The Last Time I Saw You (28 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“Congratulations,” says William, a smile wreathing his tired face, and we clink our glasses of champagne.

We’re out to dinner somewhere incredibly posh and French and garlicky in Mayfair and, as I look around the ranged lines of couples, I realize that, at least for tonight, we’re part of their ranks. Dinner last week got canceled at the last minute, but at least now we’re finally on a proper date, not something born out of duty or contrivance.

“Thank you,” I say, unable to stop myself beaming. I heard today that my story is a runner-up in the competition—I still can’t quite believe it. It wasn’t a win, but it at least suggests I might still have some kind of talent for writing stuff that’s less disposable than a punchy slogan. The Flynn project seems to be going better too. Amazingly, directors are responding favorably to the script, and at the moment he seems happy to keep his grubby little paws off it and let someone else take the helm. It’s not long until he goes back to the US, but Mary’s mooted the idea
of me going to New York to meet a couple of directors he’s suggested, a prospect I can’t quite get my head around. The bitter irony of it seems too great—to make my virgin trip there so soon after Sally’s death seems almost cruel. I dug out the tag when I heard, looked at it again. I’m thinking that if I’m there I might as well go and find Capricorn Holdings and see if showing it to them elicits any more answers.

“Are you going to let me read it?”

“Oh no, you don’t want to do that. You’ve got enough to worry about.”

The very idea makes me cringe, particularly when I think how much of the emotion of recent months I poured into it. It’s an old woman looking back on her life, but still, I’m sure he’d be able to pick out some of me and Sally in the talk of jealousy and loss.

“I do,” he says, simply.

“Okay, I’ll think about it.”

Tonight’s definitely infected with that awkwardness that’s written through the DNA of a first date. I think partly it’s the sex: what was once innocent and tentative has now been made flesh—made of flesh—and cannot be reshaped into something that leaves us both feeling whiter than white. I notice him looking at me a couple of times when he thinks I’m not aware, a watchfulness about him that I haven’t seen before. He’s making an effort to ask me questions too, the kind of biographical detail you’d expect to have down pat after this many meetings, but which have been swept away by more primal exposures of the heart. It should be a nice thing, a sign that he’s genuinely interested in me, but in my paranoia it’s making me feel like I’m on a job interview with the most terrible odds. I realize, as I’m falteringly describing
my relationship with Marco, that I’m giving it more weight than it deserves. He’s been married, had a child, and here I am with only a few months of cohabitation under my belt—I don’t want him to think I’m some kind of emotional invertebrate.

“Relationships do tend to get to that point, don’t they?” he says. “Where you have to commit or call it a day?”

“Totally,” I agree, all the time knowing that I’ve never even got close. James creeps into my consciousness without me having invited him in—I don’t like to overanalyze the why of it.

“That’s one of the good things about marriage. It forces a decision, stops one from drifting.”

“Didn’t you say that . . . that you were under quite a lot of pressure to get married?”

Why did I say that? The last thing I want to do is sound like I’m chipping away at her, a wicked stepmother waiting in the wings.

“Undoubtedly, but it doesn’t mean I regret it,” he says, stoutly. “Now I don’t know about you, but I’m in the market for some dessert.”

I offer to go dutch, but he won’t hear of it—my relief mingles with a painful awareness of that towering pile of debt he’s facing. Before we leave I scoot off to the toilet, and frantically chew some gum to try and dissipate the overwhelming taste of garlic from the snails he persuaded me to share. Once we’re out on the pavement he grabs my hand.

“Shall we walk?” he says, and I nod, though I don’t really know where it is we’re walking too. We pass through one of those elegant squares with the fenced off gardens in the
middle, then past the Connaught: I wonder if he’ll suggest a last drink, but he doesn’t.

“Something came up at work this week,” I say, tentative. “It looks like I might be going to New York for the Flynn thing.”

He looks at me, shock on his face. I don’t know if it’s the very mention of New York, or it’s the thought of me in it.

“I see.”

“I just thought—if it does coincide, if there’s anything I can do to support you . . .”

“That’s very kind,” he says automatically. “Have you ever been there before?”

“No, never.”

“You met Mara, didn’t you? I’ll put you back in touch. It can be jolly overwhelming first time around. She and Richie will gladly take you out.”

I don’t care about Richie and his scary wife, and I certainly don’t care about sightseeing—I care about you. I look at him, his features tidied back up into a neat formation, and know better than to say it.

“Thank you. That’d be great.”

“I meant to ask you, we’ve been finessing the christening details today,” he says, the subject of New York firmly closed. “I wondered if you’d like to bring Julia along?”

The christening: the very sound of those words fills me with a deep sense of dread. The idea of having to feign cool detachment—in front of Lola, in front of his parents, in front of the rest of Sally’s friends—while all the time they wonder why I’ve been elevated from bit-part player to godmother, is horrific. I need to call Lola and tell her up front, but I’ve been too chicken. I worry that she’ll put two and two together, think about how much information I had,
how much I pumped her for, and start to have her own suspicions. I wish I could talk to her—about the tag, about what Madeline said, about the heaped-up clothes—but she’s so in Sally’s thrall that I suspect she’d think it treasonous.

“That’s a lovely thought.”

Of course he wants me to bring Jules, she’s the perfect beard. I feel a stab of illogical hurt, then remember that of course we couldn’t be seen to be together so soon. I know how it would look to me from the outside—it looks that way from the inside much of the time too. I should head for the tube, keep some kind of distance, at least for the next few weeks.

“I’d love to invite you back,” he says, leaning down to kiss me. I try not to lose myself in it, to keep some kind of detachment. “But I’ve got to be up at sparrow’s fart for a meeting in Westminster.”

“No, of course,” I say, trying to convince myself that this was exactly what I wanted.

“I was going to say, Madeline’s staying with her cousins this weekend. I wondered about going away for a night?”

“Really?” All my doubts fragment in the face of my stupid feelings.

“I did enjoy . . . I liked how we were able to get to know each other a little better when we were in Dorset. I’ll ask my assistant to come up with some options.”

Me too. Much as a proper date is gratifying, I can’t help but miss the rawness of our tangled, complicated encounters, where truth always ends up dashing across the plane like a naughty little dog.

“Great!” I say, trying not to sound too pleased.

This time, when he kisses me, I let go of the crash barrier. Perhaps all I need to do is trust.

I’m going to text him Wednesday morning to thank him for dinner, but then I remember his meetings, and wait until lunchtime. It’s pathetic, I want him to get it at a time when he might have time to reply, but for all my futile strategizing, I don’t hear anything until ten o’clock.
It was my pleasure, William
, it says, with no kiss. He never puts kisses on his messages, but at least he doesn’t write
best
anymore. I stare at it, trying not to feel disappointed. I’m a fool if I ask for more than he can give, a callous fool at that. And we’ve got our night away to look forward to, a prospect that gives me a fizzy feeling whenever I think of it, despite everything.

By Thursday lunchtime I’m wondering if I should call and ask him what the plan is so I know whether to bring an overnight bag to work tomorrow. Something stops me. Instead I go and buy travel sizes of products I can’t afford, then trail around the Selfridges lingerie department holding silken scraps of nothingness up to my body. I get halfway to the changing room before that nausea starts to rise up; the memory of that birthday teddy smashing into the present moment—the moment in which I’m considering trussing myself up like a Christmas turkey to seduce Sally’s husband. “I’m sorry,” I mutter, yet again, shoving the bra and knickers onto the nearest rack like they’re on fire. I bet when she did deign to sleep with him it was amazing: I know what she’s like, what she was like, she would have put in a
Hollywood Wives
-worthy performance to ensure that he pined like an abandoned dog until the next time she chose to bestow her sexual largesse. That’s probably why he’s got some moves, she will have taught him everything he knows. I push my way to the escalators, suddenly desperate to get out, the air close and stifling.

By Friday morning I’m properly desperate, my insides as taut and stretched as harp strings. “A night”—such a cruel distinction, if he’d said “the weekend” I could demand clarity without looking like a fool. I’m terrified of bothering him, of making him take flight from a relationship that he can only approach through half-closed eyes.

And then, finally, as the fat black hands of the office clock crawl their way to four p.m., he calls. At that precise moment I’m in the corridor, trying to have a sotto voce emergency confab with Jules, Mary’s eyes boring into me from her vantage point behind her big glass desk. I can’t face speaking to him with her in plain sight, so I take the elevator to the ground floor and call him back. No answer, and he’s left no voicemail. I can’t risk being out here long, not after leaving the office at lunchtime yesterday, so after five more minutes I force myself to go upstairs, where I find his e-mail.

I aim a vicious kick at my stupid, hopeful overnight bag languishing underneath my desk, trying my best not to cry. Mary’s still watching me, and Honey’s warned me that she’s hoping to get ten minutes with me before the end of the day. I hate that he called on the hour, like he knew he couldn’t leave it a minute longer without his precious manners being called into question. I hate that he uses exclamation marks to make the lack of kisses less glaringly obvious: Sally threw kisses at messages—at life—like they were confetti, and I
don’t believe for a second she’d have let him get away with it. I hate the fact that the writing is most likely on the wall, but that I’m too cowardly and lovesick to turn back, the thought of ripping the bandage off too much to bear. And most of all, I hate that I can’t say any of this to him. But I guess he feels like that every day—haunted by a million questions he wants to ask the one person who will never reply.

Then Mary calls me in.

“You’ve literally watched it a thousand times, you know what happens,” says James, coming into the living room to find me stuck on the sofa,
All About Eve
playing, marooned in a sea of Kleenex and Quality Street wrappers.

“It’s not the film.”

“Has he changed it to tomorrow?” he says, then looks at my face. “He’s canceled, hasn’t he. Livvy . . .”

“Stop, hush. I know what you think, there’s no need to say it.”

“He’s having a complete fucking nightmare, I get it,” says James, his fists balled up with frustration, “but he’s taking the piss.” James hates it when a man hurts me, doesn’t see any irony in the countless hearts he’s broken over the years. I like it, and also I hate it: if I needed any proof as to how he sees me, it’s right there in capital letters.

“He can’t help it. He’s in so much pain.” James looks at me, his expression saying it all. “If it carries on like this of course I’ll finish it,” I say, unconvincing even to myself. “Anyway, it’s not just that. Your bloody ‘whatever she is’ totally screwed me over today.”

The ten minutes Mary wanted were to tell me that she and Charlotte have decided I’m “too sensitive” to deal with
Flynn’s “artistic temperament” and she’s sending her to New York single-handed. It’s utterly humiliating, particularly considering the stream of e-mails he and I have been swapping about what we were going to do.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” I said, the tears that were already threatening starting to spill. “If you were always going to do this, I wish you’d just done it weeks ago.”

Mary’s eyes flashed with anger at me questioning her management, and I shrank back into the pink velvet sofa.

“I’ve been trying to give you a chance,” she said, tone icy, and then smiled at me. “Come on, Livvy, you’ve no idea how much you’ve learned. You’ll thank me for it in a year.”

The gratitude hasn’t started to kick in quite yet, just a glum sort of relief that she’s talking about me having a future a year hence. I watch James as I’m telling him, convinced he’s trying to suppress a surge of glee at the thought that he might get a dirty weekend in New York out of the whole sorry business.

“That’s utterly shit, Livvy, but I don’t see how it’s Charlotte’s fault.”

“She’s been scheming and manipulating—”

“Mary always treats you like dirt, you just don’t like admitting it to yourself. You’re too scared of biting the hand that feeds you.”

“No she doesn’t! I’ve learned everything I know from her. She’s like . . . she’s my Yoda.”

“If you say so,” says James, rootling futilely in the Quality Street box—only the ones with weird-tasting cream centers have survived my self-pity-fest. I find a hazelnut one that I was stowing behind the cushion and silently hand it to him, thinking about what he just said. I’m not saying it’s true, but it’s not not true either.

“Anyway, I don’t know why you’re sticking up for Robot Girl. You wouldn’t be hanging around here on a Friday night if it wasn’t for her. What’s the latest on her leaving?”