What a Girl Wants (31 page)

But it wasn’t just Steven that had been commenting on Amy’s pictures. Every single shot since the pic of her passport had a big thumbs up beside it. Charlie Wilder likes this. And just like that, my delirium took a massive blow to the balls.

I flipped to my emails and saw several new messages. A quick one from Paige to let me know she got everything over to Charlie on time, a longer one from Agent Veronica that was not nearly as nice, demanding an update, and a message from Charlie about the pitch.

All right, you,

Portugal was great, flying home tonight. Think they’re totally in love with us. They definitely will be when they see your slides. Maybe I should send you off to Milan more often the pitch is amazing. It’s one hundred per cent in the bag. What would I do without you?

Thank goodness I don’t have to find out.

I love you,

Charlie xx

It had been very easy to forget anything and everything else existed whilst waltzing around the winding streets of Milan, holding hands with a man I wanted to lean over and lick, but when reality crept back in, it did not mess around.

Charlie. Perito’s. London. Today was Thursday; I was supposed to be flying home on Sunday for the pitch on Monday. Bollocks.

Flat on my back, the sun remained up in the sky, refusing to vamoose and make way for some dark grey clouds to reflect my mood. I remembered my English A level, I knew what pathetic fallacy was. Damn the height of the Italian summer; clearly I needed to be up on the Yorkshire moors or something. It was hard to hate yourself when the sun had got his hat on.

There was only one thing for it. I’d been brave that morning; I wasn’t going to sit around and wait for things to happen to me any more. I would call him. I would pick up my phone and dial his number and tell him everything. He would be upset, he would be hurt, but maybe he would understand. Like Amy said, he hadn’t been moping around after me for ten years, it was more like ten minutes. He might even be a bit relieved when he thought about.

And maybe that was a very pretty pig flying past me on its way into the kitchen to become my dinner.

‘Be brave, Tess,’ I told myself. ‘What would Beyoncé do?’

Only, what
would
Beyoncé do? Beyoncé would never find herself in this position, that’s what Beyoncé would do. She would be at home with Jay-Z and Blue Ivy watching telly and thinking ‘That Tess doesn’t half get herself into some situations.’

Without the guidance of an icon and with some resistance from my broken phone, I pressed Charlie’s name and hoped something distracting might happen before he picked up, like a runaway train crashing through the walls and crushing me to death, or maybe something a little less dramatic like the end of the world.

‘Hi, you’ve reached Charlie Wilder.’

Oh, for the love of all that was holy, I found the balls to make the most difficult phone call of my life and it went to answerphone? Really?

‘I can’t take your call right now so leave me a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Cheers.’

‘Hello!’ I buzzed down the line as soon as I heard the beep. ‘It’s me. It’s Tess. Um, anyway, I got your email. Glad you liked the pitch stuff. I said I’d call you so I’m calling you!’

Nice. Really smooth.

‘Anyway,’ I went on in my hyper-happy voice. ‘I wanted to talk to you about something and I didn’t really want to wait but you’re not there so I will!’

Insert feeble laugh.

‘Sooo, yeah, maybe text me and let me know when’s good to chat. Talk. We should have a talk.’

Insert awkward silence.

‘Bye then, love you!’

I hung up and immediately hit myself in the forehead with my phone. What was I thinking? Yes, I had ended every phone call to Charlie in the last decade with a ‘love you’ and ‘love you’ was very different to ‘I love you’ but it really wasn’t helping me to set the scene that needed to be set. What a knob I was turning out to be.

‘Al!’

I had managed to waste a good couple of hours, taking some more photos of the house and the grounds, going through the shots I’d got at Warren’s studios, avoiding thinking about Charlie and generally killing time until I could touch Nick again. It was past four when I trotted into the lobby and saw Al sitting on the bottom step of the staircase. He had a phone in one hand, a worried expression on his face and a three-piece suit on his back. The mobile phone looked almost as out of place on him as the suit. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him holding one before.

‘Going somewhere nice?’

‘In theory, I should be.’ He gave me a welcoming smile and a kiss on each cheek but he did not look happy. ‘I’m going to see Edward. There’s been a problem with the samples.’

‘Everything was fine when I was there yesterday,’ I said, sitting down beside him. ‘The samples looked amazing.’

‘I’m not sure what he showed you then,’ Al said with a grimace. ‘But he just told me that there’s no way he can go ahead with the project.’

‘That’s not possible!’ I pulled my camera out of my bag and flipped through to my shots from the studio. ‘See? He had done all this already? I was sort of expecting him to have everything finished for the party.’

‘As was I.’ Al took my camera in his hands and stared. ‘This is all very strange. First the factory, then the shop and now Edward.’

None of this sounded like good news. ‘What’s happening with the factory? And the shop?’

‘Things at the shop are relatively simple, red tape and such.’ He waved a hand to show he wasn’t too worried, but everything about his demeanor said that was a lie. ‘But the factory is more of an issue. I don’t know how much you know about the manufacturing business?’

‘Oh, loads,’ I replied. ‘Pretty much everything. But I’m happy to humour you and have you explain it all in very simple terms.’

‘Of course,’ he said, the corners of his eyes crinkling. ‘I very much wanted to work with one specific factory. They don’t use child labour and all of their materials are fairly sourced – all of the things that were important to Jane. That are important to me.’

I made myself concentrate on Al’s troubles but I couldn’t help but worry a little bit about Amy. She was so excited.

‘And they can’t do it?’ I took my camera back and hung it carefully around my neck.

‘They say they can’t,’ he said.

I looked down at the image on the back of my camera, at a dress that might now never exist.

‘Do you know why?’ I asked. ‘Have they explained?’

‘They’re in China so the time difference is a bit of a pain,’ he explained. ‘We received an email overnight. I had offered to pay a premium to get things done the way I wanted them done in the time I wanted them doing and initially they agreed but now they’re saying they don’t have the resources. It’s all very frustrating. Perhaps Artie is right: I’m being very foolish thinking I can get into the fashion game at my age.’

‘Artie?’ My ears pricked up so fast, I felt like Lassie. ‘Artie said that?’

‘Let’s just say he wasn’t terribly supportive,’ Al said with as much diplomacy as he could muster. ‘He has to throw a tantrum from time to time. The trouble with having an only child is that they never learn to share.’

I was so used to seeing Al’s face smiling, it hurt my heart to see him sad. His suntanned face wore its wrinkles with pride and I was sure there was a story behind every one, but for all its worn in ways, everything looked wrong when he frowned. His forehead creased against his smile lines and for the first time, I thought he looked old.

‘Couldn’t he help you?’ I asked. ‘Couldn’t Artie talk to some people for you?’

‘Oh, Tess!’ Al clapped his hand on my knee and stood up, again, not nearly as light on his feet as he had been in Hawaii. ‘You’re very sweet to be so concerned for me but it’ll all work out for the best. I’m just an old man who is used to getting his own way. It was madness to think that I could turn up in a city that I haven’t visited in years and demand to have everything my own way. We’ll still have the party tomorrow night – I may have to learn a little humility, that’s all.’

‘Maybe you should speak to Artie though?’ I suggested, really not wanting to push too hard but desperate to find a way to make things work for Al. And for Jane.

‘I don’t think it would be a lot of help if I did,’ Al said. ‘If anything, I imagine he’d try to throw a few more flies in the ointment.’

He dropped his phone in his pocket and combed out his beard.

‘I might not make dinner this evening,’ he said, giving the driver of the car that had pulled up in front a quick salute. ‘But I trust you are excited about the party tomorrow evening?’

‘So excited,’ I agreed, glad to have another subject to turn to. ‘It’s going to be all right for me to take photos, isn’t it?’

‘I would be offended if you didn’t.’ He gave me a trademark Al twinkly smile and bowed gracefully. ‘I hear Kekipi and Miss Smith have been taking care of your fashion choices this afternoon. Any point in asking how you and your collaborator are collaborating?’

I smiled, my brain tipping right back over the edge at the very mention of Nick’s name. Actually he hadn’t even mentioned his name. Dear God, I was done for.

‘Ah, I see,’ Al smiled and strode out towards the car. ‘Young love, excellent news. Everything as it should be. And all is well with the world.’

I stood up and watched Al go, waving as the car pulled away and thinking how nice it would be for all to be well with the world, just for once.

‘Tess!’

But all was not well with the world. All was not even well within my bedroom. I hadn’t even closed the door when I heard Amy yelling from her room. Dropping my bag on the sofa and hearing a stomach-churning clunk as it missed its target, I sprinted into her bathroom, led by her screams.

She was definitely being murdered, I told myself, leaping to the worst possible conclusion as quickly as humanly possible.

‘What do I do? Help me, Tess!’ Amy wailed as I stopped short in front of her bathroom door.

I stood and I stared and then, when I’d had time to process, I laughed – hard and loud and in an incredibly unladylike fashion. Amy was wrapped in a bath towel that was bigger than she was, losing a fight with the most impressive bubble bath monster I had ever, ever seen.

‘What is happening?’ I asked, gasping for breath and kicking off my flip-flops before wading into the waist-deep foam. Because that would help. ‘What did you do?’

‘I was going to have a bath because I burnt my shoulders,’ she said, tears creeping into her voice. ‘You always say if I get sunburnt I should have a bath.’

The fabric of my dress darkened as I fought my way through, feeling my way across the room and searching for the actual bath. Whatever was happening had to stop happening before the foam made its way into the living room. One ruined dress was nothing compared to a destroyed antique carpet.

‘You think this is my fault?’ I could hear whirring over Amy’s choking sobs. ‘You told me to have a bath.’

‘I gave you a suggestion and you turned Al’s house into a really bad club?’ I asked. ‘How did you manage this?’

‘There wasn’t any bubble bath.’ She backed away until she was almost out of the room altogether. ‘So I put shower gel in and then I turned the Jacuzzi jets on and then – oh, I don’t know, this just
happened
. I thought I was going to die.’

‘You put shower gel in a Jacuzzi bath?’ I gave my best friend my best ‘are you kidding me’ face and then took a deep breath, diving into the belly of the beast and slapping the side of the bath until I struck gold. Or at least, the off switch. The whirring quieted and the bubbles stopped multiplying and I regained faith that we would all live. ‘Seriously, Amy?’

‘I don’t know, do I?’ she ranted, still crying. ‘When have I ever been in a Jacuzzi? How could I know it would turn into The Thing?’

‘Don’t cry.’ I waded back through the foam and gave her a hug but Amy didn’t want to be consoled. Amy wanted to sit on the floor, surrounded by an admittedly delightful-smelling bubble fog and cry some more.

‘I can’t do anything,’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t even have a bath without fucking it up.’

‘That’s not true,’ I said, giving in and sitting on the floor next to her. This dress was buggered. ‘You can do lots of bloody things. Like you said, you’ve never had a Jacuzzi bath before, how would you know?’

‘Because
you
would know.’ She pawed at her face, wiping away her angry tears. ‘You wouldn’t put shower gel in there, no one would. I’m so stupid. I hate myself. I hate this.’

It was difficult to know where I should and shouldn’t touch since she was only wearing a towel and we were still boob-deep in bubbles but this felt like such a supportive patting situation.

‘You do not hate yourself, you’re not stupid and what are you talking about?’ I went with an affectionate punch in the shoulder. It was not especially well received.

‘All of it,’ she explained, unhelpfully. ‘I hate not knowing obvious stuff that everyone else knows. I know you’re the clever, serious one and I’m the stupid, wacky one but I’m tired of it, you know? Maybe I want to be taken seriously for a bit. Maybe I want to be the clever one, the one who gets things right.’

‘No one thinks that,’ I said without stopping to check whether or not I was telling her the truth. ‘No one thinks you’re stupid.’

‘Everyone does.’ She hung her head and sniffed. ‘Charlie does, my family does, my housemates do. All our friends think that. You even think that a little bit, that’s why you don’t want me to work with Al, because you think I’ll fuck it up.’

She wasn’t the only one who hated herself at that moment.

‘That’s not it at all.’ There were times, I decided, when it was perfectly acceptable to lie. ‘I only didn’t want you to rush into something that you didn’t know that much about in case it turned out you didn’t like it. If you’re excited about it and you’re into it, you’ll be amazing at it and we both know that.’

‘You’re a terrible liar.’ Amy leaned against me and rested her head against my arm. ‘How did you manage to pull off the fake name thing for so long in Hawaii?’

‘Everyone was drunk for quite a lot of the time,’ I admitted. ‘And anyway, shut up. When you want to do something, Amy Smith, you are bloody good at it and I’m being one hundred per cent honest now – I just haven’t seen you want to be good at anything for a while. Maybe you’ve been coasting a little bit.’