Henry opened the back door of the car and I climbed inside as gracefully as possible. That was to say, I very nearly managed not to show him my knickers.
‘Thank you. For tonight,’ I said as he hung on the door and I knew he was still anticipating an invitation to join me. ‘It was nice to meet you.’
‘I’ll call you,’ he promised, finally closing the door, accepting defeat. I pressed myself up against the window, watching him watch me as the car pulled away. Then I realized what was wrong with Henry’s kisses. They weren’t Adam’s. The strange, unsettled feeling inside me grew stronger and stranger before souring into something far more familiar. It was guilt. I felt guilty and lonely and so far away from the man I still loved.
‘Where am I going?’ the driver asked we drove off down the road, stereo pumping out hard dance music that burned the soft edges off my moment. I gave him my address and was flung against the back seat as we tore out of the city centre. Trying to ignore the sensory overload of the tiny car, I tapped my bottom lip and relived Henry’s kiss for a moment.
As we burned through the streets with a booming hip-hop soundtrack, I fumbled for my phone to text my friends and let them know I’d survived the date, but instead of typing a group text, my finger hovered over the Facebook notification, letting me know Adam had liked my photo. I closed my eyes and gipped as the little car that could hopped over a speed bump, bouncing me out of my seat and hitting my head on the roof of the car.
‘Sorry,’ the driver said automatically.
‘No worries,’ I replied, fastening my seatbelt and attempting to go limp.
I wondered how Adam would feel if he knew I’d been on a date. Jealous, I told myself. So jealous and so angry. I wondered how he would feel if he’d seen me kissing Henry. The same way I’d felt when I’d seen him kissing that girl? Well, now we were even. He wasn’t the only one who could go around snogging good-looking people in public; he wasn’t the only one who could get on with his life. But righteous indignation did nothing to soothe the swirling pit of misery in my stomach. I felt as though all the fucks I’d ever not given had come home to roost. What if he did find out? Would he be angry? Would he even want to speak to me again?
‘Sorry,’ the driver shouted over the ear-splittingly loud music as we sailed over another speed bump and landed back down with a bounce in the middle of the road. The driver swerved out of the way of an oncoming bus and then tutted loudly. ‘Fucking buses, though.’
‘Buses,’ I agreed, clutching my seatbelt in sheer terror. Probably wasn’t a good idea to upset him by pointing out he was the worst driver on earth – he was clearly mentally unwell.
At least I wouldn’t need to worry about feeling guilty about kissing Henry if I died on my way home, I thought to myself, closing my eyes and praying for safe passage along the A52.
21
‘What I would do, is have someone kidnap M and then, when Bond goes to find out who’s got him, he finds out it’s his dad,’ Chris said, hitting the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. ‘That would be amazing.’
‘Isn’t his dad dead though?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t him being an orphan a massive part of it?’
‘He’s supposed to be dead,’ he agreed as he pulled into the left lane to undertake a Volkswagen Beetle travelling at the speed limit. ‘That’s why it’s amazing. It’s the last person you expect, father figure versus actual father. The only person Bond can never kill.’
I looked out the window and watched the countryside blur past in a swipe of green and grey and blue. ‘What about his mum?’
‘Still dead,’ he confirmed. ‘Box office gold.’
Chris put his foot down as we passed a large, green sign, declaring London seventy-five miles away and I leaned forward to turn up the radio. He had insisted on giving me a lift down to London on Saturday morning while we were both at Mum and Dad’s on Friday night and I couldn’t turn him down in front of my dad. I had agreed to check out the upstairs space at the bar with Jane and her brother, to see if her dream of a sixties speakeasy could become a reality, while Chris was on his way to some ridiculously overpriced jewellers to buy a christening gift for Gus and a something for Cassie. He had told me what, but I couldn’t remember, I hadn’t been listening.
‘Listen, I don’t want to stick my oar in,’ Chris began. I couldn’t even bring myself to laugh. ‘But I told Cassie I’d have a word. About tomorrow.’
‘What about tomorrow?’ I asked. It was a classic Chris tactic, whenever he had to have an awkward conversation, he would open by blaming whatever topic he wanted to discuss on someone else. I was almost certain this was the only reason he’d got married in the first place. Cassie was now his lifelong scapegoat.
‘The christening,’ he said, lowering the volume I had just raised with the controls on his steering wheel. ‘You and Liv.’
‘What about me and Liv?’ I asked, my shoulders stiff.
‘You’re two-thirds of the bloody godparents and you haven’t spoken to each other in a week,’ he reminded me. ‘You’re not going to give me any grief, are you?’
I strained against my seatbelt to give him a questioning look. ‘When in my life have I ever given you any grief?’ I asked. ‘What do you think I’m going to do?’
‘I don’t know, do I?’ he exclaimed as we sailed down the A1. ‘But I need to know you’re both going to behave yourselves. Cassie doesn’t want a scene.’
‘Then Cassie shouldn’t have married you, should she?’ I suggested, buttoning and unbuttoning the cuff of my shirt. ‘There’s not going to be any scene.’
‘You could have bloody well waited to break up with her until after the christening,’ he sniffed, flicking his eyes up to the Beetle in the rear view.
‘I do apologize,’ I replied. The car was right up our arse. Didn’t appreciate being undertaken, obviously. ‘Anyway, we haven’t broken up. And again, for the millionth time, I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Right, right,’ he nodded, a smirk curling at the edges of his lips. ‘Well, if you don’t want to talk, I shan’t say a word.’
One of Chris’s biggest problems was that he could not keep a secret to save his life. He knew something I didn’t and he was desperate to let me know but he savoured the moment, flexing the withheld information over me for a moment.
‘What’s going on with you and this dark-haired bird?’
Shutting my mouth, my jaw tensed as though it were wired shut and my eyes widened for just a second. Chris’s smile broadened.
‘What dark-haired bird?’ I asked, an amber alert flashing in my guts.
‘Come on,’ he egged. ‘Cassie saw you with some scorching hot brunette in the Bell. You’re not going to deny it, are you?’
Cassie had seen us? If Cassie had seen us, then Liv knew and that could not be good.
‘You mean Jane?’ I replied casually.
‘I believe that is to whom I am referring, yes.’
‘She owns the bar, you know the one you’re driving me to right now?’ I explained, keeping to the facts and trying not to panic. ‘I don’t know what your missus thinks she saw but that’s all it is. She came up to choose the wood for the bar and then we went for a drink. How scandalous is that?’
It wasn’t an entirely accurate timeline of events but it was all the information Chris needed. Not that a little thing like the truth mattered if the village jungle drums had already got back to Liv. I hadn’t seen Cassie in the Bell on Wednesday, wherever she’d been lurking she hadn’t seen fit to come over and speak to me, so there was no telling what she thought she’d seen. And no telling what she’d passed on to her supposed best friend. I felt a bit sick at the thought – it had been three days since the drink with Jane in the Bell and it would only have taken Cassie three minutes to turn an innocent drink into something else. What had she told Liv? Was this why she’d told me not to call again? What if she wasn’t at home, working things out, but at home thinking I was already shagging somebody else? My brain hummed with questions and potenti
al disasters and Chris’s driving wasn’t the only thing making me nauseous.
‘What exactly did Cassie say?’ I asked, with a dry mouth. ‘Has she spoken to Liv?’
‘She said you were in the Bell with the closest thing the East Midlands had seen to a supermodel since Kelly Brook was signing trainers in Debenhams,’ he said, steering with one hand. ‘And of course she’s spoken to Liv. Not that it matters, Liv was there as well.’
Oh no. Fuck fuck, fuck fuck, fuck fuck fuck. I was screwed.
‘Liv saw me with Jane?’
‘What does it matter?’ Chris asked gleefully. ‘She’s only someone you’re working with, there’s nothing going on.’
‘There isn’t,’ I insisted. My phone burned in the palm of my hand. ‘But you don’t know what it looked like, do you? To other people?’
‘I know exactly what it looked like to other people,’ he replied. ‘It looked like you were out with a total fox, chugging drinks in your local when you’re supposed to already have a girlfriend.’
‘If it weren’t for all this break bollocks, none of this would be a problem.’ I punched the roof of the car and Chris jumped in his seat, the car starting forward even faster than before. ‘Liv has never not trusted me. So what if I was having a drink with a woman? I work with women all the time, she’s never been jealous.’
‘Hey, don’t take your cockups out on my car,’ he warned, calming his pace. ‘I know you think I’m a knobhead, little brother, but I’m not a complete idiot.’
I had nothing nice to say so I said nothing.
‘This has been going on, how long? Nearly two weeks?’
Nodding, I stared down at my phone as though, if I concentrated long enough and hard enough, Liv might call so I could clear up all this nonsense, once and for all.
‘It’s time to work it out,’ my brother advised. ‘If you’re going to end it, end it. If you’re going to propose, propose. This limbo bollocks will do your head in.’
‘My head is already done in,’ I replied. ‘And call me crazy, but I don’t think proposing would go down very well right now.’
I stared at the phone in my lap. Should I call her? She’d said not to but that was before I knew what she thought she knew.
‘Tell me about this Jane,’ Chris said, turning off the radio altogether. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing going on?’
‘There’s nothing going on,’ I repeated, still trying to telepathically link with Liv through the O2 network. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘Show me a photo then,’ he demanded. ‘Let’s have a look.’
‘Strangely enough, Chris, I don’t carry around headshots of my clients,’ I said, furious with him, furious with Cass and furious with myself. ‘You knob.’
‘Get her on Facebook then, Nutsack,’ he replied, swerving to dodge a kamikaze pigeon. ‘Or have you not added her?’
‘Of course I haven’t added her. I’m not fourteen, I hardly ever use Facebook.’
Chris sat in the driver’s seat, a smug grin spread right across his face. ‘You haven’t added her because you fancy her. If there was nothing going on, you’d add her.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ I said, refusing to look at him. ‘You fucktard, I haven’t added her on Facebook because I’m building her bar. She’s a client, I don’t need her going through every photo from your stag do.’
‘Yeah, because you fancy her,’ he said with complete conviction. ‘If there was nothing going on, you’d have added her. You don’t want Liv clicking on your Facebook and seeing you adding loads of fitties.’
‘If I’d have added her, she might have got the wrong idea,’ I replied, finger hovering over the Facebook icon on my home screen. ‘And that’s the last thing I want.’
‘Well, what’s she like then?’ Chris asked. ‘I mean, Cass was going on like she was Scarlett Johansson crossed with Jennifer Lopez crossed with, I don’t know, Stoya or something.’
‘I find it highly unlikely that your wife compared a woman I was with in the pub to your favourite porn star,’ I said, frowning. ‘But yeah, I suppose she’s fit.’
‘And?’
‘And, I don’t know,’ I replied, trying to choose just one of the thousands of words that were desperate to trip off my tongue. ‘She’s cool. She’s done a lot of travelling, been to loads of the same places I have. She’s really into mixology and this bar she’s opening, she’s really easy to talk to, she’s really honest. Pretty funny as well. Can I stop now?’
‘You could have stopped any time,’ he said, concerned. ‘Fucking hell, Ad, maybe you should propose to her instead of Liv.’
‘She’s basically Marsellus Wallace’s wife.’ I fished for a way to explain that he would understand. ‘I’ve got to be nice to her because I’m working for her, but I’m not going to do anything.’
‘“Say you had a lovely evening, drink your drink, go home and jerk off, that’s all you’re going to do”,’ he quoted. ‘I get it but I’m not so sure. You’re the one with the missus for a start. I think that makes you Uma Thurman and she’s John Travolta.’
‘And Liv is Ving Rhames?’
He furrowed his brow. ‘It wouldn’t be the first celebrity I’d think to compare her to, but if the shoe fits …’
‘The shoe wouldn’t fit. The shoe would be about seven sizes too big. It’s a shit shoe.’ I looked out of the window of the Jag so Chris couldn’t see the colour in my cheeks. ‘You asked me what she was like, I’ve told you. There’s nothing going on.’
‘And if you weren’t interested, the correct answer would have been tall, dark hair, nice tits, not she’s the world’s most incredible woman oh, and she’s funny,’ he said emphatically. ‘Adam, I’m serious. You need to do some thinking. If things are really this rocky with Liv, and you’re mooning over this Jane bird, why shouldn’t you give this a go? You know what I always say about taking a car for a test drive.’
‘Because I love Liv,’ I replied with only the slightest hesitation. ‘Because two weeks ago, I was going to ask her to marry me.’
‘“Was” is the operative word in that sentence,’ he said. ‘Past tense. You were going to ask her to marry you.’
The quickest way to shut him up was to agree with him, however much it pained me. And it never pained me more than when there was even the slightest chance he could be right.
‘While I remember,’ Chris forced an air of nonchalance into his voice, fooling no one. ‘I meant to ask you something.’
I rested my hands on the top of my head, knuckles brushing against the roof of the Jag. It was a nice car but it was not made for tall men, something he had not considered when his wallet went out shopping to overcompensate for what was not in his pants.
‘You do know Liv was supposed to have a date last night, don’t you?’
He paused and looked over at me.
‘No she was not,’ I replied, staring straight ahead. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Oh, all right then,’ Chris turned on the radio to listen for the final scores. ‘She didn’t agree to go out with a bloke on Tinder and then cancel. Even though she did.’
I sucked in my cheeks and bit down, refusing to ask any follow up questions. There was no way. Liv was not on Tinder, Liv wouldn’t not go on a date. She was the one who said no seeing other people, she would never, ever do that. Unless she thought I’d gone on a date too …
‘I’m only telling you what I’ve been told. Cass didn’t want me to tell you but it’s hardly fair, is it? Her running around town with god knows who and you sat at home like a numpty. But it’s probably nothing,’ he said, turning up the radio. ‘I mean, Cass did say she’d cancelled it.’
She’d better have cancelled. I couldn’t stand even the thought of her flipping through photos of other men; it was enough to send me over the edge. Was that what the new Facebook photo was in aid of? Tinder? I’d liked that bloody photo. Sitting round Chris’s house, watching Mum’s dodgy home video of her yoga retreat and desperately wishing I was with Li
v instead, I had liked, nay, loved, that photo.
‘Probably nothing,’ I agreed amiably while the world around me burned. ‘Thanks, Chris.’
‘You can drop me off here,’ I instructed as we passed Jane’s Mini, parked right in front of the bar. ‘This is perfect.’
‘Hang on, there’s a space up there,’ Chris said, slowing down and whipping the car across the street, pulling straight into a slightly too small parking spot. He looked at me, grinning from ear to ear. ‘Come on, though, that’s a nice bit of parking.’
I unbuckled my seatbelt and opened the door. I’d been desperate to get out of the car and away from my brother ever since he’d decided to share the news about Liv’s non-date. If he followed me even a foot there was every chance I’d throw him in front of the first passing lorry. ‘Well done. Call me when you’re done and I’ll come and meet you.’
‘Hold on.’ He turned off the engine and unclipped himself. ‘I’m coming with.’
‘You are not,’ I replied, startled. I unfolded my long legs, cramped from two hours of hitting imaginary brakes on the passenger’s side, and immediately crossed the road. ‘I’m working. This is work. You’re not coming with me.’
‘If you think I’m taking off without seeing this goddess you’re absolutely not interested in,’ Chris started, checking the street for traffic before bolting after me, ‘you’re more mental than I thought.’
‘Chris, I am a hundred per cent serious.’ Surrounded by the seductive inner-city scents of southern fried chicken and unemptied bins, I turned to threaten my big brother as politely as possible. ‘Please don’t be a dick. I don’t need you to ruin this for me.’
The two-inch difference in our height disappeared as my shoulders rounded and his spine pulled him all the way up straight. ‘Ad, what do you think I’m going to do?’ he asked. ‘I’m not going to Kanye your bar, am I? “Excuse me, I’m going to let Adam finish but I’m the best furniture designer in all the world right now.”’
‘I don’t know what you’re going to do,’ I began to panic when I saw Jane walking towards us, sunglasses on and a giant cup of something in her hand. ‘But precedent does not suggest you’ll be incredibly supportive.’