What a Girl Wants

  ‘The photos, dear?’

  ‘Of Jane’s dresses,’ I reminded him. ‘For the party?’

  ‘Oh yes. They were marvellous.’

  Even though I was plenty confused myself, I couldn’t help but notice he sounded distracted. ‘Is everything OK?’ I asked. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  ‘Just some hiccups,’ he said, smoothing out his voice and my nerves. ‘Teething problems I probably should have expected with a new business. Nothing to worry about at all. Let’s all catch up this evening at dinner, yes?’

  ‘Sounds brilliant. See you then.’

  I hung up the phone, pulling my knees up to my chest, and sighed. All I had to do was get through the rest of the day without killing anyone and I’d be just fine.

  ‘Well, bugger me backwards, look who it is. How’s your vagina?’

  ‘Morning, Paige,’ I smiled into my iPhone in spite of myself. ‘My vagina is fine. How’s yours?’

  ‘Grown over,’ she replied, the line crackling very slightly. ‘Sealed up. There are tumbleweeds up there, I think. Tell me everything.’

  ‘I would if I had any idea what’s going on,’ I said, turning on my computer and pressing a hand over the speakers before it could bust out its irritating Apple chime. ‘But I need a favour and you’re the only person I trust to help.’

  ‘Are you trying to flatter me because you know I won’t want to do it?’ she asked. ‘Because I’m very lazy and if it means getting off my arse, I won’t lie, I’m probably going to say no.’

  ‘There is the slightest getting-off-the-arse element,’ I admitted, ‘but only to walk to the printer. Mostly, it just involves using your eyes and pressing, like, four buttons.’

  ‘Four is a lot,’ Paige said. ‘You’re clearly taking liberties but luckily for you, the printer is next to my desk.’

  ‘I need someone to look over the Perito’s pitch for me and then print it out,’ I explained, opening up my PowerPoint document from the night before and scanning to make sure I hadn’t gone completely mad. ‘I’m emailing it all to Charlie but he’s shit at presentation boards and I’m worried I won’t have time to get it done properly before Monday.’

  ‘You’re still going ahead with this then?’ she asked. ‘Because someone might have told me that a certain tallish, blondish shagger had made an appearance in Milan and that the two of you were getting along quite well.’

  ‘How are you in touch with Amy?’ I opened an email and clicked on the attachments. ‘That girl cannot be trusted to relay the facts.’

  ‘Facebook, innit?’ Paige said. ‘And Twitter. And Snapchat. She loves an app, that girl.’

  ‘She’s sending you Snapchats?’ I pressed send and tried very hard not to think what she was sending photos of. ‘Yes, I am still doing this and yes, Nick is here but no, I haven’t got a clue what’s going on. I thought I had for half a second but you know what he’s like.’

  ‘You know what?’ she said. ‘I really don’t. I only know Nick the Knobhead. I know the character he puts about, the arrogant, full-of-himself shagger, but that’s not really him, is it? Or is it? Because I’ll be so happy if it is.’

  ‘I honestly don’t know,’ I said, wishing it wasn’t the truth. ‘He changes his mind more often than I change my knickers and I know you don’t know me that well, but believe me, I am fastidious about clean knickers.’

  ‘Good to know,’ Paige replied. ‘Back to Nick: you could do something incredibly wacky and ask him what’s going on?’

  I looked over my monitor and checked out my reflection in the mirror. Thank God Nick hadn’t been there when I woke up, I looked like a panda on meth.

  ‘It is starting to look like I’m going to have to take such drastic measures,’ I said, trying to wipe away some of the mascara that was crusted all around my eyes. I didn’t care what Amy said: there was no way Debbie Harry walked around looking this shit. ‘Terrifying.’

  ‘And not to make matters more difficult but where does this leave taller, darker and quite frankly as far as I’m concerned, handsomer, Charlie?’

  ‘It leaves him as my best friend,’ I said, hoping it was still true. ‘I haven’t quite worked that part out yet.’

  ‘At least you’re sending him a brilliant ad campaign for chicken,’ she reasoned. ‘That’s bound to cushion the blow. Sorry I’m dumping you, darling, but ta-da! Here’s a big old boost up the career ladder.’

  ‘Are you taking the piss?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not sure, to be honest,’ she replied, ‘but I’m looking at this presentation and it is brilliant. Don’t be a chicken! Eat one. Really funny.’

  ‘Because Perito’s is spicy,’ I said, excited. ‘So people need to be brave to eat it! And we’ll have a man in a shit chicken suit running around with a load of blokes doing Evel Knievel stuff – you know, stupid things that men think are cool.’

  ‘Yeah, it wasn’t a difficult concept to grasp,’ she sighed. ‘But thanks for assuming I’m an idiot. I’ll check it, print it out, and courier it over. Send me his address?’

  ‘Sending it now,’ I said, still very pleased with myself. It wasn’t often I managed to take someone hurling insults at me and turn them into a killer ad campaign. I was a glass of whisky and two married mistresses from feeling just like Don Draper. And it was a bit early in the day for the whisky. ‘Thanks so much for this, you’re a lifesaver.’

  ‘So you’re still coming back at the weekend?’ she asked. ‘Do you want to get lunch on Sunday or something? Catch me up on how your very many difficult conversations go?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll let you know when we’re back,’ I looked around my bedroom, feeling incredibly possessive all of a sudden. ‘We’ll make a plan.’

  ‘Fine, glamorous photography lady,’ she said before blowing me two kisses. ‘Talk to you later.’

  ‘Paige?’ I squeaked before she could hang up.

  ‘Tess?’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, feeling silly and grateful and sad and happy all at the same time, ‘for not sending me home in Hawaii. You could have kicked me off that shoot right at the beginning. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be here now.’

  ‘Don’t thank me too soon,’ she warned. ‘And don’t do yourself down. You’re good, Tess. You’re a good photographer, and I’m only going to say this once, but you’re a hot piece and a nice person.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, wanting to give the phone a hug.

  ‘I mean, a bit too nice sometimes, probably. Almost erring on the side of martyr. And you’d do a lot better if you put a bit more effort into the hot piece part of that compliment but in general, all the raw materials are there for a shit-hot, shit-kicker of a woman.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, wanting to hang up.

  ‘No worries.’ This time I got three kisses. ‘Ciao ciao, bella.’

  Peering back into the mirror, I frowned, peeling off my shirt and heading for the shower. It was hard to be annoyed with someone when you looked like Alice Cooper’s ugly twin sister but somehow I found a way.

  The showers in the palazzo weren’t the most modern or luxurious in the world but any kind of hot running water was pretty wonderful when you had woken up alone in a bed that wasn’t your own. I wasn’t quite sure how it happened but almost an hour had passed since my chat with Paige when I finally found myself fully dressed. Amy was hanging out in the living room, knees first on the sofa, leaning out of the window and staring at the beautiful, sunny day outside.

  ‘You look nice,’ she said, giving me a slightly surprised but approving glance. I curtsied, holding out the skirt of my little red sundress and accidentally showing her my knickers. It was shorter than I might have liked, but that’s what I got for letting a gay man choose my clothes. ‘You’ve done something with your hair.’

  ‘Washed it and dried it,’ I declared, joining her on the settee. ‘Fancy, I know.’

  ‘What’s the occasion?’ she asked. ‘Is the Queen coming for dinner?’

  I shrugged, trying to fi
nd my bench in the park. ‘Could be. You never know with Al, do you?’

  Three sharp knocks announced Nick’s entrance. He walked right in before we could invite him, without waiting for anyone to come to the door. I knew it was really my fault for not locking it behind me on my way in but I was still annoyed enough to blame him for anything and everything that came to mind. The door not being locked, apartheid, Justin Bieber’s breakdown, whatever.

  ‘There you are.’ Nick strode into the middle of the room in a beautiful light blue shirt that almost matched his eyes, his hair darker than usual, still damp from a shower maybe, and his jeans were perfectly tight in the arse and loose in the leg. I wondered how many pairs he had tried on before he bought them. I hoped it was at least nine. Jeans shopping was soul-destroying.

  ‘You’re just so bloody good-looking,’ Amy sighed loudly, sliding down onto her backside and sighing. ‘Could you wear a bag over your head or something?’

  ‘Is there anywhere else I should be?’ I asked him, ignoring Amy. It was something that took a lot of practice and he seemed to be struggling with it, his attention constantly flickering over to her stony expression.

  ‘You’re not where I left you,’ he said. ‘Does she need to be here for this?’

  ‘Not where you left me?’ I was confused. ‘I’m not your car keys.’

  ‘No, she’s not,’ Amy agreed. ‘And yes, Nicholas, I do need to be here. It’s my room.’

  ‘You said you were tired and I woke up early so I went for a run,’ Nick said, rolling up the arms of his sleeves as he spoke. He did not seem to be enjoying his audience. ‘And I got back and you weren’t there.’

  ‘I was tired last night,’ I said, so glad I had washed my hair. Clean hair was much better for self-righteous flicking. ‘That didn’t mean I was tired this morning.’

  Nick stared across the room and out of the window, his jaw tight and his expression dark. Our living room had gorgeous high ceilings and huge, bright windows but Nick managed to suck all the air out of the room and replace it with tension in a heartbeat. Someone had turned the volume up on the cars driving by on the street below and every dog bark made me jump.

  ‘Ooh!’

  One too many seconds of awkward silence were broken by Amy.

  ‘So, you slept in his bed last night but didn’t put out?’ she asked, pointing at me. ‘And then he woke up this morning with a hard-on, as you do, but thought you didn’t want to eff him so he went for a run, or he had a wank but doesn’t want to say that in front of me, and when he got back, you’d disappeared. So now he’s being mardy?’

  I looked at Nick and shrugged, the sounds outside returning to normal volume, the room relaxing around me. ‘Sounds about right.’

  ‘And you’re annoyed because he wasn’t there when you woke up and he’s annoyed because you’d gone when he got back from his run, which had to be really difficult with a hard-on. Just saying.’ Amy rolled her eyes and rested her head on the back of the settee. ‘Do you two need a full-time translator or what?’

  ‘It would seem so,’ Nick replied, carefully folded sleeves now folded right across his chest.

  ‘It’s not Tess’s fault,’ Amy said, hopping up off the settee and patting Nick on the shoulder as she passed. ‘She’s never really had to deal with a proper wanker like you. She’s probably going to fuck this up another couple of times … just so you know.’

  ‘Duly noted,’ he said, the suggestion of a smile crinkling around his eyes while Amy backed into her bedroom while theatrically staring at Nick’s arse.

  ‘I was annoyed that you weren’t there when I woke up,’ I said as her door closed. ‘You should have woken me up.’

  ‘And I was annoyed that you weren’t there when I got back,’ he replied. ‘Now that’s cleared up, can we talk? Without an intermediary?’

  I looked out the window and immediately found my bench. It looked different in the daytime.

  ‘Apparently not well but we can try,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you start?’

  ‘Not here.’ Nick held out a hand and cocked his head towards the door. ‘I want to show you something.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t run off the erection,’ Amy shouted through her closed bedroom door. ‘Be safe.’

  ‘She doesn’t get out much,’ I said, my body fizzing as his fingers wove themselves through mine. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Somewhere erections are frowned upon,’ he replied. ‘So Amy doesn’t have to worry.’

  I made a small half-laughing sound but I couldn’t help but be a little bit disappointed. Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered washing my hair after all.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘I can’t believe you made me get on a motorbike,’ I said, my arms still wrapped around Nick’s waist minutes after we had come to a standstill. ‘My legs don’t work.’

  ‘Your legs do work,’ Nick said, calmly peeling away my arms and knocking down the kickstand with his boot. ‘Can you stand up?’

  ‘No.’ I was not lying.

  In twenty-eight years, I had never been on a motorbike. When I was little, my uncle had come off his and spent an entire summer in traction. While I found his agony hilarious at the time – very few things were as funny to a seven-year-old girl as a grown man in a full-body plaster cast – the message was clear: get on a motorbike and you will die. My mother had been quite vocal about it, my uncle had been lucky but every single other person who came within fifteen feet of a motorbike was absolutely, definitely, one hundred per cent guaranteed to die. And like everything else my mother had banged on about over and over and over, I took the message to heart and considered it gospel.

  Until an attractive man asked me to get on the back of his bike …

  ‘It’s the best way to see Milan,’ Nick explained, manoeuvring himself out of his seat and attempting to loosen my vice-like grip on the handles behind me. ‘Didn’t you love it?’

  I stared at him with wide-open eyes. ‘I have had my eyes closed for the last twenty minutes.’

  ‘We were only on the bike for five,’ he replied. ‘Come on, it’s safe now.’

  ‘I’m not getting back on it,’ I said, letting him lift me off the leather seat of the bike, holding my breath until I felt solid ground beneath my feet.

  ‘Then you’ll walk home,’ he said without flinching. ‘Now look, wasn’t that worth it?’

  The sun was so strong, it was hard to see exactly where I was until Nick pulled the sunglasses off the top of my head and slid them over my eyes.

  ‘Honestly,’ he sighed and tilted my head upwards. ‘Look up there.’

  We were parked beside what looked like a big church until I raised my eyes up and realized that it just kept going. And going and going and going.

  ‘Woah.’

  ‘I think that’s what the new pope said when he came here for the first time,’ Nick commented. ‘It’s the duomo. Isn’t it amazing?’

  The blinding white spires of the cathedral stretched so high, it looked like they would split the sky and make it bleed. Back on the ground, I stumbled backwards, dizzy from looking upwards and still trying to find a spot where I could take it all in. It was basically the size of the village I had grown up in. I was impressed. I’d never been especially religious – me and my sisters hadn’t been raised to believe in anything other than being home in time for tea – but I’d always been impressed by churches and cathedrals. The idea that someone, or rather a lot of someones, would dedicate their lives to building something so epic without so much as an iPhone to help them blew my mind. I couldn’t even put up a picture without the spirit level app. Not that I ever put up my own pictures, but I did like playing with the app.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, feeling as though I could look at it for days and never get bored. ‘How have I not seen this before now?’

  ‘You’ve been walking around with your eyes closed?’ Nick pulled on my arm. ‘Let’s go.’

  I pulled up my shades to show him that my eyes were wide open. ‘W
e’re going in?’

  ‘No.’ He leaned in and pressed his lips against mine, quickly enough for it not to be a big deal to anyone around us, but long enough to make all the blood rush to my head. ‘We’re going up.’

  As much as I hated how arrogant and self-righteous Nick could be, I loved the fact that he took charge and made plans. I was so used to being the Boss of Everything at work and waiting for Charlie to plan anything more exciting than a lunchtime trip to Subway that it made a nice change. He made me feel like a girl, rather than a bossy loser.

  ‘This way.’ He pushed me through a metal detector, surrounded by very tall men in very impressive uniforms, carrying very big guns. I cowered, keeping my eyes down and praying that they wouldn’t shoot me. Nick gave them all manly nods and kept on going. ‘You don’t mind a few stairs, do you?’

  ‘No …’ I wasn’t entirely sure. How many stairs were a few?

  ‘Ladies first, then.’

  In front of me was a very narrow, very dark, stone staircase. I peered around the corner, only to see it twist upwards into the darkness after four or five steps, and looked back at Nick. He gave me a bright sunny smile, followed by a gentle push on the arse.

  ‘Is there not a lift?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘But we’re not using it.’

  ‘Gotcha,’ I said, turning my back to him and trying to delicately dab away the sweat that was already speckling my forehead from being out in the morning sun. ‘How many steps is it?’

  ‘To the top?’ he asked, turning to squint at a sign in Italian behind him. ‘That would be nine hundred and nineteen.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ I said. ‘Great workout. I haven’t had my run today.’

  ‘You run?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’ I replied. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘One foot in front of the other, Tess.’ Nick gave me a second, considerably less gentle shove. ‘There are people waiting.’

  ‘Easy,’ I said, my legs already protesting. ‘Piece of cake.’

  ‘You enjoying yourself?’ he asked as we rounded the second corner. ‘With the project, I mean?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, pleased to discover I could speak and climb upstairs at the same time. Tess Brookes, multitasker. ‘I’m loving it, actually, and I’ve got so many great shots. It’s fun, documenting Al’s new baby.’