From Notting Hill with Love...Actually (26 page)

I walked down into the depths of Notting Hill Gate station. I found the correct line on the map up on the wall and then had to sit patiently on the tube train for a few stops, before I could alight and go back up into the fresh air once more.

I pulled the piece of paper from my pocket, glanced at it again, and then had to ask for further directions before winding my way along a few more streets, eventually arriving at a block of flats.

I looked up momentarily at the towering gray building in front of me before I hurried into its core. I had to wait while I rose up excruciatingly slowly in the lift until the light above my head lit with the number 5, and the doors jolted open.

It was after I had made my way along a dark and dingy corridor that I finally found what I was searching for.

I took a deep breath before knocking purposefully on the door of flat no. 504.

After a few seconds the door swung open and Rose stood staring at me in astonishment.

“Scarlett, what are you doing here so soon?” she said, her expression one of concern.

My voice quivered as I tried to speak.

“What on earth is wrong?” Rose asked in alarm. “What’s happened?”

Tears began to fall from my eyes. “M…Mum,” I just managed to utter before the tears cascaded down my cheeks in a tidal wave of emotion.

“Oh, Scarlett,” Rose said, clasping her hand to her mouth, as tears began to spring from her own eyes now. “What’s changed?”

“I have,” I sobbed, running toward her.

And it was then, for the first time in my life, that I hugged my mother.

Mum and I spent lots of time together over the next couple of days. We visited galleries, took walks in the park, had lunch, and even managed to watch a few movies together—both at the cinema and at home on Belinda and Harry’s huge plasma screen TV.

“My shifts change next week,” Mum announced on Sunday when we were on our way back from seeing a double bill of Cary Grant films. We’d had to travel quite a way on the tube to find this particular cinema, which only showed classic movies. But it had been worth it for an afternoon of
An
Affair
to
Remember
and
The
Philadelphia
Story
the way they were originally intended to be viewed, on the big screen. “So I won’t be able to spend so much time with you, I’m afraid. Besides, I expect you’re starting to get fed up seeing me every day.”

“Of course I’m not,” I protested, genuinely meaning it.

Mum smiled. “That’s lovely to hear, Scarlett. But unfortunately I’ll be working days next week, so I’ll only have my evenings free. Anyway, I expect you’d like to catch up with David. I bet he’s been missing you.”

“Actually, I think I have been neglecting David a bit recently, and I wanted a chance to introduce him to my new friends, and to you, of course. So you having your evenings free is good, because I was hoping to have a dinner party next week. David has some business in London so he’s going to stay over one night.”

“Oh, I’d love to meet your fiancé,” Mum said, looking pleased.

“I thought I’d invite Oscar and Ursula too—they’re the two people who were with me the night we met at the cinema. They’re dying to meet you properly; they know about everything that’s happened.”

So did my mother now. Over the last few days I had explained not only how Sean and I had searched all over London and then Paris for her, but also the other reason I was here. And, as I thought she might, my mother had heartily approved of my plan to prove everyone wrong about the movies.

“I shall certainly look forward to your dinner party, Scarlett,” Mum said now. “But you must promise me you’ll try to get out and find some more films next week—you’ve not got long in London now, and one of us has to prove your father wrong. I certainly never managed it.”

“Stop worrying, Mum,” I assured her. “Everything will be just fine—I’m sure of it.”

***

As I stood in front of Belinda’s cookbooks trying to decipher how long you marinated and how often you should stir, I highly doubted it
would
all be fine…well, the dinner party I was holding tonight anyway.

I was sure that people like Oscar and Ursula who frequented trendy London restaurants all the time wouldn’t expect to come to a dinner party and be served up my trademark dish of spaghetti bolognese. But knowing those two, I highly doubted they would complain—they were far too lovely and polite for that. And David…well, David would be surprised to find I was even cooking at all; it wasn’t usually high on my list of successful pastimes.

But I wanted to impress my mother. She might not be living in the lap of luxury at the moment, but I got the feeling from some of the stories she had told me about her life that she had sampled some of the finest cuisines in the world at one time or another.

“Oh God, what do you mean, you stupid man?” I said, staring at the pages of the cookbook, where the celebrity chef grinned smugly back at me from a tiny photo at the top of each page. “What the hell is
braise-deglaze
?”

The doorbell rang.

“Oh no—who the hell is that at”—I glanced at the clock on the cooker—“at four bloody o’clock in the afternoon!”

I stomped impatiently to the door in my apron, with my cookbook still gripped tightly in one hand.

“Hello, stranger,” the person standing grinning on my doorstep said. “Long time no see.”

“Sean!” I nearly dropped the book in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

“I just heard the good news from Ursula—about your mother—so I thought I’d pop round.” He looked at my apron-clad body suspiciously. “Can I come in?”

“That depends.”

“On?”

“On whether you know what
braise-deglaze
means.”

Sean wrinkled his forehead. “It’s a way of cooking food in liquid, until the liquid evaporates—I think.”

“You’re in then,” I said, pulling him into the house with my book-free hand.

“What
are
you doing?” Sean asked when I’d shut the door behind him and he was following me back into the kitchen.

“Cooking—well, trying to anyway. I’m having a dinner party.”

“Oh, I see.”

“I would have invited you, of course,” I said hurriedly. “But I thought you were still in New York.”

“I got back last night—been sleeping off the jet lag since. Then Ursula phoned and told me about your mother. I can hardly believe it, Scarlett, she was right here all along.”

“I know—mad, isn’t it?”

“So how have things been between you?” Sean said, picking up an onion from the counter and casually tossing it up and down in his hand. “Are the two of you getting on all right?”

“We are now. Look, it’s a really long story, Sean. Which I really want to tell you,” I added truthfully. I
did
genuinely want to tell him. In fact, now he was here in the house with me again, I didn’t want him to go at all. “But I’m in way over my head here with this dinner party and I really don’t have the time at the moment. Maybe we could meet up tomorrow?” I suggested hopefully.

“Or maybe we could just kill two birds with one stone and I could stay here and help you cook while you tell me all about your mother.”

I smiled gratefully at him. “You can cook?”

“I’ll give it a try,” Sean said, throwing the onion on a chopping board and starting to roll up the sleeves of his shirt. “Now, how bad can it be?”

“I’ve just about managed to light the oven successfully,” I said in a pathetic voice. “But not much more, I’m afraid.”

Sean quickly took charge and the kitchen was soon filled with countless delicious aromas—suggesting to me that he might have played down his culinary talents somewhat. I ran about the kitchen like his commis chef and, in between chopping, slicing, and stuffing, I told him all about what had happened with Mum.

When I got to the part about the gifts I watched carefully for Sean’s reaction. He had his back to me stirring something in a saucepan, but I saw him pause for a moment before he continued to move the wooden spoon around again in a slow, circular motion.

“Pass me that knife, will you, please?” I asked, gesturing to a sharp knife that lay next to him on the counter. “I think this one is a little blunt.”

Sean picked up the knife and turned toward me. As I looked up at him I noticed his eyes glisten under the bright kitchen spotlights. “I do wish you’d chop those onions under water like I said, Scarlett,” he said brusquely, hastily turning his face away. “They play havoc with my eyes.”

I didn’t like to point out I’d actually finished chopping the onions ten minutes ago and I was now well into the mushrooms and carrots.

“So everything’s going well, then?” Sean asked, when I’d finished my story and he was fully up to date.

“Yes. That’s partly what tonight is all about, so Mum can meet some of my friends—well, most of them. Maddie and Felix are still away on their honeymoon.”

Sean was silent. He pretended to concentrate hard on something in the recipe book.

“Look, why don’t you stay for dinner tonight too, Sean?” I suggested, putting down the casserole dish I was carrying. “After all, you’ve practically cooked the meal yourself.”

“But won’t it throw your numbers out?” he asked, turning his gaze from the book toward me.

I shook my head. “No, there were only five of us anyway; six will make it look much neater.”

“Who’s the five?”

“Me, obviously, and Mum. Then there’s Oscar, Ursula, and David.”

I saw Sean’s shoulders tighten when I mentioned David’s name.

“David’s coming?”

“Yes, Mum wanted to meet him.”

“I see.”

“But I’m sure she’d love to meet you too, Sean,” I said hurriedly. “She’s heard all about you from me.”

“Has she?” Sean asked keenly, his eyes bright with anticipation.

“Yeah, I told her all about how you helped me search for her.”

“Oh, right.” Sean turned back to the book again.

“Please stay, Sean,” I said, walking across the kitchen toward him. “This is an important night for me. I’d like you to be here.” I touched him gently on the shoulder.

“Of course I’ll stay, Scarlett,” he said, turning to face me again. “If that’s what you’d like?”

“I would, Sean—yes.”

As we stood silently staring at each other, I had to fight the urge to reach out and wipe away the small beads of sweat that had formed on Sean’s brow. Because if I did so, I knew my fingers would want to continue to trace a line along his nose to his mouth, where they would pause, and I would slowly replace my fingers with my lips…

There was a sizzling sound. It took me a few seconds to realize it wasn’t coming from me.

“Sean, the sauce!”

Sean spun round to see red wine sauce bubbling over the side of the saucepan on to the hob. “Damn, it’s not supposed to boil,” he cursed, hoisting the saucepan aloft. “I’ll have to start again now.”

Hurriedly we returned to our kitchen duties, and all sizzling—of any kind—was momentarily forgotten.

“You know what’s just occurred to me, Sean,” I said a little later when things were back under control again. “You could be Mark Darcy standing there cooking in my kitchen.”

“I don’t think Mr. Darcy cooked, did he?” Sean said, looking puzzled. “Not in the Jane Austen I’ve read anyway—he would have had staff to do that for him.”

“No—not Mr. Darcy from
Pride
and
Prejudice
. Mark Darcy from
Bridget
Jones
!”

“Oh right, one of your movies again.”

“Yeah, I haven’t notched one up for a while. But you’ve given me another scene this afternoon with all your cooking efforts.”

Sean thought for a moment. “Wait, haven’t I been him before? This Darcy fellow?”

I considered this. “Yeah, I said you and David’s water fight at Maddie’s wedding was like the one out of the second
Bridget
Jones
film.”

“What about when I was in the boat, on the Small World ride at Disneyland? I’m sure you mentioned it then?”

“No, that was Hugh Grant’s character—Daniel Cleaver—I compared you to.”

“Ah, I see—I think. Which one’s better? To be compared to, I mean?”

I thought again. “Mark Darcy. Yes, definitely Mark.” After all we were talking Colin Firth here—and no woman who ever saw him emerge from that lake ever quite got over it.

“You had to think about it though. Why?”

“I…I’m not sure. Colin Firth is this quite staid, reserved character in the film, a bit like the real Mr. Darcy—the Jane Austen version. But you just know that deep inside he’d be really passionate and sexy once you got his guard down. And Hugh Grant—that’s Daniel—his personality is out there from the start—there are no hidden depths with him. He’s a bit of a cad…a smooth talker…a ladies’ man, I guess you’d call him. They both have their attractions from a female perspective, just in different ways.”

“But you liked Colin better?”

Sean had stopped what he was doing at the stove and was giving me his full attention during this questioning.

“Yeah, I think so. What is all this anyway? I thought you hated the cinema—why the sudden interest?”

“No reason,” Sean said mysteriously, turning back to his saucepan. “I just wondered, that’s all.”

I opened my mouth to question him further, but the doorbell rang again. I never had visitors—mainly because I only knew Sean, Ursula, and Oscar in London. Who could this be?

I excused myself from the kitchen, walked through the hall, and pulled open the front door without my now customary glance through the peephole.

“Surprise!” my father called from the top of the steps with his arms outstretched.

“Dad! What on earth are you doing here?”

“What sort of welcome is that for your old dad?”

“He came with me, Scarlett,” David said, appearing from behind Dad on the steps. “I hope you don’t mind?”

“No…no, of course I don’t. I’m just surprised to see you, that’s all.”

“Good surprise or bad?” Dad asked.

“Good, obviously.”

“You’re a good liar, Scarlett—I know you hate surprises.”

“Not always,” I said vaguely. I was trying to think which film the lines we had just inadvertently spoken had been from. Oh, it was on the tip of my tongue…Oh yes,
Notting
Hill
, of course! The part where Alec Baldwin turns up to surprise Julia Roberts at the Ritz hotel.

“Aren’t you going to invite us in?” David asked.

“Yes…yes, come in.” I stood back, and they piled in, David with an overnight bag but my father, rather more worryingly, with a suitcase.

“How long are you here for, Dad?” I asked, suddenly remembering who was coming to dinner tonight.

“Just for a few days, Scarlett. It’s been ages since I’ve been down to London, and David had some sort of rail voucher that if you bought one rail fare you got one half price. So we split the cost, and I thought I’d come and see how you were getting on.”

Now David and the railcard made sense, but my father rarely took time away from the business, and for both of us to be away at the same time was unheard of.

Dad and David gave each other a conspiratorial look, and suddenly I got why my father was here. He didn’t want to risk anything going wrong like it had with my mother—not now the end of my time away was so near, and neither did David. They’d cooked this little scheme up between them to keep an eye on me. Is that what David had meant in Paris when he said he’d given my father his word? Were they in this together all along?

I was about to tell them in no uncertain terms that I didn’t need keeping an eye on when Sean appeared unexpectedly from the kitchen still wearing an apron.

“Scarlett, have you any—”

I spun round toward him.

“You!” I heard David say behind me.

Sean looked calmly between David and my father. “And it’s a pleasure to see you again too, David.” Then he ignored him and walked toward Dad. “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure?” he said with his hand outstretched.

“Sean, this is my father.”

“Mr. O’Brien, pleased to meet you at last, Scarlett has told me so much about you.”

I didn’t know whether Sean was doing all this just to annoy David—but if he was, it was working, because David’s face was now quite an alarming shade of red.

My father, looking surprised, shook Sean’s hand.

“Dad, this is Sean, my neighbor.”

David made a snorting sound.

“Pleased to meet you, Sean,” Dad said. Then he glanced at David. “Are you all right, David? You’ve turned a funny color.”

“I think it’s time I went,” Sean said, untying his apron. “I hope I’ve been of some help to you, Scarlett.” He pulled the apron over his head and walked toward the door.

David—his color returning to normal again—stepped aside to make room for him. “I hope you’re not going on our account, old boy,” he sneered as Sean passed.

“Yes, Sean, you really don’t have to go.” I glared at David.

“Yes, I think I do,” Sean said, focusing on me and choosing to ignore David. “I hope all goes well tonight, Scarlett. I’m sure your guests will enjoy the food you’ve so carefully prepared.” He winked at me as he reached for the door.

“Wait a moment, Sean, and I’ll see you out properly. Dad, David, the lounge is just through there,” I said, pointing to the door. “If you’d like to go through, I’ll be there in a minute to help you find somewhere to put all your things.”

My father looked in the direction I was gesturing. “Righty-ho then. Nice to meet you, Sean.” He nodded at him.

“And you, Mr. O’Brien.”

David made what sounded like a growling noise at Sean.

“You really want to get that cough seen to, David,” Dad said, as David followed him obediently into the lounge. “It can get much worse if you leave it untreated too long.”

I waited until they were out of sight before stepping outside with Sean.

“Please don’t go,” I pleaded with him again. “I still have room for seven around the table, it’s huge. And I’m sure David will behave himself if I have a word.”

Sean smiled at me. “Oh, Scarlett, I would have thought me being there would be the last thing on your mind right now.”

“What do you mean? Oh, Dad. I had no idea he was going to turn up today—apparently it’s a surprise.”

“Yes, I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation from the kitchen. But no, I don’t mean your father turning up unexpectedly. I mean, what are you going to tell your mother?”

“How do you mean?”

“About the dinner party—how will you put her off? You can’t have her turning up tonight with your father here, can you?”

I stuck my hands in the pocket of my apron and idly watched a man trimming a hedge over the road.

“Scarlett?” Sean prompted.

“They’re going to have to meet each other again some time now Mum’s back in my life,” I said, turning to face him. “It’s not my fault Dad’s turned up out of the blue like this.”

Sean’s eyes widened. “But they haven’t seen each other for over twenty years; there could be bloodshed if they just turn up at the same dinner party!”

“But there might not be…it could all work out just fine.”

Sean rubbed his forehead in a way that suggested he didn’t agree.

“Just how much of that red wine we were marinating with did you drink? Scarlett, just ring your mother and tell her the dinner’s off.”

“No, she’s been looking forward to meeting everyone.”

“Including your father?”

I pulled my apron over my head and folded it up. “Look, Sean, I didn’t orchestrate this, fate did. And now I’m going to let fate take its course.”

“You’re asking for trouble.”

“Maybe…maybe not.” I shrugged. “Look, are you going to come to dinner tonight or not?”

“And miss this? You’ve got to be kidding. It’ll be like Christmas in the Queen Vic—just without the cockney accents.”

I had to smile. “I know you think what I’m going to let happen is the wrong thing to do. But maybe that’s what all this has been about—me coming to London, so I can have two parents in my life. Everything happens—”

“For a reason. Yes, I know, you’ve said so before. But maybe this isn’t the only reason for you coming here?”

“And maybe it is. Look, I have to get back inside. I’ll see you later, yes, about 7:30? I’ll tell Mum it’s eight, and then everyone will have a chance to chat to Dad a bit before she arrives.”

“I don’t think that’s a good—”

I held up my hand. “No more, Sean. I’ll see you later?”

Sean nodded. “But you could end up regretting this decision, Scarlett. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and possibly for the rest of your life.”

I stared suspiciously at Sean. “Are you absolutely sure you never watch movies?” I asked him.

“Not often, why?”

“Hmm, it just seems you have an awful knack recently of making me feel like I’m in one.”