One Summer Night At the Ritz (7 page)

Then, when they approached the restaurant, she found herself doing a little gasp as it glowed from within its wooden walls like something out
The Hobbit
. The hustle and bustle of noise was spilling out on the path and the waiter apologised that they were fully booked as soon as they stepped inside. But somehow Will managed to wangle a bottle of chilled white wine and two glasses and took her to sit on the grass overlooking the lake.

She kicked herself for being so impressed but she couldn’t help it.

As he handed her a glass of wine, she asked, ‘Why did you follow me? I mean, it’s just, this doesn’t really seem like your kind of scene.’

‘You don’t know anything about my kind of scene,’ he said with a quirk of his brow.

She laughed. ‘I can guess,’ she said, ‘Sitting on the grass in your fancy suit doesn’t seem like it happens every day.’

She’d kicked off her sandals already and was lying back, propping herself up on her elbows as he sat in his work shoes and socks, his trousers hitched up so he could sit on the grass, his forearms resting on his knees.

‘Yeah, OK, fair enough. It’s probably not my usual idea of an evening out, but it’s good. I like it. I don’t get many chances to be spontaneous.’

‘That’s sad,’ she said. ‘You’d think with all that money you’d be able to do whatever you liked.’

It was his turn to laugh. ‘Yeah, except it’s not all that money. I’m being rinsed left, right and centre. I have an aunt who is co-owner of the business and who at the moment is trying to either get me to buy her out, which based on our assets I can’t afford to do, or find an investor to take her place which, at the moment, looks to be some bloody awful hotel chain who just wants us for our property.’

‘Sorry I asked.’ Jane took a sip of wine through half-smiling lips.

Chapter Twelve

Where had that come from? Why had he told her about his aunt? So far he’d played it all pretty cool. He’d basically managed to shoehorn in all his secret, impressive London landmarks and she was responding to them exactly as she should. He was showing off and he knew it. But there was something almost addictive about how excited she got about everything. How genuinely pleased she was to see the restaurant that he came to practically once a week with clients. He barely even paused to appreciate the building any longer. Tony had slipped him a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses and she’d reacted like he was James Bond.

And now. What was he doing? Why hadn’t he said something smooth like,
I’m basically loaded and call all the shots and can do whatever I like in life. Let’s charter a helicopter.

Heidi would have laughed at that.

Quick snog, maybe a shag in The Ritz, leave it seven days before deciding whether to call. Done.

Instead he’d just had some verbal outpouring of his current financial woes. And she hadn’t even said how sorry she felt for him. This was not the way things were meant to happen.

‘Why don’t you just give her half?’ she said, lying completely back on the grass so she could look up at the clouds.

Will practically snorted his wine out his nose. ‘I’m sorry? Give her half? You can’t just give someone half a business? Well, technically you could, but there’s no way I’m giving her half. She doesn’t do anything. You can’t just give someone half a business.’

‘You just said that.’

‘That’s because I’m being emphatic.’

‘Well you don’t need to be. I listen to everything.’

He paused before he carried on. She was right, she did listen. Maybe that was what made her so refreshing. Who listened nowadays?

‘Well then, you’ll understand that I can’t give her half.’

‘What do you mean she doesn’t do anything, your aunt?’

‘She doesn’t do anything. She just invested the money at the start so my dad could start it.’

‘So she did do something.’

‘Technically yes, but not really.’

Jane frowned and raised herself back up onto her elbows. ‘Sounds to me like she did something. She helped your dad start his business.’

‘You don’t understand. Let’s not go into this.’

He watched her smile.

‘Why are you smiling?’ he asked.

‘Because I think people only say that when they’re scared of the answer.’

‘Bullshit.’ He snorted a laugh.

‘Well tell me then. You know everything about me.’

He repositioned himself on the grass so he was sitting a bit more comfortably. Wondered whether to take his shoes and socks off. Then considered when the last time he’d done that was. Probably as a kid. He took a sip of his wine.

‘Come on…’ she said, half impatient, half-encouraging.

‘So this is the feistiness that you hide under some veneer of poor island girl lost.’

She snorted. ‘I’m thirty-six, I am not a poor island girl lost.’

‘Are you really thirty-six? You look younger.’

‘Am I out of your age range for women?’ she said with a smirk.

He nodded. ‘Yeah, you’re a year above the usual tick box.’

‘Lucky escape,’ she said and as soon as he heard it, he purposely didn’t reply. Instead, he waited to see if she’d blush.

She glanced away, feigning interest in a patch of daisies. But he kept watching, and gradually there it was – like pomegranate seeds popping under her skin, the tips of her cheekbones speckled pink – and he smiled on the inside.

‘Go on then,’ she said after a couple of seconds of silence, the blush gone. ‘Tell me why you can’t just give her half.’

‘Because I can’t,’ he said. She raised a brow and he sighed. ‘You can’t just give away what you have, what you’ve worked for all your life. Because it’s my dad’s really and he wanted it to be this massive success and it was for a bit in his lifetime and then it struggled a fair bit, quite a lot in fact, and then it was handed to me. I mean, what do you do? You know it’s a part of his soul. You have to make it work. And anyway, that’s all by the by because she wants cash out of it.’

‘And what does he say now?’

‘He doesn’t. He’s dead, died a couple of years ago.’

He watched her lick her lips, mull over what she was going to say next. The mention of death usually stopped any further questions.

‘So he wouldn’t know what you did with it,’ she said and he frowned, surprised.

‘Well that’s…’ He paused for a second. ‘That’s not really the point, is it? It’s keeping his legacy alive. It’s what he’d want.’

‘He told you that?’

‘He gave me the business, he didn’t have to.’

She took a sip of wine. She seemed annoyingly relaxed, at ease, while he was getting het up.

She shrugged. ‘Yeah, maybe.’

‘What does that mean?’

She sat up, crossed her legs underneath her and said, ‘Just that. Maybe.’

‘Or?’

She smiled, her whole face lit up and he found himself staring.

‘Or maybe not,’ she said. ‘Maybe he hoped you might give it a go, see if you enjoyed it and then do whatever made you happy if it didn’t work.’

‘Yes but it is working. We’re a successful business, we just don’t have the capital to pay off an investor.’

‘Fair enough,’ she said with a laugh. ‘You don’t have to persuade me. I’m nothing to do with it.’

‘Yes but I want you to understand that you’re wrong.’

She almost spat out her wine. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ she said, patting the wine off her chin. ‘You can’t persuade me to think that you’re right if I don’t think you are. And why do you care? I know nothing about business.’

‘Exactly,’ he said, raising a hand to emphasise his point. ‘Hence. You’re wrong.’

She did another little laugh and a frustrating shrug of her shoulder. ‘If you want.’

‘Oh my god, you’re so annoying,’ he said.

She laughed, properly this time, a real proper laugh, at him. Then she stood up. ‘Shall we go swimming?’ she said and he had to lean forward to check that he’d heard correctly.

Chapter Thirteen

The good days with her mum were like the circus coming to town. They were never normal days like other people might have where they went to Tesco or took the dog for a walk. They were always these crazy, fun-packed days. Where she’d wake and find her mum already up and making stacks of cherry pancakes and maple syrup. She’d have borrowed Enid’s canoe and packed it with supplies of popping candy and Dandelion & Burdock. They’d paddle up the river to some little cove and go swimming in just their underwear and her mum would find frogs and toads under stones and hold them in her hands until they jumped away. She’d pull a kite out from nowhere and they’d run to the top of the hill to fly it and then play tennis and hire bikes and eat nothing but fresh raspberries from the bushes all day. Whatever she saw, her mum would do. If there was a pedalo on a lake, they’d pedal. If there were horse-riding lessons, they’d ride. If there was a car showroom with an old Jaguar to test drive, they’d be off on the open road.

And Jane had to be constantly prepared for these days because, otherwise, if she wasn’t, if they took her by surprise, she might miss a precious second of them. It was like every day she was wound up, ready, waiting.

Of course a life where someone made sure she had three meals a day, clean clothes and regular dentist appointments would probably have been better - be the more normal life that she had craved so often at the time. But those good days with her mum…

Jane realised then that everything that had followed - the dementia, the anger, the ageing and responsibility - had made her almost forgot this stuff. Those heady days that were like being handed rubies. Infinitely precious and rare enough to leave her always craving more.

‘Swimming?’ Will said. ‘As in, in the lake swimming?’

‘Why not?’ Jane asked. ‘It’s hot still, we’ll dry out.’

‘You’re mad.’

She laughed. ‘No I’m not,’ she said, holding tightly onto that gossamer-thin thread of impetuousness that her mother had inspired. Knowing her instinct was to shake her head and say that he was right, to lie back down and stare up at the stars instead. But she was going for it. She was clinging onto the thread her mother had left her because tonight was about everything she never normally did as just Jane. ‘It’s just sometimes it’s more fun than you can imagine – doing something unexpected.’

Will scratched his neck and looked dubiously out at the lake, then back at Jane who was slipping her sandals on so she could walk over the pebbly path. ‘You’re seriously going to swim in the lake?’

She nodded.

‘Oh for god’s sake,’ he said with a resigned sigh. ‘I should have gone to dinner with Heidi.’ Then he stood up, poured himself another slug of wine which he downed in one and said, ‘Fine. OK. Come on then. You win.’

And Jane felt her mouth stretch wide into a smile as she walked over to the edge of the lake, in view of all the restaurant diners, and took off sandals, her jeans, her white top and waded out into the freezing water of the lake till she was swimming.

‘Oh Jesus Christ,’ she heard Will say. ‘We’re going to get arrested.’

She turned over onto her back and watched him as he awkwardly undressed. ‘We’re not going to get arrested,’ she said, ‘The worst that will happen is that they shout at us.’

All the restaurant diners were watching and pointing. One of the waiters had come to the door and she saw Will give him a resigned shrug before he too waded into the icy water in his black boxers and then dived beneath the surface.

He came up just next to her with a splash, his hair wet to his head, his teeth almost chattering. ‘Shit it’s cold,’ he said.

‘You’ll warm up,’ she replied and, flipping over, swam right out to the centre and then rolled onto her back to look up at the stars.

With the sun gone, the people on the bank were shadows pointing to where they were swimming. Will front-crawled over to join her and dunked her under the surface as soon as he got there. She came up spluttering.

‘That’s not part of the fun,’ she said, coughing up water.

‘It is for me,’ he laughed. ‘This is amazing. I feel like I’m about ten years old.’

‘See, it’s nice.’

‘Yeah.’ He nodded in agreement.

It occurred to her how close they were. How close and how semi-naked. While in the middle of a public lake, the darkness of the sky and the black of the liquid made it feel like it was just them, almost nose to nose.

Will seemed to sense it too. He’d gone quiet. She brushed her hair away from her face and tried to think of a distraction. But Will got there first, his mouth spreading into a smile as he said, ‘Come on, I’ll race you to the other side.’

And the weird close moment was gone.

They messed around for maybe ten minutes before the waiter came out and shouted, ‘Will, the warden’s on his way.’ Which had them at the edge and out within seconds, bundling up their clothes and making a dash for the bushes to get changed.

Jane shivered in the darkness as she tried to dry herself with her jeans. ‘I’m freezing.’

‘Yeah me too,’ said Will. ‘Do you want my jacket?’

She caught his eye as she looked up and shook her head, ‘No you’re all right, thanks.’

‘Honestly, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a gesture to keep you warm. And if you don’t use it I can’t use it because then I’ll feel bad and unchivalrous for being warm when you’re not, so you may as well take it because otherwise it’ll just go on the floor.’

Jane had to laugh. ‘OK, thank you, I’ll take it.’

‘Good,’ he said, handing her the jacket with a satisfied look on his face. ‘See, you’re learning.’

They walked through the park in the direction of The Ritz, their clothes sticking to their backs and their bodies drying in the tepid evening warmth. Jane didn’t want it to end but she didn’t want to ask him to stay out any longer and it was starting to get late. She’d usually be brushing her teeth ready for bed at this time. Neither of them spoke as they walked.

She tried to think of different ways she could casually ask him if he wanted to go for a coffee or another drink, or actually for some food. She hadn’t eaten dinner. There had been many nights in her life when she’d gone to bed with no dinner, when her mum hadn’t bought any food or just wasn’t in any mood to cook, but none when she’d forgotten to eat purely out of fun.