Lessons in Laughing Out Loud (26 page)

“Really? You were right; everything you wish for does come true, sometimes before you’ve even wished for it. Are you sure those shoes aren’t magic? Maybe there’s a genie in the sole.” Daniel’s voice receded and grew louder as he paced again.

“I don’t know,” Willow said, fingering her coat before slipping it on. “Sometimes I think objects that have belonged to other people carry a tiny piece of those lives with them. I don’t
know anything about who owned these, but maybe a little bit of them has rubbed off on me,” Willow mused aloud, as she zipped up her skirt.

“Or maybe a little bit of you has rubbed off on everyone else.” Daniel had stopped just the other side of the screen. “You are a remarkable woman, Willow. You try and hide it away, but it’s always been there. Maybe all you needed was a pair of foxy shoes to strut your stuff in. You’ve certainly got my attention.”

Will smiled, pressing her palm against the screen for a second.

“The most amazing thing is that Chloe would trust me to bring up her baby, which means that she still thinks of me as a decent enough person to be a mother. Which maybe means I can build something between us again, if Sam will let me.” Willow smiled. “Perhaps I can still have a chance to be a mum to Chloe.”

She emerged from the haven of the screen to find Daniel waiting for her, his arms crossed, brows knotted.

“And the baby?” He leaned his head toward her, as if eager to hear her answer.

“I don’t think Chloe’s thought about the baby at all,” Willow said. “Maybe not until today, until we saw the scan. I think she made the decision to have it adopted before it was real. Perhaps adoption
is
the best thing, I don’t know. But if I’m there with her, and not here taking my clothes off for you, then . . . well, that’s the sort of thing a mum does, isn’t it?”

“I never thought I’d find maternal instincts in a woman who’s as sexy as hell, but turns out I was wrong.” Daniel approached Willow as she slipped on her coat. He took the lapels of the coat and tugged her closer to him.

“If you think you can be a mum to Chloe, then go for it,” he said, kissing her on the tip of her nose. “But Will, sweetheart, two things: I don’t know if you can take losing Chloe and Sam . . .”

“Just Chloe,” Willow protested.

“
And
Sam again,” Daniel insisted. “And Willow, my God, you are a beautiful, wonderful, funny, sexy woman. Any man, including me, would be as lucky as hell to have you.” Willow decided it would be a terrible idea to look him the eye, in case there was more ill-advised touching, so she studied his thumbs in the fur of her coat instead.

“You deserve a life, a husband, a child of your own. You can have those things, if you just let yourself.”

Willow shook her head. “I can’t, Daniel. I can’t, you know that. I can’t make that work, I’ve tried. . . . And anyway, what’s the big deal? Look at you, you never want to settle down. You’ve been playing the field for twenty years and you’re perfectly content.”

Removing one hand from her lapel, Daniel lifted her chin and made her look at him.

“I used to think so, Willow, I used to think so, but—”

Without warning Daniel kissed her ever so lightly on the lips, pausing for a fraction as his mouth brushed over hers. It was a chaste kiss, almost like a whispered prayer, but it sent a surge of electricity pulsing through Willow, rooting her to the spot.

“Willow . . . I don’t really get what I’m feeling right now,” Daniel whispered, his eyes closed. “I don’t know if it’s real or just me being me, because you’ve kind of rejected me here, which usually makes me want a woman more. But I do know that I’ve got all these feelings churning around in my gut that may have been there a long time, and that maybe I’ve pushed them aside because of . . . well, because you are the only person in the world I am really myself with, and I don’t want to lose that. So what I’m saying is, I might be a shallow, feckless, awful man or . . . I might be in love with you. I’m not sure which and I’m not sure that it makes a difference to you either way, but I kind of had to say it.”

Willow caught her breath, trying to take a step back, but Daniel kept her close.

“What I do know, for certain, is that I am your friend. And I will do whatever I can to help you right now. And maybe later on, once I’ve figured this out and you’ve figured out all your stuff, we might revisit that kiss? See how it makes us feel then?”

Swallowing, Willow nodded, shocked by the suddenness with which Daniel released her, sending her tottering back a step or two on her heels.

“Great, well, I’ll walk you out and get you a cab.” He grinned at her, back to normal Daniel in a snap. “So I’ll see you at Serious James’s thing on Thursday—hey, bring your guests! The awfulness of James’s jokes will take their minds off their woes, or push them over the edge, one or the other.”

“I might just do that.”

Daniel opened the front door for her. “One more thing, Willow. You are still my Venus. You don’t get out of it that easily.”

As Willow settled back into her seat in the cab, she thought what it might have been like tonight, between her and Daniel, if she hadn’t stopped him. If Chloe hadn’t come to her, if Sam hadn’t been standing in her flat today . . . then it would have been the most perfect moment that Willow could have imagined. But the truth was never that simple between Willow and Daniel; yes, they had become friends because he lived next door and had a penchant for mooching a drink off her in the afternoon. But they had stayed friends after they had both moved on from that address for one reason.

After all, it was partly Daniel’s fault that Sam had thrown Willow out and told her never to come back.

Because, after all, it was Daniel whom Sam had found Willow in bed with one gray, wet afternoon.

Willow had known that it was just a bit of reckless fun
for him from the moment that Daniel had pulled her a little closer to him while they were twirling around her living room, drunkenly dancing to the
Greatest Hits of Doris Day
album that Daniel had found in Sam’s CD collection. She had known it when, a little bleary-eyed and rebellious, he mused aloud about what it would be like to kiss Willow Briars. And she had been under no illusions that this was the beginning of any kind of grand romance when he had led her, unresisting, into the bedroom and pulled her woollen dress over her head.

“Flesh!” he exclaimed with glee, as he pushed her back onto the bed, running the palms of his hands over her like he was examining an object rather than a woman. Willow had surrendered quite willingly when, rather awkwardly, he’d yanked off her tights and knickers in one go, and then, whistling through his teeth, had scooped her breasts out of the cups of her bra. “You are like a confection,” he whispered as he squeezed first one breast and then the other in turn. “Pink-and-white marshmallow.”

It had felt like he’d enveloped her with his kisses, his clothed body covering her nakedness, his mouth covering her face and neck, shoulders and breasts as he pulled away his own clothes, groaning with pleasure when he pressed his own naked skin against her hers.

“Like a cloud,” he whispered, moving her thighs apart with one palm.

It was then that Sam walked in. Willow remembered him standing there like a still from a black-and-white film. It had been a black-and-white day, rain pelting down remorselessly, electric lights on in the morning, when Daniel knocked on her door at midday wearing a white shirt and a five-o’clock shadow. He’d been carrying a bottle of gin. He’d been bored.

Willow remembered that Sam had stood there, his hand on the bedroom door, frozen to the spot for what had seemed
like an age as he tried to take in what he was seeing. She had seen him a fragment of a second before Daniel realized he was there, she’d felt Daniel’s mouth on her neck, his hand kneading her breast, his knee pushing between her legs all in that moment, while her eyes were locked with her husband’s. Her husband, whom she had loved so much, whom she had always known that she would never be able to keep.

Then Sam acted. He pulled Daniel off her with a strength that Willow did not know he possessed and literally threw Daniel, naked except for his socks, out of the flat, slamming the door on him. Willow had pulled on her knickers by the time he came back into their bedroom and stood there holding her woollen dress over her breasts. She remembered it scratching at her skin.

Sam stared at her, his mouth moving, but no words would come.

“I got drunk.” Willow had decided someone should say something. “It just happened. It was like I wasn’t even there.” Willow knew how stupid the words sounded as they spilled out of her mouth. She hated herself for saying them, even as her lips formed the syllables.

“So he raped you?” Sam advanced farther in the room, his tone harshly hopeful, causing Willow to step back into the corner until the backs of her calves pressed against the sharp corners of the bedside table.

“No, no . . . I just . . . I didn’t mind either way.”

Sam ran his palms over his face, smearing tears down his cheeks.

“I love you, Willow. I love you,” he’d told her. “All the shit, all the crap that comes with you. I live with it too, every day. Every day I live with what you told me and I love you even though I know you don’t feel the same.”

“I do,” Willow told him.

“How can you?” Sam asked, and Willow could not reply.

“I thought,” he continued, “I thought that even if you didn’t love me you might care about me and Chloe. Chloe, for God’s sake, hasn’t she been through enough?”

Willow thought of Chloe, of how they’d sat at the kitchen table the previous afternoon, a dank and dark winter Sunday, and created tray after tray of misshapen cupcakes, which they had eaten in one sitting almost as soon as they were iced.

“Sometimes people think you’re my mum,” Chloe had said casually, shrugging. “I don’t mind if they do.” And Willow had felt warmth spread through her chest and something as near to happiness as she had ever known.

“Life is hard,” were the only words she could find for her mouth to form.

Sam shook his head and looked right at her as if he were seeing the real her, the woman who did not deserve to be loved. Willow had always known he would one day.

“I want you out before Chloe gets back from school,” Sam had said quietly, turning his face away. “I don’t want her to know anything about this.”

Daniel had not been blameless, of course not, but neither had he been to blame. It was Willow’s fault, Willow who still, after all this time, felt that her body was a worthless thing, a trinket to be cast away lightly for . . . what? That afternoon hadn’t even been about her own pleasure; it had been about Daniel’s. It had been about a few moments of watching his disconnected desire for her, because when she saw the reflection of that woman mirrored in his eyes, for a moment she felt something.

She hadn’t fallen in love with Daniel then; it had been later, in the aftermath, when he had been kind to her. That was a problem that Willow had—she often fell for people who were kind to her.
Pined,
that was the word Holly used, and she was right. Always seeking approval, always craving kindness, finding it hard to reciprocate.

Looking back, Willow was almost certain that they had become friends because Daniel felt responsible. The question was, had they stayed friends because of something more than that?

Holly answered her phone on the first ring and listened wordlessly as Willow told her everything that had happened that day. Her silence remained intact long after Willow stopped talking.

“So?” Willow prompted her. “What do I do now?”

“I don’t know what else you can do except show Chloe that you will always be there for her, whatever happens. As for Sam, I don’t know, Willow, the way you feel about him can’t be summed up in a few words. What I do know is that you should be very careful about getting your fingers burned by Daniel Fayre.” Holly fell silent again.

“You know what I’m like. I’ll get it wrong again, I’ll hurt Chloe, drive Sam away. I’ll lose the only friend I’ve got other than you. I’m just not a good enough person for all this. Everyone is better off when I’m just . . . me.”

“Don’t say that,” Holly said quietly. “Please, Willow, can’t this just be the moment you let go of the past? Can’t this be the moment that it’s finally over?”

“It’s never over, though, is it?” Willow said. “I don’t see that it can ever be over.”

“It can,” Holly told her. “It has to be.”

Static crackled in Willow’s ear as she listened to the sound of her sister’s breathing, as steady as waves breaking on the shore, and the sudden rise of panic that had overwhelmed her subsided a little. She reached into her pocket, finding the little locket and clenching it in her fist.

“You need me,” Holly said, with an air of finality as if she had come to a decision.

“No, no—don’t be silly, it was just a moment. I’m fine now.”

“No, something’s going on and you need me. I’m coming.”

Chapter
            Twelve