The Runaway Princess (5 page)

“Is this it?”

I looked up so fast my neck nearly cracked, and saw Leo holding a pot aloft like a trophy. It was one of my seedlings.

“There’s only one that’s not broken, I’m afraid,” he went on. “Unless you also want some—
ew
. You don’t want
that
.” He gave something a discreet kick, and it fell off the balcony out of sight.

I gave him a goofy double thumbs-up, then wished I hadn’t. “Be careful coming down.”

“I know. That’s the hard part.”

He stuffed the pot into his trouser pocket, and I watched him climb down in a series of confident moves. He had obviously climbed before—I could tell by the effortless way he transferred his weight from hand to foot down the scaffolding, keeping himself balanced until he reached the fire escape.

At the bottom, he jumped down from the fire escape and handed me the plant pot with a flourish.

“Thank you,” I said. It sounded inadequate, but it was all I had.

“Happy to be of service.” Leo smiled, the moonlight shading the chiseled contours of his face, and again I had that weird feeling that we’d met before. I felt like I
knew
him.

Jo was always telling me how readable my face was. I hoped it was now saying something meaningful and intelligent, but I had the sinking feeling I just looked like the pantomime horse I hadn’t come as. Big-eyed and moony.

“By the way, I like your costume.” Leo took a step back to admire the bits of silk pajama visible beneath the quilted parka I’d pulled on to come outside. “Don’t tell me—your idea of heaven is … staying in bed all day?”

“Yes!” I felt stupidly pleased that he’d got it. “Well, no, to be honest, my idea of heaven is a really long bath, so I suggested covering myself in Bubble Wrap, you know, for bubbles? And then when I ran out of conversation, I could just invite people to pop me. Jo wouldn’t let me.”

“You might attract the wrong sort of poppers,” he said, his eyes serious, although the corner of his mouth twitched.

“That’s what she said. But everyone likes popping Bubble Wrap. Saves having to make chitchat about villa holidays.”

“You’re not a fan?”

“I’ve never been on one.”

“They’re overrated.” Leo nodded. “No one ever washes up, and there’s always an ‘incident’ with the pool. Give me Bubble Wrap any day.”

I grinned, savoring the intimacy of his tone, and also the outline of his shoulder muscles through the white shirt.

“For the record,” he added, “both the long bath and the long lie-in are my idea of heaven too. But to be honest, fancy dress parties are hell. Well, any party where you have to explain your outfit is hell, but fancy dress parties more so.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

The night air was sharp, tinted with distant Saturday-night shouting and the faint waft of steak and smoke and the gray London smell I could never pin down. We stood in the yellowy streetlight, me clutching the one surviving Dream Seedling, and when Leo shivered under his open-necked shirt I remembered I was still holding his jacket.

“Sorry, you must be freezing,” I said, embarrassed. “Here you go.”

The jacket started vibrating as I passed it over. He pulled his phone from the pocket and checked it as he slipped the jacket back on, then pulled an expression of what seemed like real regret.

“Sorry, I’ve got to make a move. Rolf’s crashed another party.”

“So long as that’s all he’s crashed,” I said. “Wasn’t he in your car?”

“Don’t remind me.” He nodded at the plant. “Anyway, good luck nursing that back to health after its adventure. Sorry there was only one.”

“No, thank
you
. I’m the plant doctor. I’ll just have to get someone to fly more seeds out in the next twenty-four hours.”

Leo grinned, and there was a pause where I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to make more witty conversation (unlikely) or kiss him good-bye (but how many times? which cheek first?), or shake his hand, or what.

The moment was stretching out and I was going into one of my silence-filling panics when he touched my arm lightly, leaned forward, and pressed his warm lips against my cheekbone.

No man that handsome, that charming, or that fragrant had ever been so close to me, and if I could have freeze-framed it, I would have.

“Will you thank Jo for … well, she didn’t actually invite us. Maybe apologize instead. Apologize for our intrusion.”

“I’ll thank her for having you,” I said brightly.

As soon as it came out of my mouth, I thought,
That sounded wrong.

Leo grinned. “That sounds a bit wrong.”

“It does.” I nodded, grinning and still tingling from where he’d kissed my cheek. I still wasn’t used to all the casual kissing in London. It was something all Jo’s friends did, even if we’d just been introduced, but where I came from you had to know someone for at least ten years or be directly related to them (and maybe not even then) before you went further than a gruff “see ya.” Touching was for family members, and even then only at moments of high emotional tide, like funerals or Rugby World Cup finals.

Leo gestured toward our flat. “I’d say come with me, but I can’t guarantee it’d be more fun than the party you’ve already got going on in there.”

“To be totally honest,” I confessed, because something about Leo was making me say things I normally wouldn’t unless I was far drunker than this, “if you offered me a sofa and a film now, I’d bite your hand off.”

A flicker of amusement lit up his incredible eyes. “What, a whole season of something on DVD? And some nice takeout?”

“I was thinking maybe a film,” I agreed. “But with the best pizza. And ice cream. And all the controls within reach so you don’t have to get up. Maybe even a Slanket.”

“A Slanket? I don’t know what that is, but I want one.” Leo looked wistful, and for a split second I thought he was going to suggest we go back in there and kick everyone out so we could watch
The Shining
and ring Pizza Hut.

The unspoken invitation hung in the night air between us, and it abruptly occurred to me that good hostesses weren’t supposed to plan secret escapes from their own parties.

“I mean, I
like
parties …” I started.

“But there’s a lot to be said for a relaxing night in.” Leo held my gaze, and I melted inside. “With the right sort of company. And you’re already dressed for it.”

In an ideal world, I would have come out with a killer line at this point, but I just stared at him and nodded. Which was, I figured, better than saying something I might regret.

Leo let out a rueful half laugh. “If only I didn’t have to save the next hostess from Rolf, eh? Another time.”

He bent and kissed my cheek briefly again (again!). And he was gone.

I sank onto the rusty picnic table left over from the summer, not wanting to go back into the flat just yet. The stars were out over London, and the moon was fat and clear in the blue-black sky. Something about the evening didn’t feel quite real, but in a delicious new way, and I wanted to savor it while it was actually happening. I knew in the morning little details would have already started to flake away in my memory, lost forever, and I closed my eyes to imprint everything as much as I could.

His smell. The warmth of his breath on my neck. The cool tingle of the night air.

Then something brushed against my bare ankle and I nearly dropped the plant pot in shock.

Mrs. Mainwaring’s cat, Elvis, flicked his tail at me. He was covered in gold body glitter and soil, and he didn’t look too pleased about it.

T
he one party rule we had—or rather, the rule we had that Jo enforced with steely determination—was that all guests
had
to leave at two o’clock, even if it meant pretending that we’d called the police. Morning-after lingerers were absolutely forbidden in our sitting room. Jo said it ruined the magic for everyone, and besides, the last thing one wanted to smell through one’s hangover was unwashed guests.

She also insisted on a ritual downing of one pint of water, a vitamin C tablet, and an aspirin directly after we’d locked the door on our last guest (this time, Dickon, minus his velvet jacket but with a smear of coral lipstick on his left ear and seven phone numbers written on his shirt), and as a result I woke up on Sunday feeling almost human.

A giddy Christmas-morning feeling was flitting around the edges of my mind, as if I’d had a gorgeous dream I hadn’t wanted to wake up from, and it took me a moment to work out what it was.

Then my eye fell on my bedside table, empty apart from one terra-cotta pot, and I remembered. Last night I’d met a blue-eyed man who’d scaled rusty scaffolding to rescue a plant. For me.

I sat up cautiously, hoping that maybe a piece of paper with Leo’s phone number might have materialized in the soil or something, but it hadn’t. He hadn’t scrawled his number on the pot either. I don’t know why I hoped he had; I knew he hadn’t, and I’d been too shy and inept to ask him for it.

Disappointment tinged the giddy feeling as I thought of all the things I
should
have said. How could I get in touch with him to say thank you now? It would be only polite to say thank you.

Although, the realistic voice in my head started, if Leo knew people who went on Dream Seed courses, he was about four leagues out of my reach. And he was friends with that appalling Rolf, so I probably wasn’t really his type either.

I swung my legs out of bed to stop
that
depressing line of argument and went through to the kitchen to start my part in the morning-after routine: the miracle cooked-breakfast hangover cure.

The sitting room certainly looked a little less heavenly this morning than it had last night, even without guests slumped over the soft furnishings. I pushed open the curtains to let some light in and started to tidy on autopilot, but really my brain was only thinking about one thing. Each time I replayed the brief moments when our eyes met, or Leo’s hand had touched mine, a sharp thrill went through me, and I shied away from it as if I might wear out the memory from replaying it too often.

But then I’d move a bunch of glasses or an empty bowl of olive stones and allow myself a sneaky sideways memory of Leo kissing my cheek, or him leaning in to my neck to make himself heard over the party, and I’d shiver all over again.

In the end, I had to turn the radio on to distract myself, and with the dishwasher humming and the windows wide open to get rid of various smells, I fried eggs, and grilled sausage and bacon, and made toast, and piled the whole lot onto one big serving dish, then took it through to Jo’s room with a pot of tea so we could begin the party postmortem.

*

J
o was lying surrounded by all her pillows, with a silk sleep mask over her eyes. Her hair was still in last night’s curls, but her skin was clean and pink. She always took her makeup off before she went to bed, no matter what state she was in, even the time we were both so worse for wear that she’d tried to use toothpaste for cleanser.

“I’ve made you breakfast in bed, milady,” I said, doing a pretend
Downton Abbey
bob.

She gave a languid waft of her hand, which was supposed to convey the impression that she never
ever
ate fried foods—we had to go through this each time—and I added my usual line, as of our first night out, “Five generations of my family swear by this fry-up, and they were—”

“—proper drinkers,” Jo joined in for the last bit. “Oh, go on. Persuade me. Maybe start with tea.”

I poured two cups of strong tea, the color of bricks, and stirred in two sugars. “Come on. You’re not
that
hungover. You’ve had eight hours’ sleep!”

Jo struggled into a sitting position and held out her hand for the mug, sleep mask still in place. I put it carefully into her hand and went to open her curtains.

“It’s a lovely day outside.” I shoved open the sash windows, and clean bright air rushed in, along with the sounds of a dog barking a few streets away and distant church bells. “Even the
pigeons
look clean.”

“Are you still drunk?” Jo pushed the mask up onto her head and gave me a bleary-eyed look. “How come you’re so chipper? You did your usual vanishing act, I noticed. You missed the orange game—again!”

Jo’s parties frequently ended with the orange game: you had to pass an orange from one guest to another without using your hands. Inevitably, since by this stage guests were seeing double at least and had little balance left, the orange would get stuck in someone’s cleavage, and so much upper-class hooting would ensue that you’d think a flock of Canada geese had landed. It was a good way of checking who was safe to drive, and I found you could win quite easily by hiding your own orange somewhere about your person—no one ever checked.

“I, er, had to pop out …”

“You always
do
.” Jo winked and patted the duvet next to her. “Come and fill me in about what happened while I was running around after Marigold. Who had the best outfit? Did you see
Julian’s
?”

“Julian?”

“Julian Martin. He was dressed as Gordon Ramsay.”

“With the bloody jacket?” I said, trying to remember which one that was. “Or am I thinking of the evil dentist guy? They’re so easy to mix up, evil dentists and evil chefs.”

“Which means he made no impression on you at all.” Jo sighed. “Fine. What about Max? I spotted you chatting to him by the kitchen.”

Things hadn’t gone well with Max, who’d arrived shortly
after
I’d floated back in after my moment with Leo. He seemed intent on describing the entire plot of a film he’d just seen, and I was hardly able to concentrate as it was, and in the party crush, Max thought I’d said I was from Grenada instead of that I was a gardener, so I’d spent fifteen confusing minutes desperately trying to answer questions about some beach holiday he’d been on, and then he’d given up and left.

I took a long time spreading Marmite on my toast while I worked out which bits of this I could convey to Jo without being rude about one of her friends. I didn’t like being rude. My family was of the straight-talking variety, which was probably where my tongue paralysis under pressure originated; I’d rather the stunned silence came from me than the horrified second party.

“You can be honest, Amy,” Jo pressed, her eyes alight with encouragement. “I know Max isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but he’s a lot of fun once you get past the red trousers. He likes dogs! And he won’t make you go skiing because he’s a
terrible
skier …”

“Jo. It’s never going to happen with Max.” I speared a sausage and decided to be truthful. “I just can’t talk to him. He makes my mind go blank. I can’t think of a thing to say to him.”

“Max? But he’s easy to talk to!” She seemed surprised.

“He’s easy for you to talk to, yes. You’ve known these people for years. I have zero conversation to make about horses, or tennis.”

“You’re being chippy.” She wagged her toast at me. “Don’t be chippy.”

“I’m not, I’m being honest.” A faint, warm wave of last night’s magic rippled through me. “I just think when you meet the right person, conversation isn’t an issue. It just … happens.”

“Fine,” said Jo. I could tell she hadn’t given up, though. She was just planning a different approach. “What about Dominic? Did you meet Dominic? The rower?” She mimed someone rowing, adding a broad smile to indicate his perfect dentistry, or possibly a history of emotional instability.

I cut my sausage in two and bit into it. “Jo, seriously. It’s like I said yesterday, you don’t have to keep trying to set me up. What if I dated someone and we fell out? I don’t want it to spoil our friendship. And I’m not going to meet Mr. Right if I’m on a blind date with Mr. Wrong.”

“You never go on any dates! And you totally deserve one. Look at this amazing breakfast! I know men who’d marry you for this alone. Plus it would make your life so much easier.”

“What do you mean, easier?”

Easier? Didn’t she mean
more romantic
? Or
exciting
? Or
even …
less soil-focused
?

“Well.” Jo pulled the face she always pulled when she was about to say something not very politically correct. A half-
apologizing
, half-really-
not
sort of face. “Wouldn’t it be easier if you didn’t have to worry about other people’s lawns day and night to make ends meet?”

I put down my fork, sausage still attached. “Are you suggesting that I need a boyfriend to
pay my way
?”

“No! Well …”

“There’s a word for that back home,” I said hotly. “It’s not a very nice word either.”

“Oh, don’t get your knickers in a twist, I don’t mean like that.” Jo buttered another slice of toast, unperturbed. “Obviously he’d have to be a lovely guy who’d adore you, and you’d have to adore him, but there’s nothing wrong with letting someone else take care of you a bit.”

“If I’d wanted to be taken care of, I’d have stayed at home.”

“Think yourself lucky. If I’d stayed at home, I’d have been doing all the taking care. And I’d have needed someone to take care of
me
,” Jo retorted. “A full-time therapist, for a kickoff. My parents are
enraging
, not like yours. Can we swap?”

I ate the other bit of my sausage and chewed it for a long time so I wouldn’t have to say anything.

Without meaning to, Jo had touched on—no, not touched on, punched—a real sore spot. My independence was something I was proud of, and I’d have eaten porridge for a week rather than be late with any of the bills in the flat. (Actually, I had done that once or twice in the early days, though obviously I’d never told her.) It was a point of honor for me that Mum and Dad hadn’t had to lend me a penny since I left home, and I’d paid back my college fees through gardening jobs in the holidays.

I didn’t hold it against Jo, but it was easy for her to accept the odd bit of help from her mum and dad—they had the money, for a start, and her family went from being very rich to very poor every hundred years, so they were used to it. My family, though, had been through a nightmare few years while I was still at school, and it had left me fiercely protective about my finances. That part of our life wasn’t something my parents and I ever talked about, and the one good thing about busy, anonymous London was that no one here knew about it—unlike back home, where you could wear a hat one day and be known as “the girl with the hat” for the rest of your life.

I knew not opening up about stuff like this made me look like a chippy northerner sometimes, but I’d rather that than tell Jo the whole story. I liked the new Amy she knew; I was quite happy to leave the old Amy back home in Rothery.

“Am I barking up the wrong tree?” Jo went on, taking advantage of my full mouth. “I mean, if you’re on the other bus, tell me. I know loads of gay people. In fact, I could introduce you to—”

I swallowed my sausage as fast as I could. “I do want a boyfriend. Eventually. I just want a normal one. Someone with an actual job. Someone who eats at Pret a Manger at lunchtime, and has a travelcard and a mutt like Badger, not a spaniel with a family tree. I’m not saying your friends aren’t nice—I just don’t have much to say to very posh boys. Not unless they like gardening too. By which I mean, actual gardening, not directing their groundsmen.”

“You don’t ask for much, do you?” observed Jo.

“I just want someone normal,” I said stoutly. “I’m just a normal girl, and I want a normal bloke.”

She smiled. “None of us are normal. We’re all special in our own way.”

“Have you been reading Grace Wright’s self-help books again?”

We eyed each other over the breakfast tray, and I hoped Jo knew I didn’t mean any offense.

“Anyway, you can talk,” I pointed out, trying to lighten the mood. “Who on earth was that Rolf bloke last night? I mean, was he real? Or was it some kind of reality TV thing?”

“He’s real enough.” She groaned, reaching for her tea. “Although strictly speaking, Rolf exists in his own version of reality that the rest of us aren’t invited to. Just like he wasn’t actually invited last night.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“Amanda Hastings’s first wedding.” Jo prodded the tray with a finger to indicate something outrageous was coming. “When the vicar asked if anyone had any just cause or impediment, Rolf stood up and coughed, and then sat down again. Then he laughed. The best man punched him on the nose at the reception, he bled over a bridesmaid’s Vera Wang, and Amanda sat him next to
me
at dinner because she said I could talk to anyone.”

“Well, you can.”

Jo looked wounded. “That’s not something you should
punish
your friends for.”

“But he seemed really keen to see you.”

Jo took a big gulp of tea. “Well, he can carry on looking. I’m not at home to Rolf Wolfsburg.”

“Why?” I was really interested now. “Have you two got history?”

“I wouldn’t call it that.”

“Ted would.” I added a raised eyebrow for good measure.

“Well, there’s no need for that. Not that Ted … I mean, he doesn’t …” Jo fiddled with her eye mask, then pulled it off crossly. “Listen, even if Rolf wasn’t a party-crashing egomaniac who thinks he’s constantly appearing in his own James Bond title sequence, I wouldn’t touch him with someone else’s barge pole. My dad only gave me one piece of advice when it came to relationships.”

I’d listened to enough of Jo’s stories about her parents’ various marriages to be surprised her dad’s advice could be boiled down to just one thing.

“Do tell,” I said. “I’m agog.”

She put her mug down on the bedside table and pressed her lips together. “He said, ‘Jojo, you can marry into any family in the world—except a royal one. They’re all crazy.’ Well, until I met Rolf, I thought he was just being pretentious, but now I know how right he was.”