Happily Ever After

by Harriet Evans

  “Oh. Sorry—oh. I was just wondering where Tom was? I’m a—I’m a friend of his.”

  The girl—who was very beautiful, and wearing a floral top, Elle saw now, how could she have thought she was a man, much less that a man could have shoulders as slim as that and be wearing gold earrings?—put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. “Tom!” she called. “Someone here to see you.” Elle stared at her, impressed. “Cheaper than an intercom,” she explained.

  Tom appeared, framed in a doorway behind the till. He had a pencil behind his ear, and his sleeves were rolled up. “Elle!” he exclaimed, coming forward. “What a nice surprise. What are you doing here?” He kissed her. She noticed the freckles on his nose, slight sunburn on his face.

  “It’s so hot, I thought I’d treat myself to a day out of Kilburn,” Elle explained, pleased at how normal this sounded, because now she was here she felt she’d made a mistake. “Work off a bit of the hangover, have a walk by the river, you know.”

  “Well, I’m very glad you did,” he said.

  There was an awkward pause. “I’ll just have a look round, shall I?” said Elle, now embarrassed. “Came to see the bookshop, get some books, it’s my mother’s birthday, you know.” In February. She shook her head. “Um—”

  “OK,” said Tom. He glanced at her again, with a strange look in his eyes. “Well, that’s great. Do you want to get a drink afterwards? I’m off this afternoon, done my shift. We could—” He hesitated, looked swiftly back at the girl behind the till. “Look, let me know when you’ve finished.”

  The girl said, “Tom, if you’re going to go, go now. Remember Mervyn Thacker’s coming in around lunch to talk about his event.”

  Tom winced visibly. “Oh, my God, thanks, Caitlin.” He turned to Elle. “Shall we go?”

  “Let’s,” said Elle gratefully. “Thanks,” she said to Caitlin.

  “Elle, this is Caitlin. She runs the shop. She’s the reason we make any money at all.” He squeezed Caitlin’s shoulder. “Bye, C. See you later.”

  As they left the shop, Elle turned to look at Caitlin once more, mesmerized by her dark, almond-shaped eyes, her low, husky voice. She was watching them leave.

  “There was a lunatic author we published at Bluebird called Mervyn Thacker,” Elle said. “He wrote this book all about the real message of the Rosetta Stone. He was mad. Kept ringing up Joseph Mile and telling him that there were runes on the Pyramids that reflected markings on the surface of Mars and why wouldn’t anyone listen to him.”

  “Well, you’re bang on the money,” Tom said. “He lives in Richmond. He’s written a sequel to the book about the Pyramids and published it himself and he wants to have the launch party at Dora’s.”

  “You called the bookshop Dora’s.” Elle had seen the sign outside. “That’s so nice.”

  “Well, my mum loved reading, and it’s a good name.” He smiled, and rotated his head around his shoulders, as if he were tired. “Plus the publicity doesn’t hurt. That’s the terrible thing.”

  “You’re a true salesman,” Elle said.

  “I love it, it’s strange,” Tom said. “When I was an agent I hated trying to get people to buy books I wasn’t sure about. Even when my clients wrote books I actually liked I always assumed I must be wrong and they’d never find a publisher. It’s much easier when you’re selling books. You don’t feel as much pressure. I’ve read this book, I love it, I can hand-on-heart recommend it, promise, money back if you don’t agree with me.” He paused and gave her a curious look. “Elle, I hope you don’t mind me saying it, but you’re practically green. Are you all right?”

  Elle coughed, and then laughed. “Thanks. I’m fine. I just need a hangover cure, that’s all. Or maybe another drink.”

  “Oh-ho,” Tom said. “Big night last night?”

  Elle shook her head. “Well… sort of.”

  He chuckled. “So, tell me all. I stayed in last night and made some pasta. Make me jealous.”

  “Um—there’s nothing to be jealous of.”

  “I see.” His eyes gleamed. “You were out on the lash, what on earth did you get up to? Come on.”

  She said, almost crossly, “I stayed in and drank a bottle of wine by myself, Tom. That’s what I did.”

  “Oh, right,” said Tom.

  Elle was annoyed, and she flushed. She added, “That’s partly why I came here, actually.”

  “Oh, yes? Why?” Tom steered her down a side street.

  “Well, I don’t know why, but I wanted to tell you, it’s probably boring, and—” It sounded so pathetic now. “All my friends are away, you see. And I kept thinking you’d get it. Don’t know why but that you would. After our chat about weddings.”

  She couldn’t see his face, he was looking down the street. “What’s happened?”

  “The wedding’s off. My brother’s wedding, you know,” she added.

  His face was blank for one second, and then it cleared. “The one who rang you? To the crazy American? It’s canceled? No way.”

  They emerged from the shady lane onto the riverbank, lined with trees, a field in the distance, the beautiful white stone Richmond Bridge to the side. Boats and ferries slid slowly through the water, and on the bank people lounged outside the pub, holding glasses of Pimm’s and chatting, laughing, the smell of cigarette smoke, barbecue, and green grass in the air. Elle looked around, and drew in her breath.

  “Oh, it’s lovely,” she said.

  “I’ll get you a drink, and you can tell me all about it,” said Tom. “What do you want?”

  Elle took a deep breath, telling herself she should just have an orange juice. “Think it has to be Pimm’s,” she heard herself say. “The fruit will do me good, anyway.”

  “Very true,” said Tom. “Grab a seat, I’ll be back in a minute.” There were swans on the river, the sky was blue, all she could see were pretty nice things, and there was something about Tom, Elle felt she could tell him anything. On their third Pimm’s, she said, “I didn’t come here because you asked me out, you know.”

  Tom choked on a piece of cucumber. “Wow,” he said, coughing, as Elle handed him a glass of something. “That’s someone’s beer. I’m OK.” He coughed again. “You are a strange girl, you know that?”

  Elle stared at her drink, holding the plastic pint in her fingers, wondering as she always did how tight you’d have to squeeze it before it cracked. “I know I am,” she said.

  “I don’t mean it like that,” Tom said. “Honestly. I wish I’d never done it. It wasn’t supposed to be that big a deal, just more a—hey, let’s go for a drink. I wasn’t… asking you out.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I know,” Elle said, turning her head away. “Just wanted to make it clear it wasn’t a problem.”

  “Let’s stop talking about it,” Tom said. “I’m sorry, again.”

  “Very good idea,” Elle said, with relief. She bowed. “Good to sort it out.”

  He bowed back. “I concur.”

  There was a pause.

  “So, Caitlin seems nice,” she said, and then bit her lip.

  “Er, yes.”

  Elle was determined to remove any awkward date element of their… drink, she supposed it was to be called now. “You like her, don’t you?”

  “I do.” Tom looked out at the river. “But she’s slightly crazy. I don’t know if I can deal with it.”

  Elle watched him, saw the curled vein at his temple begin to pulse, and thought how much younger he looked out of a suit.

  “So there is something going on with you two, then,” she said.

  The rather harsh lines of his face relaxed. “She’s—I’ve known her for ages. We’ve been—well, it sounds a bit rubbish, when I asked you out, but we were seeing a bit of each other, earlier in the summer.” He slapped his hand against one cheek, shook his head quickly, sharply. “But there’s still this ex-boyfriend, Jean-Claude, hanging around. I mean, they split up but she still sees him.” He smiled, and she wanted to pat his shoulder, he looked so young
, so sweet. He shook his head. “Forget it. I’ve said too much already.”

  “It’s fine,” Elle said. “Go on, please.”

  “She seems to like it, the drama, the games. I—” His face was rigid, his jaw set. “I don’t, I’ve never been any good at it.” He gave a mocking half-smile. “So I’m sure I’ll screw it up at some point soon. I just wish I knew more.”

  “Knew more about what?”

  “Whether it’s the circumstances that are the problem, or whether we’re just not right for each other. Whether it’s just the working together that makes us closer.”

  “It’s not,” Elle said, her heart in her throat. “You spend all that time together, but it’s not real time, it’s work time.”

  “How are you so sure?”

  “I—” Elle faltered.

  “Oh,” he said apologetically. “I remember, you just broke up with someone. Forget it. I just want someone who knows, to tell me what to do.”

  “I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you you should be careful.” Elle swallowed.

  “How do you know?”

  She took a deep breath; she felt reckless, she couldn’t go back now. “I had a—I was with Rory.” She still didn’t know how to refer to it. “An affair.” It sounded so lame. “I had an affair with Rory.”

  “You and Rory?” he said sharply.

  She nodded.

  “Seriously?” They were sitting at two corners of a table, facing the river, but he sat up and looked at her, and cleared his throat. “How long? Elle, I didn’t know, I—” He rubbed his head again. “Jesus. That’s who you were talking about, when you said you’d split up from someone?”

  “It’s OK.” She hugged herself. “No one knew. No one really knows now. It was—over a year, on and off. Started before that. The first night I met you, actually.” Suddenly, talking about it like this, she felt she was going to cry.

  “So when did you split up?”

  “Um—just before Christmas. Yeah.” She drained her drink. “When everything happened with the sale.”

  “Because of the sale?”

  She screwed up her eyes. “Sort of. More the—the whole th-thing. The lying to his mother, to everyone. He stood there and told us there wouldn’t be a sale, and then he went behind his mother’s back, sold us all down the river. It’s weird,” she said. “I was so in love with him. I still love that Rory. And there’s this whole other person he is, too, who it means I just can’t be with. Sounds crazy.”

  “No, it doesn’t, I know what you mean.” Tom stared at her, his eyes searching her face. “I’m sorry. Oh, Elle. Well, he’s paying for it now, he’s absolutely sinking without trace at Bookprint. I heard Bill’s looking to get rid of him by the end of the year. Oh, Elle,” he said again. “You’re well off out of it.” He laughed, a short, angry sound. “God, why is it lovely girls like you fall for total wankers like Rory?”

  “You don’t know him,” she said. “I wasn’t blind to his faults, but—there’s more to him.” She thought of his smiling eyes, the way he’d tickle her feet, how safe she felt in his arms, with her head on his chest. She couldn’t explain it, not to anyone. She hardly believed it had happened herself.

  Tom took a gulp from his drink. “Are you still in love with him?” he asked flatly.

  “No.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

  “I don’t know.” Elle turned away from him and stared out at the water. “Maybe, yes.”

  “I wish you hadn’t said that.”

  “Why?” she asked, not really listening, still thinking about Rory’s face, the day before, in the covers meeting, as Bill had torn a strip off him about the new Paris Donaldson jacket. Tom was still looking at her, and she realized it and faced him again. “Sorry, where were we?”

  He got up. “Hey,” he said. “Doesn’t matter. Shall we get some food? It’s nearly three. You don’t have to rush off anywhere, do you?”

  “No,” she said, getting up and shaking her head. “Absolutely not. I might even have another drink.”

  He laughed. “You said earlier you were never drinking again.”

  “Well, I’m changing my mind.”

  ON THE WAY to the train station much later that evening, after pizza and a lot of wine, sitting outside in a shady courtyard off Richmond Green, Elle realized something.

  “It’s weird, I don’t know anything about you,” she said.

  Tom stopped walking. “What are you talking about? We just spent the whole day together.”

  “Yes, but we drank loads and chatted about—I don’t know what we chatted about,” she said. Her parents? His parents? Rory? Work? Books? They’d definitely talked about all of that, but she couldn’t remember what they’d said, or why. They’d talked, and laughed, and the sun had set, and now she couldn’t remember any of it.

  “I like conversations like that,” Tom said. “Much less hard work. With Vicky, my ex, it was like pulling teeth sometimes. We had loads in common but we just didn’t see the world in the same way.” He stopped. “Oh, that was good. I should write it down.” He got out his phone.

  “You’re writing that down?”

  “Yep,” Tom said, fiddling with his phone. “I’m going to text myself. Oh, I can’t. I’ll text it to you, can you text it to me?”

  She stared at him, trying not to laugh. “Wow.”

  “Right.” Tom put his phone away, as hers buzzed in her bag.

  “You are weird, do you know that,” she said. “Most of the time you’re almost normal, but occasionally your super-weird side comes out. Maybe when you’re drunk.”

  “That’s nice to know,” he said equably. “You too, if I may say.”

  “I’m not weird,” Elle said defensively.

  “I mean in a good way. All the best people are.” He swallowed, as if he was thinking carefully. Elle saw he was a bit drunk. “You’ve got staying power. Like with the Georgette Heyers. Reading all of them, getting obsessive about them. And you know, much better to be obsessed with crummy romance books than, er—hard-core porn, or something.”

  She looked at him. “Well, yes, that’s true. How about you?”

  “Me?” Tom wrinkled his nose, and put his hands in his jeans pockets, rocking slightly on the empty pavement. “Me? Nothing. Nothing. Well, I really loved Pulp. Loved them. Love them still. Got every album and used to keep a book with a note of where they got to in the charts each week.” He was grinning, but he couldn’t look at her. “Album and single. Still got it. And a chart of who was connected to who. Every record Jarvis makes. Or Richard Hawley. Got them all.”

  “OK then,” said Elle.

  “Let me see, what else. Oh, Sherlock Holmes? I’ve read every Sherlock Holmes story about ten times. Some of them more. I know everything there is to know about them. Test me.”

  “I believe you.”

  “Test me! Go on!”

  “Oh. Right then. What was the name of the hound of the Baskervilles?”

  Tom looked at her pityingly. “He didn’t have a name.”

  “Anything else, then?” Elle said. “Any other weird thing you do?”

  “I used to throw things into waste-paper bins. When my mum was ill. Five, ten times a day. If it landed in the bin I’d say she’d get better. If it didn’t go into the bin I had to throw something till it did.”

  Elle nodded.

  “She didn’t get better. So it didn’t work. I told her, she said it was good to try anything. I never knew if it was, though. I should have been doing other things, trying to make her proud, not playing these stupid mind games with myself while she was… so bad.”

  She wished she could put her arms round him, give him a hug, but she was suddenly shy. “Where are you going now?” she said, after a few moments. “I don’t even know where you live.”

  “I’m only ten minutes’ walk that way. Um—” Tom looked at his watch. “Wow. It’s late. I might—”

  “Don’t go and see Caitlin,” Elle said suddenly, and then wished
she hadn’t. His face froze with that old look of formal, cold distance she knew so well. He carried on walking, and then stopped and turned.

  “Why? Don’t you want me to?” he asked.

  “No! I think she’s using you. To make Jean-Claude jealous. That’s all.” She nudged him. “Hey, what’s up?”

  “I can’t tell you,” he said. “It sounds too strange. You wouldn’t understand.”

  He was looking at her with his dark eyes, his expression deadly serious. Elle felt nervous, and then he moved towards her and she suddenly panicked. He wasn’t going to… was he?

  Tom put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m drunk, sorry,” he said, and then he leaned forward and kissed her. Elle felt his long fingers on her shoulders, his breath against her mouth. He smelled of something spicy, wine, sweat. His lips on hers were hard, yet smooth; the stubble on his chin rasped on her skin. He pressed against her, fiercely, gripping her, and then, after a few moments, released her, almost pushing her away. She had her hands on his arms, and she clung on to him, momentarily, before letting go, stepping back, breathing heavily.

  “I shouldn’t have done that,” he said curtly. “Too much to drink. Sorry. I just—”

  “It’s OK,” said Elle.

  He swore under his breath and she was mortified; he was obviously regretting it.

  They looked at each other. “Well,” Tom said. “This is awkward, isn’t it? Forgive me. I wish we could forget it. Taking advantage of you.”

  Elle couldn’t help laughing, even as she pressed her hand to her chest, where her heart was hammering. “Honestly, it’s fine,” she said. “I’m a big girl, Tom. I’m not going to collapse in a dead faint. We’re—we’re friends, aren’t we?”

  She reached out and gently touched his hand. He took a deep breath and looked at her, his eyes searching her face, in the dark passageway.

  “Aren’t we?” she repeated.

  When he spoke, his voice was light again. “If you can get over this embarrassing solecism on my part and the fact that I collect Sherlock Holmes memorabilia, then yeah.” He nodded. “That’d be great.”