleasure, his complete works of Shakespeare. And from the direction of the bathroom I heard his voice, far deeper than usual, shouting something about lily-livered boys.

  I broke into a grin. I knew that voice! It was his Actor Voice! Hailey and I had dubbed it the Bowes Actor Voice (BAV) after watching him playing Oedipus in a university production. We’d spent the night bent double with mirth at his boomy, two-octaves-deeper-and-ten-times-posher-than-normal delivery. I hobbled over to the microwave with my meal-for-two, giggling. I hadn’t heard the BAV in a very, very long time.

  ‘CHAS,’ Sam boomed, emerging dramatically from the bathroom.

  ‘Hello, Samuel the actor, hello, the BAV. What happened to Bowes the sulker?’

  Sam hopped into the armchair, looking pleased but self-conscious. ‘Samuel Bowes is putting himself back into circulation,’ he said, a little less boomily.

  I put our dinner in the microwave. I didn’t approve of microwave meals, of course, but, given that Sam had abandoned his mad cookery sessions and I couldn’t stand up for long, they were serving us rather well. ‘So you’re going to try to get some work?’ I asked him tentatively. It was a minefield, Sam’s acting career. He hated being probed about it, but if you didn’t ask he complained that no one took him seriously as an actor.

  ‘I’m going to try.’ I looked over at him and, as I’d expected, his face had gone a little red. Sam found it very hard to talk about acting: it seemed to bring up all sorts of wild emotions that both of us were happy to avoid. ‘If you can go back to work with a crazy half-healed leg I can get my arse off the sofa and try to get some auditions. Remember that showreel I made in 2010? I sent it to some agents a couple of weeks ago and one of them called this morning, saying he wanted to see me! It’s bloody PFD, Charley. They’re massive!’

  I grinned and clapped. It was a huge relief to see Sam like this. ‘Brilliant work, Bowes! When are you going down?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay there till the weekend and see if I can hand-deliver the DVD to any casting directors. Maybe hook up with any friends who are acting. Just, you know, get the word out there.’

  ‘The word that the Bowes is in town,’ I said distractedly. This meant Sam would also be in London during William and Shelley’s date on Wednesday. My mind began to race with absurd possibilities. Clearly I had to stay well away from it, but perhaps he could help. Perhaps I could ask him to … to intervene. Try to seduce Shelley and maybe hand William a picture of me by way of consolation? Yes, great, I thought angrily. Perhaps you could hire a brass band and throw an erotic dancer into the mix.

  It had been three long days
since I had last logged on to Shelley’s profile. Three days since I’d taken a deep breath, emailed William to confirm Polpo at seven thirty on Wednesday and made up some cock-and-bull story about why Shelley couldn’t email him again before the date. Afterwards, I’d gritted my teeth and called her.

  ‘What do you mean it all got a bit personal?’ she’d barked. ‘Charlotte, if I find out that you’ve been divulging –’

  ‘No, no! Not that sort of personal. I haven’t given out your address or anything … It just got a bit, um, intense,’ I said lamely. Knowing I had no choice, I then emailed Shelley the password to her love.com account so she could sign in and see just how ‘intense’ it had got. The thought of her wrath left me weak with fear but I had to wash my hands of the situation.

  So it was not without amazement that I read her email a few moments later. ‘I’m engrossed, Charlotte, this is good stuff. Do you normally go this far for clients? Quite frightening but it’s all bang on. I actually think William will be well prepared for who I am.’

  At first I’d been amazed; after a while I’d felt less surprised. Shelley and I were, after all, the same person. William had obviously hit as much of a nerve in her as he had in me. DAMN HER.

  Sam was looking at me expectantly. Slightly nervously, in fact.

  ‘Er … sorry?’

  ‘I asked if you were OK. You suddenly disappeared,’ he said.

  ‘Er … yes, I’m OK, just shattered. Reckon I’m going to have some dinner, do a couple of hours’ work and hit the hay,’ I said vaguely.

  ‘Don’t be a fool. Just eat and go to bed,’ he said. ‘You can’t work in this state.’

  I shook my head. ‘I haven’t the choice. We’ve never been so busy.’

  Sam looked as if he wanted to probe further but knew it wasn’t worth it. ‘OK. So, anyway, what do you think?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I knew you weren’t bloody well listening! I …’ Suddenly Sam seemed extremely awkward. ‘I, er, wondered if I could maybe call Katy and ask if I could stay with her. She said I could sleep on her sofa any time … and I …’ He trailed off.

  ‘And you can’t stay with any of your actor friends?’

  ‘Well, Jamie’s just got engaged, so they’ll be shagging all the time. Howard’s just had the bailiffs in and hasn’t got so much as a chair to sit on. Helly hasn’t spoken to me since we, er … and Tim’s on holiday.’

  ‘And you don’t know anyone else in London? Apart from my pretty little sister?’

  Sam slammed his fist on the sofa. ‘I just broke up with Yvonne, Charley,’ he said angrily. ‘Do you really think I’m in the mood for trying to get off with someone else? My fucking housemate’s little sister at that?’

  ‘You’re always up for getting off with someone, Sam. Come on.’

  ‘Piss off,’ he said, marching out of the room. His door slammed behind him. For the second time in the last few days, I stared at it in shock. ‘Sam?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Sam!’

  Tentacles of guilt wrapped themselves around me. Of course Sam wasn’t going to London to try to seduce Katy. He was going down there to try to build up his fragile self-esteem, find a footing in the horrible world of acting and take his mind off his break-up. You stinky bitch, Charley, my head hissed. Sam’s been a great friend to you and you repay him like this? Shame on you!

  I hauled myself off the sofa, hobbled over to his bedroom door and walked in without knocking. Sam was on his bed, crying. He looked like a helpless child, balled up and rocking. My heart melted. ‘Oh, Sam … oh, darling Sam, I’m so sorry,’ I said, throwing myself awkwardly onto the bed next to him. ‘Sam, Sam, Sam …’ I put my arm round his waist and he crumpled onto my shoulder, sobbing.

  ‘I miss her,’ he howled. Rigid with shock, I stroked his back. I had never seen anything like this from Sam. Sobs tore through him. ‘I feel so sad and confused and shit,’ he yelled into my shoulder.

  Five minutes later I served two bowls of microwave mush and called Katy. ‘Katy Lambert, are you able to put up your big sister and her housemate?’ I asked. Sam smiled, eyes still red, and promptly burned his tongue on a piece of red-hot parsnip. I shook my head despairingly.

  ‘WOOOO, YEAH!’ Katy shouted. I could hear a strange wind instrument playing in the background. ‘WICKED!’

  ‘Sam’s coming down for some actorly networking and I’ve got a few meetings,’ I said. ‘I know you hate me going to hotels when I’m there with Salutech so I thought I’d stay with you for once.’

  ‘TRIPLE ’MAZIN’!’ she bellowed, ringing off.

  Sam got up to fetch the HP sauce, which he squeezed liberally into his bowl. ‘Thanks for this, Chasman,’ he whispered, his face that of Mummy’s Brave Little Soldier.

  After dinner I put Sam to bed among his horrible lad mags, then slid helplessly back into the uncomfortable thoughts I was having about staying with Katy. The truth, of course, was not that I was staying with her because she complained when I stayed in hotels. Neither was it because I didn’t trust Sam around her.

  It was because I didn’t trust myself.

  A plan had begun to form in my mind, involving William and Shelley’s date on Wednesday and some sly intervention from one Charley Lambert. It was a stupid plan that horrified my sensible side. But this sensible side (or what remained of it) believed that I wouldn’t see the plan through if I was surrounded by Katy and Sam – people from my real world – rather than strangers in a hotel, where I was accountable to nobody and could sneak off on a stupid mission far too easily. Maybe, just maybe, if I stayed in Katy’s Brixton house full of mad, creative people, there was a chance I wouldn’t see this stupid plan through.

  Maybe.

  Chapter Seven

  I woke up in Katy’s spare room on Wednesday morning – the day of the date – and knew I was going to have to follow the plan through. All of the (many) reasons not to go to Polpo had strangely vanished from my consciousness: it was do or die. I couldn’t face dying in an agony of ‘what if’. I had to go.

  The problem was, the plan was sketchy at best. Beyond a vague idea that I needed to be in Polpo looking glorious at seven thirty, I still had absolutely no idea how I was going to intervene while William and Shelley ate Italian tapas tonight. Start a brawl to attract his attention? (With Shelley maybe?) Sit near them looking tragic and beautiful in an amazing dress? Hmm. Perhaps I might faint so that a doctor (i.e. William) could soar over to administer urgent medical aid.

  ‘Gah! GET A GRIP.’ The fact of the matter was that Shelley Cartwright would march into a restaurant tonight and enchant William with her enigmatic coldness. Eventually she’d let go of her defences and they would fall madly in love and get married and she would move into his doctorish house in Bloomsbury and I would be stuck in Edinburgh with a peg-leg and a depressed housemate who yelled about gnarled harpies in the shower. Not to mention a pathological deputy at work.

  Margot. I shuddered. It had been a huge relief to leave Salutech for the airport yesterday afternoon. Nothing had changed in the office. Margot was on the phone most of the day, talking to my contacts and refusing to tell me what was going on, on the grounds that she was ‘just too busy, Charley’. It had been a long time since I had sat in the comms office at Salutech and not been across every tiny thing that was happening. Powerlessness did not sit well with me.

  I swung my legs out of bed and hobbled to Katy’s kitchen. Sam was asleep in the sitting room, morning sun falling on his angelic fluffy hair, making him look like a big, slightly grubby kitten. Katy, he and I had been for noodles in Fujiyama last night, and as I watched him talk to her so stiffly and formally – to make absolutely clear to me that he was not on the pull – I had felt even worse about Monday’s outburst. Sam was red raw at the moment. Not even half capable of seduction. I smiled fondly and crept into the kitchen, where an unidentifiable Young Person was asleep in a chair clutching a bottle of tomato juice. I tiptoed past him, glad that I wouldn’t have to stay at
Katy’s again in the near future. I loved my trendy, enthusiastic little sister but her lifestyle baffled me. As if to confirm this, I opened her fridge – which had been almost empty when I’d gone to bed last night – and found about a thousand carrots loaded onto the shelves. ‘DON’T EAT,’ said a piece of paper taped to a carrot. ‘VEGETABLE CARVING CLASS 2MORO.’

  The milk I’d bought yesterday had disappeared to make way for carrots. No coffee for me, then.

  Bollocks. I sighed, sitting down on the chair next to Juice Boy, wondering what William was doing right now. Was he eating breakfast? What was his breakfast? I imagined it would be sturdy English classics such as kedgeree, kippers or black pudding. He would be a full-fat-milk-with-percolated-coffee man, not one for such fripperies as lattes or double-shot skinny soy moccaccinos.

  What was he thinking about, as he spread marmalade on his no-nonsense toast a few miles north of where I was now? Shelley. Without doubt. Of course he was: he’d gone barmy for her and had had to endure five days without contact. He must be going out of his mind.

  He wasn’t the only one.

  After my meeting with Arthur Holford I slunk off to Selfridges where I ate a muffin and bought a Lanvin dress while my back was turned. Later, I sat staring at it in Katy’s sitting room, excited but ashamed. It was not a sensible expenditure but it was probably necessary: I had now begun to assemble some sort of plan for this evening that required an outstanding dress.

  It was a fairly basic plan at present: simply that I would go to Polpo wearing my beautiful borderline-glamorous dress and that I would get there shortly before the date commenced. I would sit at the table directly opposite William and look nice, approachable and attractive. I figured that Shelley would arrive ten minutes late (because that’s what I would do on a date) so I had precisely ten minutes in which to find an excuse to strike up conversation with him and dazzle him so much that by the time Shelley arrived he’d be wishing he was going on a date with me. I would eat a small and stylish meal, then pull on my fur coat (I didn’t have one but there was still time) and glide out of the restaurant. William would be devastated but – and this was the great part – I’d give my business card to a waiter and ask him to pass it on to William! He’d come to the end of a horrible, dull meal with an uptight Shelley and his heart would leap as the waiter slid my card discreetly into his hand. Ta-da!