A Funny Thing About Love (17 page)

He was about to continue when he was joined by a stunning, willowy woman with long, honey-blonde hair who was a good two inches taller than him, all long limbs and artfully tousled hair, with an effortless English beauty like the model Laura Bailey. Immediately she slid her arm into his. ‘I wondered where you'd gone off to.' She looked directly at Carmen, her grey-violet eyes coolly appraising, then back at Will. ‘So who wants to shag you, darling? Should I be worried?' she demanded.

Carmen thought her cheeks might actually combust. Will didn't exactly look thrilled as he muttered, ‘Just reminding Carmen of one of her old clients, Karl Fraser, and all his shag jokes.' He looked appealingly at Carmen.

She backed him up, ‘Yeah, Karl, our least favourite knob, shag-gag comedian.'

Will had a girlfriend. A spectacularly good-looking girlfriend. He was obviously a quick worker, or maybe he'd had her all along? Maybe the flirtation had all been in her head?

‘Tash, this is Carmen, Carmen, Tash,' Will did the introductions. ‘Tash is a TV producer, Carmen used to work with me as a comedy agent and is now a writer.' Not just spectacularly good-looking, also in possession of a good career. Carmen now felt about as skittish as a horse on its way to the knacker's.

‘What kind of writing?' Tash asked with the characteristic directness of a TV producer.

‘Well, actually I'm sort of writing a sort of comedy drama slash sitcom,' Carmen replied, doing a mental d'oh for sounding so uncertain.

‘Oh? I'm always interested in new writing, give me the premise.'

It seemed less a request and more of an order.

Carmen hated being put on the spot like this. She found it hard enough describing her drama to her close friends, never mind to someone who was looking at her with disdain and who also happened to be going out with Will. ‘Sorry, I've got a thing about talking about work in progress, so all I can say is it's about two sisters and their children who share a house. One sister is widowed, the other divorced, so they both have baggage, but funny-tragic baggage, not moany baggage.' She couldn't believe how much of a loser she sounded.

That comment earned her a condescending look from Tash. ‘I wouldn't steal your idea, Carmen. I'm up to my eyes in comedy dramas.'

Will caught Carmen's eye and gave a reassuring smile. ‘I don't think Carmen means it like that, Tash.
It's sort of like you don't want to jinx it by talking about it. Am I right?'

Carmen nodded, grateful for the intervention.

‘I see,' Tash replied, with the same tone of voice she might have used for ‘whatever'. ‘It was lovely to meet you, Carmen, good luck with the writing. I must go and talk to Graham.'

‘As in Norton,' Will told Carmen, clearly expecting to carry on talking to Carmen, but Tash remained where she was.

‘And you need to come too, Will.'

‘So email me,' Will said over his shoulder as Tash led him away. ‘I've got a backlog of Wobbly Worms for you. I've discovered that you trained me too well – I only like the green ones and I don't know what to do with the others. Not even Trish likes them.'

‘Is she okay?' Carmen called back, relieved Trish hadn't been sacked.

‘Yep, she and the tropical fish are hanging on in there. See you, Carmen.'

Carmen gave a wry smile and held up her hand in farewell, trying to ignore the unexpected torrent of jealousy that was making its way through her at the fact that Will had a girlfriend. Correction, Will had a hot, super-talented, bloody gorgeous girlfriend. And what did she have? An unfinished sitcom and a cupboard full of green worms that she'd been saving for Will, not forgetting a cactus called Basil.

As Marcus had won an award there was no way that Carmen could make a quick exit; she was in for the
long haul and had to spend the next hour doing the oh-darling thing, every now and then catching glimpses of Tash and Will as they worked the room, looking every inch the successful dynamic couple. Every glimpse afforded Carmen a fresh stab of jealousy, so painful that even drinking copious amounts of the evil acidic white wine failed to obliterate the feeling.

‘There, it wasn't so bad seeing Will again, was it?' Marcus asked as he sprawled out on the back seat of the limo, the winner's prerogative, as they were whisked smoothly back to Mayfair. ‘He looks bloody gorgeous in black tie. Truly scrumptious.' He ignored the filthy look Carmen shot him.

‘It was okay,' she replied, being economical with the truth to the point of deceit. She did not want to admit to the complex mix of emotions seeing Will had aroused in her. She was definitely not going to reveal that she was green with jealousy, as green as the wobbly green worms, as green as her designer dress which she would never want to wear again as it would forever remind her of tonight. ‘D'you know his girlfriend Tash?'

Marcus wrinkled his nose, ‘Oh God, is he going out with her? I thought he had better taste. She's so hard you could cut diamonds on her.'

‘Aren't you being sexist just because she's a forthright woman and good at her job? I bet you wouldn't say that if she was a man.' Carmen didn't know why she was defending her; frankly she hadn't warmed to Tash one little bit. She tried to tell herself that was
because of Tash's personality and not because she was Will's girlfriend.

‘No, she's just hard.' Marcus paused. ‘I bet he's only seeing her because you knocked him back.'

‘I'm sure he's not,' Carmen replied truthfully, looking out of the window at late-night London rushing by. She had one of those moments when she suddenly felt very small. The kind of moment that called for her Victoria Wood CD with a sketch about Bunsen burners and a hot chocolate, but she suspected Marcus had neither.

Marcus wanted Carmen to spend Saturday with him in London, but after a late breakfast she felt she wanted to return to Brighton and force herself back to reality. She had been harbouring thoughts of Will, had extended the fantasy where they were lovers to include wildly romantic trips to New York, to moving in together. It was where she retreated to avoid thoughts of Nick and his baby. But now she was going to have to let go of it. The sad truth was that the Sinatra song ‘One for My Baby', which she'd danced to with Will, had nailed it. All she and Will had shared was a brief episode. And it was over now. She'd had the clearest possible signal seeing him with Tash that there was nothing doing. So she would rather be out of London to clear her head. If she stayed with Marcus, she'd only obsess about what Will and Tash were up to. Had they made love in the morning when they were both still half asleep and full of dreams? Had he then made her
tea and toast? No, scrap the toast, Tash did not have the look of a carb eater. She probably had something
über
healthy like a broccoli and spinach smoothie and then went for a ten-K run.

Arriving at Brighton station, Carmen went first to M&S to arm herself for a Saturday night on her own without the Will fantasy to sustain her. She planned to watch a DVD, maybe a French film, something challenging that pushed the boundaries, sip a glass of red wine and eat something healthy. She grabbed a pack of Singapore prawn noodles and a bottle of red wine. This was absolutely fine, she told herself, but then she found herself in the checkout line with tears in her eyes as she surveyed the packets of Wobbly Worms next to her, each and every one reminding her of what she had lost. She tried to tell herself not to be so pathetic. It was hardly up there with the greatest romantic moments of all time, was it? Romeo calling out beneath Juliet's balcony; Cleopatra killing herself after learning of Mark Antony's death; Orpheus rescuing Eurydice from the underworld; Carmen crying over a packet of worms. But it made no difference.

Forget the French film, there was only one thing for it –
Gladiator
. She needed the distraction that this film could deliver. It was Carmen's guilty pleasure, which just a select few of her friends knew about – she didn't want everyone thinking she was a total nutter. But still, didn't some people watch
Dirty Dancing
two hundred and fifty times? When she and Nick were going through the IVF hell she'd had to watch
Gladiator
at least once
a month. Yes, she had an all-consuming passion for Russell Crowe, which had abated over the years somewhat – mainly due to his penchant for choosing challenging roles where he had to pile on the pounds and often behave quite badly or madly or both – but it was more than that.
Gladiator
offered a world view of black-and-white values, where you had to be brave and get on with things, however bad they were, and in fairness having your wife and son murdered and being forced into slavery and to fight to the death was probably as bad as it could possibly get.

By the time the credits rolled, even though Carmen had fast-forwarded the traumatic scene where the aforementioned son and wife get murdered and some of the gladiatorial combat – once you've seen one arm being hacked off you've probably seen them all – she felt drained. To cheer herself up she watched
Some Like it Hot
, another of her all-time favourites. In consequence she got to bed after two a.m., slightly sozzled from the red wine (the one glass had become three-quarters of the bottle) but nicely numb, thoughts of Will thankfully blunted by the alcohol. It possibly wasn't the most mature way of dealing with the situation.
But still
, she told herself, tucking the duvet under her feet to guard against the foot monster,
nobody's perfect
.

October became November. The weather turned cooler. Carmen fulfilled Jess's prophecy and bought a pair of black UGGs, which she now lived in. She fulfilled her own prophecy and spilt red wine on Marcus's white rug, which no amount of stain remover would shift. She had better make a success of the comedy in order to earn enough money to buy him a new rug. She had finally settled into a routine of sorts. She'd discovered that morning was her best time for writing, that she had to do some kind of exercise, otherwise in the afternoon she wanted to fall asleep, and that she also had to see someone during the day for lunch so as not to go stark raving mad. She met up with Jess several times a week for lunch, usually just a quick sandwich as Jess rarely had time for anything longer. For exercise, she took to alternating running by the sea with swimming in her local pool, where she frequently suffered pool rage from people who swam in the wrong lane. She would spend the rest of the day smelling faintly of chlorine and worrying that she had a verruca.

Swimming was now the only time she allowed herself to think about Will, but thoughts of him crept in when she least expected it. When she'd written a
scene she particularly liked she thought about what his reaction would be. When she got dressed up for a night out in London with Marcus and Sadie, both of whom had yet to come to Brighton, she wondered how Will would have rated it on the muttonometer. But on the whole she thought she was handling the whole Will-having-a-girlfriend scenario rather well, which was why she was thrown when a package arrived one Friday morning containing five packets of Wobbly Worms all de-greened with a note, ‘As promised. Enjoy. Hope the writing is going well. Will x'.

It was a sweet gesture – no pun intended. Tash did not have the look of a woman who would enjoy a Wobbly Worm. She would no doubt have sophisticated tastes like quail eggs and caviar, and drink detoxifying nettle tea and pretend to like it when everyone knew it tasted like goblin vomit. Oh well, Carmen sighed, Tash and Will would be very happy together. They'd buy a loft in Shoreditch, go to all the achingly cool places, be in with the in crowd, in fact
be
the in crowd. Then when Tash had her first child, an adorable golden-haired girl called Octavia, they'd buy somewhere in the country, say the Cotswolds, to spend weekends. Tash would continue to make award-winning TV, but be slightly softened by motherhood, Will would be every inch the fantastic dad and he would start his own agency and go stateside.

Carmen paused to bite the head off a red worm and chewed it vigorously until the feelings of jealousy receded. In fact, she felt she had worked through her feelings enough to call Will and say thank you. It was
two weeks since she'd last seen him; she could do this grown-up, mature, I'm-completely-over-you thing. She had been all set to email, but knew that if she did that she'd spend the next few hours obsessing about whether he had replied or not, and if not why not. So she was not
that
over him. She would go for the direct approach.

‘Thanks for the worms,' was her opener. She hoped she wasn't opening a can of them by calling him. ‘It's Carmen, by the way.'

‘There is only one person I know who would thank me for worms,' Will said drily. ‘And there'll be plenty more where they came from. I'm completely addicted to them. I'll probably have to go to Wobbly Worm rehab to break the habit – do you think they do a twelve-step programme for confectionery? Hello, my name is Will and I'm a wormaholic?'

‘Hello, Will,' Carmen put in.

‘Trish tried to tempt me the other week with some Haribo bears but it just wasn't the same. I felt as if I was betraying the worms.'

‘You ate a Haribo bear! That's even more uncool than the worms!' Instantly they were back into banter.

‘Carmen, confectionery cannot be cool or uncool. And anyway, I've never said I'm cool, I quoted “Lady in Red” to you, remember? And I'll admit right now that Chris Rea's “Driving Home for Christmas” is one of my favourite Christmas numbers of all time.'

The reference to ‘Lady in Red' opened the flood-gates of memory in Carmen. Who'd have thought a
song by Chris de Burgh would have that effect on her? The night where she and Will had so nearly got it together, the night he had said she was gorgeous . . . Well, he surely didn't think that any more now he had Tash, future mother of Octavia. She needed to get in the canoe and paddle away from that memory as quickly as she could. So she didn't pick up on the reference but said instead, ‘I bet Tash doesn't eat Wobbly Worms, does she?'