A Passionate Love Affair with a Total Stranger (11 page)

Sorry it's taken so long to reply to your last message. I had a difficult day at work and couldn't get online.

I would like to go for a date, yes. How does the twenty-sixth of September work? Shelley

I pushed my chair back and got up to make some tea. I didn't know what else to do with myself.

11.03 p.m.

Aha! Shelley! Evening greetings to you.

26th is fine, although I might die of anticipation between now and then.

Look, I wanted to say sorry if you feel that I came on a bit strong trying to get under your skin last night. The problem is that I like you just a bit too much for some bird from the bloody Internet. There's something about you.

But I don't want to frighten you so let's leave it at Wednesday 26 Sept and in the meantime I'll go and shag loads of slappers. x

Absolutely, categorically no, I told myself. Don't you
dare
bite.

But I was powerless.

11.05

What do you mean there's something about me?

Sx

I'd broken so many rules now that a kiss was neither here nor there. I felt quite insane.

11.12

AHA! Shelley is still ONLINE. Good. So, hmmm, what is it about you …

It's not that I find you really attractive (although, for the record, I do), it's more that I feel like there's something incredibly sweet and girlish underneath this scary business exterior you have.
Are
you really this scary corporate ball-breaker? Or is there someone else underneath? I got the impression last night that there is.

Bugger. Sound like patronizing twat. We've never met. But … I dunno. I feel like I know you. I feel like I can hear the things that go on in your head. Even though we've never met, you just seem so familiar.

This is too much. I need to shut the hell up.

‘Oh no, oh no,' I said, staring in anguish at my computer screen. ‘Stop seeing me. I hate this.'

11.29 p.m.

It
is
a bit too much, Dr William. But it's strangely enjoyable.

Am I really this scary businesswoman?

Maybe not.

But I am! No, I'm not. I'm … argh, stop it.

I suppose what I know is this: I've recently had to take a break from my normal (ball-breaking) career and have ended up doing something a lot more jolly. And you know what? I've absolutely loved it. There hasn't been so much as a whiff of corporate toughness and I've not been stressed or exhausted. At all.

So perhaps I'm not a scary businesswoman. (But if I'm not, I'm at a bit of a loss to know who I am.)

William, you can't just make me say that and not tell me anything about you. You said last night you wished you'd made something more of yourself. What did you mean?

Sx

11.40

What did I mean? Bloody hell, I don't know. I suppose I have a massive, overwhelming feeling of underachievement. Like life is passing me by and I'm not on board. Treading water. Wasting opportunities. Having a great time but never really engaging with anything or anyone. Girls come and go, meaning nothing – not that I get around, I mean relationships – and my dreams just get further and further away.

This is not a very romantic preamble to a date, is it? Sincere apologies. You and your profile got me at a bit of a vulnerable moment last night. And now I've opened a Pandora's box that
I'm having trouble closing. Worse still, I seem to have forced you to open yours.

Wow. I really do have all the moves, innit.

11.59

William. You may not have the classic moves, but I think you're the most honest, open person I've talked to in years. You get me. I'm not sure I like it!

00.05

Hmmmm. Same. Let's try something more pedestrian. Where are you from?

00.07

Small town outside the city [
true for both me and Shelley. Different cities though. Different girls, I told myself firmly.
]

Where are you from?

00:17

I'm a city boy. The countryside looks so beautiful on postcards but in real life it annoys me. I don't know what to do with it.

00.22

I know what you mean! I plan ‘trips to the country' and then have fuck-all idea what to do when I get there!

00.30

Maybe we could have a countryside date then. Exorcize some fears. Pretend we're just some couple who've gone away for a dirty weekend. (If it went really well, we could always turn it into one of those.)

Er, sorry. Too much.

Ah, just caught sight of your profile picture again. Are you aware of being beautiful? X

I felt madly happy and then madly sad. William was looking at a picture of Shelley, not me.

00.31

Inside and out [
he added
]. Even if you look nothing like your photo I still reckon you're beautiful.

I stopped feeling madly sad and felt madly happy again.

00.40

Why thank you, William.

Now. I like the sound of a countryside date but it will probably be impossible with my work schedule. It may have to be urban. Oh, and as the man it's your job to come up with somewhere imaginative and fabulous. No pressure.

And for the record I think doctors are amazing. So quite what you're on about with this feeling of not having achieved, of life passing you by, I have no idea. I've consistently overachieved and, as you appear to have worked out on my behalf, it's left me completely adrift.

Our conversation has rather blown me apart, William …

Not convinced this is very good Internet dating etiquette. Oops.

*Giggles cheekily.*

Sx

00.53

I like that cheeky giggling. Oh, I like it very much, young lady. I think you would benefit from doing a lot of cheeky giggling, Shelley Businesswoman. I think you would benefit from running around the house without any clothes on, giggling and singing and whooping. And then maybe quitting your job for a bit and giggling off to, I don't know, Berlin, where you'd go and get stoned and hang out at strange discos by the river at 7.30 a.m. eating hotdogs.

I looked wistfully at my plastered leg. It did indeed sound rather wonderful.

But again, it sounds like I'm trying to do amateur psychoanalysis on you. I'm not trying to say you're some uptight woman who needs to set herself free … just that … I was just really touched by you saying that you'd probably enjoy life more if you could let go. It made so much sense to me.

And I don't care about email etiquette. This conversation has rather blown me apart too, which is exactly what I needed to happen. See you in seven days. X William

Promise me you just fixed up a date and left it at that
, Hailey texted me, just before midnight.

‘Yep, date sorted,' I replied, staring at William's face on my screen. That, at least, was true.

The date was in seven days. And as I turned my laptop off and lay in the dark tingling all over, I realized that I couldn't let Shelley go on it. Something real was happening here. I'd learned more about myself in two evenings
talking to William than I had in thirty-two years under my own steam. Wasn't this the sort of stuff that happened when you fell in love?

I pulled the pillow out from underneath my head and started thumping myself with it. ‘You are forbidden EVER to use that word again,' I hissed. ‘FORBIDDEN!'

‘So, you see, it's looking like I should be back really quite soon.' I stuck a crutch up in the air to signal how mobile I was.

Margot looked unimpressed. ‘We'll be delighted to have you with us, Charley,' she said carefully – as if I was applying for a receptionist's job after recently doing work experience, ‘but do you think you can cope here while you're on crutches? Salutech isn't particularly disability-friendly.'

‘Well, that sounds to me like something Carly might want to look into,' I said smoothly. Carly from HR, delighted to have something to do, wrote down ‘DISABILITY ACCESS' and underlined it twice, finishing off by circling the two words and adding an asterisk just to be certain. Margot looked at my crutches and shuddered.

I am calm six-foot woman
, I told myself.
Not angry six-foot woman. I will not give her what she wants.
(Ness had once sat me down and told me that the only thing scarier than a six-foot woman was an angry six-foot woman.)

As if she were reading my mind, Margot took it to the next level, leaning back in her chair with all the expansive ease of a CEO. ‘I wonder if you should be assessed by one of our doctors before you make any firm arrangements to come back.'

I took a deep breath. ‘Margot, I've been keeping abreast of things and it's obvious that you've done an excellent job laying down foundations for the Simitol launch. Seriously –' I gritted my teeth ‘– I'm so impressed that you've won over the health minister and made such brilliant progress with the patient groups. But in two weeks we go public with the biggest brand launch in twenty years and the government and ABPI are going to be all over our every move. It's absolutely essential that I personally manage that process.'

‘I couldn't agree more,' said a voice from the doorway behind me.

I froze.
Oh, please, no.

John was meant to be in Paris at a conference set up by one of our competitors, who had a significant drug in phase three: I'd timed today's meeting especially to coincide with his absence. Of course I accepted I'd have to deal with him at some point, but I also knew that today was not the day. But there he was. All six foot four of him, suited, booted and beaming, still tanned from his honeymoon at that stupid
winery
in California with a stupid gold wedding ring on his finger. Stupid, stupid, stupid. And yet more impossibly handsome than ever.

I tried to stand up, but he bent down to kiss my cheek instead, saying it was nice to see me. I was so thrown by the situation that I could barely hear him, but I came to rapidly as he slid a hand discreetly along the curve of my neck. It lingered there for a split second before he straightened. I glanced round furtively but neither Margot nor Carly appeared to have noticed.

The dog. The flirty, dirty dog. Touching my neck with his
wedding-
ring hand?

And then I realized something very strange was happening. My neck was not tingling where he'd touched me. Well, not much. My privates were definitely not on fire. And actually, as the shock of unexpectedly seeing him wore off, I felt really quite calm.

Eh?

‘Well, then, Charley!' he said. He only called me Lambert in private. ‘How's the star of the company? Ready to take the helm on Monday?'

I nodded, noting that Margot looked furious.

John, meanwhile, was watching me keenly. ‘Are you going to be OK, my dear?' he asked, in a more human voice. ‘It won't be too much?'

‘Course not,' I replied brightly. ‘Margot can start emailing stuff today so I'll be up to speed.'

Why wasn't his compassion turning me to squelch?

John, perhaps wondering the same, squatted on his haunches and brazenly took my hand. I sensed Margot's frontal cortex exploding with envy and suspicion. ‘Are you sure, Lambert?' he murmured quietly. ‘Your health is far more important to me than Simitol.'

For a man as driven by his business as John, this was a fairly dubious claim. And yet, looking at his face, I got the impression that he was being absolutely straight. ‘Of course I'm sure!' I said brightly, withdrawing my fingers.
I actually didn't want him holding my hand!
This was extraordinary. I wasn't falling apart and I wasn't hatching some deluded campaign to steal him back from Susan Faulkner.
That's because you're busy trying to destroy Shelley Cartwright's stab at happiness instead
, my head informed me.
What a nice girl you are, Charley Lambert! Why bother looking for a man of your own when you could steal someone else's?

John smiled, his eyes boring into mine. I smiled politely back at him and put my BlackBerry into my bag. ‘Good to see you, Charley,' he said, after a pause.

Twenty minutes later, sitting in the back of a taxi on the A1, I tried to make sense of this. Was this thing with William the doctor – William the total stranger to whom I had no entitlement whatsoever – really enough to end seven years of unadulterated obsession with John MacAllister?

I thought about William and the way he had just effortlessly tunnelled inside my mind. He'd already been to places John had never got close to. I felt more confused than ever. Surely this was how you were meant to feel when you'd been with someone for a while and started to fall in love.

‘STOP IT,' I shouted at myself, as the taxi pulled up outside my flat. ‘THIS IS NOT LOVE.' I paid the bewildered driver and prepared to haul myself up the stairs, determined to take some positive action.

Failing to come up with a plan of positive action, I decided to call Hailey instead.

‘Banqueting, good afternoon?'

‘Hailey …'

‘Hello, Charleypops! Please don't tell me you're calling to talk about the Internet doctor.'

‘Um … I'm calling to talk about the Internet doctor.'
I leaned against the kitchen sink so I could look out of the window without the aid of crutches.

I heard Hailey pull the phone round the corner into the chefs' locker room. ‘Chas,' she said. ‘We've talked about this. He's not yours to obsess over, my love.'

‘I know. But I saw John today and I felt nothing. All I could think about was how much William seems to understand me.'

‘He doesn't understand you, Chas. He doesn't even know your name. When he thinks about you, he's visualizing some bird called Shelley. He's going on a date with
her.
' She sounded tired.

‘Sorry, Hails. I'm really pissing you off now, aren't I?' I bit my lip, staring distractedly out of the window. Brightly coloured tankers cruised into Newhaven, calmly unaware of my romantic turmoil.

‘No, my love, it's just … I just think you're in a fantasy world. If you're over John that's great but you can't really attribute that to this imaginary affair. Has Shelley seen the emails yet?'

‘No. She hasn't even asked for them. She just doesn't care. She wants me to do all the dirty work so she can turn up and decide if William's
good enough
. He isn't right for her, Hailey! He's right for me!'

‘So what are you going to do? Fly to London and spy on their date?'

Now there was an idea. ‘Dunno,' I mumbled.

Hailey sighed, exasperated. ‘Look, I can't stay on. But I'm telling you once and for all that this has to stop. It's immoral, it's selfish and it's insane. Understood?'

‘Murgh.' I ended the call and looked at William's picture
on my laptop one more time. She was right: I was going to have to let him go. It was immoral, it was selfish and it was insane.

But as I looked at him, all handsome with his jumper and manly stubble, a bubble floated up the screen telling me I had a new message. Immoral, selfish and insane, I thought, throwing myself across the room without crutches and opening the message as quickly as I could.

Dearest Shelley. (Dearest? Too old-fashioned? Oh, never mind.)It's lunchtime and I've been thinking about you all morning. This is mad! I've decided to take up a load of hobbies to keep my mind busy until I meet you. Current favourites: poetry writing and harpsichord lessons.

I took myself out for dinner last night after my shift finished and imagined you sitting opposite me. You were tall and even prettier than you are in your photo. You arrived without glasses because you thought you looked better without them, but then you had to put them on to read the menu. I thought you looked lovely with them on. And off. I made an inappropriate joke about sodomy and then went bright red. You pretended to have a tiny little feminine appetite and then gnawed your way through a gigantic rump steak in ten minutes.

I watched you eat and wanted to stretch my hand out and hold yours. I didn't, though. I was being manly. But then you caught me looking at you and took my hand.

Then my real-life burger arrived and I stopped mooning over an imaginary woman.

I've bloked up now. Fuck harpsichords and poetry. I'm going to go and pump iron and watch football and drink lager. Maybe beat someone up. A patient, ideally.

How about a place called Polpo for our date? It's sort of Italian tapas, if such a thing could exist. Always noisy so if we don't get on we won't be sitting in silence. 7.30 p.m.? Surely you've finished work by then? If you haven't, make an exception.

X

I read the message three times, an uncontrollable grin stretching across my face. I wanted to be sitting across the table from William, eating Italian things and giggling as he made tasteless jokes about sodomy. I wanted to reach over and take his hand just like he'd imagined. I wanted this more than was healthy.

Was this Internet love? No way. It was bigger than that.
Real
love? ‘Shhh,' I told myself, alarmed. But then I realized it didn't matter what it was. All I knew was that William was the most wonderful and brilliant man I'd ever met. And that I was going to have to disobey Hailey and find some way of getting him into my life.

Shortly after I'd sent a reply, Sam crashed through the front door with a face of thunder. No, worse than thunder. It was pure, sooty blackness. I slammed my laptop shut so he couldn't see what was going on but I needn't have bothered: he didn't even look in my direction. Instead he stormed over to the cupboard and took out a loaf of bread and the Nutella jar.

‘Oh dear,' I said. ‘What's happened, Bowes?'

He ignored me, shoving two slices of bread angrily into the toaster.

‘Sam? What's wrong?'

‘Yvonne,' he muttered.

‘What about her?'

‘It's over,' he said, abandoning the toast and marching off into his room. The door slammed behind him. I stared at it, open-mouthed.

Two seconds later, he wrenched his door open, marched back to the counter, grabbed the loaf, the Nutella and a knife, and took them with him. The door slammed again.

I was more shocked even than when they'd got engaged. Sam and Yvonne were … They were
lovely
! Delightful! Happy! How could this have happened?

This, Charlotte Lambert, is why you're far better off helping other people start relationships than trying to have one yourself
, I thought, dazed. ‘Fucking hell,' I said to the empty room. No one replied, but Sam's toast popped up forlornly.

Love is a nightmare
, I thought.
Change of plan. Stop emailing William. Walk away before this ends in a miserable mess too.

A great sadness welled up in me. Letting go was the right thing to do: nothing about the situation was healthy. William was due to meet Shelley in five days, the ball was now rolling and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Apart from anything else, I couldn't take another moment more of the bipolar it's on/it's off thoughts flying around my head.

There was no argument. I had to let go of William. And that absolutely sucked.

After a few seconds, I limped purposefully to Sam's cupboard, removed from it a loaf, his spare jar of Nutella, then took a knife out of the drawer and went to my own bedroom.

The door slammed behind me.

Margot marched out of my office in a vulva-skimming skirt, her inappropriate suede high heels stalking across the communications office with angry precision. She had always worn strange clothes but in my absence her wardrobe appeared to have undergone a metamorphosis from strange to plain old slutty. I wondered vaguely if it was an attempt to attract John, but doubted it. Margot didn't like John any more than she liked me. Or anyone else who was senior to her, for that matter.

This was going to be even harder than I'd thought. Margot had reorganized our entire system and was keeping any remotely important information close to her chest. Anything that would help me to do my job remained a mystery. But any information that was irrelevant or would annoy me was readily accessible.

‘What about Suki Gilpin from the
Mail
?' I had asked her a few minutes earlier. ‘She must have had something to say.' All of the papers had found out about Simitol and, inevitably, a few were trying to stir up trouble. Or, at least, a ‘provocative angle'. Suki Gilpin was normally the worst for this.