‘Hi, you’ve reached Charlie Wilder.’
Oh, for the love of all that was holy, I found the balls to make the most difficult phone call of my life and it went to answerphone? Really?
‘I can’t take your call right now so leave me a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Cheers.’
‘Hello!’ I buzzed down the line as soon as I heard the beep. ‘It’s me. It’s Tess. Um, anyway, I got your email. Glad you liked the pitch stuff. I said I’d call you so I’m calling you!’
Nice. Really smooth.
‘Anyway,’ I went on in my hyper-happy voice. ‘I wanted to talk to you about something and I didn’t really want to wait but you’re not there so I will!’
Insert feeble laugh.
‘Sooo, yeah, maybe text me and let me know when’s good to chat. Talk. We should have a talk.’
Insert awkward silence.
‘Bye then, love you!’
I hung up and immediately hit myself in the forehead with my phone. What was I thinking? Yes, I had ended every phone call to Charlie in the last decade with a ‘love you’ and ‘love you’ was very different to ‘I love you’ but it really wasn’t helping me to set the scene that needed to be set. What a knob I was turning out to be.
‘Al!’
I had managed to waste a good couple of hours, taking some more photos of the house and the grounds, going through the shots I’d got at Warren’s studios, avoiding thinking about Charlie and generally killing time until I could touch Nick again. It was past four when I trotted into the lobby and saw Al sitting on the bottom step of the staircase. He had a phone in one hand, a worried expression on his face and a three-piece suit on his back. The mobile phone looked almost as out of place on him as the suit. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him holding one before.
‘Going somewhere nice?’
‘In theory, I should be.’ He gave me a welcoming smile and a kiss on each cheek but he did not look happy. ‘I’m going to see Edward. There’s been a problem with the samples.’
‘Everything was fine when I was there yesterday,’ I said, sitting down beside him. ‘The samples looked amazing.’
‘I’m not sure what he showed you then,’ Al said with a grimace. ‘But he just told me that there’s no way he can go ahead with the project.’
‘That’s not possible!’ I pulled my camera out of my bag and flipped through to my shots from the studio. ‘See? He had done all this already? I was sort of expecting him to have everything finished for the party.’
‘As was I.’ Al took my camera in his hands and stared. ‘This is all very strange. First the factory, then the shop and now Edward.’
None of this sounded like good news. ‘What’s happening with the factory? And the shop?’
‘Things at the shop are relatively simple, red tape and such.’ He waved a hand to show he wasn’t too worried, but everything about his demeanor said that was a lie. ‘But the factory is more of an issue. I don’t know how much you know about the manufacturing business?’
‘Oh, loads,’ I replied. ‘Pretty much everything. But I’m happy to humour you and have you explain it all in very simple terms.’
‘Of course,’ he said, the corners of his eyes crinkling. ‘I very much wanted to work with one specific factory. They don’t use child labour and all of their materials are fairly sourced – all of the things that were important to Jane. That are important to me.’
I made myself concentrate on Al’s troubles but I couldn’t help but worry a little bit about Amy. She was so excited.
‘And they can’t do it?’ I took my camera back and hung it carefully around my neck.
‘They say they can’t,’ he said.
I looked down at the image on the back of my camera, at a dress that might now never exist.
‘Do you know why?’ I asked. ‘Have they explained?’
‘They’re in China so the time difference is a bit of a pain,’ he explained. ‘We received an email overnight. I had offered to pay a premium to get things done the way I wanted them done in the time I wanted them doing and initially they agreed but now they’re saying they don’t have the resources. It’s all very frustrating. Perhaps Artie is right: I’m being very foolish thinking I can get into the fashion game at my age.’
‘Artie?’ My ears pricked up so fast, I felt like Lassie. ‘Artie said that?’
‘Let’s just say he wasn’t terribly supportive,’ Al said with as much diplomacy as he could muster. ‘He has to throw a tantrum from time to time. The trouble with having an only child is that they never learn to share.’
I was so used to seeing Al’s face smiling, it hurt my heart to see him sad. His suntanned face wore its wrinkles with pride and I was sure there was a story behind every one, but for all its worn in ways, everything looked wrong when he frowned. His forehead creased against his smile lines and for the first time, I thought he looked old.
‘Couldn’t he help you?’ I asked. ‘Couldn’t Artie talk to some people for you?’
‘Oh, Tess!’ Al clapped his hand on my knee and stood up, again, not nearly as light on his feet as he had been in Hawaii. ‘You’re very sweet to be so concerned for me but it’ll all work out for the best. I’m just an old man who is used to getting his own way. It was madness to think that I could turn up in a city that I haven’t visited in years and demand to have everything my own way. We’ll still have the party tomorrow night – I may have to learn a little humility, that’s all.’
‘Maybe you should speak to Artie though?’ I suggested, really not wanting to push too hard but desperate to find a way to make things work for Al. And for Jane.
‘I don’t think it would be a lot of help if I did,’ Al said. ‘If anything, I imagine he’d try to throw a few more flies in the ointment.’
He dropped his phone in his pocket and combed out his beard.
‘I might not make dinner this evening,’ he said, giving the driver of the car that had pulled up in front a quick salute. ‘But I trust you are excited about the party tomorrow evening?’
‘So excited,’ I agreed, glad to have another subject to turn to. ‘It’s going to be all right for me to take photos, isn’t it?’
‘I would be offended if you didn’t.’ He gave me a trademark Al twinkly smile and bowed gracefully. ‘I hear Kekipi and Miss Smith have been taking care of your fashion choices this afternoon. Any point in asking how you and your collaborator are collaborating?’
I smiled, my brain tipping right back over the edge at the very mention of Nick’s name. Actually he hadn’t even mentioned his name. Dear God, I was done for.
‘Ah, I see,’ Al smiled and strode out towards the car. ‘Young love, excellent news. Everything as it should be. And all is well with the world.’
I stood up and watched Al go, waving as the car pulled away and thinking how nice it would be for all to be well with the world, just for once.
‘Tess!’
But all was not well with the world. All was not even well within my bedroom. I hadn’t even closed the door when I heard Amy yelling from her room. Dropping my bag on the sofa and hearing a stomach-churning clunk as it missed its target, I sprinted into her bathroom, led by her screams.
She was definitely being murdered, I told myself, leaping to the worst possible conclusion as quickly as humanly possible.
‘What do I do? Help me, Tess!’ Amy wailed as I stopped short in front of her bathroom door.
I stood and I stared and then, when I’d had time to process, I laughed – hard and loud and in an incredibly unladylike fashion. Amy was wrapped in a bath towel that was bigger than she was, losing a fight with the most impressive bubble bath monster I had ever, ever seen.
‘What is happening?’ I asked, gasping for breath and kicking off my flip-flops before wading into the waist-deep foam. Because that would help. ‘What did you do?’
‘I was going to have a bath because I burnt my shoulders,’ she said, tears creeping into her voice. ‘You always sa
y if I get sunburnt I should have a bath.’
The fabric of my dress darkened as I fought my way through, feeling my way across the room and searching for the actual bath. Whatever was happening had to stop happening before the foam made its way into the living room. One ruined dress was nothing compared to a destroyed antique carpet.
‘You think this is my fault?’ I could hear whirring over Amy’s choking sobs. ‘You told me to have a bath.’
‘I gave you a suggestion and you turned Al’s house into a really bad club?’ I asked. ‘How did you manage this?’
‘There wasn’t any bubble bath.’ She backed away until she was almost out of the room altogether. ‘So I put shower gel in and then I turned the Jacuzzi jets on and then – oh, I don’t know, this just happened. I thought I was going to die.’
‘You put shower gel in a Jacuzzi bath?’ I gave my best friend my best ‘are you kidding me’ face and then took a deep breath, diving into the belly of the beast and slapping the side of the bath until I struck gold. Or at least, the off switch. The whirring quieted and the bubbles stopped multiplying and I regained faith that we would all live. ‘Seriously, Amy?’
‘I don’t know, do I?’ she ranted, still crying. ‘When have I ever been in a Jacuzzi? How could I know it would turn into The Thing?’
‘Don’t cry.’ I waded back through the foam and gave her a hug but Amy didn’t want to be consoled. Amy wanted to sit on the floor, surrounded by an admittedly delightful-smelling bubble fog and cry some more.
‘I can’t do anything,’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t even have a bath without fucking it up.’
‘That’s not true,’ I said, giving in and sitting on the floor next to her. This dress was buggered. ‘You can do lots of bloody things. Like you said, you’ve never had a Jacuzzi bath before, how would you know?’
‘Because you would know.’ She pawed at her face, wiping away her angry tears. ‘You wouldn’t put shower gel in there, no one would. I’m so stupid. I hate myself. I hate this.’
It was difficult to know where I should and shouldn’t touch since she was only wearing a towel and we were still boob-deep in bubbles but this felt like such a supportive patting situation.
‘You do not hate yourself, you’re not stupid and what are you talking about?’ I went with an affectionate punch in the shoulder. It was not especially well received.
‘All of it,’ she explained, unhelpfully. ‘I hate not knowing obvious stuff that everyone else knows. I know you’re the clever, serious one and I’m the stupid, wacky one but I’m tired of it, you know? Maybe I want to be taken seriously for a bit. Maybe I want to be the clever one, the one who gets things right.’
‘No one thinks that,’ I said without stopping to check whether or not I was telling her the truth. ‘No one thinks you’re stupid.’
‘Everyone does.’ She hung her head and sniffed. ‘Charlie does, my family does, my housemates do. All our friends think that. You even think that a little bit, that’s why you don’t want me to work with Al, because you think I’ll fuck it up.’
She wasn’t the only one who hated herself at that moment.
‘That’s not it at all.’ There were times, I decided, when it was perfectly acceptable to lie. ‘I only didn’t want you to rush into something that you didn’t know that much about in case it turned out you didn’t like it. If you’re excited about it and you’re into it, you’ll be amazing at it and we both know that.’
‘You’re a terrible liar.’ Amy leaned against me and rested her head against my arm. ‘How did you manage to pull off the fake name thing for so long in Hawaii?’
‘Everyone was drunk for quite a lot of the time,’ I admitted. ‘And anyway, shut up. When you want to do something, Amy Smith, you are bloody good at it and I’m being one hundred per cent honest now – I just haven’t seen you want to be good at anything for a while. Maybe you’ve been coasting a little bit.’
‘I panicked when I broke up with Dave,’ she said. ‘Everything was so mapped out and I was so scared that I threw it all out the window. Now I think I’d like to get the map back and just have a quick look and I can’t.’
‘Or,’ I suggested, ‘we could get a new map.’
‘I suppose,’ she replied, her voice a little bit high-pitched but not dolphins-could-hear-her-in-Miami high-pitched. ‘I freak out a little bit sometimes. I’m nearly thirty and I’ve got no idea what I’m doing with my life.’
‘Then this is going to be a pretty bloody exciting adventure, isn’t it?’ I told her. She didn’t need to know about Al’s logistical nightmares; giving her another reason to question her confidence wasn’t going to help anyone. ‘So yeah, you had to take a bit of time out to work out what you wanted to do, but Amy, if this was what the universe had waiting for you, isn’t it worth a few miserable retail jobs?’
‘Yeah …’ She blew a chunk of floating foam away from her face. ‘But don’t you start going on about the universe. I’m the one who reads her horoscope and says things like that, not you.’
‘Maybe we’re not quite as black and white as you think,’ I said, the bubbles in the bath starting to pop quietly. ‘Maybe we’re both a bit brilliant and a bit stupid.’
‘You could be on to something.’ She let out a sigh and stretched her legs, pressing her toes against the base of the toilet. ‘At least about you being a bit stupid.’
‘That’s the spirit.’ I kicked my legs in the mass of foam that still spilled over the bathtub, making the bubbles dance up into the air. ‘But so you know, being the clever sensible one can get really boring.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m still me,’ she said. Now I was paying attention, I saw that her shoulders really were red raw. Ouch. ‘Which already makes me loads cooler than you, so I’m not too worried about that.’
‘Thank goodness for that,’ I said, my sympathy waning fast. ‘I’ll leave you to clean all this up then.’
‘Where have you been all day?’ Amy tightened the towel around her boobs and bent forward onto her knees as if to start cleaning and then stopped. ‘How do you tidy up bubbles?’
‘I have no idea.’ I didn’t even attempt to help. ‘I was with Nick. We had The Talk.’
‘And?’
‘And I think we’re sort of giving it a try.’
‘You think?’
‘It’s a really long story.’ That I had no intention of telling her. ‘But the short version is, his ex cheated on him and so he’s a bit gun-shy about relationshps.’
‘Hmm.’
‘What does hmm mean?’ I asked as she attempted to smother the bubbles with a spare bath sheet.
‘I don’t know.’ She pulled up the towel, achieving nothing other than sending a load of bubbles wafting around the bathroom. ‘You’re sure he’s not doing the “I’m telling you I’m an arsehole so when I behave like an arsehole, you can’t be angry at me for it” thing?’
‘Is that a thing?’ I asked.
‘Oh yeah,’ she nodded. ‘That’s a massive thing.’
‘He wouldn’t do that, would he?’ I said, rubbing my itchy nose. ‘I don’t think he’s doing that.’
At least, I didn’t until she brought it up.
‘I only want you to be careful,’ she said. ‘You’re like a freshly hatched chick or something. Don’t let him get away with bullshit just because he’s got a massive cock and makes Michael Fassbender look like a right dog.’
‘Can we stop talking about his penis?’ I said, struggling to get the last word out loud. ‘Please?’
Amy turned to give me her best ‘are you kidding me?’ face.
‘Fine, I’m going to get dry. And then showered. And then dry again.’ I squeezed out the skirt of my dress and went to leave. ‘Can you sort this out from here?’
‘You can help if you want,’ she called after me as I crawled out of the world’s saddest foam party. ‘I don’t mind.’
‘No, you’re all right,’ I called back. ‘You’ve got it sorted and don’t forget to put some aftersun
on that sunburn.’
‘Yes, Mum,’ she shouted.
Even when I was trying not to be the sensible one, I couldn’t bloody help myself.
I knew things were getting out of control when I ran down to the dining room at eight and my empty stomach hadn’t even crossed my mind. In an attempt to avoid any and all potentially dangerous eventualities, I was wearing flat shoes, a black dress and had woven my hair into the best fishtail plait that several YouTube tutorials had to offer. Amy, exhausted from her one-woman Ibiza tribute, was already in bed and Al was still working, which left me, Nick and Kekipi for dinner.
As much as I wanted Nick all to myself, I was excited to be having dinner with someone else now we were almost officially a couple. The last time I had eaten food with a man I was also sleeping with, it was a 2 a.m. Burger King in Leicester Square with the accountant from Wimbledon who had taken me on three dates and I’d paid for my own burger. And my mum had wondered why that one didn’t work out.
‘Looks like we’ve been set up again.’
I opened the door to the outside dining room to find Nick sitting alone at a dinner table laid for five. He was wearing a slim-fitting white shirt and charcoal-grey trousers that pulled over his thighs. If my trousers had been that tight, I’d have wept into a bottomless pit of Ben & Jerry’s for three days and nights but on him, they looked wonderful. And the ideas I had for the black belt that was holding them up … Bad Tess.
‘No Kekipi?’ I asked, holding myself at the door. I’d been so excited to see him and now my feet didn’t know what to do. God, he was pretty.
‘I passed him on my way in but he was running off somewhere with what’s-his-name, Domenico?’ He poured red wine into the empty glass next to his. ‘You’re not planning on staying?’
‘Thinking about it,’ I said. ‘I am quite hungry.’
‘Then come and sit down.’ He patted the table and gave me a grin that hit me right in the womb. ‘Or do I have to come over there and get you?’
Just walk, I told myself, padding towards the table and, more importantly, towards the wine. He stood up and pulled out my chair, confusing the blood that didn’t know whether to rush to my head, my heart or my ovaries.