A Passionate Love Affair with a Total Stranger (38 page)

Then he looked up and saw me and his face changed. His eyes widened and, without any thought for etiquette, he waved excitedly at me, beaming like a child. ‘No fucking
way
!' he mouthed, much to the delight of the audience. Following his eyeline, a theatreful of people stared at my grubby clothes and greasy pudding-bowl hair. But I didn't care. I fixed my eyes on Sam and clapped even harder, grinning for all I was worth.
I love you
, I thought.
I absolutely love you!

Feral farmhand I might be, but I had to tell Samuel Bowes how I felt. And, like Frank, I had to do it my way. Not Shelley's way or bloody anyone else's way. I'd had enough of meddling with other people's relationships. I'd had enough of other people meddling with mine. This was my story.

‘Sit,' Shelley commanded, pointing to a seat in the corner of the bar a little while later.

I sat, thinking it would be wise to play along with her for now. Our little party sank into chairs around me and an enthusiastic resting actor in a red waistcoat offered us champagne. I took three glasses.

‘Now, Charlotte, you don't need to worry. I have a plan,' Shelley said, in tones that were perhaps designed to be soothing. They were not soothing or even close to it. She pulled her chair in closer to me, checking her watch. ‘Ah, excellent. There will be a bag of clothes arriving by courier any minute,' she said. ‘My friend Araminta is a buyer at Fenwick's.'

There was not even a trace of irony in her face. She was extraordinary.

‘Shelley, that's lovely of you but I'm no longer in a position to buy expensive clothes,' I began.

‘You aren't buying them,' she interrupted. ‘It's taken care of.' She giggled to herself, and William stroked her arm fondly. ‘In the interval I arranged for you to use a shower backstage,' she told me. ‘We'll have you looking human in no time at all.'

She was mad. They both were.

‘So what's the plan?' I asked her, doing my best to look as if I was eager to get cracking.

Shelley tapped her nose. ‘You leave the planning to me.' She cackled manically. ‘However … before I press the green button, Charlotte, I want to know why it's taken you so long to get to this point. I suspect you've liked Samuel for a while.'

I nodded grudgingly. ‘I suppose.'

‘Well, then, what was
stopping
you?' She looked at William for support. ‘Are you mentally retarded?'

I tried to frown but couldn't help smiling. This was vintage Cartwright. ‘Well, for starters, Shelley Cartwright,
you
told me he was going out with Katia!' I reminded her. ‘I only found out today that it was a lie – that he's single. And what did I do? I got straight on a plane! I don't think I'm entirely to blame.'

Shelley reddened. ‘Ah,' she said spiritedly, staring at her expensive bracelet. ‘Yes. Was hoping to stir up a bit of jealousy. Make you fight for him. Possibly an error.' She recovered from her embarrassment soon enough, though. ‘Well, you came round in the end, Charlotte! I suggest you sit back and let me take care of this. OH! AHOY THERE!' A motorbike courier with four Fenwick's bags stood in the doorway and Shelley strode over to him without so much as a glance in my direction.

I watched her go and marvelled. It was touching, of course, that she was so desperate to get Sam and me together, but alarming to witness the extent to which the challenge had taken her over.
Thank God I'm not like that any more
, I thought, shuddering. Thanks to Sam, it had been nearly two months since I'd walked out of Salutech and the life that came with it.

Sam
. My palms prickled.
I have to find Sam before Shelley gets to him
. I watched her sign for the delivery while yelling into her BlackBerry, and knew that it was now or never.

‘Just going to the loo,' I said to the others. Hailey waved me off and nicked one of my glasses of champagne.

I ducked under the velvet rope which was across the entrance to the stairs and scampered up towards our box. If my plan was going to work, I had to act fast. I drew level with the door and then, checking no one was watching,
snuck through the one next to it, a narrow, heavy door marked ‘Private'.

It opened into a narrow corridor with black curtains on either side, lit softly by blue-painted bulbs, which I'd seen a technical person disappear down during the interval. For a moment I paused, weighing up the probability of being caught and thrown out. But I had a plan and I wasn't afraid to use it. I wasn't Charlotte Lambert the Scottish Amazon any more: I was Charley who wanted to do her best for herself.

I followed the little corridor around a corner and down some stairs. And there it was. Bingo. Dimly lit and blissfully quiet: the empty stage.

I wandered to the edge and stared out into the gloom of the auditorium.

For a few minutes I breathed in and out, feeling strangely empowered by the silence and the stillness around me. But then my head started chattering.
Your plan is stupid and mad
, it told me.
It's about as romantic as a fish finger!
I tried to ignore it but the volume just increased. Fear scrunched up my digestive system and I felt suddenly weighed down by the contents of my bag.
You are a pillock
, my head informed me.
Sam's probably drinking champagne with his luvvie friends right now – what are you going to do, barge into their dressing room, drag him off to a toilet and show him what's inside your bag like a crazed gypsy?

I sat down on the edge of the stage, dangling my legs into the orchestra pit, and wondered if it would be best to ditch my plan and sneak off. I looked like a tramp, I smelt like a dog and my hair looked like it had been attacked by a block of lard. I couldn't talk to Sam like this.

‘Wow,' said a voice behind me, causing me nearly to jump out of my skin.

It was Sam, standing in the centre of the stage. He'd obviously just showered and was wearing a beautifully cut shirt with super-smart trousers, all ready for his big glittery party. He looked edible.

‘That's a very special outfit,' he said, appraising my attire with awe.

I nodded. ‘I spent hours shopping.'

Sam walked over and plopped down beside me, smelling clean and masculine and gorgeous. I was painfully aware of my canine aroma.

‘I did shower this morning,' I blurted.

Sam sniggered. ‘We have little monitors in our dressing rooms, showing what's going on onstage,' he told me. ‘I saw this bizarrely clad creature roaming round.'

‘Just sizing it up,' I told him. ‘Thought I might give the acting thing a go some time …'

Sam smiled indulgently. I couldn't bear how handsome he was.

‘Where's your colonial moustache?' I honked, into the ensuing silence.

‘It's a fake,' he replied. ‘I spent six weeks trying to grow a moustache – or any sort of facial hair, really – and just ended up with patchy bum-fluff. The wigs mistress designed it especially for me. You like?'

I nodded, unable to think of anything to say.

And here we go again
, my head said.
It doesn't work
in the real world. It only works when we're emailing.
WE CAN'T
COMMUNICATE
.
IT'S
DOOMED
.

For once, my head had a point. I was sitting alone with Sam, bursting with things I wanted to say, yet I was mute.

Which meant – another scrunch of fear in my stomach – that I was going to have to put my plan into action.

In slow motion, I put my hand into my bag and pulled out my laptop, which I handed to Sam. It was all ready to go.

He took it, clearly confused, as I dragged out the gigantic black spaceship that my parents called a laptop on to my own knee. I opened it up and there on the screen was an instant messenger dialogue box with a cursor flashing patiently.
Charley says
, it read.

‘Er … ?' Sam said. I nodded to indicate that he should open up the laptop on his knee. Which he did, with a slightly bemused smile.

‘Chas … ?' he said, peering at the screen, which looked very similar to mine. ‘What's going on?'

I ignored him and started typing.

I screwed up my eyes, praying he'd jump on board. And a few seconds later, I heard the sound of fingers typing.

What the fuck was ‘going on' was that I was going to tell him how I felt. Using a very romantic mode of communication known as instant messaging. I didn't care if it was the most soulless expression of love in the universe:
the fact was our lives had changed for ever because of our online conversations.

Email worked for us. Talking didn't. Not yet.

As the Heathrow Express had powered towards Paddington earlier, I had created instant-messenger accounts in anticipation of this chat. And the lovely thing was that I felt no compulsion to plan what I was going to say. I knew that, when the time came, my fingers would start typing, just like they had during those spine-tingling hours in October when ‘William' and ‘Shelley' had been emailing each other. It had been as effortless as breathing.

So here I was, facing a darkened sea of seats, ready to send a message of sweet love on Dad's gigantic boulder of a laptop. Shelley probably had a search party out by now and I had to move quickly.

I took a deep breath.

There was an excruciating pause.

There it was. I couldn't turn back now.

Sam removed his hands from the keyboard, which threw me. Was he about to run? Or was he just ready to listen?

He picked up his hands again and put me out of my misery.

I inhaled slowly. I knew it was going to be nerve-racking. I just had to do it.

Sam didn't move or say anything. Turning ever so slightly I could see there was a blush on his neck, spreading out
underneath the soft downy hairs where his hairline ended and his neck started. I longed to throw my laptop into the orchestra pit and hug this soft downy neck.

However, my more pressing concern was that Sam wasn't saying anything. And so I took things up a level. A substantial level.

Still nothing.

I stopped typing, even though I wanted to add two thousand more sentences persuading Sam to love me. But I'd promised myself: keep it simple. Say what you need to say, and if he's not forthcoming, get the hell out. Put a few hundred miles between you. Get back to Malcolm.

After what seemed like several lifetimes, Sam began to write. I felt like I was having a heart attack.

Sam sniggered.

How the fuck can you be sitting there cracking jokes?
I thought desperately.
Are you mad? Blind? Did you not just see what I wrote?

Sam started writing again.

‘THERE THEY ARE,' hissed a loud voice.

Sam stopped writing.

The voice had been a full-on pantomime whisper and it had come from somewhere above me. With a sinking feeling, I looked up and saw two heads poking out from the box we'd sat in tonight, staring furtively down at me. Of course it was Shelley and William. And of course they were goggling at us.

I looked back at my computer, which had just pinged a message in.

NO!
I thought desperately.
No! Shelley is not ruining this for me!

I put the computer down and stood up.

‘Shelley, bugger off,' I shouted. ‘And William too.'

There was a stunned silence as the two protruding heads looked at each other, then back down at me in astonishment. ‘Us?' Shelley barked.