A Passionate Love Affair with a Total Stranger (10 page)

William emailed back almost immediately.

05.03

Do you think you're a perfectionist?

I exhaled slowly. This was all getting a bit heavy. And yet he was hitting home. Quite hard, in fact. Was I a perfectionist? Bloody hell, yes! I was more of a perfectionist than anyone I knew! I crippled myself trying to make the perfect risotto, to buy the perfect wine, to be the perfect employee. I got furious with myself if I lost so much as a
tenth of a second
from my ideal running time round Holyrood Park. A tenth of a second? Dear God! I passed my hand over my face, slightly dazed.

05.10

In a word, yes. Actually I'm a chronic perfectionist. And I don't quite understand why I'm only noticing that now?!

Honestly, William, I'm so cruel to myself. I'd like to be kinder if I knew how.

I think that deffo applies to relationships, too. I think I'd find them a lot easier if I could learn to just accept myself as I am – normal, imperfect. I wish I didn't spend all my time pretending to be better.

05.13

William, I'm sorry, it's late, I don't know what came over me. Please ignore that last message. It makes me sound like a loon
and a lonely psychopath who's just completed a course in amateur psychology.

05.17

Rubbish. It makes you sound like a real human being. The sort of human being I would really like to meet. I understand what you're saying because in many ways, although for opposite reasons, I'm in the same situation. You'd love to take it easy: I'd love to get out there and make more of myself. You'd love to work less: I'd love to work more. I'd love career success. But I'm scared of failing.

I think you sound brilliant, Shelley the executive management consultant. Are you meant to have this sort of conversation after only four hours? Are you meant to like complete strangers? To the bollocks with it. That's how I feel. I do like you, and I'd love to meet up with you some time. Are you free this week?

05.24

What do you mean you want career success? You're an ENT surgeon!

05.41

Yes, I am. I forgot. Ignore me. I'm at the top of the game, baby. You should be begging for a date with me. I could stick my arm up your nose and all. Now, when are we going to meet? X

‘Are you out of your fucking
mind?
' Hailey asked, staring in dismay at my laptop.

I looked helplessly at her. ‘Oh, God, Hailey, do you think it's that bad?'

Hailey burst out laughing. ‘Er, yes? Fucking hell, Chas,
you've just bared someone else's soul on their behalf! Without knowing the first cocking
thing
about them! What's Shelley going to say when she reads this?'

I shrugged.

Hailey's eyes narrowed. ‘You're not planning to show her these messages, are you?'

I shut my eyes. ‘Probably not.'

Hailey went silent. Then she cleared her throat and said, ‘Charlotte Lambert, I think you're planning to throw Shelley off the trail and pursue William yourself.'

I opened my eyes. ‘Maybe. Oh, God, Hailey this is awful. I don't know how to stop it.'

‘I can tell you exactly how to stop it. You organize a date for them RIGHT NOW and then you give her the password for her OWN BLOODY DATING PROFILE so she can read these messages, just like it promises on your website. And then you back off and never make contact with either of them again.' She folded her arms across her hefty rack.

Horribly ashamed, I said nothing.

Hailey had come round after work to take me out for a fish supper: ‘I want to get some solid junk food down you,' she said, loading me into The Tank and wheeling me up Broughton Street to the chip shop. My inability to sustain a conversation – so preoccupied was I with William – had not gone unnoticed. After a short bout of cross-questioning, I gave in and handed her my laptop, which I'd brought just in case the fish-and-chip shop had Wi-Fi. And William emailed.

Man, I'd lost it.

It hadn't helped that Hailey had immediately spied a
Word document that I'd minimized, containing details of twelve ENT surgeons called William, which I had compiled using the GMC database. And a doodle relating to how I could somehow poison Shelley Cartwright.

‘CHAS.'

‘Sorry. I know. I have to let them go on a date.'

‘Damn bloody right you do, you psychopath! What's
happened
to you? Don't you turn into one of those stupid women who ruins her career over some juvenile obsession with a man,' she commanded. Turkish techno music boomed out of the speakers behind us and Hailey, demolishing a battered sausage under the strange glow of the chippy's pink neon lights, looked even more scary than usual. In spite of my best efforts not to be, I was feeling rather offended by her tone. Hailey had always been very bossy but this had begun to feel like a personal attack.

Seeing that I was upset, she softened a little. ‘Come on, my love. You're a professional professional! Not a doorstep shitter-onner! Charley,
look after
this business of yours. It's brilliant.'

I sat back in The Tank, sighing. She was right. It would be an atrocious error of professional judgement to try to get involved with William myself. Apart from anything else, how would I ever meet him without telling him who I was and what I'd done? Inject some horrible malady into my eardrum and hope I'd get referred to him?

But the prospect of just letting him go was quite devastating. Yes, I had an electric sexual connection with John, but with William I felt like I was making my first ever emotional one. A real emotional connection, which had
helped me examine my life in a way I never had before. Surely this was significant!

Stop it
, I begged myself.
You had four hours of email. You have no emotional connection at all. You don't even know each other!
The merry-go-round tinkled on and on, going precisely nowhere.

‘CHARLOTTE,' barked a voice I didn't expect to hear in my local chippie. I looked up and there she was: Granny Helen, sitting regally in a wheelchair of her own with Sam, slightly out of breath, behind her. He was wearing a grubby tracksuit from his university days and had broken a sweat from the short walk up the hill. In spite of this, he
still
looked attractive.

‘Bowes? Granny Helen? I … What's going on?'

‘I came to your flat to surprise you,' Granny Helen announced. ‘Find out how this business of yours is going. I certainly did not expect to find you here eating sausage-shaped offal. Are you ill?'

‘Quite surprised by this little scene myself, Chas.' Sam chuckled. ‘You don't have a wholegrain wrap hidden under the table?' He wheeled Granny Helen round so she was parked next to me.

I was temporarily silenced. I had not expected to sit next to my grandmother – both of us in wheelchairs – in my local chippie. Together we must have made for an unusual sight. Granny Helen looked neat and stylish, her hair knotted into a bun that was pinned into the nape of her neck. (Mum did Granny Helen's hair for her every single morning.) Pearls hung from her earlobes and her make-up was immaculate. She smelt of powder and perfume
and childhood. And, of course, I was dressed pretty smartly, as always. Yep. We looked odd.

Hailey, obviously of the same opinion, smiled. ‘Don't you two look funny?' She leaned over to kiss Granny Helen's cheek, which had just been angled towards her. ‘How did you get here?' she asked.

‘Christian brought me,' Granny Helen replied. ‘He wanted to come and see Charlotte too, but I forbade it. I don't get enough time with my granddaughter.' She sniffed. ‘Even when she was recuperating at home in East Linton she was working on that dratted business of hers all the time!'

She peered ferociously at me over her glasses, inviting a challenge, but I offered none. Going to war with Granny Helen was absolutely pointless even when she was wrong. In this case, she was right. I sighed as Hailey smiled, clearly delighted to have found an ally. ‘Hear hear!' she said as Sam wandered off to order a carton of orange juice, which was all Granny Helen was prepared to consume.

As Hailey and Granny Helen exchanged stories about how hard it was to get time with me, I watched him ordering his own meal – a deep-fried pie and chips, of course – while he jingled change in his jogging bottoms.

I was surprised he'd been physically capable of wheeling Granny Helen up the hill. He'd stumbled into the kitchen at lunchtime today, looking wrecked and muttering about an all-night shagathon with Yvonne, and had been in a state of dazed exhaustion ever since. While he'd sprawled on the sofa watching
Dr Who
, I'd tried to put Dr William out of my mind by writing some thirty client messages.

It hadn't worked.

As Sam paid for his chips, I made a huge mental effort to file William away for now. Granny Helen had arranged to come all the way here to see me, and both of my friends had nearly broken their backs wheeling Lambert women up the hill. I owed them, at the very least, the courtesy of my attention.

Sam arrived back at the table, handed Granny Helen her orange juice and opened a can of Coke for himself. ‘Cheers,' he said absently, sinking his teeth into his deep-fried pie. Watching Sam eat was not dissimilar to watching Malcolm at his bowl and I studied him with the usual mixture of fondness and despair.

‘You eat like Malcolm does,' Granny Helen told him. She had a habit of saying things that other people thought but tended not to voice. Sam shrugged: he knew. ‘But you're extremely attractive,' she added. Sam blushed.

‘Isn't he?' Hailey agreed. ‘It's such a waste. Think what a decent man could do with those looks.'

Sam blinked, totally unconcerned. ‘I am a decent man. Very decent. I've been faithful to Yvonne the whole time we've been together.'

‘Six months is not a world record,' Hailey said. Granny Helen smiled slightly, watching Sam's face. She enjoyed hearing about his normally disgraceful love life. She said it reminded her of how lucky she was to have been married to Granddad Jack.

‘No,' Sam agreed, ‘but it's a personal best.' He cut a cheese-shaped wedge out of his bizarre pie and popped it into his mouth with comical delicacy.

There was a pause.

Then: ‘I'll have one of these pies,' Granny Helen shouted over at the man behind the fryers. ‘Enough,' she snapped, as Sam, Hailey and I burst out laughing. ‘Now, Charlotte, how is the business going, my dear?'

I blushed, hoping Hailey wouldn't tell her about my disgraceful emails with William last night. ‘It's going well,' I replied. ‘Sam's been an amazing help with publicity and, thanks to his efforts, I've got nearly seventy clients! Isn't that fantastic?'

Granny Helen shook her head. ‘I might have blasted-well known it would take off. Charlotte,' she said, in her most forbidding voice, ‘I do hope you're not proposing to carry on with this thing when you start back at Salutech. Because let me be clear, my girl, you cannot do both.'

My friends nodded their agreement and Hailey raised an enquiring eyebrow at my fish. Sick already of the grease, I pushed the rest over to her.

It was a question with which I'd been grappling a lot over recent weeks. I'd set up First Date Aid because I would otherwise have lost my mind, but now it was up and running – and doing really rather well – the idea of abandoning it or, worse still, selling it, was appalling. I loved it! When I was feeling flat and frustrated with my leg, restless and edgy about doing so little, it breathed life back into me. And I couldn't deny that it thrilled me to see my business model rising out of nothing and giving Steve Sampson in Boston a serious run for his money. How could I hand that over to someone else? Just watch my hard work disappear in an online financial transaction?

But, equally, how could I carry on when I was back at
Salutech? I'd absolutely caned it with my physio to make sure I was able to be back in time for the Simitol launch: I couldn't just return to work and spend half my time writing dating emails. There wasn't so much as a spare second in a Salutech day.

First Date Aid took up a lot of time. It wasn't just the flirting, it was the admin too. The money, the marketing, the client relationships, the website.

Yesterday morning I'd checked my Salutech contract to see if there was anything in it that prevented me running my own business on the side. Technically, as long as I didn't use their computers or time, there was not. But my contract was kind of irrelevant. I'd be out the door if I was discovered; they'd find a way. Salutech loved me, right up to HQ level in Washington (although Bradley Chambers, the repulsive little man who was vice president of Salutech Global, probably loved me a bit too much), but only because they knew that they had my full and undivided attention.

I pondered. And then:
Don't care
, I thought obstinately.
I'm not letting go of my little company
.
I'll find time. And that's that.

I would find time. I always did. Somehow.

‘We'll see,' I told Granny Helen as her pie was delivered.

The chip-shop man, probably flummoxed by the presence of a pearl-earringed matriarch in his establishment, had found a little sprig of wilting parsley to lay on top and – with touching reverence – put down a plastic knife and fork for her with a piece of kitchen roll folded into a
triangle. Granny Helen thanked him graciously, then turned back to me, eyes like bullets. ‘Oh, we'll see all right,' she muttered ominously.

I looked at the clock. Probably another two hours before I'd be free to email William. Just to arrange a date between him and Shelley, of course. Nothing more.

10.45 p.m.

Hello William,

I sat back, flexing my fingers. ‘Keep it brief,' I told myself, realizing that my heart was thumping again. ‘He's not yours to flirt with.'