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‘No and no.’ I gave him the side eye and rummaged around the rest of his offerings. Diet Coke, Skittles, a bag of those fresh-baked giant chocolate chip cookies – he’d made an effort, all my favourite unhealthy things.
‘Whatever, I’m glad you called me.’ He took a single step closer and I could smell his aftershave and see the almost black rings around his dark brown irises and his thick, curly copper hair and – oh bloody hell, I was about to fall over.
‘Woah!’ Charlie reached out and grabbed me before I could go down, pulling me in close and holding me upright. There were no two ways about it, being held by Charlie felt really, really good. ‘Let’s get you home. And then you can bloody well tell me what’s going on, whether you like it or not.’
Feeling equal parts faint and confused, with just an edge of lady horn, I let him wrap his arm around my shoulders and bundle me into a waiting Addison Lee taxi, leaving my new friends, Vanessa’s camera and any remaining shred of dignity with Shoreditch‘s finest.
Charlie’s flat was a typical man flat. The walls were white, the curtains were blue, and all of the furniture orbited an obscenely large television in the corner of the living room. Its satellite PlayStations and Xboxes blinked their welcomes as I dropped my handbag on the leather recliner and let Charlie guide me over to the sofa. I’d sat on this settee a million times – God, I’d gone to DFS and helped him choose it – but today I felt strangely uncomfortable, as though I didn’t know where I should look or what I could touch. The framed Goodfellas poster I had given him four Christmases ago stared down at me as I perched on the edge of the settee, pressed my thighs tightly together, and smiled gratefully when Charlie reappeared from the kitchen with a glass of water and the codeine I remembered feeding him when he knackered his knee the year before.
‘How many more years until you’ve actually paid for this?’ I asked, patting the settee as he sat down beside me, at a respectful distance. Which wasn’t that easy when he was six three and I was five ten. Charlie and I had a tendency to make most furniture look Lilliputian.
‘Three, I think.’ He pushed his coppery brown hair off his face, one or two strands refusing to comply and sticking to his forehead. ‘I’m assuming it’ll completely fall apart or something. That’s how I’ll know it’s officially mine.’
‘Right,’ I nodded in agreement and sipped my water. Water was good. A shower would be better, but I still felt a bit weird and I couldn’t see what good would come of him holding me up in there. ‘Yeah.’
I’d known Charlie Wilder for ten years. I knew his height and his date of birth and his blood type. Our hair and our eyes were exactly the same colour. I knew when he had lost his virginity, I knew he lied about having a trial for Newcastle when he was fifteen, but things had never, ever been weird between us until I knew what his penis looked like.
‘Right, yeah,’ Charlie echoed. ‘You all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, attempting to sit more upright, look more composed. While wearing a cropped neon unicorn T-shirt? ‘Apart from falling out of a window and spending all afternoon in a police station, I, sir, am right as rain.’
‘I’m glad you called me,’ he said, taking the empty glass out of my hand and placing it on the floor. Our fingers didn’t touch once. ‘Been waiting to hear from you.’
What I wouldn’t have given to be having this conversation in any other outfit.
‘I know.’ I felt the edge of my thumbnail between my teeth and concentrated my attention on the blinking clock on his Blu-ray player. I was fairly certain it wasn’t six fifteen in the morning and I quite badly wanted to go over and fix it. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry.’ I watched as Charlie pushed his Converses off with his feet, one at a time, then kicked them across the room to their home beside the door. ‘I know I dropped a load of shit on you on Monday. It’s not like I expected you to have an answer right away.’
I smiled and looked down the sofa at my best friend and saw someone I wasn’t even sure I knew. ‘I always have an answer right away though, don’t I?’
‘Well yeah, there is that,’ he replied with a soft laugh. ‘Got to admit, I wasn’t expecting you to take this long to get back to me.’
I had been in love with Charlie from the very first day of university and every day since. He was The One. He was the man I imagined walking down the aisle with, the man I wanted to father my children. I wanted him to change my plugs and catch my spiders and know where we kept the paperwork for the car insurance and everything else that went along with a happy, long life together. Only, for ten long years, all I had been to Charlie was the one who reminded him about Mother’s Day, the one who was always available for lunch or a pint after work. I was the girl who explained that petrol station carnations were never an appropriate apology, the one who went with him to weddings when he didn’t have a girlfriend.
It turned out there were lots of different interpretations of The One.
And then, two weeks ago, under the most romantic of circumstances – drunk on cheap vodka on the bottom bunk of my childhood bed – we had finally done the deed. It had been wonderful and not just because I hadn’t had sex in so long that there were expired condoms underneath my bed; it had been genuinely, toe-curlingly fantastic. Right up until Charlie threw me the ‘I don’t want to ruin our friendship’ curveball the morning after and I found out he’d been secretly shagging Vanessa.
Of course, as soon as I told him to take his tainted peen as far away from me as humanly possible, he decided he wanted to make a go of it. And not only that, but he wanted us to start our own advertising agency together. Because going out with each other after everything that had happened wasn’t potentially messy enough, clearly we needed to throw a professional relationship into the mix as well.
‘There’s been a lot of stuff going on …’ I let out a tiny yawn, the pain in my shoulder ringing as I moved. Well, that was definitely the last time I jumped out of a window. ‘I don’t really know what else to say.’
‘I had noticed you’re not at your most chatty,’ he said. ‘You haven’t really told me anything about Hawaii. You still don’t want to talk about it?’
‘Honestly, I sort of just want to go to sleep,’ I admitted. ‘And maybe have a bath and not be wearing Amy’s clothes any more. Not necessarily in that order.’
What I really meant was, I’d rather go back to the police station than talk to Charlie about what had happened in Hawaii.
‘In that case …’ Charlie stood up and stretched. He was ever so tall. ‘I’m going to pretend to go and have a wee when really I’m going to clean the bath, then I’m going to fuck off and leave you to have a nap for a bit. Thank God that’s not your top. I was about to stage an intervention.’
‘I went to Hawaii,’ I replied, ‘I didn’t go insane.’
‘Understood.’ He saluted, picked up my empty glass, and headed for the kitchen. I was already fully foetal on the settee and snuggled into the cushions I had made him buy in the Heal’s sale when he returned.
‘Drink this,’ he ordered, holding out a fresh glass of water. ‘And I’ll run the bath.’
Lying on the settee, listening to the bath water run and watching dust dance around the living room in the late afternoon sunshine, I could easily imagine things working out with Charlie. It would be so nice to have someone to look after me and he knew me so well. It could be so wonderful. The job I’d always wanted, the man I’d always wanted. It was the life I’d dreamed of.
But I couldn’t stop myself from wondering what would happen if I went to Milan. I couldn’t stop myself from wondering what might happen with Nick … Hooking my foot through the handle of my handbag because I was too lazy to sit up and get it, I dragged it along the settee and dug around for my phone. The screen was so badly shattered I had to tilt it this way and that to get a clear view of my inbox but it was pointless. There was nothing to see. No new emails, no missed calls, no new text messages. Nothing from Nick; nothing at all. Three days of silence, otherwise known as an eternity.
‘Do you want bubble bath?’ Charlie called from the bathroom. ‘I’ve got bubble bath. Why have I got bubble bath?’
‘Because you’re a woman?’ I asked, sliding my phone under my back and refastening my ponytail on top of my head. Long, thick curly hair looked amazing on celebrities. In real life, it was nothing but a pain in the arse. ‘Yes to bubble bath, please.’
‘Right, it’s running,’ Charlie said, emerging with his sleeves rolled up and a slightly flushed face. At least I knew the bath had been properly scrubbed. Charlie was one of those blokes who believed that because you cleaned yourself in the bathroom, somehow that made the room itself self-cleaning. I really hoped I was catching the towels on a good day … ‘You want a T-shirt or something? I don’t think I’ve got any underwear to lend you.’
‘I think that’s probably a good thing!’ I replied. ‘Thank you. For coming to get me and everything.’
‘It’s not as if you haven’t had to look after me before, is it?’ He stood at the side of the settee, staring down as if he’d never seen me before.
‘What?’ I stared back up. ‘What is it?’
‘I have missed you,’ he said.
I held my breath and felt my heartbeat skip a little faster than I might have liked.
‘You daft cow,’ he added.
My heartbeat slowed back down.
For a second, neither of us said anything and neither of us moved. I looked at Charlie, all tall and broad and floppy, brown hair. He looked at me, all tall and badly dressed and flat on my back.
‘I’ve got to go out for a bit,’ he said, breaking the silence and making for the door. ‘You know where everything is. I’ll be back for tea. See you in a bit,’ he said, shutting the front door carefully behind him.
‘See you in a bit,’ I repeated and waited until I heard the outside door slam shut before retrieving my phone from under my bum and dialling Amy’s number.
‘Yo yo yo,’ she answered immediately. ‘I wondered where you’d got to.’
‘Been a long day,’ I replied. I wasn’t nearly awake enough to fill her in on my adventures in housebreaking. ‘I’m at Charlie’s.’
‘Oh really?’
‘No need to sound so scandalized,’ I said. ‘It’s just Charlie.’
‘Charlie who has been calling me every day because you’ve been refusing to speak to him?’
‘Yeah, that one.’ I stretched my legs out in front of me, my shoulder singing out in protest at all movement. Padding into the bathroom, I checked the running water. Charlie’s bath filled slowly – new information to add to my encyclopaedic knowledge of his existence.
‘Shall I come over? Bring snacks?’ Amy asked. ‘We could make him watch Notting Hill again. That’s always good for a laugh.’
‘I think I probably ought to talk to him about some stuff,’ I said with a yawn. Between the painkillers, the steamy promise of the tub and the general combined stress of the day, all I wanted to do was get in the bath and get into bed so I could pretend all of this was just a dream. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Yeah, you want to “talk” to Charlie,’ she said. ‘And I want to talk to Channing Tatum.’
‘Well, if he calls, send me a text.’ I yawned and dipped my hand into the water. ‘See you tomorrow.’
‘See you tomorrow,’ she replied. ‘Enjoy your “talk”.’
Setting my phone safely on top of Charlie’s bathroom cabinet, I stripped off and sat on the side of the bath. When I’d made my phone call, when I decided it was Charlie I wanted to see, I hadn’t really had too much of a plan. I couldn’t ask Amy to come and get me from the police station because then I’d have to explain how I got there in the first place and it would have been really hard for her to collect me if she was being arrested for killing Vanessa. Charlie was the easier option; he wouldn’t give me a hard time and he would also bring snacks. But it did mean I was going to have to have a conversation that I had been putting off for the best part of a week. And in less than twenty-four hours, I had to have another conversation I’d been avoiding: a meeting with my agent, a meeting about Milan.
Sliding into the tub, I tried to get my shoulder under the water without soaking my hair. It would take forever to dry.
All I had to do was work out what I wanted. That was easy, wasn’t it? Only I didn’t know what I wanted, and the more I thought about it, the less certain I became. I didn’t just look before I leapt, I had visited the jump site, called the insurance company and done a full risk analysis and yet I still couldn’t come to a decision. I had never struggled like this before but ever since Hawaii, my compass was off. Instead of giving me a straight up yes or no, my brain had turned into a Magic 8 Ball. The outcome is unclear; ask again later; better not tell you now.
I opened the hot water tap with my big toe and watched as the mound of bubbles covering my body grew and grew and just as quickly, popped and vanished.
With a loud and obnoxious sigh, I slid deeper into the water. Sod my hair – it was already a mess.
Being a grown-up was rubbish.
The sun was fighting a losing battle when I woke up on the sofa. The room was pleasantly warm and you couldn’t tell how badly it needed hoovering now the light had faded away. I wriggled my toes inside the pair of socks I had found, sniffed and deemed fit to wear, and yawned loudly.
‘She wakes!’ Charlie called from the kitchen. ‘Better?’
‘Sooo much better,’ I said. The painkillers had reduced the shooting pains in my shoulder to a dull ache and my head felt altogether less stuffed with cotton wool after the nap. ‘You should get injured more often, I like those tablets a lot.’
‘Brilliant, you’ve been here for three hours and I’ve turned you into a junkie.’ He leaned around the door, spatula in hand. ‘What will Amy say?’
‘Amy will want to know why you’ve got a spatula in your hand,’ I suggested. ‘What’s going on in there?’
‘I’m making dinner.’ Charlie looked incredibly happy with himself. ‘I’m making dinner for us.’
‘I take it back, I’m not better,’ I sat up, pulling my second borrowed T-shirt of the day over my knickers. Amy’s was too small; Charlie’s was too big. Maybe one day I’d find one that was just right. ‘I must have hit my head as well as my arm because I think I’m hallucinating. You burn baked beans.’
‘Losing his job does strange things to a man,’ Charlie said, disappearing back into the kitchen. ‘I’ve had to amuse myself for too long. There’s only so many times you can play Grand Theft Auto and watch Breaking Bad before you start thinking a life of crime is a viable option.’
Until two weeks ago, Charlie and I had worked together at Donovan & Dunning, an advertising agency in Holborn. I ran the creative team and Charlie was an account manager, which mostly meant that I spent fourteen hours a day worrying over whether or not the target demographic would respond better to a happy squirrel selling them toilet paper or a friendly-looking bear, while he took the people who owned the toilet paper company out for dinner and then asked them for more money. But, like lots of agencies run by men who liked to blow all their money up their nose rather than into their employees’ pension fund, Donovan & Dunning was not prepared for the recession and had gone rather spectacularly bust, leaving me, Charlie, and about forty other people, out of a job.
‘So you’re going for Come Dine with Me instead?’ I asked. ‘This is a very interesting development.’
‘I’m not very good,’ he acknowledged, reappearing in the living room with two very full glasses of white wine. What went better with codeine than wine? ‘But I’ll get there. I’m making a chilli but I didn’t have any kidney beans so I used Heinz. That’s all right, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ I said, sipping the wine and trying not to wince. Charlie had never been much of a wine drinker; clearly this had been bought in for my benefit. I couldn’t help but wish it hadn’t been. ‘You can’t put baked beans in a chilli, but I’m really impressed that you tried.’
‘Then you’ll be completely wowed by my ability to call for a pizza,’ he said, sitting down next to me and pulling his phone out of his back pocket. ‘Because I’m amazing at that.’
‘A man’s got to have a talent,’ I replied.
His legs pressed against his too-big socks I was wearing and squished my toes in a way that made me feel warm all over. Or it could have been the wine, I wasn’t sure. Whatever discomfort had been between us before my nap had dissolved and all I wanted to do was stare at him in silence while he faffed about with the Domino’s app. But that could have been the wine too.
‘Pizza will be here in forty-five minutes,’ he said and turned to me with a grin. I quickly sipped my wine and hoped my face didn’t look as red as it felt. ‘So what should we do for the next forty-five minutes?’
‘Stop it,’ I shouted, swatting Charlie’s arm away from my face. ‘I hate this.’
‘You’re so bad,’ he laughed, hammering the buttons on his control pad and beating my character into a bloody pulp on the screen in front of us. ‘How can you possibly be so bad?’
‘Because I’ve been drinking for the last hour on an empty stomach,’ I said, adding a hiccup for emphasis and throwing my controller down onto the sofa in protest as he ripped the head off my character with unrestrained glee. ‘And I don’t have a penis.’
‘Loads of girls are good at games,’ Charlie argued as his phone lit up on the sofa between us. ‘You’re just shit. Thank God the pizza is here so I don’t have to kill you again.’
Folding my legs up underneath me, I watched him run downstairs to pick up the pizza and smiled the smug smile of a woman who was spending the evening playing computer games and drinking wine with her crush. It was every girl’s dream, wasn’t it? Here I was, wearing his favourite Arsenal T-shirt and a pair of big floppy socks, looking adorable. Or at least I looked adorable in my imagination; I had no interest in checking out how true that assumption was in a mirror. This was everything I’d ever wanted. Well, maybe I hadn’t pictured quite so many rounds of Mortal Kombat in our future, but the pizza was definitely a plus.
‘Dinner is served!’ Charlie pushed through the door with an enormous white pizza box, a matching plastic bag hanging from his wrist. ‘Do you want some Coke?’
‘Is it diet?’
‘No, it isn’t diet.’ He placed the pizza carefully on the not-really-clean-enough floor and handed me a napkin.
‘Then I’ll stick with the wine.’ I held out my glass for a refill.
‘Wine and pizza …’ He grabbed the almost empty bottle from the side table and poured. ‘We’re practically Italian.’
I flipped open the lid of the pizza box and ignored him.
‘Hawaiian pizza?’ I asked. ‘I suppose you think you’re funny.’
‘I want to hear about it – Amy wouldn’t tell me anything.’ Charlie handed me a piece of kitchen towel in lieu of a plate and grabbed a huge, gooey slice of pizza before settling back onto the sofa. ‘Actually, she kept saying I was a cockwomble and told me to stop calling her. Was it amazing?’
‘It was amazing.’ I chose my words carefully, focusing on my memories of the sea and the sand and the smell of morning pastries and pretty pink flowers and pineapple that tasted nothing like the pineapple on this pizza. ‘It’s really beautiful.’
‘I still can’t believe you did it, Tess,’ he said. ‘Packed up, flew halfway round the world. It’s so not you.’
I shrugged, picking pieces of sad, tinned pineapple off my pizza. He didn’t know the half of it.
‘Being me wasn’t getting me very far, was it?’ I said, wiping my hands on a paper napkin and wrapping my hair around itself in a bun on the back of my head. ‘And I needed to get away from everything.’
The skinny blonde elephant in the corner of the room coughed delicately and tossed its hair.
‘Everything?’ Charlie repeated.
‘You know, work and everything,’ I said, attempting to clarify without using the V word. If I never heard the V word again as long as I lived, it would be too soon.
Charlie wrapped his huge hand around his delicate wine glass and nodded. ‘Vanessa.’
And we’d managed fifteen seconds. Not bad going.
‘You know …’ He cleared his throat and took a drink. ‘Me and her, it was nothing to do with me and you.’
