Meet Me at the Cupcake Café (5 page)

Suddenly a car – a black BMW 23i – squealed up to an illegal stop on the yellow lines, splashing most of the queue, some of whom groaned while some swore prodigiously. Issy’s heart lifted – and simultaneously sank. This would not make her popular with her number 73 posse. But still. The door opened opposite her.

‘Wanna ride?’ came the voice.

Graeme wished Issy wouldn’t do this. He knew this was where she had to get the bus but it made her look such a martyr. She was a lovely girl and all that, and there was no doubt he quite liked having her about and everything, but he needed his own space, and it just wasn’t the done thing, sleeping with someone – someone your junior – from the office. So, anyway, he was glad she understood about not staying over – that was lucky, he was busy and couldn’t have handled someone right now who would give him a lot of aggro – but then when he was heading into work, feeling pretty good in his X-series, thinking about corporate strategy, the last thing, really, he needed to see was Issy standing soaking bloody wet at the bus stop, her scarf up around her neck. It made him feel uncomfortable, like she was letting the side down somehow by being so … so wet.

Graeme was the best-looking person at Issy’s firm. By far. He was tall, honed from the gym, with piercing blue eyes and black hair. Issy had already been working there for three years, and his arrival had caused a stir with everyone. He was definitely cut out for property development; he had an authoritative, fast-moving style and a manner that always said if you didn’t snap up what he was selling, you were going to miss out.

At first Issy had regarded him as one might a pop star or a tele vision actor: nice to look at, but stratospherically out of her league. She’d had plenty of nice, kind boyfriends, and one or two total arseholes, but for one reason or another nothing had ever worked out; they weren’t quite the right man, or it wasn’t quite the right time. Issy didn’t feel she was in the last chance saloon just yet, but she also knew, in the back of her mind, that she would like to find someone nice and settle down. She didn’t want her mother’s life, hopping from one man to the next, never happy. She wanted a home, and a family. She knew that made her hopelessly square, but that was how it was. And Graeme clearly wasn’t the settling-down type; she’d seen him pull away from the office in his little sports car with gorgeous-looking skinny girls with long blonde hair – never the same one, although they all looked the same. So she put him out of her mind, even as he cut a swathe through the office’s younger girls.

That was what made it such a surprise to both of them, when they were sent on a training day to the company’s head offices in Rotterdam one week. Trapped indoors by the howling rain, their Dutch hosts having retired to bed earlier than expected, they had found themselves together in the hotel bar, getting on far better than they’d have expected. Graeme, for his part, was intrigued by the cloudy-haired, pretty, curvy girl who sat in the corner and never flirted or pouted her lips or giggled when he walked by; she turned out to be funny and sweet. Issy, slightly giddy on two Jägermeisters, couldn’t deny the absolute attractiveness of his strong arms and stubbled jaw. She tried to tell herself that it meant nothing; that it was just a one-off, nothing to worry about, a bit of fun, easily explained away by the alcohol and kept a secret, but he was terribly attractive.

Graeme had set about seducing her partly for something to do, but had been surprised to find in her a softness and a sweetness that he hadn’t been expecting, and that he really rather liked. She wasn’t pushy and sharp-angled like those other girls, and she didn’t spend her entire time complaining about the calories in food and retouching her make-up. He had rather surprised himself by going against one of his golden rules and calling her after they got back. Issy had been both surprised and flattered, and had gone round to his off-plan minimalist flat in Notting Hill and made him an outstanding bruschetta. They had both enjoyed the experience very much.

So it had been exciting. Eight months ago. And gradually Issy had started – naturally, she couldn’t help it – she had started to wonder if maybe, just maybe, he was the man for her. That someone so handsome and ambitious could have a gentler side too. He liked to talk to her about work – she always knew who he was talking about – and she liked the novelty factor of making dinner for him, and them sharing a meal, and a bed.

Practical Helena of course had not failed to point out that, in the months since they’d got together, not only had he never stayed over at the flat but he often asked Issy to leave before morning so he could get a proper night’s sleep; that they went to restaurants but she had never met his friends, or his mother; that he had never come with her to see Gramps; that he’d never even called her his girlfriend. And that while it might be nice for Graeme to play housie on a casual basis with some girl from the office, Issy, at thirty-one, might be looking for a little bit more.

Issy tended to stick her fingers in her ears at this point and sing lalala. The thing was, well, yes, she could break it off – although there was hardly a line of eligible suitors, and certainly none as hot as Graeme in view. Or, perhaps, she could make his life so pleasant and lovely that he would see how awful things would be without her, and propose. Helena thought this plan very over-optimistic, and did not keep this thought to herself.

Graeme grimaced to himself in his BMW and turned down Jay-Z to pick up Issy. Of course he’d stop on a rainy day. He wasn’t some kind of bastard.

Issy folded herself into the low-seated car as gracefully as she could, which wasn’t very. She was conscious that she’d just exposed her gusset to the bus queue. Next to her, Graeme, before she’d had a chance to arrange herself or put her seatbelt on, was already nudging into the traffic, without bothering to signal.

‘Come on, you arseholes,’ he growled. ‘Let me in.’

‘Do I wanna ride?’ asked Issy. ‘Have you gone American?’

Graeme glanced at her and raised an eyebrow. ‘I can let you out if you like.’

The rain pounded hard on the windscreen as if answering the question for her.

‘No, no thank you. Thanks for picking me up.’

Graeme grunted. Sometimes, she thought, he really hated being caught out in a good turn.

‘Well, we can’t really go public, because of the office,’ Issy had said to Helena.

‘What, even after all this time? And you think they don’t already know?’ Helena had countered. ‘Are they all idiots?’

‘It’s a property developer’s,’ Issy said.

‘OK,’ said Helena, ‘they’re all idiots. But I still don’t see why you can’t stay over at his house once in a while.’

‘Because he doesn’t want us walking into the office together,’ Issy had said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. And it was, wasn’t it? It wasn’t as if eight months was terribly long. There was plenty of time for them to formalize things, decide when to take it to the next level. It just wasn’t the right time at the moment, that was all.

Helena had sniffed in a characteristically Helena way.

The traffic getting into town was terrible, and Graeme growled and swore a bit under his breath, but Issy didn’t care – it was just so nice to be in the car, cosy and warm, with Kiss FM blaring out on the radio.

‘What are you up to today?’ she asked conversationally. Normally he liked dumping the stresses and strains of the office on to her shoulders; he could trust her to be discreet. Today, though, he glanced at her.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing much.’

Issy raised her eyebrows. Graeme’s days were never nothing much; they were full of jockeying for position and being the Billy Big Bollocks. Property development was a profession that encouraged that sort of behaviour. That was why, she sometimes had to explain to her friends, Graeme could appear a little … aggressive. It was a façade he had to keep up at work. Underneath it all she knew, from their many late-night chats, from his moods and occasional outbursts, that he was a vulnerable man; sensitive to the aggression in the workplace; worried, deep down, about his status, just like everybody else. That was why Issy was so much more confident of her relationship with Graeme than her friends were. She saw the soft side of him. He confided to her his worries, his hopes and dreams and fears. And that was why it was serious, no matter where she woke up in the morning.

She put her hand on his on the gear stick.

‘It’ll be all right,’ she said softly. Graeme shrugged it off, almost rudely.

‘I know,’ he said.