The Runaway Princess

  I hesitated, and wondered if I should tell Jo about Leo. Then my eye fell on the controversial thong, and I decided against it.

  “I’d love to. Sounds great. What are you going to do with those?” I nodded at the box.

  “Do you want them?”

  I nearly laughed. They’d barely go over my arm, let alone anywhere else. “As a novelty headband? Maybe. Not so much as knickers. Every time I bent over, I’d think of Rolf.”

  “Eeeeuugh!” said Jo. “That’s exactly what he wants!”

  We stared at the box, as if Rolf’s handsome face might suddenly appear in the tissue like in a crystal ball.

  “Let’s leave them on Mrs. Mainwaring’s doorknob,” she decided. “That’ll give them all something to talk about.”

  *

  Grace flew back from Aspen first thing on Friday, and when I went round there, I found her standing over her Dream Seedlings with a glass of white wine and a pile of crumpled tissues, sniffing back tears and chanting some sort of gibberish mantra to herself.

  She looked so happy, though, that I nearly cried too. With relief.

  “Oh, Amy! Amy!” she said, throwing her arms around my neck. “There’s been a miracle. Look!”

  I said a million silent thank-yous to Leo while Grace touched the leaf of each plant with a tenderness that made me wonder whether that was her first glass of wine. And she was meant to be on a detox too.

  “I can’t believe I made them grow so fast,” she hiccuped. “Me! After I killed that lovely strawberry plant and the roses. And that bay tree. Look how strong they are. They must be …” She covered her mouth and blinked hard. “Maybe it means my wishes are already coming true?”

  “Looks like it!” I said.

  I was crossing my fingers that Grace wouldn’t do some basic math and question how nonmagic seeds could go from seed to fairly sturdy plant in under three weeks, even with my green fingers waggling over them.

  Grace gripped my arm and I let out an involuntary squeak, convinced she’d rumbled me.

  “Amy, can I tell you a secret?” She bit her lip like an excited teenager. “Promise you won’t tell anyone?”

  I’d been doing Grace’s gardening for nearly two years, and in that time she’d told me a fair number of secrets, most of them about her dad, who owned the flat, and Richard. And her therapist. And how she’d cheated in her A levels, and had Botox in her hands, and all sorts of other stuff.

  “Promise,” I said.

  “Richard’s bought the Palace View development!” she whispered. “He sealed the deal in Aspen. On the ski slopes. He crashed off a red run answering his phone, but it was okay in the end because there was a medi-chopper on standby anyway and the clinic had Wi-Fi so he could do it all by Skype.”

  I clamped my lips together to stop myself from saying anything.

  “And the sweetest thing was that while we were in the clinic, he arranged for me to have this amazing new chemical peel thing you can’t even get here!” She looked thrilled and touched her nose self-consciously. It was a bit raw-looking. “So that was fabulous too.”

  “That’s great news, Grace,” I said. “I’m really pleased for him. And you.”

  She sighed happily and pointed at one flowerpot. “So that’s one come true already.”

  I knew at this point I should say something smooth like, “So, Richard’ll be needing a gardening service, I suppose?” but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

  “Bodes well for the other wishes then!” I said instead.

  Grace paused, then took one flowerpot—the one with the puniest plant in it—and handed it to me. “There you go,” she said. “You helped with the seeds, it should work for you too.”

  “But you had a whole string of wishes!”

  She made an uncharacteristically rude prrthp noise. “Face it, world peace isn’t going to happen with one puny seed. It’d need a whole tree. What are you going to wish for?”

  I opened my mouth, as the various Amys in my brain argued among themselves.

  Wish for a nice new boyfriend.

  No, the gardening contract for Palace View.

  Boyfriend.

  Gardening contract. If you’re thinking of Leo, he’s a bit out of your league, love. He’s a crush. Not a potential date.

  But he did such a nice thing, finding those plants. …

  He felt guilty about Rolf kicking them off. And what about the New Year expansion plans? What about taking the business to a new level? Priorities …

  “Amy? Are you all right?” Grace peered at me. “You’ve gone all … cross-eyed.”

  “I’m fine.” I took a deep breath. “To be honest, Grace, I’d wish that Ted and I could do the gardening for Palace View. Do you think I could send a proposal to Richard? I’ve got some great ideas for landscaping. …”

  Grace stared at me, then beamed. “Yes! What a great idea. That’s like … karma in action! I grew this plant, and now you can grow more plants for Richard!”

  “Um, yeah. …”

  “Wow, that’s your wish sorted out!” She clapped her hands to her newly-peeled face in delight, then flinched. “So, actually, you won’t be needing this. Maybe I can recycle it.”

  And with a dazzling white smile, she took the plant pot back and placed it neatly back with its mates.

  Grace wasn’t always as stupid as she looked.

  *

  I spent the early afternoon digging over a garden in Fulham while rehearsing the off-the-cuff phone call I was going to make just before teatime, to update Leo about Grace’s plants. Technically, I didn’t need to, but I argued to myself that he’d want to know it had all been worth it.

  Badger had long since got used to me chatting away to thin air, but he’d developed a long-suffering sigh when I went over the same conversation too often that bordered on the sarcastic.

  “Hey, Leo, it’s Amy,” I started to the leafless cherry tree.

  Was hello better?

  “Hello, Leo, it’s Amy. Amy Wilde.”

  No. Was that a bit too formal?

  Remembering Jo’s drama school advice about smiling on the phone, I pulled a wide grin, and my voice came out shiny and bright. “Hi! It’s Amy!”

  That sounded better. Mad, but miles better.

  Underneath the wheelbarrow, Badger let out a low groan and curled up tighter on my fleece.

  “Grace loved the plants.” I coughed and aimed my voice slightly lower. “Grace was so thrilled about the Dream Seeds. …” Better, more specific, in case he’d forgotten. “Can I take you out for a drink to say thanks?”

  No. He could say, No, it’s okay. Or No, I don’t drink.

  I was overthinking. Again. I shoved my spade into the soil, despairing. It was so easy to come across the wrong way. What would Jo do? She’d just ask. She’d have asked on Wednesday morning, straight off: “When are we going out?”

  “You know what, Leo?” I drawled, leaning on my spade in a Jo impression—she was always using her surroundings as props to drape herself on, like someone in a Noël Coward play. “Can we go out for a drink? I would love to hear about some of the scrapes you’ve had to dig Rolf out of. And, besides that, you’re gorgeous and you don’t talk exclusively about your car or have an off-putting nose.”

  My mobile rang in my back pocket and I nearly slipped off the spade handle in surprise. I fumbled it out with my gloved hands, and when I saw who was calling, the cool Amy vanished completely: it was Leo.

  Oh, God. Oh, God. Should I be Amy? Or Jo?

  I took a couple of deep breaths, counted to five (I didn’t want him to go to voicemail), and managed to gasp out, “Amy Wilde speaking?”

  “Hello, Amy, it’s Leo. Is this a good time to talk?”

  My face went red, as if Leo could somehow see me in my grubby jeans. His voice was very close in my ear.

  “Yes,” I said, brushing soil off myself. I frowned at myself and stopped. “It’s fine.”

  “Excellent. Two things, really. First, did your client notic
e the replacement plants? It was today, right?”

  He’d remembered. He’d actually remembered what day I said Grace was coming back. A happy feeling rushed me.

  “She didn’t suspect a thing,” I said. “She’s over the moon—I’ve never seen her so happy.”

  “Wonderful!”

  “In fact,” a voice that sounded a bit like mine added, “she was so happy she promised to put in a good word for me about another big contract, so thanks for that too!”

  “Then I’m doubly pleased. In fact, that makes my second question even more urgent. I was wondering how you were fixed for Thursday next week?” he went on. “If you’re not doing anything, I’d love to have that chat about my garden. If you can still fit me in. I know Thursday is the new Friday.”

  I hesitated. Grace, in a fit of confidence about her early days with Richard, had explained there were rules about this sort of thing. How many days’ notice you were supposed to give. How busy you were supposed to look. She made negotiating dates sound like haggling over a knockoff Prada handbag in a Turkish street market, but not as much fun.

  What would Jo do? She’d say …

  “Thursday? That’s Zumba.”

  I closed my eyes in horror. Where had that come from?

  “Zumba? Is that some kind of religious … event?” Leo asked politely. “Forgive my ignorance.”

  I considered lying for a split second, but decided there was no point. I’d only make it worse. “No, no, Zumba’s a class that Jo makes me go to with her at our gym,” I confessed. “You’re meant to look like Shakira while you’re doing it, but I’ve seen us in the mirror, and we look like two pensioners with hip problems trying to take off a pair of trousers without undoing the fly.”

  Leo laughed. “Well, I don’t want you to miss that.”

  Why did you just give Leo a mental image of a dancing pensioner? Even if his laugh was making my chest feel ticklish?

  “Wednesday’s fine, though,” I said quickly. “If you’re free? Wednesday’s the new Thursday in our house.”

  “I can definitely be free on Wednesday,” said Leo. “It’s a date.”

  Date. He’d said date.

  “What sort of garden do you have?” I didn’t know why I’d dragged the conversation back to business—maybe because I was desperately trying to displace the dancing pensioner with a knowledgeable horticultural-expert woman. “So I can sketch out some plans?”

  “Oh, it’s just a small one,” said Leo, and I thought I detected a tiny note of embarrassment. “You know, city garden.”

  “I do know—I’m really good at making the most of small spaces.” I could already see it in my mind’s eye, the pretty mini-garden in the sky. Maybe some potted figs in containers, or tumbling climbers pinned to brick walls. He had no need to feel embarrassed—any garden in London was a luxury. “I’ve done a few rooftop vegetable patches recently—they can be low-maintenance, and some people find it therapeutic, watching things grow. If you make a sketch of your garden and bring it, we can talk about light and shade and soil.”

  “Sounds great. So, is half seven good for you? We can have a drink and grab some dinner, if you have time.”

  “That would be lovely.”

  “I’ll look forward to it.” Leo paused, then added, as if he wanted to prolong the conversation, “How did the apology gift go? I suggested that actions might speak louder than words.”

  “Um, not great.” I wasn’t sure how much I could say without being rude about Rolf. “The action being suggested was a bit … adult-oriented. Flowers might be nicer? I can recommend a book on the language of flowers, if it’d help.”

  “I like that. What’s the international flower language for ‘I’m sorry for being a loudmouthed idiot’?”

  “A Venus flytrap.”

  Leo let out a loud, slightly guilty snort. There was some office-type noise at his end, and I heard someone speaking. “Okay, listen, I have to dash, but we’ll firm up details closer to the time. Have a great weekend!”

  “And you!”

  And that was it. Simple. Date arranged, nice chat, no embarrassing moments apart from the Zumba thing, but he’d laughed at that.

  Heat was spreading through my chest, in direct contrast to the numbness in my nose and ears.

  Badger stared at me, and I realized I was grinning like a loon at a dead wisteria.

  Seven

  Obviously, I spent the next four days agonizing about what to wear, with only brief pauses to agonize over what to say—all about a million times harder because I was too embarrassed to tell Jo I was off on a date with the friend of the idiot who was now filling our flat with orchids. I didn’t want to give Rolf the faintest chance of making it a double date, for one thing.

  My social life didn’t usually require much effort on the wardrobe front. Thanks to the fact that Jo and I were both skint most of the time, dinners out in London were limited to the pizza place round the corner; our local pub, the Nightingale Arms; and all-you-can-eat Indian buffets in Tooting with Ted, who fancied himself as something of a curry connoisseur. I got the feeling Leo wasn’t going to book a table at any of those locations, so I wasn’t feeling very confident about my usual jeans and a top.

  Plus, it was still a business meeting. I’d prepared some color sketches of garden ideas—a white garden, a cottage garden, a neat little raised-bed complex—and was actually quite excited about creating something new. What did top gardening experts—who wanted to appear subtly sexy—wear?

  In the end, since I couldn’t consult Jo herself for fear of getting into a whole can of worms, I fell back on the What Would Jo Do? reasoning, and went for my black dress. I rarely spent money on clothes, but Jo had virtually pried my debit card from my hands at a Harvey Nichols sale. She’d been right to make me buy it. My Reliable Black Dress scooped me in at the right places and skimmed over the wrong ones. It was one of those secret weapon dresses that you could literally go anywhere in, depending on whether you pulled on boots or killer heels.

  I put my one pair of killer heels in my bag, just in case, and set off in my flats.

  I arrived in Berkeley Square at seven thirty, as Leo had texted me earlier, and immediately saw him waiting exactly where he’d said he would be, on the park bench opposite the Bentley car showroom.

  He looked smart. Really smart. Before he could see me, I ducked behind a postbox and pulled on the heels.

  I straightened up, butterflies swarming in my stomach, and banked this moment in my mental scrapbook for later. On the bench a very, very attractive man was waiting for me, dressed in a proper navy coat, his tawny-blond hair shining in the streetlight. I thought he was checking his phone, but on closer inspection I realized he was reading a Kindle.

  That just put the cherry on the cake. A man who read, when no one was even looking at him.

  Unaware of the reaction he was creating just by sitting on a bench reading, Leo shot back his coat sleeve to check the time, and glanced hopefully in the direction of Green Park Tube station. I didn’t want someone else snapping him up, so I hurried across the square as quickly as I could in my unfamiliar heels, hoping he wouldn’t look up too soon and witness the giveaway wobbling.

  Nerves hit me when I was nearly there. So far, the two times we’d met had been very much on my turf. Now we were on his, and I wasn’t even sure my shoes were totally on my side. But when he realized the irregular clacking noise heading his way was me, Leo’s face lit up with a smile that crinkled the corners of his blue eyes, and something warm pushed aside the nerves.

  “Hello!” he said, putting one hand on my arm as he got up to kiss me on the cheek.

  I nearly swooned at the sudden closeness of his skin, and his subtle cologne, and the roughness of his coat collar, all at the same time. Every single one of my senses felt as if it had been turned up to eleven, and then had a neon-lit brass band marched through.

  “Yes, hello!” I started, but he’d gone for the other cheek in a Euro double kiss, and I mumbled awk
wardly into his beautiful sharp cheekbone, “Oh, sorry, um, yes, hello!”

  “Sorry, sorry!” he said, and for a moment we sort of held each other at arm’s length, bobbing heads.

  “No, I’m sorry,” I said to fill the unsettling silence, “I never know how many kisses to do. One, or two—or none! We don’t do kisses back home. Our family doesn’t really do kisses, we’re more the hearty-slap-on-the-back type. Um, I don’t mean we don’t kiss each other ever,” I corrected myself, in case he thought I didn’t want to be kissed at all. “Just not all that, you know—”

  “Just that you don’t go in for all that mwah-mwah stuff,” Leo suggested. “Quite right, too, it’s awful. Hate it. I’ve got friends who do four.”

  “Four? Really? Are they English?”

  “Ha! No, they’re not. Rolf’ll do up to six, if he can get away with it. More, if the girl isn’t resisting. He just carries on until she shoves him off.”

  I snorted, which wasn’t very ladylike, but Leo didn’t seem to mind.

  “So, um, where are we headed?” I asked.

  He gestured toward the towering Georgian townhouses that surrounded the tree-lined park. If you could ignore the two lanes of traffic circling it, Berkeley Square was quite a romantic spot, not too far from Green Park in the art-galleries-and-designer-boutiques part of London. Lights were twinkling in the windows, and the sky was unusually clear behind the lines of old plane trees that crisscrossed the square.

  “I thought we could eat round here, if that’s okay with you?”

  “It’s fine with me,” I said as we started walking. I was nearer his shoulder in these heels than I had been in my trainers the last time we’d met. “I like Berkeley Square.”

  “Really? What about it, in particular?” Leo sounded interested. “Are you into art galleries?”

  “No, it’s the trees. Don’t laugh,” I added, because my thoughts on London trees tended to make even Ted snigger. “I love the squares in London where the trees are as old as the buildings—or even older, like the buildings have had to fit around them. I like imagining where the roots go, how far under the ground they stretch.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Leo hadn’t sniggered, so I carried on. “I imagine them touching the Underground tunnels, and winding round wine cellars. I know they don’t, obviously, they’re not that deep, but I always loved those cross sections of London we had in history lessons. Roman roads, and medieval pottery shards, and plague pits, and tree roots joining them all up.”