The Hopeless Romantic's Handbook

by Gemma Townley

  He reached over and dug it out of the trash, then gulped. The Hopeless Romantic’s Handbook. The book that Kate was talking about. The one that had promised her love. Guaranteed it, even.

  And now she’d chucked it in the bin.

  Tom’s heart started to race in his chest as he fought the temptation to push the door down, put the book back on her shelf, track Kate down, and tell her that he loved her, hopelessly, madly, completely, even if she was a hopeless romantic.

  But that would be stupid. It would go wrong. Tom had had his heart broken once and he wouldn’t risk it happening again.

  He looked at the book again and felt his heart thud painfully. It was okay for him to avoid emotional entanglements, to maintain a dispassionate approach to relationships and life. But not for Kate. Had he done this to her? Had she chucked it out because of him?

  Uncomfortably, Tom dusted the book down and put it in his pocket. Hopeless romantics like Kate were dangerous creatures, irresponsible and naïve and stupidly optimistic. But without them, he feared that the world would only ever be the depressing gray battleground that he saw every single day.

  27

  Everyday Romance

  For many, romance is a very specific thing, concerned with love between a man and a woman, the giving of flowers and the excitement of a dinner engagement.

  But romance need not be so limited. Romance might be the call of a morning bird or a jaunt down the river with friends. Romance might be the smile of a loved one or a shared experience.

  To bring true romance into our lives, we must do our best to experience romance every day. Once we are used to romance being all around us, we will be more open and prepared for more serious romantic entanglements.

  And so, Reader, do something romantic today! Call in on a friend, grant a request you might usually turn down. Remind your parents of your deep affection for them. Put on a bright scarf. Cheer up a glum companion with funny tales. Fill your home with colorful flowers. And buy yourself some rose-tinted spectacles, for when we see the world in a pinky hue, it is always so much more pleasing….

  Tom raised his eyebrows and wondered if this book was for real or some kind of piss-take. Was this seriously the reading matter that Kate chose?

  Make the world pink or pale blue. Brilliant. This woman had more insight than Einstein.

  He shook his head and smiled ruefully. No wonder Kate was such a hopeless case. Sweet, silly Kate. Maybe he’d take the book into the hospital. Try telling his patients that all they needed to do was to choose to see the world in a pinky hue and everything would be alright again.

  People could be so foolish. So … emotional. Rose Sandler, for instance. She’d left a couple of hours ago to go to her son’s concert, all made-up and dressed as if she was going to the opera. Her husband had brought in several outfits for her to try on; Tom had been forced to turn a blind eye to the fact that Lucy had spent over an hour doing her makeup, and all to sit in a hall and listen to her son play the violin. He probably wouldn’t even notice she was there.

  The fact of the matter was that the world was an arbitrary place. An unfair place. Catch cancer early and you could rip it out, kill the bastard with chemo. And when people got the all-clear, it was like the ending of a million great books tied up together—tears, joy, relief, wonderment, and a sudden feeling that it was all worth it. That good could conquer evil, that happiness was more than an advertising slogan. Seeing people hold each other, the look in their eyes as they realized that they weren’t going to lose their husband/wife/ child/parent after all, was … well, it felt good. But it never lasted. Because five minutes later there was some less lucky bastard to give bad news to. Some other husband/wife/child/parent to destroy with the news that it was too late, that the surgery hadn’t worked, that the hospital had done all it could, but…

  He hated that word. But. You could be saying the nicest things and as soon as you uttered the word but, everyone knew it was game over. “I love you, but…” “The surgery was successful, but “I don’t want to leave you, but…”

  But rendered everything else a lie. Why not just say “I don’t love you”? “The surgery was a hopeless cause because whilst we removed the tumor, the cancer is now out of control.” “I want to leave you because someone else is offering me a better life and I’m not sure I ever wanted you anyway, and please don’t bother trying to get in touch because I’m going to have better children with my new husband. …”

  Tom’s beeper went and he dug it out. Mrs. Sandler, he read, curiosity piqued. Maybe she was back and regretting her excursion. Well, it would serve her right, and he’d tell her so very sternly.

  Putting his beeper back in his pocket, Tom closed The Hopeless Romantic’s Handbook and left his office.

  Lucy was waiting for him in the ward when he got there.

  “Tom … Doctor. She’s …” She bit her lip and put her hand on his arm. “She said she wanted to see you and I thought you’d probably … well…”

  Tom looked at her. “What?”

  “Tom …” Wide-eyed, Lucy returned his gaze. “… she had a seizure.”

  Tom shook her off. “A seizure? Where is she?” He raced to her bedside. “Rose, what happened?”

  Rose smiled weakly. “It was beautiful,” she whispered. “I was in the front row, you know, and he played so well. And …” She took a breath, with difficulty.

  “He knows that I love him,” she said, a few moments later. “Thank you, Doctor. I really can’t thank you enough.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone,” Tom said. “Look at you. It was too much stress. I shouldn’t have allowed it….”

  Rose shook her head very gently, wincing at the pain. “I needed to go,” she said quietly. “I needed to have a moment, a memory for Liam that didn’t involve a hospital bed.”

  Tom stared at her, furious. “Stop talking about memories, Rose. You are getting better. You will be better. As soon as you’re strong enough I’ll operate, and we’ll get the rest of the tumor….”

  Lucy appeared at his side and squeezed his hand, and Tom silently studied the machines around Rose, willing their readings to be different, begging them to tell a different story. “You just need to eat,” he whispered hoarsely. “Need to get your energy up.”

  Lucy pressed his arm, and ushered him a few feet away. “Tom, the doctors found out this afternoon that she’s got a liver infection. On top of the tumor.”

  “And you still let her leave the hospital?”

  He walked back over to Rose and took her hand. “I’m so sorry,” he said. He could feel tears appearing at the corners of his eyes, tears that hadn’t been allowed to fall for more than twenty years.

  “Don’t be sorry,” Rose said, smiling serenely. “I saw today how my boys—Liam and Pat, I mean—how they’ve got so close. Him and his father never used to have much to say to each other, but now … well, they’re wonderful together. The thing is, Doctor, I know they’re going to be alright now. I’m not worried anymore.”

  “But what about you?” Tom said tightly. “You can’t just…”

  Rose put a finger to her lips. “They’ll be here soon. Liam and Pat. I’m going to have my boys next to me. You can’t ask for more than that, can you, to die surrounded with the people you love. Who love you.”

  Tom swallowed, doing his best to ignore the large lump in his throat.

  “And I wanted to thank you,” Rose continued. “You’re a good man, Doctor. A very good man.”

  Tom shook his head as Rose’s husband and son appeared at the door of the ward, their faces worried and pale.

  Rose saw them and smiled. “Good-bye, Doctor,” she said. “You take care of yourself, now.”

  “Good-bye, Rose,” Tom managed. He held her eyes briefly, then turned and walked out of the ward, nodding a greeting to Mr. Sandler as they passed each other, but failing to look him in the eye. He didn’t dare to.

  28

  Kate decided to walk home from the hospice. For the past few
days, she’d been there constantly, and when she wasn’t there, she was on the phone, dealing with suppliers, organizing timetables, and making demands. Everything felt surreal, as if she’d got in a lift to go up a floor and instead it had taken off like the Great Glass Elevator, and now she was in a place that seemed vaguely familiar but that differed from her own world in very significant ways. Channel 3 had jumped on the commission. Magda was treating her like someone important. Suppliers were bending over backward to give her everything she needed for free. She had a team of researchers working just for her. She was thrilled and excited about her work for the first time in absolutely ages. And each day that went by made the pain of Tom not calling lessen just a little bit, made the world a little bit more bearable.

  As she walked, she found herself outside Charing Cross Hospital, and she glanced up at the large gray building, wondering if Tom was inside. He was probably studying someone’s charts, she thought. Or maybe he was talking to a patient. Doing some paperwork.

  Not knowing quite why, she found herself walking through the doors and into the reception area. She hadn’t been here for years— Tom had studied to be a doctor here, and she remembered coming here with Sal for a party at the end of Tom’s first year. There had been a disco, and at some point in the evening they’d played lots of fifties tunes and Tom had flung her around the dance floor until she’d been sure she was going to be sick. And then the three of them had played lift-jumping with the lifts-with-no-doors-that-keep-moving-constantly-that-probably-had-a-very-important-medical-use but which they had huge amounts of fun with, leaping in and out with gay abandon until an angry woman told them to leave. That had been a different time. A time when all that mattered was the here and now, and how much fun could be had.

  But in recent years there had never really been a reason to come to the hospital. It was strange that this place, such a huge part of Tom’s life, should be so unfamiliar to her.

  A bit like Tom himself.

  She stared at the hospital map and idly wondered where Tom would be. The cancer unit was on the fourth floor. Would Tom be there? Or did he have an office somewhere? She frowned—on television, doctors were always racing down corridors holding calibrators in their hands. Or was that just ER?

  Not that it mattered.

  She turned to leave.

  “Can I help you?” A woman in blue was smiling at her expectantly.

  Kate smiled brightly. “Um, no, thank you.” Then she frowned. She did need help. She had a television show to organize; in the beginning she had assumed she’d just talk to Tom about getting permission to film, but that seemed less and less likely.

  “Actually, I’m doing a television show, with Channel Three,” she said. “Renovating a hospice around the corner for cancer patients who’ve had surgery here. I was just having a look around. Do you know who I’d need to talk to about getting permission to film here?”

  “You’ll need to talk to the press office,” the woman said. “Have you made an appointment?”

  Kate shook her head.

  “Maybe you’d like to call them and arrange one,” the woman suggested.

  Kate nodded quickly. “Yes, of course.”

  She headed out of the hospital. It had been a mistake coming in. She was still hoping that somehow things with Tom would work out. That he’d realize he was in love with her. And it wasn’t going to happen.

  As she reached the doors, her phone buzzed furiously, and she dug it out.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Kate! Heather from Hot Gossip here. Listen, I was just wondering if you felt you wanted to talk yet. I mean, you know, if there’s anything you’d like to say….”

  Kate sighed. “No, Heather,” she said firmly. “I have nothing to say to the readers of Hot Gossip magazine. Nothing at all.”

  Then an idea hit her.

  “Wait,” she said. “I might. Would you be interested in a project I’ve got on the go? Renovating a hospice for cancer patients?”

  “Charity?” Heather said cautiously. “Possibly, I mean …”

  “Television,” Kate said. “It’s going to be a television show.”

  “And you’ll give us your side of the Penny and Joe story?”

  Kate sighed. “There’s nothing really to tell. …” she began.

  “Only, I’m not sure some charity thing is going to be enough,” Heather said.

  “Fine,” Kate said reluctantly. After all, she told herself, two could play at the publicity game. If Penny and Joe were going to use her to get themselves in the papers, then she was going to use them right back to promote the hospice. “You’ll get my side of the story.”

  “Fabulous!” Heather said. “I mean, that’s great. Shall we arrange a time and place now?”

  “Sure,” Kate said, “why not.”

  Ed seemed worried when he came in that evening, the result, Sal recognized, of her phone call that afternoon insisting that he be home by seven and telling him that she urgently needed to talk to him. She was sitting, waiting for him, at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, her hands on top of her knees where she could regularly wipe the sweat off them.

  He looked at her curiously, then poured himself a glass of wine. He offered one to Sal, who declined.

  “So,” he said with a sigh. “What’s this emergency summit all about, then?”

  Sal looked down at the ground, then back up at Ed. “Do you know where your golf clubs are?” she asked.

  Ed frowned. “My golf clubs? You get me home early to talk about my golf clubs?”

  “Answer the question, Ed,” Sal said levelly

  “In my car,” Ed said. “Next question?”

  “In your car,” Sal said. “Well, that would make sense, since you took your car to golf last weekend. And the weekend before that.”

  “Is there a point to this?” Ed asked, tensing.

  Sal stared at him. “I was just curious, you see,” she said, her voice quiet. “Because I thought they were in your car, too. And then I got my car cleaned. And I found them in my boot. Where we put them at Christmas.”

  The color drained from Ed’s face.

  “And I just wondered how you’d been managing to play golf without them,” Sal continued, looking Ed right in the eye.

  “I… I borrowed clubs,” he said weakly. “I need some new ones anyway, so I was trying out some different…” He trailed off, and closed his eyes briefly. “Fuck, Sal,” he said with a sigh. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry….”

  “Who is she?” Sal spat. “Who is the woman that you’ve been leaving me for every weekend? Who knackers you out so you barely have the energy to touch me anymore. Or is that just lack of desire? Do I not do it for you anymore?”

  Ed’s face crumpled. “You think I’m having an affair?”

  “What am I meant to think?” Sal cried. “You tell me, Ed. What am I meant to make of our marriage? I never see you, and when I do you snap at me. You say you’re playing golf, but you leave your clubs behind. …”

  She shook her head. “I’ll leave, Ed. I will. And you’re not the only one with opportunities to play around. But unlike you, I know the meaning of restraint. Unlike you, I value our marriage. I was kissed, Ed. Kissed. And it ate me up so that I couldn’t bear to even look at myself in the mirror anymore. But now, now I wonder what I was so worried about.”

  As she spoke, she found tears forming at her eyes and she blinked them back furiously.

  Ed looked stricken. “You … you kissed someone?”

  Sal shrugged, tears now falling freely. “He kissed me. I didn’t kiss him back. And now I’m going to be a single mother and I don’t know what to do, Ed. I don’t know what to do.”

  “A mother? What?” Ed asked.

  “I’m pregnant, Ed.”

  “You’re pregnant? You kissed this guy and now you’re pregnant?”

  Sal gave him a withering look through bleary, tear-filled eyes. “I think the actual order of events was that you and I actually found the time to hav
e sex about seven or eight weeks ago and now I’m pregnant. I’m not sure the kiss really featured, actually.”

  “You’re having a baby? We’re having a baby?” Ed looked dumbstruck

  “Yes, you idiot. And you don’t have to be involved if you don’t want to. I mean, I’ll need some money, but I don’t want you staying with me just because I’m pregnant. I’ve got my pride, you know.

  “Oh my God.” Ed stood up. “Oh my good God.” He wrapped his arms tightly around Sal. “My darling girl. We’re having a baby. We’re having a frigging baby. God, I can’t believe it. That’s the most wonderful thing I think I’ve ever heard.”

  “But…” Sal said in confusion. “What about the affair? What about the state of our marriage?”

  Ed swung her stool round and stared at her. Then he sighed. “Sal, you have to believe me when I tell you that since I met you, I have not looked at another woman. Apart from Helena Christensen, but that was in a magazine, which doesn’t count.”

  Sal looked at him indignantly. “The golf clubs, Ed. What exactly have you been doing every weekend for the past four months?”

  Ed sat down and took her hands in his. Then he looked down at the floor.

  “What, Ed?” Sal whispered. “What is it?”

  He swallowed with difficulty and took a slug of wine. Then he looked Sal right in the eye. “Sal, I’m being investigated. By the Financial Services Authority.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  Ed sighed. “I mean that for the past five months, the FSA has been listening to every single phone call I’ve made, going through every e-mail I’ve sent, and talking to every single one of my investment clients. They think I was involved in some inside dealing.”

  “And were you?” Sal asked, shocked.

  “Of course not,” Ed said wearily. “But if they think I was, I lose my license. I’ll never work in the City again. We’ll lose the house. We’ll lose everything.”

  “And why do they suspect you?”