Summer at the Lake (10 page)

Privately, Floriana thought he was nothing but a show-off and made a mockery of the hard work she and all the other blue-and green-badge guides put in – the many hours of study for the exams they had to sit as well as the regular workshops attended in order to keep up to date.

However, what bothered her more was the thought of Damian getting the payment she was due for leading her group this morning. ‘But, Tony,’ she said, trying to appeal to his desire for Dreaming Spires Tours never to be accused of second-rate service, ‘you know Damian gets carried away with the sound of his own voice and just makes it up as he goes along. That’s hardly good for our reputation, is it?’

‘Oh, he’s not that bad,’ Tony said, ‘and his patter goes down well enough. Most of the punters don’t know that he’s ad-libbing and a lot of them want nothing more than a good yarn to share with the folks back home.’

While that was true on one level, Floriana still wasn’t going to let an amateur steal her show. ‘I’ll be fine to take my group,’ she said, ‘and by the time I’ve got my Professor McGonagall hat on and wrapped a Hogwarts’ scarf around my neck, they’ll hardly notice the bruises.’

Tony raised his glasses to inspect her more closely. His expression was sceptical. ‘All right, but’ – he wagged his finger at her – ‘no overdoing it.’

Relieved that she’d convinced Tony she was fit for work, she went through to the back office. Now all she had to do was convince herself she could get through the day without keeling over or experiencing a panic attack.

She was disconcerted that she felt so utterly exhausted before the day had even properly begun. She felt jittery as well, sort of hollow and wobbly inside. Perhaps she should have caught the bus in and not walked, but she’d thought the walk would do her good and help to get her back into the swing of things. But she’d misjudged it badly, for every time a car had come too close to her she had let out an embarrassing cry of panicky alarm and jumped away from it, her heart racing and her hands literally shaking. At one point she was scared she was going to have a full-on panic attack. It had been a huge relief when she’d reached Radcliffe Square and escaped the traffic.

As much as it grieved her, it looked like Esme Silcox had been proved right when she’d said that Floriana should take another day off, if not the whole week, before returning to work. ‘No one in their right mind would expect you to rush back before you were fully recovered,’ the old lady had said.

The trouble was, as Floriana had explained to her, being freelance meant she was paid by the tour, so the more she did, the more money she had in the bank. As well as tours she also did shifts in the office when Tony needed extra help, which she quite enjoyed but really being out and about as a guide was what she loved to do. She enjoyed the interaction with a group, seeing herself as part teacher and part entertainer. Just not the kind of entertainment Damian Webb advocated.

She was the only one of the guides to add a flourish of costume to her tours. Initially Tony hadn’t been keen for her to do it. Ironically, given his penchant for hammy old Damian luvving it up, he’d been worried it would give the wrong impression, that they wouldn’t be taken seriously. But Floriana had gone ahead with it and the feedback Tony received was that her tours were always thoroughly enjoyed, both for their content and style, which she kept light and engaging, but grounded in solid fact. She had also become something of a familiar sight in Oxford as she led her groups through the streets and colleges, which was quite something in a city that was full of eccentric sights, both in human and architectural form.

She opened the cupboard where she kept her ‘theatrical props’ and found an envelope with her name on it – it was a Christmas card from Sandra, one of the other guides who specialised in garden tours and stained glass. It was a reminder that Floriana had to get on with buying some cards herself and start writing them. There was also the small matter of Seb’s unanswered card to deal with.

All that free time at home and she hadn’t managed to bring herself to reply to him.

She had thought of Seb, though. She had thought of him too often, to be honest. Esme Silcox was partly responsible for that.

It had come as a shock to Floriana when Esme had told her that she’d been mumbling Seb’s name at the time of the accident. Perhaps she had been blaming him, Floriana had suggested.

‘Oh no, I wouldn’t say that at all,’ the old lady had said. ‘You uttered his name wistfully, as if you wanted him there with you.’

That had been too much for Floriana to hear and after disappearing to the kitchen to bury her tender face in a handful of tissues, she had returned to the sofa and told Esme exactly who Seb was.

‘Oh, you poor dear girl,’ the old lady had said when she’d finished. ‘How cruel life can be to us.’

‘It’s my own fault,’ Floriana had said. ‘I’m always putting things off. It’ll be written on my gravestone –
Here lies Floriana Day, the greatest procrastinator of them all.
I just didn’t realise I loved Seb until it was too late.’

‘Did you never tell him how you felt?’

‘Only when it finally dawned on me he’d fallen in love with someone else.’

‘Do you still love him?’

‘I don’t know, is the honest answer. I thought I’d got him out of my system, but then this arrived.’ She had gone over to the mantelpiece for the Christmas card and the save-the-day card inside it. Giving them to Esme, she’d said, ‘That’s what I was thinking of when I stepped out into the road on Friday night.’

‘Will you go to the wedding?’ Esme said after reading the two cards and passing them back to her.

‘Again, I honestly don’t know. I don’t know if I could put myself through the pain of it.’

‘Why do you think he has written very specifically that he’d like you to be there at his wedding?’

‘It’s an olive branch, of course, I can see that. I’m not so stupid as to think he wants me there out of spite.’

The old lady had smiled. ‘Well, you certainly don’t need to decide categorically one way or another right now. This card is only asking you to save the day, isn’t it? Do you have any idea where the wedding will take place?’

‘None whatsoever,’ she had said. ‘My guess is that it won’t be in this country; everybody seems to be getting married abroad these days. A save-the-day card is a warning to invited guests to set aside time and money. And if that’s the case, if Imogen has set her stony heart on somewhere extravagantly exotic, this whole dilemma is hypothetical as I won’t be able to afford to go.’

‘But meanwhile, you can simply accept the olive branch, can’t you? What’s the worst that can happen as a result of doing so?’

Recalling that conversation now, Floriana thought how wonderfully simple the clear-thinking Esme had made it sound. But then from the outside looking in, it probably did look simple. All she had to do was send a card to Seb saying she would save the day, because in no way did it commit her. And really, just how difficult would it be to do that?

The difficulty lay not so much in writing the words but in what might follow. What if Seb made contact again? What if he wanted to resurrect their friendship? Could they ever do that with Imogen in the picture?

Clearly Seb, in offering her this olive branch, had forgiven her. But the real question was, could Floriana forgive Seb for falling in love with Imogen?

His ticket bought and displayed in the windscreen, Adam locked his car and crossed the road. He had three-quarters of an hour until his meeting with his accountant, which gave him time to nip into Blackwell’s for the Haruki Murakami book he wanted to buy for his brother for Christmas. God help him, he might even take a look at the self-help shelves where doubtless he’d find any number of books along the lines of
How to Survive While on a Break
, and
How to Win Back Your Girlfriend
.

Having negotiated a way to get Jesse to reconsider their relationship while on a month-long break, he’d initially been full of optimism that he could turn things around, but now hope had been eclipsed by doubt and anxiety.

How the hell did he think he could win her back when he couldn’t see her? What was he supposed to do in the next four weeks? And what did being ‘on a break’ actually mean? Was Jesse free to see other men? Were they supposed to see other people as some sort of test, to see if there was anyone better out there?

It was that thought that was driving him mad. Forty-eight hours into this half-baked agreement – an agreement that he had engineered – and he wasn’t sure he’d done the right thing at all. He was used to being proactive, making things happen, getting things fixed, now, quite possibly for the first time in his adult life, he was powerless. He could do absolutely nothing but wait for Jesse to decide what she wanted.

In the interim, he was in limbo. He couldn’t help but wonder whether he’d been better off before when he’d believed it was definitely over. Hope was one thing. But false hope was quite another matter.

His purchase made, he held the door open for a mother with a child in a pushchair and stepped onto the pavement.

It was a cold, damp and dreary day and after the warmth of the shop it felt even colder and damper outside. Buttoning his coat, he noticed a group of tourists on the other side of the road in front of the steps of the Sheldonian. In all the years he’d lived in Oxford, he’d seen any number of tourists in Oxford trailing round after their guide, but never had he given them, or their guide, much thought before, other than annoyance if they got in his way. Having met Floriana Day, he now gave the group opposite him more than a passing glance. And then, in spite of how awful the last forty-eight hours had been, he found himself smiling at the sheer daft coincidence of it.

He crossed the road for a better look, taking care to keep his distance, not wanting to distract her, not when he could see how keenly her group was listening to her, hanging on her every word by the looks of things. He didn’t blame them; with her hands waving about her, she looked extraordinarily animated. The black cape, scarf and witch’s hat she was wearing added another dimension of vibrancy to her. How amusingly unconventional she looked.

She was ushering the group up the steps of the Sheldonian when she noticed him. Just as he had done, she did a double take. Then smiled and gave a little wave.

Feeling it would be rude not to, he crossed the road and approached her. ‘Nice hat,’ he said.

‘Professor McGonagall,’ she said by way of explanation. ‘I’m doing a Potter tour.’

‘Sounds fun. How are you?’ Now that he was close up, he thought she didn’t look much better than when he’d last seen her, though perhaps that was because she had removed the dressing from her face. It looked a terrible mess.

She glanced over her shoulder at the group that was drifting further away, some of whom were taking photographs, others were consulting their maps, and the rest were looking back at her as if anxious she was about to abandon them. ‘I’m OK,’ she said, ‘busy right now, as you can see.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I’d better let you go.’

‘It was nice seeing you again,’ she said.

‘You too.’ He turned to walk away and then something took hold of him. ‘I don’t suppose you’re . . .’ He stopped himself short. It was a crazy impulse and one that would put her on the spot. So no. Better not to ask.

‘What?’ she asked

He shook his head. ‘No, forget it. It’s nothing.’

‘Oh, don’t do that to me. I’ll now spend the rest of the day wondering what it was you wanted to ask.’

He hesitated. Oh, why not! ‘I was going to ask if you could give me your advice on something. Over lunch maybe. That’s if you’re free today. That’s if you even have a lunch break.’

‘I’ll be free at half past one if that’s any good.’

‘That would be perfect.’

‘Now I really must go.’ She started to move off.

‘Where shall I meet you?’ he called after her.

‘In St Mary’s in the Vaults. They do great soup. And cakes nearly as good as the ones you gave me on Saturday. See you!’

‘I really should have warned you before, giving advice isn’t exactly my strongest suit,’ Floriana said after they’d queued for their lunch and were now seated – they’d both opted for hearty plates of lasagne in preference to the soup. She was glad of the chance to sit down. She was exhausted and looking forward to getting home so she could crash out.

‘But I’d be interested to hear what you think,’ Adam said, passing her one of the paper napkins.

‘Go on then, tell me what it is you imagine I can help you with.’

He ate a mouthful of the lasagne, chewed, took a sip of his fizzy water and said: ‘Have you ever been on a break from a boyfriend?’

She shook her head. ‘Nope.’

‘Do you know what the ground rules are?’

‘Nope. Sorry.’

‘Right,’ he said with a frown. ‘That was short and sweet.’

Seeing his obvious disappointment, and wishing she could be of more help, Floriana said, ‘Why don’t you give me the context of why you want to know?’ She knew from her chat with Esme that Adam had very recently broken up with his girlfriend, but without admitting they’d discussed him behind his back, she couldn’t acknowledge that she knew about Jesse.

‘My first reaction is to tell you to let Jesse go,’ she said, when he’d explained, ‘and to impress upon you that there’s nothing worse than clinging onto something you can’t have.’

His face dropped.

‘But,’ she said, hurrying on, ‘what I’m actually going to say is, if you love Jesse, do all you can to win her back. If that means giving her a month to reconsider, or perhaps even longer, then so be it. If you have the patience and you truly believe she’s worth it, hang in there. What have you got to lose?’

‘You sound so sure,’ he said.

‘Trust me, I wrote the book when it came to missing my chance. I know exactly what you can lose.’ And because he’d been so candid with her, and because it seemed so vitally important that he didn’t make the same mistake as she had, she told him why she knew what she was talking about.

When she’d finished raking through the embers of her history with Seb, and suddenly feeling self-conscious, she said, ‘I know that receiving his wedding invitation has stirred things up for me, but amazingly I haven’t spoken to anyone about him in ages, now here I am telling you all about him when I hardly know you, just as I did with Esme on Sunday.’