by Liz Fielding
‘You and the PR team got lucky. Tomorrow’s headlines will all be about the weather.’
‘It’s still snowing?’
‘Deep and crisp and even,’ he said. ‘Traffic chaos from one end of the country to the other. It’s no night for an elf to be out.’ He paused. ‘Especially not in something that doesn’t cover her-’
‘I’ve got the picture.’ She tugged on the back of the tunic. ‘Thank you.’
When she still didn’t move he took her hand and pressed his phone, warm from his pocket, into it.
‘If you can’t trust me, take this, call Enquiries and ask for a cab firm, although I warn you you’ll have a long wait in this weather.’
Calling her bluff. He knew she had nowhere to go. She opened it, anyway. Keyed in the number for Enquiries but, before it was answered, she broke the connection.
‘We both know that if I had anywhere to go, anyone to call, I wouldn’t be standing here in this ridiculous outfit,’ she said. ‘I’d be long gone.’
Nat watched her accept the bitter truth and felt his heart breaking for her. No one should be so alone. So friendless.
‘I’m sorry. It’s tough when you love someone and they let you down.’
‘Love is a word, not an emotion, Nathaniel. We’re sold on it from the time we’re old enough to listen to fairy tales. Songs, movies, books… It’s a marketing man’s dream. I was in love with the idea of being in love, that’s all. Swept up in the Cinderella story as much as anyone buying the latest issue of Celebrity. It’s not my heart that’s in a mess. It’s my life.’ About to hand the phone back to him, she said, ‘Actually, would you mind if I sent a message?’
‘You’ve thought of someone?’
Why didn’t that make him feel happier?
‘Half a million someones,’ she replied. ‘My Twitter and Facebook followers. Some of them must be genuine.’
‘It seems a fair bet,’ he admitted. ‘What will you say?’
‘Don’t worry, I’m not about to ask them to descend en masse on Hastings & Hart and rescue me.’
‘Pity. It would make this the best Christmas H &H have ever had,’ he said, then wished he hadn’t.
‘Sorry. While I’d like to oblige you by delivering a store full of customers at opening time, right now I’m doing my best to stay beneath the radar while I figure out what to do.’
‘It’s your call. What will you say?’
‘Trust no one…springs to mind. Or does that sound a touch paranoid?’
‘Just a touch.’ He turned away, giving her a moment to think while he pretended to scan the shelf. ‘And since Henshawe, in his statement to camera regarding your outburst, managed to imply that you not only had an eating disorder but were mainlining tranquillisers to deal with the stress of your new lifestyle, that might not be in your best interests.’
‘He did what?’
‘He was touchingly sincere.’
Her eyes narrowed.
‘I’m just saying. Having met you, I can see how unlikely that is. At least about the eating disorder,’ he added, tossing a packet of chocolate biscuits into the trolley. The ones with really thick chocolate and orange cream in the middle. Maybe they’d tempt her to stay.
‘Thanks for that!’
Lucy noted the chocolate biscuits. The man was not just eye candy. He paid attention…
‘Any time. And, let’s face it, you’re a bit too sparky to be on tranquillisers.’
‘Sparky?’ She grinned. Couldn’t help herself. ‘Sparky?’
‘I was being polite.’
‘Barely,’ she suggested. ‘You’re right, of course. It was my mouth that got me into all this trouble in the first place. But I can see how his mind is working and that does scare me.’ And, just like that, she lost all desire to smile.
‘He blamed the press for causing the problems by hounding you out of the flat you shared with your friends.’
‘If you’re attempting to reassure me, I have to tell you that it’s not working.’
‘You didn’t feel hounded?’
Nat added some crackers to the trolley, then crossed to the cold cabinet and began to load up with milk, juice, salads, cheese.
‘A bit,’ she admitted, trailing after him. ‘I couldn’t move without a lens in my face, but since it was his PR people who were orchestrating the hysteria it seems a bit rich to blame the poor saps wielding the cameras. But I have fair warning what to expect when Rupert catches up with me.’
Nat glanced at her.
‘I’ll be whisked into one of his fancy clinics for my own good,’ she said, responding to his unasked question.
‘He has clinics?’
‘He has a finger in all kinds of businesses, including a chain of clinics that provides every comfort to the distressed celebrity. A nip and tuck while you’re drying out?’ she said, pulling on her cheeks to stretch her mouth. ‘No problem. A little Botox to smooth away the excesses of a coke habit? Step right in. Once he’s got me there, he’ll probably throw away the key.’
Lucy attempted a careless laugh, but he suspected that she was trying to convince herself rather more than him that she was joking.
He was more concerned why Henshawe would want her out of the way that badly-or why she’d think he would-and when he didn’t join in she stopped pretending and frowned at the phone. ‘How about, I’ll be back!…?’ she offered.
‘Will you?’ he asked. ‘Go back?’
‘To Rupert?’ She appeared puzzled. ‘Why would I do that?’
‘Because that’s what women do.’
‘You think this is just some tiff?’ she demanded when he didn’t answer. ‘That it’ll blow over once I’ve straightened myself out? Got my head together?’
‘It happens,’ he said, pushing her, hoping that she might volunteer some answers.
‘Not in this case.’
She snapped the phone shut without sending any kind of message and offered it back to him.
‘Why don’t you hang on to it for now?’ he suggested. ‘In case you change your mind.’
She looked at him, still unsure of his motives. Then she shrugged, tucked the phone into the pouch at her belt. ‘Thanks.’
Her voice was muffled, thick, and he turned away, picked up a couple of apples and dropped them in the trolley. Giving her a moment. Sparky she might be, but no one could fail to be affected by a bad breakup. Especially one that had been played out in the full gaze of the media. Tears were inevitable.
After a moment she picked up a peach, weighed it in her hand, sniffed it. Replaced it.
‘No good?’ he asked, taking one himself to check it for ripeness.
‘They are a ridiculous price.’
‘I can probably manage if you really want one. I get staff discount.’
That teased a smile out of her, but she shook her head. ‘Peaches are summer fruit. They need to be warm.’
And, just like that, he could see her sitting in the shade of an Italian terrace, grapes ripening overhead, her teeth sinking into the flesh of a perfectly ripe sun-warmed peach straight from the tree. Bare shoulders golden, meltingly relaxed.
Her lips glistening, sweet with the juice…
‘I get why you ran out of the press conference, Lucy,’ he said, crushing the image with cold December reality. ‘But, having dumped the man so publicly, I don’t understand why he’s so desperate to find you.’
She swallowed, managed a careless shrug. ‘I thought you didn’t want to know.’
He didn’t. If he knew, he would be part of it, part of her story. But, conversely, he did, desperately, want her to trust him and the two were intertwined.
‘I have something of his. Something he wants back,’ she admitted.
The file, he thought, remembering the glossy black ring binder she’d been holding up in the news clip. That she’d been carrying in her bag.
It wasn’t there now, he realised.
‘Maybe you should just give it back,’ he suggested. ‘Walk away.’
‘I can’t do that.’
Before he could ask her why, what she’d done with it, she was distracted by the sound of voices coming through the arch that led to the butchery.
‘It’s just one of the cleaning crews,’ he said quickly, seizing her wrist as panic flared in her face and she turned, hunting for the nearest escape route. ‘Good grief, you’re shaking like a leaf. What the hell has he done to you? Do you need the police?’
‘No!’ Her throat moved as she swallowed.
‘Are you sure? What about this?’ he demanded, releasing her wrist, lifting his hand to skim his fingertips lightly over the bruise darkening at her temple.
She stared at him. ‘What? No! A photographer caught me with his camera. It was an accident. Nothing to do with Rupert.’ She looked anxiously towards the archway, the voices were getting nearer. ‘Please…’
‘Okay.’ He wasn’t convinced-he’d heard every variation of the bruise excuse going-but this wasn’t the moment to press it. ‘We’re done here,’ he said, heading for the nearest lift.
‘You can’t take the trolley out of the food hall,’ she protested as the doors opened.
‘You want to stay and pack the groceries into carriers?’ he asked, stopping them from closing with his foot.
A burst of song propelled her into the lift. ‘No, you’re all right.’
‘Doors closing. Going up…’
‘What?’ She turned on him. ‘Where are you taking me?’
‘Believe me, you’ll be a lot safer on the top floor than the bottom one,’ he said quickly. ‘There’ll be no security staff. No curious cleaners wondering why you look familiar. Where they’ve seen you before.’
She opened her mouth, closed it again, her jaw tightening as she swallowed down whatever she was going to say.
‘You’d never have got away with it, Lucy.’
‘You don’t know that,’ she declared, staring straight ahead. ‘And it would test your security staff. If they found me you’d know they’re as good as you think they are.’
‘Believe me, they are. And you’d spend the night in a police cell.’
‘Oh, but-’
‘They don’t call me when they find intruders, Lucy. They call the local police station and then the game would be up. If you’re so sure that the cleaners would recognise you, I think it’s a fair bet to assume that whoever turned up to arrest you would, too.’
She slumped back against the side of the lift. ‘You’re right, of course. And the elf costume would confirm everything that Rupert was saying about me. That I’m one sandwich short of a picnic.’
‘It wouldn’t look good,’ he agreed. ‘But if you really do have your heart set on spending the night in a tent, I’ll go and fetch one of those pop-up ones. You can set it up on the bedroom floor.’
The lift came to a halt. ‘Tenth floor… Customer services. Accounts. Doors opening…’
‘Bedroom floor?’ She frowned. ‘I thought the bedroom department was on the fifth…’
She stopped, blushing, remembering too late how she knew that.
‘Forget the bedroom department,’ he said, leading the way past the customer services department, down a corridor past empty offices. ‘Have you never heard of living over the shop?’
‘Over the corner shop, maybe,’ she said as he used a swipe card to open a door that led to an internal lobby containing a private lift from the car park and a pair of wide double doors. ‘But not…’
He keyed a number into a security pad, opened the door and, as he stood back to allow her to precede him, her protest died away.
Ahead of her was the most striking room Lucy had ever seen. Acres of limed floor. A pair of huge square black leather sofas. Starkly modern black and steel furniture. Dove-grey walls. No paintings, no colour, not a single thing to distract from the view through the soaring wall of glass in front of her. Constant movement, the ever-changing vibrant colour of the cityscape against the monochrome room.
‘Wow!’ she exclaimed, gazing out over a London lit up and laid out at her feet like fairyland. ‘You actually live here?’ she asked, moving closer.
There were lights everywhere.
Not just the Christmas lights, but every famous landmark floodlit to show it at its best. There was traffic crossing bridges, strings of lights along the Thames. Even the aircraft coming into land, navigation lights winking, added to the drama.
And Christmas trees, everywhere there were Christmas trees.
Big ones in squares, rows of small ones atop buildings, every shape and size in gardens and shining out of windows. The colours reflected in the big soft flakes of snow falling like feathers over the city, settling on parks, covering trees, rooftops. Wiping the world clean.
He hadn’t answered and she turned to him, expecting to see him smiling, amused by her totally uncool reaction.
But his face was expressionless.
‘When I’m in London,’ he said. ‘There are stores all over the country, as well as abroad. I seem to spend a lot of time in hotels.’
‘They don’t all have apartments like this on the top floor?’
‘No. I can say with confidence that this is unique. It was commissioned by my cousin, Christopher Hart, as part of the refurbishment of the Hastings & Hart flagship store.’
‘It’s amazing. I bet you can’t wait to get home.’
‘This isn’t home…’ He bit off the words as if they’d escaped before he could stop them. And when she waited for him to tell her why, ‘It’s a long story.’
‘Is it? Well, here’s the deal. You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.’
‘Long and very boring. Make yourself at…’
‘Home?’ she offered, filling the gap.
He managed a smile. He had an entire repertoire of them, she discovered. Sardonic. Amused. The one that lit up her insides, fizz, whoosh, bang, like a New Year firework display.
And then there was this one. The blank-eyed kind you cranked up when you didn’t want anyone to know how you were really feeling. The shutters had come down so fast she almost heard them clang, excluding her. And now they were down she knew how much she wanted to go back two minutes.
‘Or not,’ she said when the silence had gone on for far too long.
‘My problem, not yours, Lucy. Look around. Find yourself a room-there are plenty to choose from. I’ll be in the kitchen.’
He didn’t wait to see if she accepted his invitation, but returned to the trolley, disappeared through a door. Something had touched a raw nerve and while every instinct was urging her to go after him, put her arms around him, kiss it better, he might as well have painted a sign saying keep out on his back.
Instead, she took him at his word and looked around. The small flat she’d occupied at the top of Rupert’s town-house had been elegant, comfortably furnished, but this was real estate on an entirely different level.
It was the kind of apartment that she’d seen featured in the ‘at home’ features in Celebrity. So tidy that it looked as if no one lived there.
This was a somewhat extreme example, she decided. There was no Christmas tree here, no decorations. Not so much as a trace of tinsel.
Maybe, she decided, when you worked with it all day, you needed to escape. Maybe.
This might be a stunning apartment but he’d said himself that it wasn’t home. So where was? She wanted to know.
Her fingers trailed over the butter-soft leather of the sofa as she turned, taking it all in and, looking up, she saw an open gallery with the same stunning view of the city. It was reached by a circular staircase and, taking Nathaniel at his word, she went up, finding herself in a space wide enough for casual seating. Armchairs in more of that soft black leather.
There was a single pair of black panelled doors. Assuming that they led to an internal lobby where she’d find the bedrooms, she opened one and stepped through.
For a moment all she could see was the blinking of the navigation lights of a plane passing overhea
d, then soft concealed lighting, responding to movement, gradually revealed the room she’d stumbled into.
The dark, asymmetrical pyramid of glass above her that would, by day, light the room. The tip of a landmark that rose like a spear into the sky. Silver in the rain. Bronze, gold, fiery red when struck by the sun. Never the same.
Below it was the largest bedroom she had ever seen, perfect in every striking detail. The walls were a soft dove-grey and, apart from the bed, a vast space of pure white, the only furniture was a cantilevered slab of black marble that ran the entire width of the room behind the bed.
Unable to stop herself, she opened a door that led to a pair of dressing and bath rooms. His and hers. Nathaniel’s?
No. Despite an array of the most luxurious toiletries, the designer suits, couturier dresses, in the walk-in wardrobes, it was obvious that neither of them was in use. It wasn’t just the fact that all the clothes were cocooned in plastic covers.
There was no presence here. Like the rest of the apartment, it was visually stunning, austere, silent.
But here the silence was a hollow, suffocating emptiness.
Even the art was monochrome. Just one piece, a black-framed architectural impression of the Hastings & Hart building that filled the space above the bed.
The only point of colour in the room was a single crimson rose in a silver bud vase gleaming against the black marble.
She touched a velvety petal, expecting it to be silk, but it was real. The one thing in the room, in the entire apartment, as far as she could tell, that was alive and she shivered as she stared up at the drawing.
The building was a thing of light, energy, leaping from the earth. While this…
‘This isn’t home…’
And then her eyes focused on the signature on the drawing.
Nathaniel Hart.
Nat emptied the groceries onto the central island of the vast kitchen that he rarely used for anything other than making coffee.
He’d offered to pitch Lucy a tent but wasn’t that what he was doing? Camping out. Living here but doing his best not to touch anything.
As if by not making an impression, not disturbing anything, maybe one morning he would wake up and he’d be back in his own life. The nightmare over.