A Passionate Love Affair with a Total Stranger (13 page)

It had been three long days since I had last logged on to Shelley's profile. Three days since I'd taken a deep breath, emailed William to confirm Polpo at seven thirty on Wednesday and made up some cock-and-bull story about why Shelley couldn't email him again before the date. Afterwards, I'd gritted my teeth and called her.

‘What do you mean it all got a bit personal?' she'd barked. ‘Charlotte, if I find out that you've been divulging –'

‘No, no! Not that sort of personal. I haven't given out your address or anything … It just got a bit, um, intense,' I said lamely. Knowing I had no choice, I then emailed Shelley the password to her
love.com
account so she could sign in and see just how ‘intense' it had got. The thought of her wrath left me weak with fear but I had to wash my hands of the situation.

So it was not without amazement that I read her email a few moments later. ‘I'm engrossed, Charlotte, this is good stuff. Do you normally go this far for clients? Quite frightening but it's all bang on. I actually think William will be well prepared for who I am.'

At first I'd been amazed; after a while I'd felt less surprised. Shelley and I were, after all, the same person. William had obviously hit as much of a nerve in her as he had in me. DAMN HER.

Sam was looking at me expectantly. Slightly nervously, in fact.

‘Er … sorry?'

‘I asked if you were OK. You suddenly disappeared,' he said.

‘Er … yes, I'm OK, just shattered. Reckon I'm going to have some dinner, do a couple of hours' work and hit the hay,' I said vaguely.

‘Don't be a fool. Just eat and go to bed,' he said. ‘You can't work in this state.'

I shook my head. ‘I haven't the choice. We've never been so busy.'

Sam looked as if he wanted to probe further but knew it wasn't worth it. ‘OK. So, anyway, what do you think?'

‘About what?'

‘I knew you weren't bloody well listening! I …' Suddenly Sam seemed extremely awkward. ‘I, er, wondered if I could maybe call Katy and ask if I could stay with her. She said I could sleep on her sofa any time … and I …' He trailed off.

‘And you can't stay with any of your actor friends?'

‘Well, Jamie's just got engaged, so they'll be shagging all the time. Howard's just had the bailiffs in and hasn't got so much as a chair to sit on. Helly hasn't spoken to me since we, er … and Tim's on holiday.'

‘And you don't know anyone else in London? Apart from my pretty little sister?'

Sam slammed his fist on the sofa. ‘I just broke up with Yvonne, Charley,' he said angrily. ‘Do you really think I'm in the mood for trying to get off with someone else? My fucking housemate's little sister at that?'

‘You're always up for getting off with someone, Sam. Come on.'

‘Piss off,' he said, marching out of the room. His door slammed behind him. For the second time in the last few days, I stared at it in shock. ‘Sam?'

Nothing.

‘Sam!'

Tentacles of guilt wrapped themselves around me. Of course Sam wasn't going to London to try to seduce Katy. He was going down there to try to build up his fragile self-esteem, find a footing in the horrible world of acting and
take his mind off his break-up.
You stinky bitch, Charley
, my head hissed.
Sam's been a great friend to you and you repay him like this? Shame on you!

I hauled myself off the sofa, hobbled over to his bedroom door and walked in without knocking. Sam was on his bed, crying. He looked like a helpless child, balled up and rocking. My heart melted. ‘Oh, Sam … oh, darling Sam, I'm so sorry,' I said, throwing myself awkwardly onto the bed next to him. ‘Sam, Sam, Sam …' I put my arm round his waist and he crumpled onto my shoulder, sobbing.

‘I miss her,' he howled. Rigid with shock, I stroked his back. I had never seen anything like this from Sam. Sobs tore through him. ‘I feel so sad and confused and shit,' he yelled into my shoulder.

Five minutes later I served two bowls of microwave mush and called Katy. ‘Katy Lambert, are you able to put up your big sister and her housemate?' I asked. Sam smiled, eyes still red, and promptly burned his tongue on a piece of red-hot parsnip. I shook my head despairingly.

‘WOOOO, YEAH!' Katy shouted. I could hear a strange wind instrument playing in the background. ‘WICKED!'

‘Sam's coming down for some actorly networking and I've got a few meetings,' I said. ‘I know you hate me going to hotels when I'm there with Salutech so I thought I'd stay with you for once.'

‘TRIPLE 'MAZIN'!' she bellowed, ringing off.

Sam got up to fetch the HP sauce, which he squeezed liberally into his bowl. ‘Thanks for this, Chasman,' he
whispered, his face that of Mummy's Brave Little Soldier.

After dinner I put Sam to bed among his horrible lad mags, then slid helplessly back into the uncomfortable thoughts I was having about staying with Katy. The truth, of course, was not that I was staying with her because she complained when I stayed in hotels. Neither was it because I didn't trust Sam around her.

It was because I didn't trust myself.

A plan had begun to form in my mind, involving William and Shelley's date on Wednesday and some sly intervention from one Charley Lambert. It was a stupid plan that horrified my sensible side. But this sensible side (or what remained of it) believed that I wouldn't see the plan through if I was surrounded by Katy and Sam – people from my real world – rather than strangers in a hotel, where I was accountable to nobody and could sneak off on a stupid mission far too easily. Maybe,
just maybe
, if I stayed in Katy's Brixton house full of mad, creative people, there was a chance I wouldn't see this stupid plan through.

Maybe.

I woke up in Katy's spare room on Wednesday morning – the day of the date – and knew I was going to have to follow the plan through. All of the (many) reasons not to go to Polpo had strangely vanished from my consciousness: it was do or die. I couldn't face dying in an agony of ‘what if'. I had to go.

The problem was, the plan was sketchy at best. Beyond a vague idea that I needed to be in Polpo looking glorious at seven thirty, I still had absolutely no idea how I was going to intervene while William and Shelley ate Italian tapas tonight. Start a brawl to attract his attention? (With Shelley maybe?) Sit near them looking tragic and beautiful in an amazing dress? Hmm. Perhaps I might faint so that a doctor (i.e. William) could soar over to administer urgent medical aid.

‘Gah! GET A GRIP.' The fact of the matter was that Shelley Cartwright would march into a restaurant tonight and enchant William with her enigmatic coldness. Eventually she'd let go of her defences and they would fall madly in love and get married and she would move into his doctorish house in Bloomsbury and I would be stuck in Edinburgh with a peg-leg and a depressed housemate who yelled about gnarled harpies in the shower. Not to mention a pathological deputy at work.

Margot. I shuddered. It had been a huge relief to leave
Salutech for the airport yesterday afternoon. Nothing had changed in the office. Margot was on the phone most of the day, talking to
my
contacts and refusing to tell me what was going on, on the grounds that she was ‘just too busy, Charley'. It had been a long time since I had sat in the comms office at Salutech and not been across every tiny thing that was happening. Powerlessness did not sit well with me.

I swung my legs out of bed and hobbled to Katy's kitchen. Sam was asleep in the sitting room, morning sun falling on his angelic fluffy hair, making him look like a big, slightly grubby kitten. Katy, he and I had been for noodles in Fujiyama last night, and as I watched him talk to her so stiffly and formally – to make absolutely clear to me that he was not on the pull – I had felt even worse about Monday's outburst. Sam was red raw at the moment. Not even half capable of seduction. I smiled fondly and crept into the kitchen, where an unidentifiable Young Person was asleep in a chair clutching a bottle of tomato juice. I tiptoed past him, glad that I wouldn't have to stay at Katy's again in the near future. I loved my trendy, enthusiastic little sister but her lifestyle baffled me. As if to confirm this, I opened her fridge – which had been almost empty when I'd gone to bed last night – and found about a thousand carrots loaded onto the shelves. ‘DON'T EAT,' said a piece of paper taped to a carrot. ‘VEGETABLE CARVING CLASS 2MORO.'

The milk I'd bought yesterday had disappeared to make way for carrots. No coffee for me, then.

Bollocks. I sighed, sitting down on the chair next to Juice Boy, wondering what William was doing right now.
Was he eating breakfast? What
was
his breakfast? I imagined it would be sturdy English classics such as kedgeree, kippers or black pudding. He would be a full-fat-milk-with-percolated-coffee man, not one for such fripperies as lattes or double-shot skinny soy moccaccinos.

What was he thinking about, as he spread marmalade on his no-nonsense toast a few miles north of where I was now? Shelley. Without doubt. Of course he was: he'd gone barmy for her and had had to endure five days without contact. He must be going out of his mind.

He wasn't the only one.

After my meeting with Arthur Holford I slunk off to Selfridges where I ate a muffin and bought a Lanvin dress while my back was turned. Later, I sat staring at it in Katy's sitting room, excited but ashamed. It was not a sensible expenditure but it was probably necessary: I had now begun to assemble some sort of plan for this evening that required an outstanding dress.

It was a fairly basic plan at present: simply that I would go to Polpo wearing my beautiful borderline-glamorous dress and that I would get there shortly before the date commenced. I would sit at the table directly opposite William and look nice, approachable and attractive. I figured that Shelley would arrive ten minutes late (because that's what I would do on a date) so I had precisely ten minutes in which to find an excuse to strike up conversation with him and dazzle him so much that by the time Shelley arrived he'd be wishing he was going on a date with me. I would eat a small and stylish meal, then pull on my fur coat (I didn't have one but there was still time) and glide
out of the restaurant. William would be devastated but – and this was the great part –
I'd give my business card to a waiter and ask him to pass it on to William!
He'd come to the end of a horrible, dull meal with an uptight Shelley and his heart would leap as the waiter slid my card discreetly into his hand. Ta-da!

‘You're an absolute twat,' Hailey said witheringly, when I called her and relayed the plan. ‘I literally cannot believe you're doing this. Seriously, Charley, you need therapy.'

There was an uncomfortable silence. I'd called Hailey looking for approval (or, more realistically, a bit of girly camaraderie). Possibly I'd set my expectations too high.

‘Get the hell on a plane and come back,' she said. She sounded actually quite angry and I realized I had scrunched myself defensively into the sofa where Sam had slept last night. His duvet was still there: I inched under it like a naughty dog.

‘Come on, Hails,' I pleaded. ‘Imagine I'd told you to stop seeing Matty after you'd begun to fall for him. Would you take any notice?'

‘I fucking
knew
Matty before I fell in love with him, you freak! Charley, I'd been seeing him for three months! YOU'VE NEVER MET THIS MAN!'

I pulled the Sam duvet over my head but then threw it off me onto the floor. I wasn't having this. I was Charley Lambert, businesswoman and granddaughter of Granny Helen Lambert. I was not a weakling and I would not be spoken to like this. ‘Hailey,' I said, with spirit. ‘I've had enough of your criticism. You've been foul to me about this situation from the word go and you've not even attempted to understand. Why are you being so cruel?'

Hailey huffed like a teenager. ‘Why am I being so
cruel
? More like, why are you acting like a wazzock, Charley? What the hell is wrong with you? How can you run a dating business and behave like this? And your fucking job, why do Salutech think you're in London?'

‘I'm here on Salutech business!'

‘Well, do your fucking business and come home, you moronic
teenager
,' she shouted. She was genuinely furious.

I, meanwhile, was feeling so ashamed I wanted to sew myself into Katy's minging sofa where I could be pummelled by lots of grubby artists' bottoms and have spliffs stubbed out on me. But I couldn't back down. Something bigger than me was in the driving seat now. ‘It's great to know I can rely on you for support,' I said, as if I were somehow the victim here.

‘You have no respect for others and their relationships,' Hailey said. Her voice was cold. ‘Come home and bring Charley Lambert back with you. This freak masquerading as her is pissing me off.' She hung up.

Ignore her
, said a voice in my head.
Sure, it's a bit lunatic to gatecrash William and Shelley's date but it's what anyone would do in your situation. Especially Hailey! She should be supporting you, not condemning you!

The voice got indignant, reminding me about the time that Hailey had had an affair with a married Hibs footballer and nearly lost her job. Had I told her off? Had I hell. I'd gone to her flat at three twenty a.m. with a bottle of Scotch and listened patiently while she'd plotted to set fire to his penis.

I knew that my plan for tonight was silly. But it was also harmless. (Reasonably.) I was just going to present myself
to William as Another Option, then sit back and see what happened. It was up to him whether or not he called me.

And then I was back in the madness again, fizzing over with excitement and nerves at the prospect of finally meeting Dr William. I balled myself up on the sofa and closed my eyes, imagining his sensible, intelligent face centimetres away from mine.

Ping, ping, ping
, went my inbox, as emails poured in. It was now four o'clock and I was attempting – rather unsuccessfully – to take my mind off tonight by engaging in some stiff work. I was hooked up to Katy's piggybacked Wi-Fi, the contents of my in-tray stacked neatly beside my laptop on Katy's kitchen table. My beautiful Lanvin presided majestically over the scene, hanging from an abandoned light fitting in the ceiling. (I hadn't dared hang it in Katy's vintage-filled wardrobe because it smelt like old ladies in there.) I wrenched my eyes away from it and fixed my gaze on my screen. The screen immediately glazed over.
Honestly, William, I'm so cruel to myself
, I'd said last week.
I'd like to be kinder if I knew how.

I stared at my phone, a terrible limbo crackling around me. The closer tonight got, the more desperately I needed support. Solidarity. Someone to tell me that my plan was brilliant. I'd thought about telling Katy but, given her Internet dating history, I strongly suspected she'd tell me to run for my life. Sam had been here earlier and I'd tried to pluck up the courage to broach it with him, but he'd been too preoccupied – terrified, even, about his five o'clock meeting with the agent, so I'd sent him off for a bath with a comforting carrot from Katy's fridge.

I looked back at my laptop, which, having given up any
hope of input from me, had wandered off into screensaver mode. My eye followed a roving picture of me, Ness, Mum, Dad and Katy on the beach by Tantallon Castle with Malcolm last year. Ness was sitting on a rock behind me, her arm round my neck.

Ness! I sat up. Ness would support me! She was my twin: she never judged me. Ever. Even when I'd had to sack someone for wining and dining a journalist in an underhand bid to get (illegal) coverage for one of our drugs, Ness had bolstered me up and told me everything was OK. I needed Ness and I needed her right now. She'd understand!

‘What's up, little Charley?'

Ness – a good nine inches shorter than me – was the only person in the world who called me ‘little' Charley.

‘Hello,' I said. My voice sounded croaky and strained.

‘Oh, Charley, what's wrong, my love?' Ness ran the literary department at the Traverse Theatre and it sounded like she was in the brightest, loveliest room in the world.

I found myself too ashamed to speak, sitting in Katy's carrot-infested kitchen.

‘It's not that bloody John, is it? Oh, Charley, I really –'

‘No. Ness, I know this sounds mad but I think I'm in love with someone I've never met.'

There was a guarded silence. ‘Are you online dating?' she asked.

‘No. It's … it's a man that one of my clients is dating. Tonight's their first meeting, in fact. We started chatting and … I think he's amazing, Nessie. I don't know what to do. I can't think straight, knowing he's meeting up with someone else.'

Ness sighed. ‘Oh, little Charley … Remember what Katy went through? She said she lost her mind when she was chatting to men online.'

‘I KNOW. But, Ness, I've been flirting with men online for weeks. I have amazing banter with some of them! And I've felt nothing. But then this started and
bam
. I think I have to do something, Ness.'

‘Such as what?' She sounded worried.

Ping, ping, ping
, went my inbox. Four months ago I'd have ended the call, rolled up my sleeves and dived into the emails. I wouldn't even have
been
on the phone to my sister during work time, let alone planning some mad intervention on a school night. But things had changed. Somewhere in London a tall man in a polo neck was winding down his working day so that he could go and meet a woman who seemed ‘so familiar' and whom he thought was ‘beautiful'.

Ness was asking me something but I couldn't hear her. ‘Are you near a computer?' I asked her.

‘Er, yes?'

‘Right. I'm sending you something,' I said. ‘Call me back when you've read it.'

I emailed her the Word document into which I'd copied and pasted my correspondence with William. Then I stared blindly at a delegate list for our Simitol press conference and waited for her reply.

Ten minutes later my phone rang.

‘See what I mean?' I demanded. ‘You see, Ness?'

Ness said nothing for a few seconds. ‘Actually, I do,' she said hesitantly. ‘And it's kind of broken my heart seeing all of it. He's so much better for you than John or Nathan or
any of those arrogant idiots you've gone for, Charleypops. And all that stuff he said about you and your work … and about letting go … Wow! I couldn't have put it better myself!'

‘You see?' I cried again, triumphantly. ‘This is why I can't let the date happen! He's never even met me and he understands me like you do! And he's funny! And smart! And gorgeous!'