What a Girl Wants Page 14

  ‘I wouldn’t want to do it all over again, at any cost,’ he said. ‘But I do know you shouldn’t make decisions based on what makes you feel safe. Make your decisions on what makes you feel alive. Life might be too short for regrets – but it’s far too long to live with a compromise.’

  It was a fair point. It felt like a lifetime since I’d first seen Charlie sauntering across the university campus with a sticker-covered guitar strapped to his back, but when I thought about how quickly a whole decade had gone by, it made me catch my breath.

  ‘Just out of interest,’ I said, scooping up the last bits of pastry with my fork. ‘What did Al say? When you broke up with your boyfriend?’

  ‘He didn’t say anything,’ Kekipi replied. ‘But I wished I had listened to his advice in the first place.’

  ‘He told you to choose the married man?’ I asked, not sure whether to be surprised or not. Al had an unnerving tendency to be right about things.

  Kekipi nodded and tapped the table twice.

  ‘Now, have you finished? There’s a lovely mosaic of a bull over there and if we stand on his testicles and do a shimmy and a spin, it’s meant to be good luck.’

  ‘We have to shimmy?’ I asked.

  ‘I added the shimmy,’ he said, standing and brushing off his immaculate suit. ‘No one has any flair these days.’

  ‘This is really beautiful,’ Amy said, pulling a white silk sleeveless blouse covered in delicate polka dots out of a stiff cardboard carrier bag. ‘Kekipi has the best taste ever.’

  ‘How do you know I didn’t choose it?’ I asked, hanging up my new clothes and trying very hard not to look at the price tags.

  Amy raised a dismissive eyebrow and handed me the shirt. ‘Do you think he would take me shopping? Do you think he would pay?’

  ‘Do you?’ I stroked a baby blue T-shirt that was softer than the basket full of kittens I would inevitably grow old with and yawned. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She draped herself over the arm of the big squishy chair closest to my wardrobe. ‘Charlie called me while you were out.’

  ‘He did?’ My heart stopped for a moment. He hadn’t called me. Or texted. Or emailed. Or faxed. Or carrier pigeoned. ‘To say what?’

  ‘Just wanted to know if we’d got here all right,’ Amy said, stretching and arching her back like one of my future cats, her minuscule bum rising off the seat as she did so. ‘He said he hadn’t heard from you.’

  It was fair, he hadn’t. I wasn’t quite sure what to say and I couldn’t imagine he was desperate for me to FaceTime him to give him the double guns again.

  ‘What did you tell him?’ I asked, terribly interested in the hanging loops on a pair of white denim Rag & Bone shorts, covered in tiny motorcycles – an incredibly practical purchase on my part.

  ‘I said we were so fine that you’d shagged Nick all night long and now you were too knackered to bother texting him so he should probably go and throw himself off Tower Bridge,’ she said, kicking me in the arse. ‘What do you think I said?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, closing the wardrobe and rubbing my bum cheek. ‘I don’t want you to be in the middle of all of this. You didn’t actually say that though, did you?’

  ‘I told him Al had been working you like a slave and that I’d knocked you out with Night Nurse last night because you weren’t feeling very well,’ she replied. ‘He bought it, obviously. But yeah, you owe me.’

  The number of times we had exchanged those words.

  ‘Anything from Mr Miller?’ she asked.

  I folded in on myself, collapsing onto the floor like a grumpy giraffe and lay flat on my back. Things always looked better when there wasn’t any further to fall.

  ‘I still can’t get over how offensively sexy he is,’ Amy sighed.

  ‘Don’t call him sexy,’ I said with a wince. ‘No one says sexy any more. It sounds so nineties.’

  ‘But he is sexy,’ she argued, twisting upside down so that her head dangled down in front of me. ‘He’s not just handsome; he’s got that “grr” thing. Like when Daniel Craig came out of the ocean in James Bond, only fully dressed. Imagine him in swimming trunks. Oh God, imagine him naked.’

  I held my breath and waited.

  ‘Oh my God, of course, you’ve seen him naked!’ Amy shouted, holding her hands over her face. ‘It’s too much for my tiny mind. You have literally blown it to pieces.’

  ‘But you have seen what a twat he is,’ I said, stretching my arm out for my handbag. I couldn’t quite reach it, meaning the universe didn’t want me to text Charlie just yet. I’d text him later, just as soon as I could reach my bag without having to move – and just as soon as I had worked out what I wanted to say. ‘So you know why it’s a no go.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ she said, rolling down onto the floor at the side of me, ‘but there’s definitely something going on with you two. You’re all jumpy and sketchy around him.’

  ‘I am not sketchy.’ I didn’t bother to try to refute jumpy. ‘He makes me uncomfortable.’

  ‘Yeah he does, all night long,’ she replied, snapping her fingers and singing what I knew for a fact was her favourite Lionel Richie song. ‘When we were in the car on the way to that weirdo’s place, he was just, like, staring at you. The whole time. Didn’t look out the window once. He just sat there, really enjoying the back of your head.’

  ‘That’s because Milan can’t compete with my incomparable beauty,’ I said, sniffing my armpits and wondering if I could get away without a shower before dinner. ‘I am a goddess.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she nodded, ‘definitely that. Also, he can’t put his dick in Milan.’

  ‘As eloquent as ever,’ I said. ‘Did anyone say anything to you about dinner tonight?’

  ‘Nope,’ she said, rolling onto her front and dragging herself up to her feet. ‘I got the car back, I saw the lovely Domenico, confirmed for the millionth time that we had everything we needed and then came up here for a nap. Now you’re back.’

  ‘I was gone for five hours,’ I pointed out. ‘And that’s all you did?’

  ‘It was a hell of a nap,’ Amy said, pumping her hands over her head and swinging her hips. ‘Can we go out tonight?’

  ‘I should call Charlie,’ I said, staring sadly at my handbag. ‘And I need to look at the photos from this morning. And talk to Al about what we’re doing next. And God, look at the Perito’s pitch.’

  She lowered her arms slowly, sadly. ‘So that’s a no, is it?’

  ‘We’ll go out tomorrow night,’ I promised, the words sounding awkwardly familiar. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Fine, I’ll go and find out about dinner, I’m rav.’ She patted her flat stomach and trotted out the door. ‘Go and have a shower, you stink.’

  You couldn’t put a price on the value of an honest friend, I told myself, as I rolled to my knees and crawled into the bathroom.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’

  After a very long, very hot shower, I’d found a note from Kekipi shoved under my door, telling me that dinner would be in the dining room at eight before giving very explicit directions as to how I was to prepare. I did as I was told, worried that if my efforts weren’t up to scratch, he’d withhold food, and since I hadn’t eaten anything other than a few bites of breakfast and the pastries at lunchtime, I really wanted my dinner. And so I dutifully made sure I’d shaved my legs below and above the knee, dried my hair properly, put on make-up, and, as the note explicitly instructed, slipped into the little black dress he had chosen for me in the Valentino boutique. There was no way I could have ever afforded it if he hadn’t flirted his way to a sixty per cent discount, and for that I would be eternally grateful. It was the most perfectly fitting dress I had ever owned. Short but not too short as to show my knickers, it was nipped in at the waist and had a perfect straight-across slash of a neckline that tethered my unmanageable boobs in place without making them look like they’d been bound down for netball practice. It was a miracle.

  I assumed I
was being preened by proxy so he could show off his fabulous styling to Amy and Al over dinner but instead of finding a table full of friendly faces, there was only one guest at the table and his face wasn’t friendly at all.

  ‘I take that look to mean you were expecting other people to be here as well.’ Nick poured himself a glass of red wine from one of the four open bottles of booze on the table and kicked his feet up on one of the empty chairs. ‘Excellent.’

  His bare feet.

  Although I was annoyed at being set up, I couldn’t help but take a little perverse pleasure in the fact that Kekipi had got one over on Nick the genius. Even if it did mean I had to sit through dinner with him, all on my own. Immediately I felt my skin begin to prickle.

  ‘You don’t have to stay,’ I said, striding over to the table as confidently as my untested new heels would allow. At least I was bloody well wearing shoes. ‘I’m not forcing you.’

  Nick watched as I reached for the white wine, moving extra slowly so as not to knock anything over, break anything or somehow manage to set myself on fire. I suspected Amy had had a hand in the table design: there were candles everywhere and she was a little firebug. Swirling the wine in his glass, he didn’t say anything, just sat and watched while I poured out an inelegant quantity of Pinot Grigio and took a massive swig. Placing the glass back on the table and out of easy reach, I crossed my legs and folded my arms, wishing I hadn’t put my hair up. It would have been nice to have something to hide behind while he continued his famous silent treatment.

  ‘So you’re going to sit there and stare at me all night, are you? Fine.’ I refused to be drawn into his mind games again. ‘I’ll just entertain myself.’

  Happily, the table was loaded with enough bread, cheese, meats and salads to cater every one of Kim Kardashian’s weddings and all of it looked divine. At least I had something to distract me while I was busy ignoring him.

  Halfway through my attempt to saw a particularly tasty looking loaf in half, Nick gave a loud, violent sigh before knocking back his entire glass of red and slamming down his glass. It wobbled for a moment as he stood up and stared at me across the table while I stared back at him, one paw full of cheese and the other full of bread. Without so much as another grunt, he stormed back into the house, slamming the door behind him.

  His glass wobbled again, before falling over and rolling off the table, shattering the instant it struck the courtyard floor.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ I whispered, breathing out for the first time in what felt like forever. As quickly as it had closed, the door flew open again, Nick striding back over to the table, his forehead all creased and his jaw heavy and tense.

  ‘What I want to know,’ he said, noisily pulling out his seat amongst the shards of broken glass, grabbing the bottle of red and starting the process all over again. ‘Is where you get off, being angry with me.’

  ‘What?’ I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing.

  ‘You’re the one who lied about your name, your job, who you are. You’re the one who lied about everything to everyone and now you’re angry with me because I didn’t return your fucking phone call?’ he said, his voice getting louder as he went on. ‘Well, I’m very sorry, Tess or Vanessa or whatever your name is, but I’m not an eccentric old man who did so many drugs in the Sixties that he’s confusing giving someone a chance with letting someone take advantage of him. I don’t let people take advantage of me. And I don’t like liars. And you’re a liar.’

  Well, that was me told.

  I placed my bread and cheese on my plate, making a silent promise to come back to them and picked up my wine glass with a shaky hand. I wanted to come back with something really snappy, something searing and brutal and personal and vicious. But it was hard to get up on my high horse when at least half of what he had said was true. Or that was to say, factually accurate.

  ‘You didn’t seem to mind me last night,’ I said, as calmly as possible, after I had drained the last drop of wine in my glass. ‘Or do you have an evil twin I should know about?’

  Nick ran a hand over his face then reached around to rub the back of his neck. I watched his white T-shirt strain against his bicep and felt nothing other than the desire to pull the T-shirt off his body and strangle him with it. Enough was enough. The prickle of anger was enough to remind me why I was mad at him.

  ‘And more to the point, how could I explain if you wouldn’t let me?’ I asked, folding my arms over my perfectly positioned bosom. This dress was incredible. ‘I tried to talk to you. I tried in Hawaii and I tried to call you. I emailed you, I sent you texts.’

  Still, he said nothing, his grey-blue eyes empty.

  ‘You told me to call you and then you didn’t call back. And then last night …’ I spoke slowly, not sure what my voice was going to do. Balanced and even might have been the goal but I was only ever seconds away from incredibly shrill or desperate sobbing whenever I spoke to him and neither of those had ever done a woman any good in an argument. ‘And then last night happened. And I woke up and you weren’t there. What do you want me to say? To do? You’re going to have to tell me because I really don’t know.’

  I heard the last word fade off and was proud of myself for getting it out without losing it. This was progress. Old Tess would have dissolved into an emotional puddle shortly after showing him an incredible PowerPoint presentation that explained, in ten slides or fewer, why he was the most offensive dickhead on the market for English women aged twenty-eight and over.

  Without anything else to add, I turned my attention back to the cheese and hoped there would never come a day when dairy turned on me too.

  ‘I emailed you because I needed an explanation,’ Nick said, pushing pieces of crystal around on the floor with his toe. ‘But then when I thought about it, I couldn’t see what use there would be in getting one.’

  Wonderful, reliable, noncomplex cheese. I chewed while I worked out what to say, tearing my chunk of bread into tiny little pieces.

  ‘What now?’ I asked, chasing the cheese with a big gulp of wine – the internationally recognized dietary choice of scorned women. ‘Are you going to keep on punishing me? Keep saying really horrible things to me in public? Because that’s been brilliant so far.’

  ‘I don’t know you,’ he replied without a moment’s hesitation. ‘I don’t know anything about you. As far as I knew, you were a photographer called Vanessa Kittler who had shagged at least half of London but for some reason, you decided to show another side to me, and then I find out that you’re not Vanessa, that you’ve lied to me the entire time, but I still see that other side to you and that’s got me really confused.’

  ‘That’s what this is about?’ I felt a little bit sick and it had nothing to do with the cheese or the wine. ‘You thought I was some massive slag and that you were the only super stud who could get through to me? And now what, you’re angry that I’m not actually that slag?’

  ‘No.’ Nick leaned forwards, resting his arms on the table, shuffling a salami out of the way. His being surrounded by cured meat did nothing to dispel the tension or the queasy feeling in my stomach. ‘I just don’t like being lied to.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ I replied. ‘Me neither.’

  Turning away and shaking his head at something I hadn’t said, Nick sipped his wine and fiddled with the edge of the white tablecloth. Still stunned into pukiness, I waited for him to say something, utterly out of my own words for the moment.

  ‘I don’t think I need to explain that I had feelings for you,’ he said, eventually settling back into his chair to look at me. ‘And I don’t think it would be difficult for anyone to understand why I might have reacted harshly when I found out you were lying about, well, everything.’

  I sucked in my cheeks and forced myself to nod, even though I felt I would definitely like his feelings explained.

  ‘But we’re here now and we’ve got to work together, sort of.’ He scratched his nose and took a cleansing breath. ‘Maybe we should agre
e to start over. I can be professional if you can.’

  ‘Last night was professional, was it?’ I asked. More wine. I needed more wine.

  ‘Last night was a mistake,’ Nick replied, his voice smooth and deep where mine was thick and uneven. ‘Sorry about that.’

  I had managed to get through twenty years feeling approximately seven feelings: love for Charlie, complete adoration for Amy, tolerance for my family, a bedwetting fear of Vanessa, blind ambition, constant peckishness and the desperate need to sleep. I wasn’t sure if peckishness actually counted as a feeling but it had played a big part in my life, so it felt wrong to discount it now, but here, sitting at the table across from Nick, I had never felt so confused in all my life. I was furious with him for being so self-righteous and embarrassed that he was right about so many things. But at the same time, it hurt me that I could have hurt him in this way and, as much as I tried to deny it, there was a sad, angry sinking feeling that was threatening to overwhelm my peckishness. He didn’t want me.

  ‘I don’t want things to be difficult for everyone else,’ Nick said, finishing off his wine and pouring more. ‘So we’ll start over, and like I said, I don’t know you.’

  ‘This is so stupid,’ I said, refolding my arms and looking up to the stars that were just starting to prick through the night sky. I thought back to all the time we had spent talking, all the things I had told him that I had never told anyone else. ‘You do know me.’

  ‘Just because I know what you want in bed, doesn’t mean I know anything about you as a person,’ he said. ‘And clearly, that works both ways.’

  Ouch. Just ouch.

  ‘But I’ll give it a go. Let’s see how well I know the real Tess.’ The light was back in his eyes but it wasn’t the playful sparkle I liked so much, it was a dark, angry fire. ‘Are you really a photographer?’

  ‘Yes.’ I really needed to start believing that myself. ‘But before I got my agent, I worked in advertising.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Nick replied, his half-smile blossoming into a full smirk. ‘What with you being such a good liar.’