Chapter Seventy-six
BY THE TIME I GET to the office my mood is more somber. The unhinged hilarity has died down and I’ve eaten three Crunchies on the trot to up my sugar levels, which has made me feel much better. Marcus has called me thirty-six times so far and I’ve ignored all of his voice messages which, frankly, run to the predictable: I love you, I can explain, she means nothing to me. That sort of thing. Why do men always think it’s better to disparage the woman they’re caught with by saying, “She means nothing to me”? Is that supposed to make us feel better? If you’re going to risk fucking up your relationship, then at least do it with someone who means a lot to you! I don’t see why this little setback means that we can’t still get married was another one that nearly set me off laughing hysterically again.
Crush is already in his office when I finally make it into Targa, so I pop over to the coffee machine and risk the complications of technology to order him a white coffee with two sugars. Then I take it into his office along with the Twix I’ve bought him.
Mr. Aiden Holby is sitting back in his chair with his plaster cast up on his desk. I put the coffee and chocolate down in front of him.
“Lifesaver,” he says, rubbing his hands together. As he starts to open the Twix, he asks, “How are you today, Mrs. Gorgeous?”
“Ms. Gorgeous,” I correct, and hold out my now unadorned ring finger.
“Ooo,” Crush observes. “So soon?”
“Diamonds are forever,” I tell him. “Emeralds, it seems, are very shortlived.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
“Not really.”
“Red eyes and blotchy cheeks,” he remarks. “Never a good sign in a girl. Found him up to his nuts in another woman?”
“Pretty much.”
“When?”
I look at my watch. “Nearly an hour ago,” I say. “I’m so over it already.” A pain shoots through my heart. I’ll never eat yogurt again. Or summer berries. Or granola. Thank God Marcus hadn’t smeared his bitch in chocolate.
“I’ll take you out to lunch,” Crush says decisively. “Somewhere special. We’ll pretend we’re talking about work. You can claim it and I’ll endorse your expenses. Fair enough?”
I nod.
“I’ve got some news I want to tell you too.”
“Is it good?” I don’t think I could stand any more bad news today.
Crush wiggles his toes at the end of his cast and studies them intently. “It depends which angle you’re coming from.”
This sounds like something I don’t want to hear, but if there’s a free lunch in it then I might as well go along. “I’d better go and do some work,” I say. Or at least look like I’m working. My productivity rate might not be that great at the moment.
“I’m glad you’re not getting married,” Crush says. “For purely selfish reasons.”
“Which are?”
He makes a steeple of his fingers and gazes at me over them. “If anyone’s going to marry you, then I really think it should be me.”
“That’s not even funny,” I say, and bang the office door on my way out.
Chapter Seventy-seven
LUNCHTIME TAKES AN INTERMINABLE AMOUNT of time to come around. I amuse myself by entering the sales figures into the computer and then completely losing them. I rip my tights on a splinter under my desk and make a complaint about the appalling state of health and safety in this company to Helen the chief harridan in Human Resources. She retorts by saying that my temporary contract might not be renewed at the end of the month, so it should make no difference to me.
To top my morning, I also ignore another forty-three begging phone calls from Marcus. I’ve turned off the ringtone and put it onto vibrate mode, so that I can now see my phone hopping round maniacally on the top of my handbag, but at least I can’t hear it. I hope he’s getting repetitive strain injury of his dialing finger. And I hope his knob drops off
Finally, when I’m convinced that Crush has forgotten all about our lunch date and am about to lie down and weep, my boss appears in front of my desk and says, “Are you ready, Gorgeous?”
Grabbing my coat, I follow him to the lift, noting that he’s become remarkably agile on his crutches over the last few weeks. My heart goes out to him and, when we’re alone in the lift, I smile warmly at him.
“What?” he says, with a worried frown.
“I’m just smiling at you,” I say. “I’m being nice.”
Crush sucks in his breath and shakes his head in the manner of a dodgy builder. “Not sure I can cope with that, Gorgeous.”
I whack him playfully with my handbag—maybe a little too playfully— knocking his crutch out of his hand and making him topple over.
“Oh, shit!” I dive to help him.
“That’s better,” he says, with a satisfied grin as he sets himself upright again, brushing down his suit. “That’s the Lucy I know and love.”
“Shut up,” I warn him, “or I’ll slam your leg in the cab door.”
When we do get into a cab, I make sure that I’m extra careful to help Crush in first and not slam his leg in the door. You know what they say about true words being spoken in jest.
The cab whisks us off to one of the trendiest restaurants in town—the Tower. It’s in a converted warehouse or something on the South Bank, overlooking the river, and is run by one of these trendy TV chefs—not the one who swears a lot, the other one. It’s the sort of place where I don’t want to be found shooting my peas—or my mélange de petits pois—across the plate and onto the floor or generally making a spectacle of myself. We take a lift to the fourth floor, and we’re shown to a table by the window. Crush lays his crutches down by our feet.
“This is lovely,” I say, and I wonder if he brought Charlotte the Harlot or Donna from Data Processing here. Bet he didn’t! The view from our aerie is spectacular. Busy tourist boats are chugging up and down the gray strip of the Thames. Today the sun is shining, making the water shimmer and sparkle like silver. I’ve lived in London for years and have never done the whole tourist bit—maybe I should next summer. Goodness knows, I’m going to have time on my hands from now on.
The menu is fabulous and mine doesn’t have any prices on it, which I didn’t think anyone did anymore, because of equality and all that. But I bet there’s nothing under a fiver on it, not even a glass of water. Still, Targa’s footing the bill and I get precious little else out of them. We order and then Crush says, “Let’s get some champagne. I need lots to drink and I suspect you do too.”
The waiter brings us a bottle of something hideously expensive and it fizzes out into our flutes. Crush clinks his glass against mine. “This feels like a date, Gorgeous,” he says with a nervous laugh.
I echo it and say, “You’re right, it does.” Then I glug my champagne gratefully. “Can I ask you a question?” I launch into it before I change my mind. “Did you start calling me Gorgeous because you couldn’t remember my name?”
“No,” Crush says. “Because you are gorgeous.”
“Oh.”
He looks at me expectantly.
“That’s all right then,” I add magnanimously.
He laughs again and, to my surprise, works his hand across the table and takes mine. My heart starts up a rap beat. “Confession time,” he says. “It was me who sent you that ridiculously expensive bouquet to the office.”
“You?”
He nods.
“And I gave all the credit to Marcus!”
“Yeah. I was pretty pissed off about that. I agonized for hours over a suitably cryptic message and then Dirty Derek went and lost the card. And lost me the girl too.”
“Not entirely lost,” I correct.
“I’ve been wanting to ask you out for ages,” he says, with a rueful expression as he threads his fingers through mine. “I don’t know why I haven’t.”
“Because you’re a misogynistic commitment phobe?”
“Or I could just be shy and insecure.”
&nb
sp; We both laugh at that.
“And we’ve both been in relationships,” he adds.
“Pretty disastrous ones,” I remind him.
“I’ll drink to that, Gorgeous,” he says, and swigs his champagne.
“Well, I’m available now,” I say, dispensing with any attempt at being coy. Clearly, the champagne is kicking in. “You’d better snap me up soon before I become a nun. Or a lesbian. Or both.”
“I might wait,” Crush muses. “That sounds as if it could be fun.”
Sighing at him, I try out my best vamp voice. “Don’t you think that we’ve waited long enough?”
“I’d planned to bring you here today to try to persuade you to leave Marcus,” he admits, flushing slightly. “I’m glad that he saved me the bother.”
I start to laugh, but not in the borderline insane way that I did this morning.
“Now all I have to do is convince you to hook up with me instead,” he says.
“I don’t know that I’ll take much convincing.” In theory, I know that I should be having some time alone to recover from my broken heart, but having already done it several times before, I’ve found that it doesn’t work. If you ask me, you might as well throw yourself headlong into another relationship and be damned.
Crush purses his lips at me. “There is, however, one slight snag.”
Why doesn’t this surprise me?
“I’ve been promoted.”
“Fantastic. Congratulations.” We clink our glasses together again and both drink. The world is starting to spin ever so slightly faster than it should. “Isn’t that good news?”
“I’m going to be International Sales Director.”
“Wow! I feel as if I should be doffing my cap to you.”
“Don’t let me stop you,” Crush says. “Doff away.”
I snarf into my fizz.
“My first job is to set up a new marketing operation—”
“You’ll be great at it.”
“—in Australia.”
The world screeches to a halt. “Australia?”
“It’s not so far away,” Crush says in a rush. “Not really.”
It’s miles, I think. Miles and miles. And miles. Just about as far as you can get without coming back on yourself. Even in this age of relative ease of air travel, where the world has become a very small place, a global village, Australia is still a Fucking Long Way Away. If EasyJet doesn’t fly there for ten quid then it must be classed as a very remote outpost.
“It’s for six months,” Crush continues. “That’s all, and then I should be back in the UK.”
Six months. Anything could happen in that time. What are the chances of him avoiding the local attractions for twenty-six weeks? I can just picture him now, running along Bondi Beach in slow-motion with some big-breasted, bleached-blond Bay'watch…type, surfboards tucked under their arms, hot sun beating down on their bronzed bodies. It’s not a picture I like.
“The thing is …” Crush says, and I try desperately to drag my attention back from this wholly depressing reverie. “The thing is … I’d like you to come with me, Gorgeous.”
Now I’m on full alert. “Me? Come with you? To Australia?” My voice is louder than it should be in such a posh place—or any place, for that matter. “Me? Come with you? To Australia?” I repeat incredulously. This is why I was never top of the class at school. Slow mental faculties in times of crisis. Made exam time hell.
“All morning I’ve been thinking of nothing else. It would be a great idea.” Crush squeezes my hand encouragingly. “The timing couldn’t be better—in some ways. What is there to keep you here? You and Marcus are all washed up. You’ve got a crap job with no prospects. No commitments.”
I’m not sure I like Mr. Aiden Holby describing my life in such disparaging terms. It sounds all too accurate.
“This could give us both a chance of a new start. We can allow our relationship to flourish away from all this rubbish.” He makes a wide, expansive gesture. “What have we got to lose? We know each other well enough to realize that we could make a go of this, don’t you think?”
I start to laugh again—and this time, the hysterical edge has crept back in. Fueled by an excess of alcohol, I believe. “We could,” I say breathlessly. As soon as I’ve said it out loud, I think, We could do this—we really could. As Aiden says, what is there to keep me here? The only people I’d truly miss are the girls from the Chocolate Lovers’ Club. There’s no doubt there’d be a big hole in my lives without them, but who else couldn’t I live without? A big fat No One. And they have chocolate in Australia, don’t they? They must do. Or I could get emergency packages of supplies sent by Clive. Or maybe I could even start up an antipodean branch of the Chocolate Lovers’ Club.
“Is that a yes?” Crush sounds nervous, as well he might. “Will you come with me?”
“Yes!” The word bursts out of me with a giggle. “Yes, I will.”
With some adjustment of his broken leg, Aiden leans across the table and draws me to him. “You don’t know how happy that makes me.” Then his lips find mine and he kisses me. In the middle of this swanky restaurant with everyone watching. There’s a clattering of cutlery. I have a feeling that I’ve knocked my peas all over the floor, but I don’t care. His lips are warm and soft and taste of champagne. A thrill runs through my body right down to my toes, stopping at some rather interesting places on the way. And I think that I’m very glad that I said yes.
Chapter Seventy-eight
WE ORDER ANOTHER BOTTLE OF champagne and drink it too quickly. The bubbles float straight to my head and make my brain all swimmy But I’m more dizzy with joy than with anything you can get from a bottle.
“When do you think you’ll go?” I ask dreamily.
“When we’ll go, Gorgeous,” Crush corrects, and I get another rush in strange places. “As soon as this comes off.” He glances down at his plaster cast. “Apparently, you’re not allowed to fly with a pot leg. It should be removed next week. Then I’ll probably leave the week after.”
That’s two weeks! “I need to get someone to rent my flat.” I also need to buy shorts, T-shirts, factor 500 suntan cream and industrial-strength insect repellent.
“I’ll pay for your flight.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I say, with more bravado than brimming bank account. “You’ve probably got a lot to pay out for. I can manage it.” I’ll just max my plastic. I wonder, do debts follow you to the other side of the world? More than likely.
“We’ll be based in Sydney,” Crush tells me. He’s starting to slur slightly and I think that we should go easy on the fizz, except that now the bottle seems to be empty. How did that happen? “I’ve never been there, but it’s supposed to be great. Targa is renting a flat for me.”
“For us,” I correct and we both giggle childishly. “God, what will they say back at the office?”
“Who cares?” Crush says, and toys with my fingers.
“I think they’ll be surprised,” I tell him. “I’m surprised.” Wait until Charlotte the Harlot hears about this! Ha, ha! What a result! Slim, beautiful person—nil. Chubby chocoholic—one!
“Will I be able to work out there?”
“I don’t know,” Aiden admits. “Maybe Targa can fix something up for you.”
“I’ll talk to the harridans in Human Resources.” I’m sure they’ll be delighted to organize something in Australia if it means seeing the back of me for a while.
Somehow we become sufficiently coherent to order dessert. We have a huge chocolate platter between us and I try to spoon the last morsel of the white chocolate mousse into Crush’s mouth, but I miss and hit the end of his nose instead. We titter pathetically as he wipes it away with his napkin.
“Are you really sure you want to do this?” I ask in as sober a tone as I can muster.
“Share your dessert?”
“No, twit. Emigrate together.” We collapse into fits of giggles.
“I’m sure,” he says. “Are y
ou sure?”
I get all emotional, when I reply, “I’m sure.” A tear rolls down my cheek and Crush brushes it gently away with his thumb.
“I want to look after you.” He stares at me all moony-eyed. “I want to cherish and treasure you.”
“I want that too,” I agree breathlessly. Taking his hand, I hold it against my cheek. “Let’s not go back to the office,” I suggest. Frankly, I’d like the cherishing and treasuring to start as soon as possible. “No one will miss us. Let’s go back to my flat.”
“That sounds like a very good idea, Gorgeous.”
We somehow manage to pay the bill and lurch to our feet. Crush is very unsteady and he hops around while he tries to adjust his crutches into a comfortable position.
“Are you okay?”
He puffs out a slightly drunken breath as he tries to straighten up and look sober. “Fine,” he assures me. “Fine.”
I try to guide him as he hops out of the restaurant, moving chairs out of his way, creating a clear passage even though I’m weaving about all over the place. That second bottle of fizz was a bad idea. A very bad idea.