‘More than you will ever know, Leo,’ she assured him. ‘I’ll show you how to love in ways you never thought possible.’
‘Really?’ This perked Leo up no end. Over the years, he had been forced, on occasions, to watch several of Grant’s more adventurous Swedish films and, you’d better believe it, if the Swedes were anything to go by then there were an awful lot of ways to love. ‘Do you fancy going to bed again to test this theory?’
‘I don’t mean that kind of love, Leo.’
‘Oh.’
‘I will show you shades of human love that you never thought possible.’
‘Still sounds kinky to me.’
Isobel smiled sweetly. Leo took her hand and she led him towards the bedroom. ‘I have to warn you,’ he said. ‘One way and another, it’s been a very taxing day. I don’t think I can manage it six times again.’
Isobel’s smile widened. ‘I’d like to bet you can.’
And Leo noted, with some relief, that she had brought her wand along with her, secreted discreetly behind her back.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I pour out three brimming glasses of Rioja – for the third time. My good friends, Caron and Jo, swig deeply and gratefully. Something truly mournful is playing on the stereo – I just can’t remember what. Something suitable for the death of a relationship. Morrissey, Bob Dylan, Nick Drake – that sort of thing. They all work equally well. No cheery humming required. Music to slit your wrists by. It captures my mood perfectly. And, anyway, I’ve left all my decent girly CDs at Leo’s flat – Whitney Houston, Norah Jones and Alicia Keyes will all lie unplayed in his CD rack, gathering dust. The minute my back is turned, the Kaiser Chiefs and Keane will be shaking the pictures off the walls.
Caron and Jo put their glasses on the coffee-table and they sit in silence as whoever warbles on about disaster.
‘This is fun,’ Jo says, with more than a touch of sarcasm.
‘Ssh!’ Caron shushes.
‘I’ve been to happier wakes.’
‘This is a wake,’ I announce dramatically. ‘We are mourning the demise of my relationship with Leo.’
Jo sighs. ‘I bet he’s not sitting at home mourning anything.’
‘Be sympathetic,’ Caron admonishes her. ‘Emma was very caring towards you when Archie dumped you.’
‘Yes, but Archie dumped me for my sister. My entire family knew he was shagging her, but not one of them told me. It caused a massive rift and even to this day none of us are on speaking terms.’
It was a fairly terrible time, I remember.
‘Emma dumps Leo frequently for the slightest reason,’ Jo says. ‘Is coming home drunk with a traffic cone on your head every now and again just cause to end a relationship?’
‘The last time he came home with a traffic cone on his head, he’d also lost his underpants,’ I feel moved to point out.
‘Yes, but you did find them hanging from the aerial of his car a few days later.’
‘When he eventually found his car,’ I add.
‘I’d go out with Leo,’ Jo says. ‘He’s lush.’
‘He is a lush,’ Caron says with a nod.
‘Well, no one’s asking you. Thank you, Joanna.’ I fold my arms. It’s desperate being single again. You are forced to hang around with your mates because you have no choice rather than because you want to – and that’s a very different feeling. How many days has it been now? Two? I have a heart-sink moment. It already seems like an eternity.
‘Remember the boy who cried wolf?’ Jo asks. ‘His mates all disappeared off to the nightclub and left him to it. Girls who cry wolf get the same treatment.’
I look around at the bare brick walls of my lovely flat which suddenly seems to be closing in on me. I can see myself dying here alone and friendless, surrounded by my IKEA furniture with statement pieces from the Conran shop – that’s if I don’t get a move on and get a decent relationship.
‘I was reading SHE magazine on the Tube this morning,’ Caron says, ‘and scientists have identified three types of perfectionist. There are those who set impossibly high standards for themselves, those who set impossibly high standards for others and those who are desperate to be seen as perfectionists in order to gain peer-group approval.’
‘And?’ I say.
‘I think you might be all of them, Emma.’
‘Oh, that’s charming!’
‘I’m trying to be helpful. They say it’s a form of mental illness – like depression or . . . or . . . insanity.’
‘I can’t help it if I like everything to be just so.’ I refuse to look at my books and CDs, which are all set at the exact same angle, arranged alphabetically. And I won’t even think about my wardrobe where everything is colour-coded and has to be hanging in the same direction on the same type of coat hanger. Doesn’t everyone else worry if the handles on their mugs don’t line up the right way in the cupboards? Is it possible for your life to be too ordered? Doesn’t it simply mean that I’m very, very organised?
‘It might be a good idea if you went to see a therapist,’ Caron suggests, using her kind voice.
I sag. ‘That would feel like giving in to life.’
‘Or it might salvage your relationship.’ Caron hugs me. ‘We want what’s best for you and it would help if you knew what that was yourself.’
I’ve never heard a truer statement and, unfortunately, I don’t have an answer off pat for my friend. I want Leo and I don’t. I want to be independent and married. I want my freedom and a shedload of children. I want to eat exactly what I like and stay rake thin. Even to me, it seems as if I might want rather a lot. But isn’t that the way of the world now? Am I really any different to any other women of my age?
We all sit and stare at the walls.
Jo is the first to break the silence. ‘So what are we going to do?’ she wants to know.
‘Do?’ I say. ‘We’re doing this.’
‘Can’t we go to a wine bar and do it?’
‘I can’t face socialising. What if I accidentally bump into Leo?’ I hold a hand to my forehead. ‘I might never go out again.’
‘Attention seeker,’ Jo mouths silently at Caron.
‘I saw that,’ I say.
‘The thing with Leo,’ Jo goes on, ‘is that you can rely on him for a laugh.’
‘It’s the only thing you can rely on him for.’
‘And what’s wrong with that?’ Jo winds her legs into the sofa, clearly becoming resigned to the fact that we aren’t destined to be going out on the town tonight. ‘Leo’s always up for some fun. He’s usually gone along with exactly what you wanted, Em. How many blokes would go salsa dancing without the threat of reduced sexual activity? Not many. Most blokes are too self-conscious or selfish to go. At least Leo doesn’t mind making an arse of himself.’
‘He does it at every possible opportunity,’ I protest. ‘It’s embarrassing to have a boyfriend who behaves like a three year old.’
‘The trouble with you, Emma,’ Jo says, replenishing her wine and settling in for the night, ‘is that you’ve never had a proper crisis to deal with. Your life has been a bed of roses. Therefore, you blow every little misdemeanour of Leo’s out of all proportion. Life can never run as smoothly as you want it to. He’s a great bloke, if only you’d relax a bit and see him for what he is.’
‘Why does everyone say that? You don’t have to live with him.’
‘As I said at the start of this conversation, I wouldn’t mind a chance. But it’s you he adores – in his own Leo-ish way.’ Jo looks round the flat. ‘Besides, you’re not living with him.’
And maybe that was part of the problem too. It would be my dream to settle down and live with Leo permanently, but I don’t know if I could stand having him around on a daily basis. Or anyone else, for that matter. I’ve always been fiercely independent and it will be hard to give up some of that to live in constant compromise with someone else. I don’t relish the thought at all. Isn’t that the quandary of all feisty young women to
day? We all complain about men being commitment-phobes, but aren’t we as bad? There’s a distinct reluctance among my friends to pitch in their lot with a man.
Once upon a time, all the romance books peddled the fairy story that all your problems would be solved if only you could find a strong, capable man. But strong, capable men are thin on the ground and today when you find a man it’s likely to signal the start of a whole new raft of problems. I slug back my wine. But the option of being without Leo suddenly seems less appealing. He’s so irritating, but Jo’s right, there’s a certain something about him – the lovable rogue, the Peter Pan approach to life, the untameable streak. Maybe a touch of the old romantic hero in him. Whatever it is, there’s something that keeps me coming back for more.
The phone rings and all three of us jump. I shoot out of my chair. ‘Oh good grief. Oh good grief. It might be him. What shall I say? What shall I say?’
‘Be yourself,’ my friend advises. ‘He doesn’t have to know you’re missing him already.’
‘You answer it. You answer it.’
‘Emma,’ Caron says calmly, ‘pick it up. Be cool.’
‘Cool?’
‘Chill. Chill.’
‘Chill?’
‘Very chill.’ Caron shivers.
I copy her. ‘Chill. Chill. Chill.’ I jump up and down, unable to help a thrill of excitement as I pick up the phone.
‘You’re a useless bastard,’ I shout as soon as the receiver is near my mouth, ‘and I’d never go out with you again even if you crawled over broken glass to beg me!’ I smile and stick up a thumb at Jo and Caron, looking for approval.
Caron turns to Jo. ‘Maybe too chill.’
I slither to the floor, still clutching the phone and I can’t help the look of disappointment that I feel spreading over my face. ‘Hi, Mummy.’
Caron and Jo slump back into their chairs.
‘No. No.’ I shake my head. ‘Of course I didn’t think you were Leo.’
‘Are we going to go through this every time the phone rings?’ Jo wants to know.
‘Probably,’ Caron says.
Jo tops up her wine again. ‘Marvellous. The sooner she starts her therapy the better.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Leo was lying in bed and he feared that there might well be a stupid grin on his face again. This wasn’t an unusual occurrence these days. When he finally managed to find the wherewithal to move himself, he looked at the clock.
‘Flip. Late.’ Leo glanced over at the other side of the bed. Isobel had gone again. ‘Flip. Gone.’
Forcing himself to sit up, he shook the now obligatory glitter from his hair and swung his legs out of the bed. He was starting to get used to the glittery dandruff, but Isobel’s regular disappearing act was proving a little more difficult to contend with. Wasn’t it blokes who were supposed to do that to women?
Leo padded into the bathroom and was surprised to see his overnight guest, as large as life, in there.
‘Whoah!’ Leo offered in the way of a greeting as he recoiled in surprise.
Isobel was already dressed and was wearing a sexy, silver-grey business suit. Her hair was piled up neatly on her head in an equally foxy fashion.
‘Good morning,’ Isobel said, patting a few recalcitrant strands of her hair into place.
‘You look great.’ She had a very kissable neck and Leo just couldn’t resist it.
‘Thank you.’
‘Hey,’ he continued as he slipped his arms round her, ‘last night was wonderful. I thought you’d skipped out on me again.’
Isobel turned and kissed him. ‘No.’
‘One tiny thing.’ Leo shook his hair again, covering his bath mat with a deluge of sparkly stuff. ‘Any chance of doing it without the glitter?’
Isobel smiled at him. ‘We need the glitter for the magic to work.’
‘Oh. Okay. Just checking. Glitter’s good.’
Turning, she showed him her finished look. It took Leo’s breath away. She was quite simply the most stunning woman he’d ever seen. If a little more transparent than most. And he didn’t mean transparent as in . . . you know . . . he meant really transparent. ‘You look fantastic.’
‘I’ve got a job,’ she announced proudly.
‘Great.’ Leo hesitated. ‘It isn’t washing dishes, by any chance?’
‘No.’ Isobel laughed and it was like a cool waterfall on hot skin.
‘You have a natural flair for it.’
‘I have to go,’ she stated. ‘Better not be late on my first day. I’ll see you later.’
Standing on her tiptoes, she kissed him again. Leo felt that he could be persuaded never to leave his bed ever again if Isobel was in it. ‘Isobel, this is hard for me to say, but . . . there’s no hurry to look for anywhere else to stay. If you need to. There’s plenty of room here. Oodles of it. If you want to stay . . .’
She breezed past him. ‘I’m planning to.’
‘Oh.’
She wafted out and, while Leo stood and contemplated this new development, he heard the front door slam.
‘Fine,’ Leo said as he turned on the shower. ‘That’s fine.’ He had a permanent housemate. Something that he’d successfully managed to avoid until now. But, do you know, the strange thing was it did feel fine.
However, when Leo looked at himself in the mirror, he was brought back down to earth. It was not a pretty sight. Isobel was quite clearly using up his hideously inadequate energy reserves at breakneck speed. His cheeks were puffy – even puffier when he pulled them out sideways. He tugged the rims of his reddened, bleary eyes downwards. His tongue was the colour of wet cement. Not good.
‘Flip.’ Leo puffed at himself. ‘I’d better buy some vitamins. Fast.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
I took Leo’s car keys from his pocket on the night of my birthday celebration to prevent him from driving. And, in typical Leo fashion, he hasn’t even phoned to find out if I have them. He’s so sure that I’ll always be there to protect him or if I can’t do that, to pick up the pieces afterwards. Still, it’s unusual that I haven’t yet heard from him. And worrying.
His long-suffering car, Ethel, had been parked directly outside the restaurant, so at least I knew where it was this time instead of having to trawl the streets for hours to see where Leo might have left it. There was a parking ticket on it, of course. Leo, quite possibly, has the largest collection in London. But at least it hadn’t been clamped or towed away. Although that’s a familiar drill now. I’m on first-names terms with the guys at every car pound in town. The London Wide Vehicle Tracing Service is on my phone’s Friends and Family list. Some of them even call me to let me know when Ethel turns up. If there was a Guinness Book of Records category for the most clamped car, Leo would be the record-holder. He treats his transport with the same indifference as he treats me.
Today I simply had to go straight to Ethel and now I’m driving my dearly-beloved’s abandoned vehicle safely back to his front door. That man doesn’t deserve her. Or me. Really he doesn’t. Despite what my friends say.
Leo lives in a lovely leafy street, but it isn’t a trendy address like mine and it’s further away from the river. However, his flat is much bigger and I wonder if we do ever bite the bullet and move in together whether we would live at my place or his. Or maybe we should sell both and start all over again with a new place, possibly even a house. A home. Even the thought of it makes me nervous.
I’ve been thinking about Leo a lot. In fact, I’ve thought about little else. He does have a lot of good qualities. He’s generous, fun-loving and not too shabby between the sheets. Perhaps it’s inevitable when you’ve been together as long as we have that you start to see past the qualities that first attracted you and start to take each other for granted. How much effort has either of us put into our relationship over the last few years? Perhaps we’ve both become complacent in the way we’ve let things slide.
Following Caron’s advice, I mustered all of my courage and phoned a sh
rink this morning. It’s not very British to admit that you need help, but the woman I picked at random out of the Yellow Pages seemed – over the phone – to be a very normal sort of shrink and not the type of woman who might be moved to wear kaftans and eat her own placenta. She sounded suitably down-to-earth and businesslike. So I’ve made an appointment for later in the day and I’ll tell Leo sometime soon in the hope that he might come along with me and we can have counselling for our relationship. The shrink might well tell him he has to pull his socks up if he wants to stay as my boyfriend. I smile to myself at the thought. Yes. This could be a good move. Getting an impartial third party to confirm that currently he isn’t ideal life-partner material might make him buck up his ideas. This could be a very good move. I slap my hands on the steering wheel in delight and wonder why I haven’t thought of it earlier.
I manoeuvre Leo’s car into the only available space outside his flat, muttering to myself. Why on earth does he still insist on driving this old heap of a Beetle when everyone else’s boyfriends have Mercedes and BMWs and Porsches. It isn’t as if he doesn’t have the money to exchange it – he simply can’t be bothered and he has an unhealthily loyal attachment to the damn thing despite his shameful neglect of it. He insists it would be like selling his granny – even though he leaves it lying abandoned all over London at the drop of a hat for me to recover. That’s another thing we can address in our counselling sessions.
As I turn off the engine and get out of the car, a woman comes out of the front door of Leo’s building. And not just an ordinary woman. She stops and looks directly across at me, an enigmatic but rather self-satisfied smile on her lips. I feel myself reeling. My eyes pop. What a stunner! She’s tiny with elfin features and masses of glossy black hair that tumbles down her back. I’ve always gone for neat and tidy cropped styles – boyish rather than vampish. There isn’t enough time in my life for curling tongs and straightening irons. Functional – that’s the approach I’ve always taken. It’s sensible hair, not the type that would be used in L’Oreal adverts. Whereas this woman is a walking commercial for expensive conditioner. Swish, swish, it goes but her gaze never flickers. Do I know her? I feel that somehow I should recognise her. Bizarrely, I hear the sound of gentle laughter inside my head. It takes me back to the night that Leo and I parted. Is it the same laughter as I heard then? Am I going completely mad?