The Little Lady Agency

  ‘Thank you for your thoughtful words of advice,’ I retorted, with a glare. ‘Look, Jonathan’ll probably just stay for the display. He normally rushes away from evening dates. We can still meet up for supper afterwards.’

  ‘I don’t know where we’re going for supper,’ replied Nelson loftily. ‘Gabi? Did you have supper plans?’

  ‘That depends. Ooh, look, there’s Remington now.’ Gabi nodded towards the door. ‘Can’t say he looks thrilled to be here. Still, when does he ever?’

  Jonathan was attempting to stand still in the slowly heaving tide of people, casting urgent glances round for me. He looked a little out of place, but in a good way: his overcoat was dark cashmere instead of Musto sailing yellow, he wore a sheepskin winter hat, even though it wasn’t that cold, and had a bright red scarf wrapped round his neck. Gabi was right, though: he did look a bit on edge.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ I said, my voice somewhat higher than normal.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Nelson and Gabi at the same time.

  I started to slither through the throng, very conscious of the hot wine in my hands, and the large hat on my head. It was nice, watching Jonathan look for me, and when he finally spotted me, his face lit up and he looked much younger than he had done standing at the door, where he’d looked somewhat haggard. But then standing next to a wall of flushed rugger-buggers washes anyone out.

  ‘Honey!’ he said, as I struggled to his side. ‘My God! What a hat!’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, returning a random elbow in the ribs, with interest. ‘Have a glass of mulled wine.’

  Jonathan accepted the plastic cup with justifiable suspicion. ‘What’s in this?’

  ‘Red wine? Oranges? Um, exotic spices? Drink it, it’ll make you feel less annoyed with the crowds,’ I advised.

  ‘I don’t think even Mogadon could do that,’ he said evenly, as a conga line of young men in full cricket kit ploughed towards the bar with brutal efficiency.

  Outside, we furnished ourselves with floury rolls full of roasted hog and apple sauce, which met even Jonathan’s high critical standards, and we began to wander over to the fireworks. I paid for us to get in.

  ‘No, really,’ I said as Jonathan attempted to extract his wallet. ‘Let me be responsible for the short-comings of English fireworks. I’ve already paid lots of council tax towards this. And finish your drink, because you can’t take alcohol in with you.’

  ‘OK,’ he said, then leaned forward, and lifted up the earflap of my hat to whisper in my ear, ‘Don’t tell the guy on the door, but I never come to events like this without emergency supplies.’ And he patted his inside pocket with a stage wink.

  His breath was hot against my suddenly chilly ear and I shivered.

  ‘Well done,’ I said, keeping my voice level with some effort. ‘Let’s go and have a look at the bonfire before it gets out of control.’

  ‘That happen often?’ asked Jonathan, eagerly.

  There were already several thousand people on the common, all doing that frustrated aimless wandering English people do at events where there is no clear ‘best place’ to grab. Most were on their phones arguing with friends in a ‘better place’ on the other side of the park. We picked our way through until we were a few metres away from the bonfire.

  I was proud to see that it was a real corker: very big, with beautiful red and yellow flames, no visible sofas or toxic plastics in the pyre, and with a proper guy on top, dressed in what looked like a Harlequins rugby shirt.

  ‘See?’ I said to Jonathan, my face glowing from the intense heat. ‘Isn’t it great?’

  ‘It’s fantastic. Shall we step away?’ asked Jonathan courteously. ‘I’d hate that hat of yours to burst into flames.’ He put his hand on the small of my back and we strolled towards the makeshift ropes, marking out the firework viewing area.

  ‘I realise it’s not proper animal fur,’ I said defensively, ‘but I’m not into wearing dead animals, especially on my head. Anyway, it keeps me warm.’ I realised as I said it, that this was exactly the sort of defensive comment my mother made when criticised about her wardrobe.

  ‘You’re cold?’ asked Jonathan, solicitously.

  ‘Um, sort of.’

  ‘Here,’ said Jonathan. ‘This should warm you up.’ He reached into his overcoat and withdrew a silver hipflask. We came to a pause by a large oak tree.

  ‘What’s in there?’ I asked as he unscrewed the cap.

  ‘Whisky.’ He passed it to me, then added, as I hesitated, ‘Don’t tell me it should be in a brown paper bag.’

  ‘No, no,’ I said. Hipflasks of whisky always reminded me unpleasantly of the shoots I’d been press-ganged into as a teenager. Since I refused to shoot, I had to beat, and spent most of the time trying to shoo the birds horizontally to freedom.

  Still, there was something chic about women who could drink whisky so I persevered with it. Now, I took a deep breath and sipped a small mouthful. It trickled down the back of my throat, leaving a smoky, burning trail.

  The hipflask, I noted, was inscribed with Jonathan’s initials and a date. I wondered if it was a wedding present.

  I passed it back quickly. Jonathan took a long swig, then another. Then he made a ‘gahhh’ face.

  ‘Dear me,’ I said. ‘Things that bad?’

  He grimaced wryly. ‘I guess it depends what you mean. I had a call from Cindy’s divorce brief this afternoon, wanting to open the horse-trading before we get to court.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. He had gone quite quiet of late on that topic, and I had begun to wonder, rather nervously, if there was a chance of them patching things up. ‘It’s going to court then?’ I added, trying not to sound too interested.

  ‘From the smart way she’s reckoning up my assets, I’d say so.’

  ‘I’m so sorry to hear that,’ I said, meaning it.

  ‘Are you?’ Jonathan gave me one of his unreadable looks.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ I said. Then, in case this was overstepping the mark, I added, flippantly, ‘Clearly word has got back to her about your fabulous new woman, and she’s decided she’s not up to the fight. A woman with no fighting spirit is hardly worth your time.’

  ‘Something like that,’ he said, but he didn’t laugh, and I realised he probably wasn’t quite as over her as he liked to think.

  I cursed my stupidity. I, of all people, should have known better than to take that detachment at face value! Just because I wanted him to be over her . . . Or did I? I pushed that thought away.

  ‘I am sorry, Jonathan,’ I said, tucking my arm into his for a friendly squeeze. ‘It must be a miserable time for you.’

  ‘It certainly is,’ he said, taking another swig of whisky. Then he shook his head as if he were trying to shake the mental pictures away. ‘I feel like I’m being asset-stripped – of all the stuff we bought to make our home together. Stuff we were given by friends. Stuff she gave me as presents! But, you know, it’s all just . . . stuff!’ He sighed. ‘I just want to walk away from it. Put it all behind me. Jesus, this isn’t a cheery conversation to be having. Can we talk about something else, please?’

  ‘OK, then – tell me about work?’ I asked, reasoning that at least there he’d be hitting targets and generally being indispensable. ‘Found Bonnie and Kurt a house yet?’

  ‘I’ve found them several houses,’ said Jonathan. ‘None of which are quite right.’ He blinked rapidly, and put a finger up to his eye. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Contact lens. No, I seem to be working London hours and New York hours at the moment. Damn phone never stops ringing.’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t be so good at your job,’ I replied. I liked the idea of Jonathan having lenses. It made him a little less perfect. ‘Wouldn’t it be boring if you had nothing to do?

  ‘It’s certainly never dull,’ he conceded. ‘And your friend Gabi is a tremendous asset in that department,’ he said with a sly look.

  ‘Gabi?’ I affected mild confusion.

  ‘Gabi Shapiro.’

  ‘Oh tha
t Gabi,’ I said, scanning the crowd anxiously in case he’d spotted her and Nelson.

  ‘Yes,’ he went on, ‘she keeps me up with all the gossip. Dean & Daniels is quite a hotbed of scandal.’

  ‘Really?’ I said, disbelievingly.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ nodded Jonathan, offering me the hipflask again and pursing his lips in pretend outrage. ‘One of our senior agents . . . and his PA, would you believe!’

  ‘Who?’ I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.

  Jonathan gave me an amused look. ‘Does it matter, if you don’t know them?’

  I remembered that I had, of course, ‘met’ Carolyn and Hugh at the garden party.

  ‘I know of them,’ I said and nonchalantly took a large sip of whisky. ‘Through Gabi.’ I had to swallow several times to counteract the burning sensation in my chest.

  ‘Well,’ said Jonathan, with a man’s fascination for gossip, ‘Gabi was getting one of our new meeting rooms ready at short notice for a client consultation, but when she went up to put the flowers and coffee and so on in there, the door was locked from the inside!’

  ‘Really? So what did she do?’ I said, letting him think I was coaxing the information out of him.

  ‘Very sensibly she alerted me, I gave her the master key and who did she find in there but Hugh Gerrard! One of our senior agents,’ he added, by way of explanation. ‘You may recall him from your garden party. Red pants.’

  I contained my shock and horror, quite successfully, I thought. ‘Gosh. With his PA, did you say?’

  Jonathan nodded.

  But I’d been Hughy’s PA. Who had replaced me? I racked my brains but couldn’t think.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I asked innocently.

  ‘A lady called Carolyn Harker,’ said Jonathan, giving me an odd look. ‘Again, you met her?’

  ‘Carolyn! And Hughy?’ I exclaimed. Then I added, ‘As he asked me to call him at the party.’

  Jonathan took his hipflask out of my gloved hands and knocked back a quick swig, rather more stylishly than I had. ‘Indeed.’

  I couldn’t help myself. Carolyn – effectively demoted! ‘And what were they doing?’

  Jonathan feigned shock. ‘What do you think they were doing?’

  ‘To be perfectly frank, I can’t imagine either of them doing that.’

  Jonathan’s face twisted into a wicked smile. ‘Checking for damp?’ he suggested innocently. ‘Inspecting cracks in the foundations?’

  ‘But it’s a new building!’ I said, thoroughly confused.

  Jonathan roared with laughter, and I smiled politely, none the wiser. Still, it was nice to see him laughing. He looked like a different person when he smiled. I wished Gabi and Nelson could have seen him.

  No, I didn’t.

  ‘Put it like this, Carolyn was on the desk, taking something down, like the good PA she is,’ he said, with a solemn face.

  ‘Goodness me.’ It was hard enough to imagine Carolyn being swept away on a tide of passion; harder still to imagine Hughy instigating one. It would have to be one hell of a tide. I began to wonder if Gabi had been winding Jonathan up.

  ‘Is she sure?’ I asked, carefully. ‘I find that extremely hard to believe. From, um, what I saw of Carolyn, she seemed rather . . . respectable.’

  ‘Well, these office flings happen,’ said Jonathan. ‘Not that I think it’s a very good idea though.’

  ‘No?’ My father seemed to take it as a perk of his job.

  ‘No,’ insisted Jonathan. ‘It’s very easy to imagine that just because your PA listens to you and indulges your every need at work, that she actually cares about you. I mean,’ he added, ‘obviously a good PA is in tune with her boss, but the relationships you have in the office aren’t the same as the ones you have at home, are they?’

  He shrugged.

  Daddy was still very much at the forefront of my mind. And with him came an unwelcome reminder of several unpleasant scenes I had unwittingly stumbled into before we moved back to England.

  ‘Oh, yes, I agree,’ I said. ‘Then when it all goes wrong – and it always does – you never get your photocopying done properly again because all the girls hate you, and everyone in the office knows about your intimate dermatitis.’

  I was thinking more of Quentin there. He’d famously had a run-in with my predecessor, Tanya. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorn’d by a man with a flaky back and athlete’s foot.

  ‘Something like that,’ said Jonathan, in a funny voice. ‘But I guess some successful relationships have to start at work. You have to make sure to take the relationship out of the professional environment. Would you like some cotton candy?’

  Was that a deliberate change of subject?

  The loudspeakers near us crackled into life before I could examine it further, and I stepped back as it blared in my ear. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the display will commence in five minutes’ time. Five minutes’ time.’

  There was a sudden stampede in various ‘good place’ directions, and instinctively, I found myself walking away from the tree and towards the centre of the park.

  ‘Where are you going?’ demanded Jonathan. ‘What’s wrong with where we are?’

  Before I could answer, his phone rang. Jonathan grimaced, took his tiny mobile phone out of his pocket, glanced at the number, then, with a great flourish, turned it off. ‘Look!’ he said.

  ‘Look at what?’ I asked, hoping I wasn’t about to get a lecture about some tedious new DVD-player-phone.

  ‘I have switched my cell off,’ he announced with a big smile.

  ‘Well, thank you,’ I said.

  ‘This is now leisure time,’ he added, in case I’d missed the emphasis.

  Did that mean he was treating this as no longer a work situation? And if he was treating this as leisure time, did he still expect me to be Honey?

  I suddenly felt extremely vulnerable, all alone in the dark park, with a grown-up, soon-to-be-divorced man I really fancied, a tissue of lies I wasn’t sure I understood properly, and a hat that could catch light at the merest twitch of a careless sparkler.

  My blood ran cold with nerves, while my face went hot.

  Jonathan looked closely at me. ‘I’m switching my cell phone off,’ he repeated, ‘so I can give you my undivided attention. The impatient homebuyers of New York will just have to speak after the tone.’

  ‘That’s very sweet of you,’ I said carefully. ‘Would you like me to switch off mine?’

  ‘That depends on whether you consider you’re working or not.’

  Our eyes met and I racked my brains for something clever to say while my heart pounded at the serious look on his face. I got the distinct impression that there was some subliminal message here I was meant to respond to, something probably very obvious, but in my panic, I couldn’t work out what he wanted me to say: yes, or no.

  Jonathan’s eyebrows crooked sexily, and a smile flickered round the corners of his mouth.

  If I wasn’t working, then I was pretending to be someone I wasn’t, someone who was up to this level of sophisticated banter. I could only carry it off when I was pretending to be Honey.

  But hadn’t he just told me how stupid it was to have affairs with people you work with?

  He definitely had said that: in fact, hadn’t he introduced the gossip about two people I wasn’t meant to know well specifically to make that point? Was this just a way to catch me out, to get me to admit my feelings so he could let me down gently?

  My spirits sank.

  Then with a deafening roar of trumpets, the firework display started and we turned instinctively to the explosion of white light in the sky. Red, silver and blue chrysanthemums boomed and glittered in the inky darkness while selections from Wagner and Led Zeppelin boomed forth from the loudspeakers.

  There are few things in life that make you feel quite so at one with humanity as joining in ritual responses with thousands of people at the same time. I suppose it’s why line-dancing and Moonyism are so popular. But my mind refused to
take it in, going round and round in circles, wishing I had the courage to do what I wanted, instead of what was right.

  The noise from the fireworks and the musical accompaniment was so loud that there was no point talking. In the general crush forward, Jonathan and I had ended up standing quite close together, and I could feel his arm squashed against my waist. As if he could read my thoughts, he lifted it very casually, said, ‘Do you mind?’ and before I could respond, he slipped it round my waist.

  My heart gave an almighty thump, and for a dizzying moment, I considered turning without another word and kissing him.

  No! You mustn’t read too much into it, snapped the voice of reason, as the rockets scattered crackling gold and green stars over our heads like Space Dust. This poor man found out this afternoon that his wife’s going ahead with the divorce. He’s hurt! Just like you were after Orlando, only a million times worse!

  Jonathan moved his hand slightly on my hip and under my thick coat a thousand shivers ran up my back, just like the fireworks exploding in the sky above our heads.

  Oh God, I despaired. I was so out of my depth here. I knew I should say something Honey-ish – just to prove I was the smart and sexy girl he thought he was with – but my mind was a complete and total blank.

  I savoured the feeling of standing so close to Jonathan for as long as the fireworks lasted, praying we’d moved on from that difficult question, but then during a brief lull in proceedings, he lifted the flap on my hat and shouted in my ear, ‘So? You never told me – is your work phone on or what?’

  My confidence drained away and I bottled it completely. ‘Jonathan, it doesn’t feel like work!’ I yelled back, hoping that would cover both eventualities.

  His face froze a little, as the music dimmed slightly. ‘But it is, right?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ I faltered, scanning his face for clues. Did that mean he thought it was? ‘As you were saying just then, business and pleasure . . . well, you have to be careful, don’t you?’

  It was no use. Honey’s chat had completely deserted me. I wanted him to say, ‘But tonight is pleasure, not business!’ but he didn’t. And I just couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t carry off gestures like that.