It Had to Be You (36 page)

They stood there with their arms round each other. ‘
Did
you need that money for an abortion?’ Lauren said in Lizzy’s ear.

Lizzy pulled away. ‘No! I’ve paid it back, can’t we just forget about it?’

‘I wouldn’t judge you if it was,’ Lauren told her. ‘It still makes me sick about all the prejudice that Penny had to go through.’

‘Lauren,
Dirty Dancing
was set in a sixties American holiday camp. You can’t compare it to how things are now.’

Her sister shrugged. ‘This is Bromley in the noughties. What’s the difference?’

By 10 p.m. Lizzy and Elliot were back on the train to London, weighed down with full bellies and Mrs Spellman’s turkey sandwiches. They were sharing the carriage with festive revellers heading into the capital for a Saturday night out. Lizzy had a headache from the amaretto shots Lauren had made her do at the front door. She was starting to feel like she’d done Christmas and New Year’s Eve in one fell swoop.

‘You were a big hit with the Spellmans,’ she told Elliot. ‘I think my dad might have some serious competition for my mum’s affections.’

‘Your parents are lovely people. I can see a lot of you in your mum.’

‘Don’t say that!’

Elliot laughed at the look of horror on Lizzy’s face. ‘It’s a good thing. You’ve both got this amazing zest for life, and the ability to connect with anyone.’ He brushed her cheekbone with the tip of his finger. ‘What I want to know is, where did the animal-print fetish come from?’

‘A-ha. You haven’t seen Mum’s famous sequinned flamingo jumper. She only gets it out for special occasions.’

He groaned. ‘Is that what I’ve got to look forward to in the future?’

The future.
A wonderful tingling spread through Lizzy.
He thinks we’ve got a future!

The next minute she was nearly ejected out of her seat by the most almighty shriek. Even the rowdy partygoers stopped playing their drinking games and looked round.

Elliot’s eyes were watering. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got a tissue?’

Lizzy dug round in her handbag and found him one. ‘Do you always make that sound when you sneeze?’

He looked nonplussed. ‘Turkey always irritates my nose for some reason.’

There was another extraordinary explosion. Lizzy started to giggle.

‘What’s so funny?’ Elliot sniffed.

‘You! You make a really weird squealing sound when you sneeze!’

‘I do not!’ He did it again. ‘Stop laughing at me!’

Lizzy couldn’t stop. The revelation that gruff, pompous, award-winning journalist Elliot Anderson made a noise like a piglet when he sneezed was the funniest thing she’d heard in a long time. As she looked at him – indignant and red-eyed as he held the novelty ‘Xmas Squirrel’ tissue over his nose – Lizzy was hit by the startling and wonderful realization that she was head over heels in love with him.

The next day Elliot had to go into the office for a few hours. Lizzy woke to a note on the pillow next to her
. Should be back by 2 p.m. Make yourself at home. E x

The bed already felt empty without him. Finding an old T-shirt of his in his workout gear drawer, Lizzy wandered through to the kitchen. The apartment was filled with a shimmery bright light that matched Lizzy’s mood. It took a few minutes to work the espresso machine, but she finally succeeded and took her prize through to the living room, feeling very cosmopolitan.

The river was like a giant silver snake ambling past. Lizzy sat in the window seat and gazed at the darts of sunlight hitting the water. Even though neither of them had said anything about how they’d felt on the train, there had been a new intensity to the sex last night. Everything had suddenly felt more deep and meaningful, as if an unspoken pact had developed between them. Was that how it worked? When the moment happened, you both just knew?

The river path was busy with Sunday traffic. A man in a green parka coat was standing underneath the window talking on his phone. Lizzy felt like throwing open the window and shouting down to him.
I’m in love with a beautiful man! And I think he might feel the same way!

Lizzy stared dreamily out over the rooftops as she drank the rest of her coffee. She had a few hours before Elliot got back. She might head into Covent Garden and do a bit of Christmas shopping. What should she get him? It was probably still too early to get anything too expensive, but she didn’t want to go down the novelty present route either.
Then again
, she thought wryly,
when you realized you were on hundred percent, bang-to-rights in love with someone, what was the point in holding back?

When should she tell Elliot that she loved him? She’d almost said it last night in bed, but had chickened out at the last minute. The circumstances had to be right: declarations of love required you to have a sober head. Maybe she could drop the bombshell over a delicious but healthy salmon dinner lovingly prepared by herself. Or was that too much? It might be better to whisper it in Elliot’s ear on one of their romantic late-night walks. But the age-old dilemma – what if
she
said it and horror of horrors, he didn’t say it back? Lizzy watched a pigeon swoop on to next-door’s window ledge and swiftly defecate. Maybe she should wait for him to say it first.

She got up and started to wander round the living room, picking up things and putting them down again, and going over to gaze at Elliot’s intellectual-looking bookcase. There was no doubt that he had good taste, but the place could do with a bunch of flowers or two to liven things up. Maybe she’d get him one of those nodding Japanese cats as a stocking filler, just to annoy him.

At the end of the room was a large cabinet, in the same dark wood as the other bits of furniture in the apartment. It was simple and unobtrusive:
nothing to see here, thank you very much.
Lizzy pressed on a corner of the biggest door and watched as it quietly popped open.

She found herself looking at a wall of A4 black box files. Everything was neat and labelled meticulously. Lizzy knew she shouldn’t have been surprised. What did they say about people’s cupboards being a true reflection of what a person was really like? Her own flat was rammed full of crap that she never used. Cupboard doors would burst open of their own accord and spit random things out like a scattergun. She wasn’t sure what that said about her.

It felt wrong, standing here looking at Elliot’s private affairs. What if he walked in now and found her?
Just shut the door and go and get in the shower
, she told herself.
You’re doing the mad snooping thing!

Except that Elliot was at work and would never be any the wiser. Her hands seemed to be beyond her control. Lizzy went on opening more cupboards and drawers, feeling an increasing sense of relief and guilt that nothing was out of the ordinary.
Why?
said the same annoying little voice.
What are you expecting to find?

She was just about to shut the cabinet door when something on the bottom shelf caught her eye. It was an old cardboard box, looking rather out of place amongst the meticulously filed paperwork and shiny box files. Lizzy pulled it out and sat down cross-legged on the floor next to it.

A musty smell wafted out as she opened the flaps. Inside was a big pile of photographs, all chucked in together. Elliot obviously didn’t apply his ordered filing system to old photographs. On the top of the pile was an official picture of a school rugby team. Fifteen teenage boys standing together in formation with their arms folded. A wiry Elliot was on the front row, sporting nineties-style Hugh Grant hair as he gazed solemnly into the camera. And was that Marcus at the back with a horrible crew cut? Even then he’d had the same smug expression.

Underneath there were more team photos, all with Elliot in different school years with a variety of dreadful haircuts. There were also a few family photos, but unlike the official school portraits these were loose and a bit dog-eared, as if they’d fallen out of an album. One was of Elliot as a small boy, standing in front of Beeston Hall. He had his arms round a taller, tangle-haired blonde girl who Lizzy assumed was Elliot’s sister Skyla. They were standing in-between a tall, jolly man who was the spitting image of Elliot and a much younger, glamorous-looking Cassandra. Elliot and his sister were both holding old-fashioned fishing nets. Despite Elliot’s serious expression, he looked adorable in a pirate’s hat and an Orville T-shirt that said,
I Wish I Could Fly.

Lizzy began to relax. This was just a box of childhood memories like everybody else had. She was about to put the lid back on when she saw a flash of gold at the bottom of the box. Carefully lifting the pictures on top of it, she pulled the photo album out.

The cover was beautiful and ornate, and it felt fat with content. Lizzy opened it and her heart shot up into her mouth. On the very first page was a picture of a fresh-faced Elliot and Amber crouching by a stream, grinning as they looked into the camera. The dedication was dated Elliot’s twenty-first birthday
. To my darling E, my one and only! Here’s to the next twenty-one years. All my love now and forever, A.

Even with a dodgy perm Amber had been stunning. With a growing feeling of sickness Lizzy turned the page. For the next twenty pages Elliot and Amber’s history was played out in glorious, excruciating detail. Amber in a long stripy scarf cheering a muddy Elliot on at the side of a rugby pitch, Amber and Elliot at their upper sixth dance together, both looking gawky and self-conscious in black tie. Them on a saggy floral sofa, bare legs tangled up together. On stage in a play, Elliot in a comical floppy hat while Amber looked ravishing as a Lolita-esque peasant girl. Them at another ball, this time older and more self-confident and poised. A close-up of a bare-chested Elliot asleep with a cute black Labrador puppy, Amber and Elliot sunbathing on a jetty on a lake, her looking like a supermodel in a black string bikini …

If that hadn’t stuck the knife in enough, Amber had annotated each picture with lovely flowing handwriting: times, dates, locations and exuberant captions.
Bel-Air baby! White Russians – never again!!
A secret, indecipherable language that Lizzy would never be able to understand. The last photo in the album was Elliot and Amber standing in front of the famous Trevi Fountain in Rome. Elliot had his arm round Amber and was smiling into the camera as she gazed up at him adoringly.
Ciao bella! We’ll always have Roma!

Lizzy closed the album with a snap. The sound matched how she was feeling inside, like something had broken. She put the box back and slumped against the cabinet. For some reason, a memory from her own schooldays swam into her mind. Her GCSE art exam: a seaside scene that Lizzy had poured her heart and soul into. She really thought she’d created a masterpiece, but when her results had come back from the exam board, she’d been devastated to have only been awarded a D. ‘I’m sorry, Lizzy,’ her art teacher had told her. ‘Sometimes things aren’t quite as good as we think they are.’

Lizzy had the same feeling now, that she’d been labouring under the illusion that she’d got something special, only to find out it wasn’t that special at all. Amber and Elliot had such a rich history together and a love that had endured across the decades. How could she ever compete?

The next day she met Poppet for an emergency summit at Pret and told her what had happened. There was a long silence afterwards. ‘Have you asked him about it?’ Poppet asked.

‘I’m hardly going to tell him I was poking round in his cupboards, am I? Can you imagine how that would go down?’

The hollow feeling of dismay she’d had in her stomach since yesterday just wouldn’t go away. Elliot had come back from work with a beautiful bunch of flowers for her and had been extra lovely, insisting on cooking dinner for Lizzy and paying for a cab to get her home early the next morning. It had only made Lizzy paranoid. Did he have a guilty conscience?

‘Everyone has pictures of their ex tucked away,’ Poppet reasoned. ‘I wouldn’t read too much into it.’

‘Oh, come on, Pops. If you were going out with a bloke who’d been dumped by his fiancée and you’d found a photographic tribute of their amazing life together hidden away on a shelf, would
you
be happy about it?’

‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I guess not.’

Lizzy stared gloomily into the street. Why the hell had she opened the box? It had been better not knowing.

The next day was Haven’s Christmas lunch. Antonia had announced that there were no funds for frivolity in the company pot, so everyone was paying for it themselves. There had been a bit of a hoo-ha in certain factions when Bianca had suggested going to Nobu followed by the notorious Box nightclub, but in the end Antonia had stepped in and announced that they were going to a restaurant on the Kings Road. It was owned by an old friend of Antonia’s, apparently, who would do them some kind of deal. It would probably still end up costing more than what most Haven employees earned in a week, but no one had dared protest.

In the run-up to Christmas Antonia had turned into the anti-Christ and had banned sugar from the office because she thought it was affecting everyone’s performance, so Lizzy and her colleagues had been reduced to sneakily eating mince pies and advent calendar chocolates under their desks. Antonia had been in a foul mood for weeks, and because she conducted all her affairs on her mobile in the middle of the office, everyone knew she was ‘fucking stressed’ about not getting any new business. They’d lost out on two pitches recently, because Antonia never gave her team enough time to prepare and they always went in on the back foot. Without Lizzy’s more established clients and Jocasta Reynolds-Johnson’s sizable retainer, things would be looking very bleak indeed.

Added to which, Lizzy was dangling on permanent tenterhooks. Every time Antonia came over to her desk or her name flashed up in Lizzy’s inbox, Lizzy’s heart would leap into her mouth. It was only a matter of time before her boss found out about Karen Jones. All Lizzy could do was wait for the axe to fall and hope – no,
pray
– that Antonia would show leniency and not sack her on the spot.