One In A Billion (33 page)
Authors: Anne-Marie Hart
Talking of work, Fabio agreed to take me back part time, but didn't agree to a pay rise - I suppose you can't have everything.
Toby's art work is incredible. He continues to graffiti in as many places he can, and often goes out on midnight missions to get his work done. He's got a huge following, and an army of fans, none of whom really know who he is. I think the anonymity appeals to his modesty, because no matter how much he loves doing it, he continues to believe he isn't any good.
Toby has matured into an incredible human being. In some ways he is just like the sixteen year old I had watched grow up, and in some ways he is so much more than that, so often, I watch him and feel like I'm getting to know some amazing part of him I never knew existed. He has physical and emotion scars all over his body, and memories that are clouded from his time through education, because he was trying to find himself, and numb himself at the same time, because he didn't like what he was unearthing. He is calm and patient with me, softly spoken, never quick to anger, wise beyond his years, the most generous man I have ever met, and funny, happy and humble. He is driven by his love for his work, and for his love for me, and those two things have always been enough for him. Now, they are enough for me too.
This book is dedicated to Toby, because he was always the one, even if I lost him along the way for a while. He's my one in a billion, the one I very nearly let get away, and the one I'll cherish until the day I die. He's the man that taught me about priorities, and the one that showed me what I truly consider to be the most important things in my life. He also helped me by designing the cover, so if it doesn't sell, I know who to blame!
Life carries on as normal. Toby and I are taking things slowly, catching up on lost time, and happy with the knowledge that we have a lot of it left in front of us. I still live with Sophia, he still lives in his studio/flat in Bethnal Green, and we see each other when we can. For my sins, I still go to my parent's house every Sunday to listen to whatever shit they decide they want to throw at me that week, mostly just for the entertainment value of it, and every once in a while I pull on a daft costume, stand around looking dumb and pretty, and hand out glasses of champagne as part of Janice's crack events team. She still can't remember who I am, even though as a compete coincidence, last Friday night I saw a copy of Fixing My Broken Heart poking out of her handbag. Luckily I haven't been asked to work on another one of Devizes's events.
Every once in a while Toby and I jump on his dad's old bike, leave the mess of London behind us, shake off whatever questions or hang ups we have about our work, and soar off into the distance like phoenixes rising from the flames.
I am happy, and free, and healthy, and I am as poor financially as I have always been, and will always probably be. I tried to tell Devizes this when we were breaking up, but he just didn't get it. You can't buy what will make you happy, you can only ever find it. And when you do find it, make sure you do everything in your power not to lose it, because not everyone gets a second chance to find it again. I was one of the lucky ones, and not a day goes past that I don't think about that, because I'm damn sure I won't get another.
Anne-Marie Hart lives in Bristol with her partner, their beautiful baby boy, Jack, and their two naughty cats, Scratch and Tickle. This is her second book.
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About Holding On To You
Some people say it takes a lifetime to find each other, and a second to fall in love. Thrown together by chance, in the isolation of the landscape that surrounds them, Maddy and River may have just found that second.
When stationery store owner Maddy Parker is taken hostage after a bungled bank raid, she has no idea what kind of journey she's about to embark on. With the police in hot pursuit, River heads towards the border, desperate to get into Mexico and ensure his own survival. What he doesn't count on, however, is stopping along the way to try and get to know the mysterious woman who has inadvertently become his prisoner, but there's something about Maddy that makes River risk everything to do so.
With time running out, the ice cool cowboy with the movie star good looks tries to fix the situation he's got himself into and make it across the border to safety, Maddy in tow. As their destination beckons, will Maddy be able to admit to the feelings she begins to develop for him, and for the first time in her life, finally let herself go?
Holding On To You is a contemporary romance novel about finding true love, and the race against time to hold on to it.
In a cold and clinically well-ordered room, an alarm sounds. It's a horrible, high pitched noise that any sane person would have changed immediately, but not Madeleine Parker. It's the noise that she's chosen to wake herself up, to keep herself from turning over and going back to sleep, day after joyless day, and above all, to keep herself feeling disciplined. Maddy, the name her mother insists on using, despite her daughter's obvious dislike for it, and the one that has stuck with her ever since her childhood, is a woman that likes order. She's a woman that can't imagine her life without it. This insistence on things being 'just so', means that everyone Maddy knows, from the postman to the dentist, and all those in between, consider her to be about as uptight as they get. They aren't wrong, but Maddy just can't see it. At least not yet.
Maddy reaches out an arm - a beautifully slender arm at that - and in a movement she has performed a thousand times before, delivers a quick tap to the button on her alarm clock, returning the room to a peaceful silence. She sighs heavily, sits up in an almost mechanical like fashion, and removes the sleeping mask she has grown accustomed to using. She blinks open her eyes - beautiful green pools of loveliness, flecked with dots of almond - and puts the sleeping mask, along with the ear plugs she delicately removes from her ears, into the plastic bag in which they both live. Maddy seals the bag, and carefully places it at the very back of the drawer of her bedside cabinet.
If you ask any one of her colleagues how old they think Maddy is - you can't ask her friends because Maddy hasn't had any since primary school, and even then she can't remember whether she did or not - they will guess conservatively, adding ten years to the twenty six she already has. Even Maddy's mother struggles to believe how young her daughter is every time her birthday rolls around, when they go for dinner and pretend to have a normal relationship for an hour, and Maddy has to remind her.
'You can't be, darling', her mother would say, in the distracted way she deals with all topics she considers uninteresting, but essential to be involved in, while slurping soup or chewing crab. 'If you're twenty six and you look like that now, what are you going to look like when you really are forty six?'
If Maddy had friends, or perhaps someone more intimate than a friend, that could look at her closely, run their hands along the delicate lines of her body, press their skin against hers, and make her happy, really, head over heels happy, then they might be able to see just how young and delicate, and extremely beautiful she had every opportunity of being.
It might happen too, if Maddy didn't cut her hair into a conservative bob, which
she
considers extremely practical, but has never been considered by any one else to be a good decision, nor hide away her best features under dark coloured dress suits, not a single one with flattering lines. It isn't that Maddy doesn't have anyone to advise her, her mother does that every time they meet, as infrequently as they do so, it's that Maddy doesn't see that it's necessary for herself to change. She has chosen how she wants to be, and because she's chosen, no matter what the result of that choice is, she isn't going to change her mind again. The fact that she doesn't have friends is just the way it is, and through absolutely no fault of her own. The fact that everyone thinks she's uptight is a problem with the way they see the world, not the way she conducts herself. And anyway, she doesn't need anyone else telling her what to do, she's doing just fine as it is, and definitely, totally, one hundred percent beyond doubt (despite her mother's constant insistence to the contrary), isn't lonely at all. Not one single little bit.
Large droplets of warm water fall from the shower head onto Maddy's conservative bob, down her slender neck, across her thin-cut shoulders, and over her pert and sensitive breasts. She soaps herself, scrubbing her skin so hard that it goes red in some places, and takes special care to make sure the undersides of both of her feet are so clean they almost dazzle in the sharp, overhead light.
When she's done, she steps momentarily out onto a wooden board, allowing any excess water to drip through the slats below her feet, and then puts those feet, nails carefully trimmed but never painted, into awaiting soft-towel slippers. The bathroom, like the rest of the house, would be considered in an interior design sense as minimalist. This is not necessarily an interior design choice made by Maddy, it's because she believes that 'stuff' itself, just gets in the way. There are no pictures on the walls, no souvenirs or treasures, no gifts or adornments or posters or anything else really that would give a guest (if she ever had any) any insight into what kind of thing Maddy likes. It's as if she lives in a show house kept immaculately clean for prospective visitors, or more than that, like nobody really lives there at all.
Maddy wraps a matching white towelling robe around her perfect body, and moves to the sink. She brushes her teeth, the full two minutes divided equally into thirty second segments across each side, top and bottom, and spends a moment, just a passing, fleeting moment, looking at herself in the mirror.
Back inside her bedroom, she opens the wardrobe and takes out a black dress suit. On the right person, it could be described as a power suit. On Maddy it looks about as far away from that as possible, not because it doesn't fit, but because it does nothing for her. She has gone, almost instantly, from a sexy, twenty-six year old girl, with an incredible figure and breasts that women across the world dream about having (and would undoubtedly kill to get), to an androgynous, monochrome, business woman that looks like she could actually be the latest model in a line of expertly designed robots. Even the sparkle in her eyes has gone, as though the suit itself has sucked the life out of her. Unfortunately, she has no other options, even if she did miraculously feel the urge to wear something different. There is not one single item of clothing in her wardrobe that has any colour at all, not even a handkerchief. Each one of her suits are exactly the same, right down to the very last detail - her wardrobe filled with replicas of the very same thing she is now wearing. Even her shoes are black, conservative and sensible. Fully dressed, you'd be forgiven for thinking she was on her way to a funeral, and not to another day at work.
She makes sure the bed is made to her liking, the alarm is reset, and the slippers and the bathrobe are back in their place in the bathroom, before she makes her way to the kitchen to continue her morning routine.
Breakfast is a large cup of black coffee, which, in Maddy's warped view of the world, she considers a treat, a bowl of unsweetened organic muesli with plain Greek yoghurt, and half a banana. It's the same every morning.
As she begins to eat, there is a scratching sound at the window, followed by a long meeeeeoooow. A large fluffy haired ginger tom cat paws the glass, desperate to get Maddy's attention. When she doesn't look up at him immediately, he meows again, turning deftly on the narrow ledge and rubbing his body up against the window.
Maddy can't resist him. She sets the spoon back in her bowl, returns to the fridge, and pours a large helping of milk into a bowl. When the tom cat sees this, he disappears from the window, only to reappear again when Maddy opens the back door. Careful not to allow him inside, Maddy sets the bowl of milk down on the ground, picking up yesterday's now empty bowl. She strokes the cat in a kind of detached, uncertain way, that some people who grew up without animals seem to do, and carefully, so she doesn't get any of his fur on her suit.
When she's satisfied he's eating, and she feels as though she's spent as much time with him as they both need, she closes the door, and returns to the kitchen table to finish her breakfast.
Alex paces back and forth over broken glass and worn discarded timber, that form the remnants of what used to be a hat maker's factory, and now, like several other buildings on the once thriving industrial estate, have been left to ruin. Above him, light breaks through holes in a corrugated iron roof that looks all to close to collapse for comfort, and pigeons flap about aimlessly, cooing and scratching, and pumping out their chests. If Alex was looking, he might notice an ironic similarity, but he's far too distracted. His belly hurts from tension and too much coffee, and this morning's surprise is settling in like a bullet wound.
