Could It Be I'm Falling in Love? (34 page)

‘Shurrup!’ he mumbled as his fingers sought the right button. ‘Shurrup!’

His hand landed on the tiny knob in the corner and the clock reset to snooze. Simon rolled back, almost asleep again already. But then something stuck to his cheek. Blearily he reached to unstick it. His eyes creaked open. Linda had already left for work, but she hadn’t forgotten. She’d left her mark on her pillow. Smiling, Simon opened the card.

Under the eyemask, Chelle was completely unconscious. Her mouth was open and there was the faintest purr of a snore. She was totally unaware of the single red rose being placed on her doorstep.

As starts to Valentine’s Day went, this one particularly sucked.

As per her new routine, her phone had started chiming at six. She had thirty minutes to caffeinate, throw on some makeup and squeeze herself into her gym kit. Roxy tried not to think about the significance of the day – today was just Friday, like any other Friday, and she was merely about to go jogging with her pop-star window cleaner …
What could be more normal than that?

She threw herself into some stretches.

The knock came at the door and she pulled it open to greet Woody. She swallowed the (fleeting) disappointment that he was brandishing a bottle of water, not flowers, and reminded herself that Woody was merely her business partner – and that any flowers he might brandish wouldn’t be at her. He could stick his sodding flowers, anyway. She could still hear his laughter from last night.

‘We should go faster today,’ she declared stiffly as their feet started their now-familiar rhythm on the pavement.

Woody looked at her in surprise, but she kept her eyes locked firmly ahead. She stepped up the pace to
cracking
.

Yes, work is the key
, Roxy told herself as she tried to regulate her breathing. All the hearts and flowers of the day were just a crappy distraction. Blokes came and went, but careers were with you forever. Roxy’s one true love had always been work. Yes, she, Roxy Squires, was Mistress Of Her Own Destiny, Girl Power General, a Lieutenant in the Army of Ladette. Only muppets moped over a card. Real women threw on their heels, set their brains to Beyoncé, and powered off to their mega-bucks jobs.

And this morning’s jog was part-and-parcel of that. She’d gym-dodged too long, she decided. TV was a fat-free zone and presenters got skinnier by the day. Goji berries couldn’t do it alone (she knew; she’d tried). She
had
to exercise and it
had
to hurt. That coffin-dodging rake Jane Fonda had been right all along … if there was no pain, there was no gain. If she wanted to get hired, she had to feel the burn. She gritted her teeth and ran faster.

‘All right?’ Woody asked as he matched her suicidal pace.

‘Fine,’ she barked, ignoring the pain in her calves. ‘So,’ she asked tersely, ‘did you get my email?’

‘Ah!’ Woody smiled. ‘The strategies.’

‘Yes, the strategies,’ she snapped. ‘The ones I’ve been working on – have you read them?’

‘Yes, I read them.’

‘And?’

‘And I think they’re great …in theory.’

Roxy narrowed her eyes. ‘And in practice?’

Woody ran a few steps before answering.

‘Rox, are you sure fame’s what they all need? I mean,
really need?’

‘Why are you sure that it isn’t?’

‘I—’

‘I mean, what makes you so bloody sure about everything?’ Suddenly she was properly angry. And not just that he’d ignored the strategies for thirty-one hours and twelve minutes – or that he’d laughed at the colonic, or seen Austin turn her on,
or that it was yet another bloody sodding cardless cocking Valentine’s
. She was angry about ‘gorgeously natural’ and ‘pretty low maintenance’ and ‘Hi, baby; when are you back?’

‘I’m
not
sure about everything,’ he replied calmly. ‘I just think what suits
you
might not suit everyone else.’

‘So you reckon they’re all better off now? Feeling bitter, and sad, and like failures?’

‘No …’

‘That Cressida should fade away into incontinence and Sue should hole up at home with the biscuits?’ She was suddenly furious. Who’d given Woody the monopoly on being right?

‘But that’s why I’m trying to help,’ he protested. ‘To make them see they have friends, and opportunities, and
other
ways to be happy.’

‘And why is your brand of happy OK, but not mine?’

‘I’m not saying that.’ Woody rubbed his head. She could feel him looking at her but she doggedly kept looking ahead. ‘I’m just saying
your
way might not be their way. Sue and
Holly are fragile. Falling out of nightclubs won’t make them happy.’

‘So you don’t reckon Simon’d jump at the chance to get back on telly? Or Terry wouldn’t pimp out his own granny for good press?’

Woody hesitated.

‘You think I’m shallow, don’t you?’ she bludgeoned. ‘You think that, just because I want to be famous, I’m stupid and shallow and an airhead.’

‘I don’t think you’re like that at all!’ he cried in exasperation. ‘I think you’re ballsy, and brave, and bloody barking.’

‘God, you’re so sodding
sanctimonious!’
she exploded before she could allow his two compliments to seep in. She didn’t want compliments – she wanted his head on a stick. ‘Just because
you
don’t want to be famous, doesn’t mean
we
can’t want it. Just because
you
couldn’t hack it, doesn’t mean
we’re
not built that bit stronger.’

‘Roxy—’

‘The only person too fragile for fame is
you!
You wussed out, Woody, and you know it. You had it all and you bottled it. And now you’re hiding in Lavender Heath, just like the others – but you’re worse than them because you’re a liar. You pretend to be happy, but you’re bricking it. You’re just another washed-up failure, too frightened to give it another go!’

‘Christ, Roxy! You’re so bloody wrong!’ he exploded. ‘Listen to yourself! You’re not thinking about them – you’re thinking about you. You’re bullying everyone back into the spotlight because that’s where
you
want to be!’

‘And you’re holding everyone back!’ she yelled. ‘Don’t make
me
out to be selfish. You’re a bloody hypocrite, Woody. You want everyone to live
little
lives – just like you!’

Fuming, Roxy sprinted on. What she really wanted was to leave Woody far behind her, but they were hurtling in the direction of home, so there was no point in turning away. Plus, their pace was already scorching; physically, she couldn’t run any faster. So the silence deepened and lengthened, with just their ragged breath and fast, angry feet to break it.

Finally Woody spoke. ‘I’m just a bloke,’ he said, his voice tight.

‘You don’t say!’ Roxy snorted, still angry.

‘I fart, and I hog the remote, and I forget people’s birthdays …’

‘And your point is?’

‘Just see things as they are, Rox – not how you want them to be.’

Roxy growled at the sky in fury. ‘You’re a man. You’re rubbish. I get it.’

They ran the last hundred metres in silence. As they arrived at her house, she stopped. There wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance of Woody suggesting breakfast. Not that she’d go, anyway.

Woody stopped too. They both panted hard on the pavement.

‘Look, Rox, about the strategies …’ He touched her arm but she brusquely shrugged him away.

‘Your hands are rough,’ she mumbled accusingly.

‘Occupational hazard.’

He held up his hands and for the first time Roxy saw they were cracked and dry.

‘They look knackered,’ she said harshly, before turning on the heel of her trainer and marching into her house. She slammed her door behind her, shutting the world – and Woody – out.

She stomped up her hallway, raging. How dare Woody say she was selfish? After all she was doing for the group!
And how bloody dare
he make out she was out of touch with reality?
She
wasn’t the one with her head in the clouds … it was
him
, perched at the top of his ladder. She was the most in-touch-with-reality person in the village …
wasn’t she?

And then suddenly it came – fast and deadly – and the barricade that had confined all of the nagging voices broke down …
Was
she out of touch and deluded? Was that why the TV companies wouldn’t take her calls? Why didn’t Woody want her? Why did all her emails start with ‘no’? Why was she single,
again
, on Valentine’s Day? Where was her life going? Where was her career going? Did she even
have
a career any more?

Roxy gritted her teeth.

Why wasn’t life better?

She closed her eyes and slumped on to the stairs.

Everything had started so well. She and Tish had been the hottest girls in London. Everyone wanted them: newspapers, party organisers … hot boys in bands, with skinny trousers … the secret gang of showbiz fairy godmothers whose sole purpose was to search out stars and give them free stuff. Life
was a whirl of fun. But then the axis of cool had shifted. The change was so tiny, Roxy hadn’t even felt it. But one day she’d turned around and the free-stuff fairy godmothers had vanished and the boys in bands had moved on and, somehow, somewhere, a cool party was happening that she didn’t know about. Tish got married and Roxy was on her own, the wrong side of the velvet rope – the magical pool of TV work slowly, imperceptibly seeping away. It wasn’t fair!
She
hadn’t changed – not much. OK, the clothes, hair and make-up had evolved a bit, but that was fashion. At her core, she was the same as she’d always been. If anything, she’d only got better! She was blonder, thinner and had even whiter teeth; her tan was deeper, her lashes thicker. She’d kept up with new music, still knew every premier-league score from the weekend and she could still pull a bloke in skinny jeans if she had to. Hell, she was two dress sizes thinner!
She’d been hungry for nine years
. NINE WHOLE YEARS! All that willpower, gritted teeth and starvation … All those mealtimes with just a bowl of cherries to sustain her in the hope that, one day, another Friday-night Channel-Four job would come knocking.

Roxy opened her eyes.

She was starving.

Not just slightly starving … absolutely, totally, utterly, insanely, eat-her-way-through-a-Tesco’s-delivery-truck
famished
. Images of Simon’s cakes swam before her … all that calorific temptation she’d so desperately wanted to gorge on … the cheesecake, the French fancies, the cinnamon doughnuts! She closed her eyes again as she tried to blot out the vision of
carrot cake. Her mouth watered. What had she been so frightened of? It was carrot cake – how bad could it be?
It was made from bloody carrots!

Roxy stood up.

She scrambled down the hall, into the kitchen and to her larder. That was it … nine years of restraint was enough.
She was bloody well going to eat, and she didn’t give a shit what the golden triangle said about it!
Manically, she rifled through her groceries, scattering boxes of cup-a-soup in search of something with calories. But her larder was a fat-free zone. Undeterred, she ransacked the fridge, tossing aside the mangetout and endless bags of spinach, desperate for
anything
with more than 0.1 per cent fat… a chocolate bar, an egg custard – hell, even a full-fat yoghurt! But there was nothing.

‘Carrot cake!’ Roxy yelled to the empty kitchen. ‘I must have carrot cake!’

The kitchen was silent.

‘Sod it!’ she swore with a surge of girl power. She would not be thwarted. It was as if the last few years of set-backs and rejections had stacked into a mountain – and she was
damned
if it was going to grow a single millimetre higher. She was going to have her cake and there wasn’t a single thing life could do to stop her from sinking her face right into it. ‘I’ll bloody make one!’ she vowed with a snarl.

She’d done home economics at school. She’d baked cakes. OK, so it was twenty years ago, but how hard could it be? All she had to do was chuck together some carrots and butter and stuff, and bung it in the oven. She ran upstairs, pulled
off her gym kit and – without bothering to shower – threw on an outfit and heels. And then she surged back downstairs, grabbed some money and checked the time on her phone: 7.48am. Mint! The village shop opened at eight. She’d google the ingredients on the way.