A Passionate Love Affair with a Total Stranger (5 page)

Hailey and I had shaken our heads in surprise, even though we knew full well why the girl had stuck her wangers in his face.

And yet, awed though we might be by his looks, we both knew instantly that we would never want to Go There. It would just be wrong. Instead we became an unlikely triumvirate: me, a lanky nerd who got twitchy when out of the library; Hailey, leading a more classic life of drinking, occasional lectures and failed romances; and Sam, drifting around studying something called ‘Drama', growing mad hair for his theatrical productions and leaving a trail of crazed girls in his wake. He picked them up everywhere. I even saw him pick one up in the university Spar shop while wearing an inexcusable pair of ethnic ‘rehearsal pants'. I concealed myself behind a huge display
tower of Haribo and watched enviously, wondering why, when I always made an effort to dress well, I couldn't so much as muster a smile out of other men. They just ran from me, seemingly terrified.

Sam popped a chocolate into his mouth while Dad struck an excitable and tuneless chord on his banjo. ‘Well, the gang are all here now. All we need is Nessie and little Katy and then we can have a party! Shall I go out and get some pizzas in?'

‘Christian.' Mum sighed. ‘I … Oh, it doesn't matter. Come on, let's give Charley and her friends some space. We can come back later.'

Dad looked disappointed but gathered up his banjo. ‘OK. Bye, darling!' he said, planting a smacker on my forehead. ‘I'll sneak Malcolm in later. Never understood why you can't bring animals into a hospital.' He wandered out of the cubicle, whistling ‘You Are My Sunshine' even more tunelessly than he had sung it. Sam, grinning, took his seat in the corner.

‘Dear God,' Mum said, following Dad out. ‘I really could punch him at times, Charley.'

I tried to laugh but it hurt. ‘You're made for each other,' I croaked. Mum shrugged, blowing me a kiss as she left. However improbable their marriage might seem to an outsider – in fact, even to them – it worked.

I'd often imagined John and me as a married couple. We'd be busy, of course, with Salutech, but we'd make sure we created time to eat around our large scrubbed-pine table in John's loch-side house. Our children would be naughty, clever and beautiful and would speak at least
five languages by the age of ten. They'd be skilled at sports and music, and the most popular kids in school by some margin.

Stop it
, I told myself.
Don't do this.

For once, I obeyed. I didn't remotely wish to believe that a long-term future with John was now impossible.
It was impossible in the first place
,
you moron
, my head snapped.
Why would he want a gigantic weird-looking fool like you?

Hailey removed the chocolates from Sam and handed one to me but I felt so engulfed by sadness that I was unable to do much more than roll it around in the palm of my hand. ‘Where's Ness?' I asked eventually. When I was feeling vulnerable I felt a visceral longing for Ness who, born a mere twenty-six minutes before me, was pretty much part of me. Our younger sister Katy, who had followed nearly ten years later (the result of one of Mum and Dad's pseudo-spiritual holidays to Asia), often grumbled about being the Lambert family wallflower, what with Ness and I ‘living up each other's arses'. We were the exact opposite; in my eyes I was a big, tall, corporate beast while Ness was a little, soft, chilled-out flower fairy. I imagined her kind blue eyes set in her delicate face, framed by her dark pixie-cut hair, and struggled not to weep.

‘She'll be here any minute,' Hailey replied. ‘She sat up with you all night; your parents sent her home to sleep.'

‘Wow,' I mumbled, moved and grateful. I had a feeling I'd really need Ness in the coming weeks.

There was a pause.

‘Sorry I ruined your party, Sam,' I said eventually.

He chuckled, shaking his head. ‘Chas, you fucking
rocked that party, brother,' he said. ‘How often does an out-of-work actor get to fly across Edinburgh in an air ambulance? It was AWESOME!'

‘Oh, Samuel Bowes. You really are an insufferable penis.' Hailey sighed.

‘Takes one to know one, Hai–'

I interrupted. ‘Er,
what
? I came here in a helicopter?'

Sam got a can of beer out of his satchel. ‘Course you did. What sort of an ambulance gets up the Salisbury Crags?'

I stared at him, shocked. ‘And you came with me?'

Sam nodded enthusiastically. ‘Fuck, yeah! I got shotgun what with it being my party and all. I wasn't going to miss out on that!'

Hailey tried to look disapproving but couldn't help laughing. ‘I did try to come with you, Chas,' she said. ‘And Ness really wanted to but, of course, she's terrified of flying. Sam just basically shoved his way in shouting, “SHOTGUN.” ' Matty nodded confirmation, looking green with envy. An emergency helicopter ride would be just up his street.

I smiled. ‘And how was the flight, Bowes?'

‘Wicked! A bit too short, plus there was this bird making horrible noises, but the paramedics pumped her full of tranquillizers and she shut up.' He looked up at me sharply to check I was still amused. I was, just. His face softened. ‘Chas, it was pretty horrible. We're all really glad you're OK.'

I realized I still had the chocolate in my hand and popped it into my mouth. My wholesome home-cooked diet could go and fuck itself. What good had it done me?
I had never been attractive enough for John. Six a.m. runs, endless trips to Beetroot Deli, the farmers' market, Crombies. Everything organic, fair-trade, high-quality, sodding expensive.
What a pitiful waste of time
, my head mocked. It would be all about chocolate from now on.

A second later I spat out a mouthful of Turkish Delight. ‘Hailey!' I cried, appalled yet unsurprised. Hailey did not take chocolate-sharing lightly. ‘I've broken my leg! Give me a good one, you horrible girl!' She handed me a caramel.

‘And you're calling me an insufferable penis?' Sam asked her mildly. He scratched his testicles and, watching him with the usual horrified fascination, I felt a renewed sense of shock at his engagement.

Then the curtain was thrown aside and Katy came sauntering in, like a scene from an east London art gallery. She wore vintage sporting breeches, a sparkly cropped bustier and some sort of feather construction clipped into her cropped hair. A pair of vintage pearls hung from her earlobes and she had smudges from last night's make-up under her eyes, making her look simultaneously dirty and vulnerable. I began to smile. I didn't see anywhere near enough of Katy: she was too busy being a fashionable electropop singer in London to hang out with her two old-granny sisters in Edinburgh.

‘Charley!' she cried, bounding over and kissing me. ‘Oh, my God!'

‘I know,' I said ruefully, as she squeezed my hand. ‘This is what happens when someone my height suffers the misapprehension that they're athletic.'

‘No!' she protested. ‘You're super-athletic! You put me and Nessie to shame with all that running.' She peered
into the box of chocolates and I took a quick look at Sam who was, as usual, eyeing her up fairly unsubtly. He caught my frown and held up his hands. Quite apart from the fact that Sam no longer had any business perving at girls, I had told him a few years back (when I'd caught him using his infamous Shakespearean chat-up line on Katy at my birthday party) that I would personally cut off his scrotum if he so much as touched her arm.

Katy, unaware of my fatwah, flopped down on Sam's knee. ‘Hi, babe,' she said, patting his leg. Katy was enviably aware of her own sexuality and Sam peeped out at me from underneath her arm, powerless and afraid. I raised a warning eyebrow.

But I knew it was OK. Sam was in love. He was getting married. The impossible had happened.

‘Sorry, Charley, I look like a Blitz prostitute,' Katy said, pulling off her painful-looking vintage heels. ‘I haven't been to bed. Gig till three a.m. and then I got Nessie's messages about you being here. There wasn't anyone sober enough to drive me up to Edinburgh so Ruben and I waited at King's Cross for the first train.'

‘You didn't need to do that!' I said, coughing. Christ, the pain in my throat. ‘And who's Ruben?'

‘Oh, he's our temporary bassist. We're having a bit of a fling – it's nothing.' She turned round and squeezed Sam's nose. ‘I heard your news!' she said. ‘Fucking mental, Sam!'

Sam looked pleased and embarrassed. I tried to shift slightly up the bed, to check that he wasn't enjoying having Katy on his knee too much, but was met with a stab of pain from my pelvis so acute that I whited out for a second.

When I came to, Hailey was standing over me, frightened, and Matty was dragging Moody Nurse in. ‘She just sort of sank,' he was saying anxiously.

‘What happen?' the nurse asked, looking irritably round the cubicle.

‘I tried to move and it really hurt,' I said faintly.

Moody Nurse tutted. ‘Girl, don't move. We told you that. Don't you move an
inch
, hear me?'

I closed my eyes, exhausted. ‘I increase your painkillers,' she said. ‘The CT-scan results arrive. The doctor come and talk to you soon.'

She shuffled out. Katy was appalled. ‘Blimey, Charley, are you OK?' she said, visibly shaken.

‘Yes, great!' I said weakly. I didn't fool anyone, least of all myself. I felt terrible, mentally and physically. I was frightened by the amount of pain I was in and terrified of being there for ever, rotting away in the evil clutches of Dr Nathan Gillies, while back at Salutech Margot stormed my office and took over my job. And far worse than
any
of this was the pain of John having got engaged. That was the end. I had no fight left; I was spent.

‘John got engaged,' I blurted out. ‘To Married Woman. Who isn't married any more, apparently.'

There was a silence.

Then: ‘Fuuuuuuuck,' Hailey said quietly. I felt my face disintegrate and tried once again to keep it together.

Sam, who felt comfortable with emotion only when it was his own and he was on stage, scratched his head. ‘I brought you a present, Chas,' he announced. The others looked at him, awed as ever by his timing.

‘Um, thanks,' I mumbled, grateful for the distraction.
I smiled bravely at the Christmas wrapping paper. Sam had cocooned it in Sellotape, so tightly that Matty had to step in with his sixteen-tool Swiss Army knife. My hands were pretty much lifeless.

‘Wow,' I said, surprised, as something smooth and shiny fell out of the wrapping paper. It was a brand new generation-something iPhone. ‘Sam … You haven't got the money to be buying things like this. What … ?'

Sam smiled in a saintly way. ‘You were carrying your phone when you came running down the hill,' he explained. ‘It smashed to pieces. I bought you a new one with some of my money from that clinical trial work you got me. Look – it's all ready to go, your numbers are there and everything. Your network even threw in a load of pay-for apps free of charge as a get-well-soon present!' He beamed, delighted with himself. In spite of my suffering I smiled, enjoying his pleasure at having achieved something reasonably adult. The atmosphere in the cubicle lightened a little and Hailey inched back to my chocolates.

‘Come here,' I told Sam, giving him a big kiss on the cheek. ‘You are truly precious. Thank you.'

‘Er, there's a maximum of three visitors per cubicle on this ward,' said a nasal voice.

Hailey froze, strawberry cream hovering centimetres from her mouth. ‘It's Dr Nathan Gillies,' she said slowly, eyes widening.

Dr Nathan Gillies looked irritated. ‘I'm a surgeon, Hailey, as I've pointed out before,' he said. ‘Quite a senior one, in fact. So it's Mr, not Dr.'

‘Still a cock, though,' Hailey muttered loudly. Katy
laughed and I blushed. Dr Nathan Gillies had my fate in his hands: I did not want to piss him off.

He looked round the rather busy cubicle. ‘Could we have a bit of privacy, please?' he said peevishly. Hailey, an ominous expression on her face, jerked her thumb at the others. They left and the curtain closed behind them.

I smiled: four eavesdropping pairs of shoes stood stationary on the other side of the curtain.

Dr Nathan Gillies cleared his throat. ‘Charlotte, I have some rather bad news. The CT scan is back and it appears that the fracture to your pelvic bone is as we suspected. Which does mean your recovery time will be longer.'

A large swell of panic rose up inside me but I feigned calm. ‘How much longer?'

‘It's impossible to say at this stage,' he said, sounding bored.

I breathed slowly. ‘You must have some idea?' I asked, with as much patience as I could muster.

A phone was ringing; I realized it was the new iPhone sitting on my stomach.

‘I doubt you'll be back at work until probably October,' Dr Nathan Gillies said smoothly.

I did a brief mental calculation. He must have made a mistake. It was the end of June. ‘No. That's three months,' I said, in as level a tone as I could muster. ‘You've got it wrong.'

The phone stopped ringing and Dr Nathan Gillies shook his head. ‘I'm sorry, Charlotte, it's going to take a lot of time to mend all the damage. I'll come and visit you tomorrow.'

As he swished the curtain open, I saw four horrified
faces. When the curtain closed behind him, no one moved. Four pairs of feet remained rooted to the spot.

My phone started ringing again and I looked at it numbly. Then I jumped out of my coma.
It was John
. ‘Sam,' I called urgently. ‘How do I answer this thing? SAM.'

Sam bounded in. ‘You slide your finger along this bi– Maybe you should just get some rest, Chas,' he said, seeing it was John.

I ignored him. ‘John?'

‘Charley. How are you feeling?'

My heart broke just a little bit more. John really was engaged if he wasn't calling me Lambert. ‘Bleugh.'