For a moment Spike doesn’t move. Instead, he just stares at me across the desk, his face expressionless, his eyes unblinking. Every millisecond feels like an hour. Just say something, I think urgently. Anything.
‘I see,’ he says finally, and steeples his fingers.
My heart constricts. Oh, God. This is dreadful. When I said ‘anything’, I didn’t mean anything. It suddenly dawns on me that the big romantic moment that I’d hoped for, the one where Spike was going to grasp me in some big corny embrace and kiss the living daylights out of me, is not going to happen. I feel like a complete idiot.
‘You know, I should be going, perhaps we can do this interview on email,’ I gabble hastily, standing up, the humiliation pouring all over me. Clutching my coat to my chest as a sort of shield, I head for the door.
Spike stands up and follows me. ‘When’s your flight?’
‘Oh, erm . . .’ I glance at my watch gratefully. Anything not to have to look at him. ‘Not for a few hours, but you know, the traffic might be bad . . .’ I’m desperate to get out of the door, but now Spike’s standing in the way and blocking it with his huge frame.
‘Really?’ he’s saying. ‘You know, you can do a lot in a few hours . . .’
Something in his tone makes me look up. His eyes are flashing with amusement. Suddenly the penny drops. Of course. The British sense of humour. He was winding me up. How could he do that to me! I feel a white-hot flash of annoyance, followed by total and utter relief.
‘And my flat’s just round the corner,’ he’s saying.
Well, I guess I did deserve it, I muse, then ask, ‘What are you suggesting?’ pretending to be shocked, while feeling a thumping beat of excitement. I’d be fibbing if the thought hadn’t already crossed my mind. I didn’t come here hoping just to apologise. Well, I am human, and his chest did feel very firm that night at the ball when I squeezed his pec.
‘Oh, I dunno, we could watch a spaghetti Western, do a crossword . . .’ He moves closer.
‘You know, I’m pretty darned good at the cryptic ones. I get all the clues,’ I tease, leaning my body towards him.
‘You are?’
‘Uh-uh.’
‘Great,’ he whispers, and I can feel his breath on my cheek. ‘But before we go any further, I think I should tell you something.’
I look at him. A flutter of nerves.
‘Don’t look so worried.’ He smiles. ‘I’m not going to tell you I’m crazy about you, I’ve told you that already.’
And wrapping his arms round me, he pulls me to his chest and gives me a great big bear hug. I feel a whoosh of happiness. There’s nothing quite like being hugged by a big strong guy you’re crazy about.
‘No, there’s something else,’ he murmurs, his lips brushing against my hair.
‘What?’ I gasp, a quiver running all the way down to my toes.
‘My name’s not really Napoleon Caesar—’
‘Nelson Hargreaves,’ I finish off, smiling. ‘I kind of figured that. So tell me – what does the B stand for?’
He looks at me, surprised.
‘I saw your email address, remember?’
Now it’s his turn to smile. Scrunching up his nose, he winces with shame. ‘Bryan. With a Y.’
‘Bryan with a Y?’ I giggle. ‘Damn, and I thought the name Napoleon was really sexy.’
‘What? Are you telling me you don’t find me sexy any more?’ He pretends to look affronted.
‘Hmmm, I’m not sure,’ I murmur. ‘I think I might have to do a bit more investigative reporting . . .’ And slipping my hands up the back of his T-shirt and on to bare skin, I tilt my face up to his and he bends down and kisses me.
Epilogue
‘How’s that looking, miss?’
The two workmen standing on ladders shout down to me, their thick Queens’ accents resonating loudly through the city hum. Standing below them on the sidewalk, I crick my neck to look upwards, shading my eyes from the bright morning sunshine.
‘Um . . . it’s not quite straight . . . Left a bit.’ I yell back.
Cue lots of puffing and panting, their breath making white swirling clouds in the frosty air.
‘What about now?’
I squint, cocking my head from side to side and stepping back a little away from the store. ‘No . . . a little higher, I think . . .’
I can tell they want to murder me. Me, the girl in the yellow coat and woollen bobble hat, sipping her mug of coffee and giving orders to two burly guys in lumber jackets, beanies and fingerless gloves, like a couple of latter-day Rocky Balboas. But seeing as I’m the one paying them, they can’t. I’m the boss now.
They just grunt that bit louder to make sure of a bigger tip.
‘This OK?’ they holler in stereo.
I look up again. I want it to be perfect. It has to be perfect. I pause, my eyes sweeping over the varnished wood, the bold swirls of paint, the glint of gold against the black lettering: Albriqht’s. I feel a thrilling rush of exhilaration. My new sign. Hanging over my new store. The legal papers were signed two weeks ago, but now it feels official. A grin breaks over my face and I feel like punching the air.
Instead, I just make do with a simple, ‘Perfect!’
I’ve been back in New York for nearly three weeks now, and I feel as if so much has happened. Well, a lot can happen in three weeks, can’t it? Look how much happened during that week I spent in England.
Watching the workmen busily fixing the sign into place, I sip my coffee and smile absently to myself as my mind drifts back. I’ve thought a lot about that trip since I’ve been back, about the lessons I learned and the friends I made. And of course I’ve thought a lot about Mr Darcy. About what really happened back there in England over New Year.
Now I’m back in New York, back to my real life, I have to be honest, it does all seem a bit unreal. I mean, I was so sure back then, there was no doubt in my mind, but it’s funny how things can seem different when a bit of time and space has passed. How uncertain you can become, how doubts can creep in that make you question yourself and your memories of the past. And now, looking back with hindsight, I can’t help wondering, Did it really happen? Did I really meet Mr Darcy? Does he really exist?
I haven’t seen him since he vanished that day in Lyme Park, and standing here, in the middle of SoHo, the mere thought of a fictional character somehow coming to life and turning up in a frock coat and breeches does seem pretty ridiculous. I’ve thought about the times we met and I guess you can explain them all away if you want to. Like I guess you can explain everything away if you try hard enough. Isn’t that what sceptics do all the time? Trying to make sense of things that don’t make sense by using common sense, rationality and that little big thing called coincidence . . .
In which case, maybe it was just a mixture of jet lag, desire and an overactive imagination that conjured up Mr Darcy at Chawton Manor. Perhaps I fainted at Winchester Cathedral and was so delirious I imagined him to be there. It could be that our moonlit boatride on the lake was simply a dream. Our New Year’s Eve horseride a hallucination, caused by too much champagne and the rest of that incredibly strong joint. And our picnic at Sham Castle was just a fantasy, the result of me falling asleep, tired and upset from my argument with Spike. And, yes, it’s possible that in the maze of gardens at Lyme Park, I was so lost and defeated and crying so hard that I envisaged Mr Darcy finding me. So that ultimately I was able to find myself.
But. And this is a big but. I’m not so sure. Part of me actually wants to believe it’s true, that something magical really did happen on that trip to England and I really did get to date Mr Darcy. But I don’t think I’ll ever know. And I don’t think it matters, does it?
Because one thing’s for sure: Mr Darcy does exist. In as much as he exists in the imaginations of millions of women everywhere. Remember June, the immigration officer at Heathrow? He was real to her. And what about Rupinda, Rose, Maeve, Hilary . . . The list is endless. Right now, all over the world, someone
, somewhere, is dreaming about Mr Darcy. So what if it’s a fantasy. Aren’t fantasies real?
‘Hey, is that the new sign?’
I whirl round to see Freddy from the bakery next door loping across the cobbles towards me. He’s wearing an apron and his arms are covered in a white coating of flour, all the way up to his elbows.
‘It looks amazing.’
I feel a huge beat of pride. ‘Thanks.’ I smile appreciatively.
‘Your folks must be really proud of you.’
‘Yeah, they are.’ I nod. ‘They’re coming down tonight with my brother. We’re all going to celebrate.’ Happiness glows inside me. Since getting back from our respective trips, my parents and I have been making a lot more effort. OK, we’ll never be best friends, but I’ve got plenty of friends. I don’t need any more friends, I need a mom and a dad. I think admitting that to myself, and to them, was the first step for all of us.
‘Wow, that’s just great, Emily, really great.’ Freddy gives me a big, floury, aftershaved hug and then grins ruefully. ‘She in there?’ He gestures to the store.
‘You mean Stella?’ I ask. ‘Yeah, why?’ I narrow my eyes. Since getting back from England, my radar’s been picking up a lot of phone calls, visits and whispered conversations between Stella and Freddy. ‘What’s going on with you two?’ I ask smiling.
‘Nuthin’.’ He shrugs innocently, and bounds off back across the cobbles.
Nuthin’? Hmm. Now I’m really suspicious.
Watching him disappear back into the bakery, I make up my mind to quiz Stella when I go back inside. At the moment I don’t want to interrupt her as she’s busy in the stockroom sorting out the new orders. Which reminds me. When I got back from my trip one of the first things I did was check the new batch of Pride and Prejudice for blank pages, but they were perfect, every last one of them, and I know, as I personally went through them all. Plus I checked our database and there was no record of any returns. Weird, huh? I must have got the one faulty copy.
And do you want to know something else that’s weird? I always kept that copy in the side pocket of my bag, but when I got home and came to unpack, I found a different copy. One with all the pages intact. I guess I must have lost mine, or mistakenly given it to the hotel in Bath and accidentally picked up one belonging to someone else on the tour.
Unless there’s another explanation – a weird, wonderful, suspend-your-disbelief explanation – that maybe, just maybe, this is my original copy. You see, I have this theory . . .
There’s this bit in the book when Mr Darcy leaves Netherfield in November and goes to London with the Bingleys for the winter. It’s at the end of Volume I, well, actually, it’s the first few lines of Volume II if I remember rightly, just after the ball. Elizabeth doesn’t see him again until Easter. That’s months. During that time nobody knew what he got up to, where he went, who he met. He could have done anything. Met anyone. Dated anybody.
Like, for example, a girl from New York called Emily.
Is that why the rest of the pages were blank? Because he met me? Because that day at Chawton Manor, when we were both visitors from completely different places, our two worlds collided and we somehow managed to bump into each other? I don’t know how it happened, or why it happened, but it happened. And as a result of that trigger, a whole set of changes were set in motion . . .
At the time I didn’t stop to think about what the consequences might be of me and Mr Darcy. I was too busy being swept off my feet by a man I’ve been dreaming about since I was twelve years old. Too caught up with living out my fantasy, and that of every other woman like me. But now, in hindsight, I have thought about it, about what would have happened if I really had fallen in love with him, if we’d somehow stayed together.
My mind begins unravelling the story at a rate of knots. Mr Darcy would never have returned to Netherfield, made the trip back to his aunt’s in the hope he’d see Elizabeth, declared his undying love, been refused and written her that letter. And Elizabeth wouldn’t have had Mr Darcy coming to the rescue when her sister Lydia eloped with Wickham, she wouldn’t have been able to come to her senses and realise she was wrong, and she wouldn’t have been able to say yes when he asked her to marry him.
And therefore the rest of the story would never have happened. The pages would have remained for ever blank. There would have been no greatest love story of all time. No Elizabeth and Mr Darcy. No Pride and Prejudice as we know it. It would have ceased to exist. And it would have been all my fault. And, like the ripples produced by a stone hitting the water, the effects would have been far-reaching. The implications staggering.
Just imagine. There’d be no Colin Firth in the lake scene, no Matthew Macfadyen striding through the mist, no Mark Darcy for Bridget Jones.
At the thought of all those millions of irate Bridget Jones fans, I feel slightly sick.
But Mr Darcy did go back. Which explains why the pages aren’t blank any more. He returned to his life, forgot about me and by doing so created one of the best love stories there’ll ever be.
Sounds incredible?
Hell, it does. But perhaps we all need to believe something incredible once in a while. Just like I’d like to believe that the silk scarf I found outside Winchester Cathedral really is Mr Darcy’s and not some random stranger’s. I still have it. I keep it in my underwear drawer. Unfortunately it doesn’t smell of that sexy cologne any more. I had to wash it after blowing my snotty nose on it and now it smells of Bounce fabric conditioner. But still, sometimes I like to take it and tie it around my neck and fantasise a little . . .
But only a little of course, and then I put it straight back in the drawer.
‘Hey, Em, can you sign these delivery forms?’
Stella’s holler grabs my attention and I zone back to see her standing in the store doorway, wearing her raspberry-pink cape and waving a bunch of forms at me. I smile. She hasn’t taken that cape off since I gave her it. That’s three weeks straight in a raspberry-pink cape. Her neighbours have taken to calling her Red Riding Hood. Not that she cares. She’s in seventh heaven – or should I say Topshop heaven?
‘Sure,’ I yell back, and draining the last of my coffee, I run across the cobbles towards her. ‘So,’ I smile, reaching her and following her inside the store, ‘spill the beans.’
‘What beans?’ she asks innocently, guilt written all over her face.
‘About you and Freddy,’ I prompt, leaning against the section of the trestle table that’s right in the path of sunlight streaming through the doorway. It feels warm on my back.
‘There’s nothing to spill,’ she continues, and thrusts the forms at me. ‘Here, you need to sign these, boss.’
I take them from her. ‘Don’t try to butter me up by calling me boss. That’s two nothings. One from you and one from Freddy.’ Grabbing a pen, I scribble my signature. ‘And two nothings make a something – it’s like a double negative.’
Stella purses her mouth and surveys me thoughtfully. I can tell I’ve really got her with the double-negative thing.
‘Oh OK,’ she sighs, throwing her hands up in the air like a Jewish mother. ‘I give in. We’re dating.’
I look at her, a mixture of delight and disbelief. ‘Stella! That’s fantastic! Why didn’t you tell me earlier? You know I think Freddy’s great. Jeez, when did this all happen?’
‘When I got back from Mexico,’ she says, allowing herself a small smile as she remembers. ‘He was waiting for me when I got back and he’d made me this great cheesecake, as he knows it’s my favourite, and we just stayed in, and ate too much, and chatted and—’ She breaks off and shakes her hair, the tips of which she’s recently dyed black. ‘It made me realise just how much I’d missed him while I was away. Even before Scott turned out to be such a loser, I missed him. I thought it was just ’cos we lived together, we’d gotten used to each other, but it was more than that.’
Joining me in the little patch of sunlight, she turns to me. ‘You know, we’re pretty good
together,’ she confesses.
‘Er, hello,’ I say indignantly. ‘Who’s been telling you this for months?’
She grins sheepishly. ‘I know, I know, I didn’t listen . . .’
‘So what’s it like, having sex with your husband?’ I ask, elbowing her.
She blushes. ‘Well, at least I know he’s going to respect me in the morning,’ she quips, and we both laugh.
We’re interrupted by the phone ringing, and Stella jumps up to get it. After a moment she calls out, ‘It’s Spike – your boyfriend.’
Now it’s my turn to blush. ‘Stop it,’ I hiss, as I rush over and snatch the receiver from her.
But I’m not really miffed, I’m only pretending. I love people calling Spike my boyfriend. I love calling him my boyfriend. I love everything about him being my boyfriend. Like, for example, sending him funny cards that I find in these little boutiques in SoHo, exchanging funny emails, chatting on the phone for hours as I lie in bed with my hot-water bottle imagining it’s him and counting down the days until he’s flying out to New York to visit me (it’s four, I’ve already counted, well, actually, it’s three days and twenty-two hours and about forty-five minutes), making silly doodles on the pad at work that involve writing our names, writing the word ‘love’ and then doing that thing where you count up how many Ls, Os, Vs, Es there are and then add them together and—
OK, I’ll stop now. I know that’s a load of old rubbish, but I can’t help it. I don’t want to help it. Because finally, after a litany of disastrous dates, I’ve finally met a guy I’m crazy about and who’s crazy about me. Well, he’s definitely crazy, anyway. And it took a long time to find him, and I went a long way to find him, and it even took me dating Mr Darcy to find him, but like Jane Austen said, ‘Don’t be in a hurry. The right man will come at last,’ and he did.
Albeit I wasn’t imagining him to be wearing a toothpaste-stained Smiths T-shirt, but then love has a habit of surprising you. Saying that, I think I’ve had enough surprises for one lifetime.
‘Hey, you,’ I say, pressing the phone to my ear. ‘How’s it going?’