From London with Love

by Jemma Forte

  ‘Apart from that person obviously,’ said Pam, shooting a livid glare in Angelica’s direction. ‘Oh, we like a laugh in this house, don’t we, Jess. Eh? Ooh, look at your face, Paul. It’s a picture. Got you good and proper, didn’t we?’

  Paul looked terribly unsure.

  ‘So,’ said Jessica faintly, who knew an explanation would now be required as to why Angelica Dupree had just emerged from her coat cupboard. It was time to fess up. Apart from anything else, she felt terribly sad that the game was up. She didn’t feel anywhere near ready to revert back to being Jessica Granger, but she had been left no choice. She turned round to introduce her mother but, as she did, realized that Angelica, who was lurking behind her, had covered her head with one of Pam’s silk headscarves and put on a rain mac, both of which she must have got from the cupboard.

  Jessica appreciated the effort, except that now, instead of looking like a movie star, she looked like a movie star who didn’t want to be recognized. Still, Paul didn’t seem to have spotted who she was. Hope flooded her system. Was it possible she might get away with this?

  ‘So, Paul, this is … one of my dad’s old chauffeuring friends … and in fact … here’s her car now.’

  A bemused-looking Paul turned round just in time to see a huge Bentley with blacked-out windows drawing up outside the house.

  ‘Blimey, what an amazing car. But – if she’s the driver, then who’s driving? And why were you in the cupboard?’ he enquired reasonably enough as, seizing her opportunity, Angelica scuttled past him. He didn’t get an answer.

  ‘Bye bye,’ she called out as incoherently as she could in order to disguise her French accent. As she dashed past Paul, down the front steps and across to the car there followed a long silence during which Pam and Jessica both stared at Paul with frozen grins, until Jessica realized they were being weird.

  ‘Right,’ she said, clapping her hands together like a Redcoat. ‘Shall we go?’

  ‘Um, yes,’ said Paul, looking nervous. ‘But I still don’t get why there’s another driver getting out to –’

  ‘So you’ll bring her back safe then, won’t you?’ yelled Pam, as if saying everything loudly would help somehow.

  ‘Oh, I will,’ answered Paul, hoping his eardrum hadn’t perforated. He wasn’t being entirely honest either. He did hope to bring her back safe (he wasn’t a deranged psycho or anything), but if he had his way it would be back to his place.

  ‘Well, be good and if you can’t be good be careful,’ Pam couldn’t resist adding cheekily, so relieved was she to see the huge Bentley finally reversing out of the drive.

  ‘Pam!’ admonished Jessica, but as she walked down the steps she breathed a huge sigh of relief too. That had been a very close shave and one she could have prevented. Her mom was making so much more effort than usual and she really needed to reciprocate it. It was just hard when she had so much on her plate, but she vowed to address the situation.

  ‘That was all a bit weird,’ said Paul now as they started off down the street. ‘And I see you’ve been having me on.’

  ‘Sorry?’ replied Jessica, her heart picking up the pace once more. Had he seen Angelica’s face after all?

  ‘Your aunt’s house? You said it was nothing special,’ he prompted, upon seeing her flummoxed expression. They crossed to the other side of the road.

  Jessica smiled back hesitantly, unsure of what to say, getting the distinct impression that she should probably stay quiet till she’d figured out what he was on about.

  ‘Why did you keep going on about how “cute” and normal her house was when she lives in a whacking great Victorian villa on top of one of the most expensive hills in London?’ he exclaimed. ‘Were you trying to make a point or something? Or do you think I’m as much of an inverted snob as Dulcie does?’

  ‘Er, yeah … no,’ replied Jessica, at a total loss. She’d told her colleagues that her aunt lived in a nice enough house, that was simple and kinda cute, and genuinely thought this to be a pretty accurate description, yet Paul clearly had other ideas.

  ‘I mean, if you honestly think that a gaff that would fetch well over a million quid isn’t special, then I’m not sure I’ll be taking you back to mine any time soon,’ he continued.

  ‘Oh,’ said Jessica.

  ‘I’m joking,’ said Paul quickly, ‘you can come back to mine any time you like, only no more bullshit, all right?’

  ‘Oh, no, absolutely not,’ said Jessica, her mind racing. How could she have got that one so wrong? Could her aunt’s place really be worth so much money? Thinking about it, her home in LA was so off the scale size-wise (they relied on the internal phone system to know when meals were ready), it might be possible that she didn’t have the most realistic perspective. She felt compelled to try and justify herself. ‘The only reason I made out that my aunt’s place was anything other than amazing was because I was –’

  ‘I’m not having a go,’ said Paul, stopping and turning Jessica to face him. ‘It’s just a bit odd that you purposefully played it down like that. We wouldn’t have judged you if you’d told us that your aunt was loaded … It’s not like it changes the fact that you and your dad haven’t exactly had things easy. Otherwise you wouldn’t be working your arse off as Kerry’s assistant, would you, and he wouldn’t be driving Vincent Malone?’

  Jessica opened her mouth to bluster a defence but Paul continued, ‘Now what do you want to do tonight? Do you fancy some dinner or would you prefer to get a drink first?’

  Jessica gazed at him properly for the first time that evening. He was wearing his usual T-shirt and jeans but had that washed look about him again. His hair was combed off his face and he looked gorgeous. Jessica had a sudden urge to get her hands on what lay beneath his clothes.

  ‘Let’s start with a drink and take it from there,’ suggested Jessica and, as they strolled up the road, the nerves she was experiencing slowly started to disappear. Who cared where they lived or who they ‘were’; she felt so at home with Paul. An effect that was only tempered by the fact that, from time to time, she was almost knocked sideways by the strong ripples of lust she experienced whenever she stopped to think about how good he looked. How could she ever have found him so intimidating?

  Later, in a pub they’d found a few streets away, Jessica toyed with the idea of owning up. Maybe she should just get it out of the way and tell him who her parents were now, before anything had really happened between them. Yet she was so terrified of opening up the can of worms which always seemed to spoil everything that she decided against it. Paul seemed so impressed that she was in England by herself, working away, and for now she didn’t want anything to ruin that. It would seem like such a lesser achievement if he were to know what kind of back-up she had. Besides, she didn’t really want to spend her first proper date with Paul talking about her parents. Why should Edward muscle his way in like he usually did, or Angelica steal her thunder? This one was just for her, for a change. There was plenty of time for the truth to come out.

  ‘You know what?’ said Jessica eventually, having prattled on about nothing of much real consequence for ages. ‘I don’t know anything about you. You’re very good at asking questions, but not so great at answering them and I want to know everything.’

  ‘OK,’ said Paul, leaning over to put his glass down. His arm brushed Jessica’s thigh and she shivered with anticipation. ‘I was born in Staines, which is about as inspiring a place as the name suggests. I’ll leave you to imagine what the kids in my area called it when we were growing up.’

  Jessica grimaced. She could imagine only too easily. Desire subsided for a second.

  ‘I went to school there, but didn’t take it at all seriously. Or, at least, I didn’t until my dad left, at which point something sort of changed. I suppose I realized if I wasn’t careful that I’d probably end up with the kind of uninspiring jobs my mum’s always had. By then, though, it was a bit late to salvage much from school so I started working. I did some pretty boring jobs for
a while but still managed to have a bit of a laugh and in the meantime tried to broaden my horizons as much as I could. Tried to educate myself a bit, I suppose. Basically, my life’s been fine, but deeply average. Or, to put it another way, I’m not sure my life so far would make for a particularly interesting biography.’

  ‘Jeez,’ said Jessica, employing some of the sarcasm Paul usually used on her. ‘Are we drowning our sorrows here or what?’

  Paul laughed. ‘I’m not feeling sorry for myself, it’s just that I truly believe – truly hope – the best bits are still to come,’ he said, in a way that made Jessica’s insides melt. It felt like there was an elevator in her tummy, plunging down five storeys at a time. ‘Although admittedly things have been pretty good for the last five years or so, ever since I got my break in TV,’ he added.

  ‘Are you close to your mom?’ asked Jessica.

  ‘Very,’ said Paul simply. ‘She’s the best.’

  ‘So does she still live in Staines? And, by the way, that is the most awful name for a place known to man.’

  ‘Tell me about it, Miss Bender,’ he replied pointedly, earning himself a sharp nudge in the ribs. ‘Ow, and yes, to answer your question, my mum and my sister still live in the only house I’ve ever called home. I went to school in Staines, had my first Saturday job in Staines, went to college in Staines and still end up back there most weekends to visit.’

  ‘What was your first job?’ enquired Jessica, who was hanging on every word that came out of his mouth.

  ‘Mmm, really sexy it was,’ mused Paul. ‘Stacked shelves in Safeways until I was eighteen, at which point I graduated on to the tills. My second job was a million times better though. I worked in Our Price for about six months so you can imagine how much I loved that. Spent all my wages on music. It was a bloody disaster.’

  Jessica smiled at him shyly while praying he wouldn’t ask the question he inevitably did.

  ‘So what was your first job then?’

  Jessica swallowed. Truth or a lie? To lie or speak the truth? Would it give too much away, provoke too many other questions, if she admitted that she hadn’t even had a job until she was twenty-two? That when she’d finally felt moved to do something other than loll about in Malibu she’d only had to ask? That she’d instantly been made an assistant on the film set of her dad’s last hit movie, which in truth hadn’t felt much like a job at all? Everyone had been nauseatingly nice to her the entire time and it was this wholly unrealistic experience that had prompted Jessica to start trying to do things her way. To look beyond the movie industry in order to properly experience a bit of life’s rich tapestry.

  ‘I worked for – in – a shop too,’ she said, chickening out once again from having to explain anything.

  ‘Yeah, what kind of shop?’

  ‘It was a …’ Jessica’s mind went completely blank. She’d never been a natural liar. There was a reason she hadn’t had the same calling as her parents. Acting essentially meant lying for a living. ‘Do you know, I can’t remember,’ she said feebly, after rejecting the strange, outlandish and utterly useless suggestions her brain was providing her with. A bike shop? A scuba-diving shop? A watch shop? (A watch shop???)

  ‘You can’t remember your first job?’ said Paul, amazed. ‘My God, I thought they were supposed to scar you so much that you never forgot them. Although, from the little I’ve gleaned about you so far, it sounds like you’ve done so many different things that maybe they all blend into one. So forget that then. Tell me more about your dad. Does he like driving Vincent Malone?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jessica, in real danger of giggling. The thought of her dad with a peaked cap on, driving his best mate around, was too much of a stretch.

  ‘And what’s he like as a person?’

  Like James Bond …

  Jessica looked at Paul. He deserved a few straight answers, she thought, as she took in his intent expression and his lovely, masculine, strong-looking hands, which were only inches away from her own. ‘My dad is my favourite person in the world,’ she stated, the truth suddenly making her feel shy. ‘I totally adore him and over the years it’s just been me and him really, so he’s more than a dad, he’s a mom too. A manly looking one with hairy legs, but a mom nonetheless. He’s the one who put me to bed when I was little – well, him or a nanny when he was working. He’s the one who organized my birthday parties and made sure I had the cake that I wanted. He’s the one who had to put up with all my friends coming over for sleepovers and the one who yelled at me when I misbehaved or, more recently, crashed his car.’

  Paul looked quite surprised by this admission, almost as if he couldn’t imagine it.

  ‘He’s kind, funny and incredibly soppy. If I were to tell you that he cried at the movie Cheaper by the Dozen …?’

  Paul looked amazed, then laughed.

  ‘Honestly, and I had to order him not to watch Marley and Me when that came out because he simply wouldn’t have coped. But on the flipside,’ Jessica said, ‘he doesn’t always listen to what I’m trying to tell him. He interferes too much in my life and at times that can be quite suffocating. Sometimes I feel as though our roles are reversed. As though I’m the one looking after him in a way, which is fine, but I just think …’

  ‘What?’ encouraged Paul.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know … it’s just, you know, he’s married and I guess his wife should probably be the one looking after him now.’

  ‘What’s your stepmum like?’

  ‘Honestly?’

  ‘No, I want you to make something up,’ he ribbed.

  ‘OK, well, picture Pamela Anderson or … Heather Locklear is another one she gets likened to. Only once the excitement of that has worn off, picture a lovely girl who has pretty much no idea what she wants out of life and who means no harm, but who has a voice that could melt tarmac.’

  ‘Really?’ said Paul. ‘I wasn’t expecting that. She sounds hilarious … and quite fit.’

  Jessica rapped his hand. ‘That’s my stepmom you’re talking about. Though, to be fair, I wouldn’t blame you for fancying her. She’s not that much older than us.’

  Now Paul looked really intrigued. ‘Blimey, don’t tell Luke,’ he said, looking at Jessica thoughtfully. Not for the first time, he felt like he had more in common with her than he could ever have realized when they’d first met. She wasn’t the only one who felt responsible for a parent sometimes. Maybe they’d both had to grow up a bit quicker than other people.

  ‘If you don’t mind me asking, do you ever see your mum?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jessica steadily. ‘From time to time, you know. She’s often away, but she comes to see me maybe three or four times a year? Sometimes more, sometimes less.’

  Paul noted a flash of something that was hard to translate in Jessica’s expression and decided not to pursue that one further.

  ‘Your turn now. Tell me about your mom, what’s she like?’

  Just like Jessica, Paul felt compelled to speak truthfully. What was happening between them, whatever ‘it’ was, seemed to warrant total honesty, a purging of things he never usually felt moved to discuss.

  ‘My mum’s a star. She works all the hours that God sends in a pub, where she’s worked for years just to keep a roof over our heads. She’s always put me and my sister first, and she’s a wonderful woman who has had a pretty shitty life. There haven’t been many treats or holidays to break up the monotony of her dull work, but I’ve never heard her complain. My sister’s great too. She’s fifteen so I go home most weekends to hang out with her because, although she’s old enough to look after herself, when Mum has to work it can get pretty lonely for Lucy. My dad did a bunk when we were tiny and has never paid a penny towards our upbringing. He’s a shit of the highest order and I fucking hate him,’ he said matter-of-factly, his tone not changing one iota. ‘He cleaned out their bank accounts before he left, shacked up with some old lush he’d met in a pub and drank everything away. He died last year. The drinking finally fucked his liver
up. He pickled himself.’

  Jessica blinked as she tried to imagine an existence so different from her own, feeling racked with guilt for ever having felt sorry for herself about anything. She also knew she may have done Angelica – whose maternal advances she constantly rejected – a bit of a disservice. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said eventually.

  ‘Don’t be,’ said Paul. ‘It’s just life, isn’t it? Besides, having to grow up a bit quicker has made me more ambitious. More determined to get to the point where I can tell Mum to stop working for good. I pay her mortgage, which is great, and now I’m saving up so that there’s a bit of money put aside for Lucy so she can go to college. Mum’s saving every penny she earns too.’

  Jessica didn’t know what to say. Life was so ridiculously unbalanced, so unfair, and when she thought about some of the rich, spoiled brats she knew in LA, it made her wonder what it was all about. She herself had always been savvy enough to suspect, to know even, that there was more to life than the Hollywood bubble she existed within, but most of her friends didn’t. In fact, she could think of at least a dozen people who would hugely benefit from a spell in the real world, a spell of meeting ‘normal’ people. Not that she considered Paul to be normal. He was amazing. The first guy she’d ever wanted to get involved with whom she actually admired. And she did want to get involved. There was simply no running away from that fact any more.

  ‘Look at us getting all maudlin,’ said Paul, grinning. ‘Jesus, things aren’t that bad, are they? I’m going to get us another drink. Or do you want to go and eat?’

  ‘Another drink would be great.’

  While he went to the bar, Jessica thought about everything she’d just learned. The more she got to know Paul, the more she liked and respected him. Oddly enough, she knew her dad would adore him too. The whole issue of her identity was starting to trouble her though. At what point was she going to tell him the truth? If she got too deeply embroiled, then lying to Paul would just become more difficult and undoubtedly start to feel like more of a deception. She knew she was only keeping quiet in order to protect herself, and so that she could get as much as possible out of this trip, but she knew Paul would see things differently. At the same time, however, it was so amazingly refreshing not having to put up with other people’s preconceptions that she wanted to enjoy the freedom a while longer.