‘I still bet we could split them up.’
‘Really?’ Grant said. ‘Personally, I vote for retaining my testicles.’
Chapter Forty
Tonight, I’m going to get an early night. My head has been pounding all day as an aftermath of the noise and humiliation that was my nightclub experience. A quiet night in with a romantic comedy DVD – Sleepless in Seattle is always a good standby – and a cup of herbal tea is much more my thing. Followed by a long, hot bath, it has almost been the perfect evening. Almost. It would be nice – like Meg and Tom – to be heading to my bed to cuddle up to someone. A sigh escapes into the silence.
I’m thirty years old. I don’t want to be single any more. I want to be married. I want lilies in my bouquet. I want a three-tier cake and a diamond-set platinum wedding ring. I want children. Three of them. And I want breast-pads and leaking nipples and stretchmarks. All of the things I have previously spurned. I want a house – roses round the door are an optional extra – but it has to be somewhere that I can put down roots, somewhere to build a future. I’m sure of it. But how to get it? Instead of making the most of my chance while I had it, up to now I’ve been going through life rudderless, letting the current trends of singledom and childlessness buffet my true feelings about until I’m not even sure what they are any more and, even worse, I’m frightened to admit it. Why are we women so keen to suppress our natural instincts these days?
I’m padding round my bedroom in my oldest, comfiest pyjamas. The ones that Leo loves – and only Leo could love me in fleecy nightwear adorned with snoring sheep. I try not to look too many times at his photograph on my bedside table. Strangely, you might say, life without Leo is proving considerably more traumatic than life with Leo. Contrary to all popular beliefs.
I pull my favourite cuddly toy to me. My entire array of fluffy animals – and there are quite a few of them – have been purchased by Leo. He’s of the opinion that a woman can never have too much cute fur fabric. In the early days of our relationship, he even remembered to buy them on my birthdays too. This particular toy was acquired on a visit to Thorpe Park a couple of years ago. I know many women whose boyfriends take them to Paris, Rome, Prague. I’m not in this smug club. Leo was more likely to take me to Blackpool or Alton Towers or, in this case, Thorpe Park. He prefers theme parks to museums. Many men pride themselves on their ability to choose fine wines or champagne. My man was an aficionado of the greasy hot-dog stand and knew which was the best log flume to get utterly soaked on. I sigh and shake the toy. It’s a bright red fluffy devil with black horns and an evil smile. Rather like Leo’s. When shaken, it giggles and says wickedly, ‘I’m a little devil.’ It’s Leo, all over. Other men buy their loved ones flowers – roses, lilies, even bloody daffodils. Leo buys stuffed toys that chortle or fart or say, ‘Fuck off’ in maniacal tones. I slide into the bed and hug the giggling ball of fluff to me. ‘Oh Leo,’ I sob.
Isobel and Leo were sharing the mirror in the bathroom. Leo was cleaning his teeth and Isobel was smiling mysteriously. Fairies, Leo decided – and this one in particular – made him very nervous.
‘What?’ he said.
‘Nothing.’
‘I find that look very disturbing, Fairy Isobel.’
‘You have a very suspicious nature,’ she told him.
‘I didn’t until I met you.’ He’d never have previously considered his life with Emma uncomplicated, but he realised now that it was.
Kissing Leo, she skipped out of the bathroom. He had never before in his life considered an early night to be a good thing either, but Isobel left him feeling permanently exhausted. Quite frankly, he was a shadow of his former self. Leo looked at his haggard face in the mirror. Ghastly. ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, have I got more grey hair since a fairy came to call?’
‘Yes,’ a disembodied voice came back from the mirror. Now his bathroom accessories were answering back.
‘Flip.’ Leo briskly finished cleaning his teeth and scuttled after Isobel and into bed. She was lying there looking far too innocent.
‘I don’t want any funny business,’ he warned her as he cuddled up next to her.
‘Not any?’
‘Well,’ Leo relented. ‘Just a bit.’
Isobel wrapped her arms round him and suddenly he felt very, very sleepy.
‘Iso . . .’ But Leo couldn’t even finish the word before he was out for the count.
I toss and turn. I’m too hot. Then too cold. I kick the covers off. Then pull them back on. I’m dreaming of Leo. An action replay of some of our happiest times together – punting on the River Cam when Leo fell in, making love in a hay field when Leo got hayfever and sneezed non-stop for five days, renting a tandem in the Lake District when we took a corner too fast and Leo ended up in a ditch. Suddenly I wake. Throwing back the duvet, I go to the window. There’s a strange mist outside and I’m not sure if I’m actually awake or still dreaming.
The London skyline looks like a cardboard cut-out in the background. I rub at the window panes with the sleeve of my pyjamas, but they’re misty too and no matter how much I rub, they just won’t clear. There’s a figure outside, watching me, I’m sure. I peer into the mist. It looks like Leo’s new girlfriend, Isobel. It can’t be. I try to look at the clock, but the face of that is misty too and the numbers are blurred. Isobel seems to be wearing a trenchcoat and sunglasses and looks like some cheap private detective. The faint sound of laughter seeps into my room. I strain to get a proper look. This is bizarre. Isobel appears to be leaning on the lamp post across the street, but it looks like she’s hovering above the ground. It’s a dream, I decide. Possibly a nightmare. And I resent that Leo’s new love is in it. I open the window and a swirl of warm mist envelops me, twining itself round my arms and legs. Suddenly, I feel sleepy again. I try to stare at Isobel, but she’s blurring. I’m struggling to keep my eyes open. Isobel starts to laugh and I’d recognise that sound anywhere. I have definitely heard it before.
‘What are you doing in our lives?’ I ask, but sleep is overcoming me. ‘Who are you? Where have you come from?’
She says something, but it’s too faint for me to hear. It sounded as if she said she was helping me. Helping me by stealing Leo away from me? What is she talking about?
‘Get lost,’ I shout into the street in a final attempt at defiance, though my limbs feel as if they’re made of lead. ‘Go away. Go on. And give me my boyfriend back!’
Leo had no idea what he was doing on the Embankment down by the River Thames in the middle of the night. Or how he got there. But he was absolutely sure that Isobel had something to do with it. The fact that he was wearing a rather smart top hat and tails reinforced his view. ‘Isobel,’ Leo shouted into the air, ‘what are you playing at?’
But there was no answer. Like policemen, fairies seemed miraculously to disappear when you really needed them. London looked fabulous at night. Particularly this slice of London. There was a shimmer of water on the pavements, even though Leo didn’t remember it raining. All along the riverside, the street lamps were reflected in it and the hoops of lights which were strung between them swung gently in the breeze, making the whole area look like stars on a stage set. The stunning backdrop of the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and Tower Bridge gave it a magical air. A full moon was out in force and sparkled – rather like the glitter in Leo’s hair – across the inky black of the river. It was a marvellous night for a walk. Leo’s heart skipped a beat . . . or for dancing.
Without warning, Emma appeared in front of him. Leo wondered where she came from and why she looked remarkably like Ginger Rogers to his Fred Astaire. Her hair was pinned up in what his mother might have called ‘bangs’ and looked fabulously glamorous. She was wearing a long, white floaty dress nipped in at her waist and she had a white feather boa draped round her shoulders. And this was a good look for her. A very good look.
Leo somehow acquired a cane and behind him on the Embankment, out of a rolling cloud of fine mist, an orchestra materialis
ed. A big one. Complete with violins and cellos – all that sort of stuff. The musicians were all wearing white tail suits and loads of brilliantine on their slicked-back hair. If this was a dream, it was a lovely one, Leo thought. Emma had never seemed more beautiful. She smiled and moved towards him.
Despite the glamour, she was slightly hesitant, awkward, maybe a bit uptight. The sounds of the opening to Irving Berlin’s ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’ floated on the breeze. She started to move more gracefully and floated into Leo’s arms. He caught hold of her waist and twirled her, making her gasp. It seemed like the right thing to do. And, surprising as it might be, Leo had never been considered much of a dancer. He was kicked out of the country dancing lessons at prep school for trying to look up the girls’ skirts. Nor did he ever manage to crack the Argentinian Tango despite his desire to fling Emma about in the style of Gomez Addams and despite the number of lessons they had. Eventually, Leo had been invited to leave that class too. The instructor seemed to feel that simply turning up with a rose between his teeth each week wasn’t taking his tuition seriously enough. But Leo had always wished that he could be considered to be a dancer, rather than emulating a twitching idiot with his finger in an electrical socket, which was his current style. Apart from tonight . . .
Emma, unlike Leo, was as light as a feather on her feet. She melted into his arms, their bodies merged. They tapdanced in complete unison up and down the steps to the river and threw in a bit of the quickstep for good measure. Leo handled his cane with all the skill of a first-rate baton-twirler. A ray of moonlight followed them like a spotlight in a 1940s’ movie. Leo twirled and whirled her again and they danced through the streets of London, their feet tap, tap, tapping on the empty pavements, serenaded by their own players. A silver butterfly and a stream of dancing stardust shadowed their every move.
‘I love you,’ Emma murmured. She had tears in her eyes. ‘I dream of us being together again.’
‘I love you too,’ Leo said. His heart surged with joy. It made him think that if Isobel was truly behind all this – and it certainly had her mark on it – why was she doing it? Did Emma, he wondered, have any idea what was happening to them? When Leo made up his own dreams they were about him scoring for England or shagging Kylie Minogue and Cameron Diaz both at once. He didn’t dream up tapdancing and fabulous music – Leo only wished that he did. This had been a most marvellous experience. Even if it wasn’t real. He tapped at the pavement with his cane to check it out. It had a very real ring to it, it must be said.
Then they stopped, just the two of them – Emma and Leo – alone on the Embankment in the dead of the night. The music lifted them, exalted them, the moon swelled with joy and filled the sky. The stars exploded like fireworks. Their lips met and the sparkling taste of champagne flooded Leo’s brain. And, to be honest, that was the last thing he remembered.
Chapter Forty-One
I struggle to open my eyes. The daylight seems more harsh than usual and I put my hands over my eyes, but shafts of sunlight still pierce through them. I feel as if I’ve been hit over the head, drugged and am waking from a deep sleep, verging on the border of a coma. Conversely, I also feel like I haven’t slept a wink, as if I’ve tossed and turned all night. My eyelids scrape over my eyeballs as I rub my eyes and force them open.
‘Ahh!’ I close them again. This can’t be happening to me. I open them again and look down at myself. Yes. I’m still wearing my pyjamas and yet I’m not in my bed. I very definitely am not in my bed. ‘Ahh!’
I’ve never been fond of heights. This isn’t somewhere I’d normally choose to be. Particularly not in my nightwear. I force myself to look up. The view hasn’t changed. And I have no idea why I’m waking up in one of the glass capsules on the giant ferris-wheel of the London Eye, high – very, very high – above the River Thames, clad only in ancient pyjamas bearing cartoon sheep.
‘Fuckfuckfuck,’ I mutter to myself. I’m alone in my pod, but all the other pods are filled with inquisitive people. In the one above me, a group of Japanese tourists take photographs of me.
I huddle by the bench in the centre of the floor. My only hiding place. The capsule moves interminably slowly, inching its way to the ground – it will be a good twenty minutes more before my humiliation is over. How the hell did I get here? It slowly comes back to me about the wonderful dream in which Leo took me in his arms and danced with me along the Embankment. I must have been sleepwalking. Add a propensity towards somnambulance to the growing list of other things that I’ve got to worry about. The people in the next pod are waving to me. I try to ignore them and when that fails, I wave back meekly.
‘Please let this end,’ I whimper. ‘Please let this end.’
By the time Leo woke up, Isobel was already in the bathroom. He could hear her splashing away in the shower, so he dragged himself up and plodded through into the bathroom.
She was wrapping herself in a towel – considerably more fluffy since she’d arrived and Leo didn’t think it was to do with a change of fabric conditioner – as he squeezed in behind her.
‘Good morning.’ Isobel kissed him. ‘Sleep well?’
‘I dreamed that I could tapdance last night.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘Yes.’ Leo flicked open the lid of the wicker washing basket next to him, so that Isobel could throw in her towel. Inside was a top hat – remarkably like the one he was wearing last night, in fact. Leo glanced down at it and gave Isobel a querying look which she blatantly ignored. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t anything to do with you.’
Isobel pouted. ‘Of course not.’
‘Of course not.’
She finished towelling herself and left the bathroom – grinning to herself if he wasn’t mistaken.
Leo stood in front of the mirror and, once again, took in the wreckage that had become his face. It looked as if he’d been up tapdancing all night. This cannot go on, Leo thought; he was ageing in dog years since he’d met Isobel. He definitely had greying hair now. He wasn’t sure that it wasn’t starting to thin too. Horrors upon horrors. Leo examined his pate just in case. No imminent signs of balding, but if things carried on like this then he suspected it wouldn’t be long before the shower would look as if a badger had died in it every time he washed his hair. Still, it had been very nice last night with Emma – more than worth the resulting exhaustion. It had brought back memories of old times. Good times. Maybe for a brief moment, Leo understood what sort of magic Emma longed for in their lives. As far as Leo was concerned, he seemed to have a surfeit of it at the moment. He sighed a melancholy little sigh and wondered where this would all end.
‘I look like doggydoo,’ he said to the mirror. Then he wagged his finger at it. ‘And I don’t want a word out of you.’
The capsule in which I’m entrapped finally circles around to the ground, by which time a crowd has gathered. As it comes to the platform for me to disembark, the London Eye staff look very bemused as to how I’ve managed to get in here in my nightwear without them noticing, and I hope they won’t arrest me or ask me for a ticket because it appears that I don’t have one of those either. It has been a very nice trip and it’s only a shame that I was too terrified and humiliated to fully appreciate it.
The steward, open-mouthed, lets me out of the pod.
I call on all my reserves of dignity. ‘Thank you,’ I say politely. I’m grateful that the steward is too speechless to ask any searching questions.
Pulling my pyjamas tightly around me, I walk serenely through the gawping crowd. Will this trauma never end? I’m going to have to hail a taxi or blag my way onto a bus looking like this. Do I really have the bottle to pretend that fleecy jim-jams are the latest look? Somehow I’m sure that Leo is tied up in this, but I have to admit that I have no idea how. Even when I simply dream about him, he still manages to get me into a heap of trouble! There’s definitely something going on.
I’m going to have to up the number of sessions I have with my psychiatrist. It’s clea
r that the benefits of therapy haven’t yet kicked in and there’s no way I can carry on like this. They’ll be locking me up and throwing away the key. What sort of woman, other than a mad one, wears her pyjamas in public?
I endure it as long as I can, holding my head high, smiling tightly – until I can bear it no longer and I break into a frantic run, scattering the crowd and trying to hang onto what is left of my fragile sanity.
Chapter Forty-Two
Grant made the assessment that Leo was enjoying a pleasant snooze while the world’s money markets did exactly what they liked around him.
His friend’s head was resting on his desk and there were gentle purring noises coming from his general direction. Grant went over and gave him a nudge. Leo snorted, then looked up and rubbed his eyes.
‘A six-shag night?’ Grant asked.
‘No,’ Leo said, shaking his head. They were now all used to the shower of glitter that accompanied it. ‘Tap dancing.’
Grant shrugged as if it was an everyday thing. Nothing his unhinged little buddy did now surprised him.
‘I’m knackered though,’ Leo mumbled. ‘I didn’t know all that shuffle ball-change stuff was so exhausting.’ He pushed himself upright and rubbed his hands together. ‘Fancy the pub?’
‘Sorry, mate. I can’t,’ Grant said, avoiding his friend’s eyes. ‘I’m taking someone out to lunch.’
‘A client?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Oh.’ Leo slumped back towards his desk. ‘Catch you later then.’
‘Later,’ Grant agreed and headed towards the door. ‘Make sure you get some beauty sleep before tonight.’
‘Why?’ Leo was suddenly alert. ‘What’s happening tonight?’
‘For goodness sake, Leo! How can you forget?’ His friend looked as if he had forgotten. Completely.
‘The Thornton Jones annual bash,’ Grant reminded him with a sigh.