A Girl Like You (20 page)

Chapter Twenty Five

He’s never waited this long to call before. What if something’s happened?

I take a cab home, rather than the tube, which is an unnecessary expense but I don’t want to go underground and lose phone reception. (I know how dismal that sounds, but I’m being honest.)

I take a shower with my phone propped up on the closed toilet seat in case he rings. (He doesn’t.) Then I blow-dry my hair and put on my favourite jeans and a casual-but-totally-sexy nude-coloured top and my cosiest socks with the phone constantly in my line of vision so I can pick it up easily if he rings. (He doesn’t.) Then I head downstairs for a glass of red wine. With my phone. (As you probably guessed.) In case he rings. (He doesn’t.)

I lie down on the couch, wine in hand, legs hanging over the edge, staring into space.

It’s past 9.30 pm now. Where could he be? What if he’s drunk somewhere, flirting with another girl? What if he’s passed out and won’t even call me till tomorrow? What if he’s changed his mind about whatever it is that is going on between us? What if—

Shut up, Abigail. Calm down. This attitude is so not you. It’s (don’t say it, don’t say it) desperate.

The front door bangs. Robert’s in the front hallway, taking off his protective moped gear.

‘Hi!’ I say.

‘Hey,’ he replies.

It’s been ages since Robert and I last hung out – since before France, now that I think about it – and I suddenly feel elated to see him. I swing my legs off the couch and stand up, smiling brightly.

‘Wine?’ I say.

‘Ah, why not,’ he says, sighing, and coming into the room. He’s still wearing his suit and looks a bit rumpled and stressed.

‘You need a haircut,’ I say.

‘A shower is more important right now. Very long day. Back in ten.’

He turns and heads straight for his room. I wonder why he’s so stressed. He still won’t tell me what he does. I’ve stopped asking.

The living room feels somehow bare and unloved tonight, and not a very nice place to come home to.

So I tidy up, fluffing all the big red cushions and banging the couch into shape, and turn on the fire and the lamps around the room to try to make it feel cosier. Then I open up a packet of pretzels and put it into a bowl for us to have with the wine. There are some tea lights sitting in mismatched tumblers behind the sink, so I put them on the coffee table too. Then I realise they look like an attempt at romance, so I quickly blow the candles out and put them back behind the sink, just as Robert gets back.

His hair is all wet from the shower and he’s wearing odd socks with his oldest, most threadbare pair of jeans, and his favourite blue shirt that has too many holes in it. It’s done up wrong, but I decide not to tell him that. He looks like himself again. I can’t help beaming at him. And not because he’s distracting me from Dave not calling. It is just so
good
to see him.

‘You cooked!’ he says, looking at the pretzels and wine with a grin.

‘Never say I don’t look after you,’ I reply, taking a seat and picking up my glass. He stretches and sits down in his chair with a huffing sound, picking up his glass of wine and holding it up to me. Our eyes meet for the first time since he got home.

‘Happy almost-Christmas,’ I say.

‘Happy almost-Christmas,’ he nods, and takes a long sip. ‘Ah. That’s better.’

There’s a pause as we smile at each other. I like his face, I think involuntarily. And not because of the whole handsome thing. I just like it. I probably can’t tell him that without sounding like a fool, however, so I take a sip of wine.

‘How’s Dave?’ he says.

‘He’s good, fine, he’s good,’ I say quickly. I don’t want to linger on the subject in case Robert says something I don’t want to hear. ‘How’s, uh, how’s . . .’

‘They’re fine,’ he says crunching a handful of pretzels thoughtfully, which is very hard to do. ‘They’re all fine. How’s work?’

I look at him and raise an eyebrow. Work is one thing I don’t want to talk about. ‘Business as usual, then,’ says Robert. ‘I thought you were faking work confidence?’

I shrug. ‘You can’t fake something for that long. Eventually you have to admit the truth, and I hate . . . Christmas decorations!’ I exclaim. ‘That’s what’s missing.’

‘Huh?’

‘I was thinking this room felt a bit bare . . . it needs Christmas decorations!’

‘Hmm. I’ve got my sister’s old stuff somewhere from before she moved to Dublin . . .’

Robert goes to the hallway cupboard and takes down a very large cardboard box.

‘Abby, darling, meet the worst Christmas decorations ever.’ Out comes threadbare tinsel; tarnished baubles; knotted Christmas lights; a dilapidated Christmas wreath with some seriously sick-looking red robins attached; eight red candles of varying degrees of use; a CD called
The Best Christmas Album EVER
– and that’s just the first layer.

‘Your sister seems like she’d be fun,’ I say, picking up a staple gun from the box.

‘Alice? Oh, she is,’ says Robert, picking up a cutlery holder attached to wooden geese swimming in holly.

‘What is this?’ I say, holding up a stuffed moose with a Santa hat on, with ‘Fernie 2002’ embroidered on the hat.

‘Alice used to staple gun that moose to her front door,’ he says. ‘Instead of a wreath.’

‘May I?’ I say, leaping joyfully towards the front door, reindeer and staple gun in hand.

‘Ah, the leap of the nimble-footed mountain goat!’ he calls after me. ‘I’d recognise it anywhere.’

I staple the moose to the door by arms, feet and antlers, and spring joyfully back into the house. ‘Shall we get into the Christmas spirit?’ I pick up a bottle of Jack Daniel’s with a Santa Claus beard attached and waggle it at him.

An hour later, I’m wearing a mistletoe headband. Robert is wearing a Mrs Santa hat with long white plaits. We’re singing along to Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’. I’ve propped the red robin wreath on the coffee table and put red candles inside, and arranged the baubles in a large glass bowl on the kitchen top. We’ve also staple gunned fairy lights around the windows (probably a disastrous idea, but at that point we’d already had two glasses of Jack).

‘It looks like Christmas with a hangover,’ I say proudly.

‘I love it,’ says Robert, taking a sip of his Jack Daniel’s. ‘God! I’ve had a shit week. Thanks for making me do this. You are like human Prozac.’

I grin at him. It feels so easy hanging out with him again. If only relationships could be as easy as friendships. I guess they are, eventually, but first you probably have to go through the trial-by-insecurity phase that I’m in with Dave right now. I want to ask Robert if we can do something together this week, but then I remember that I hope to see Dave every night, so I don’t say anything.

Robert starts staple gunning tinsel to the doorway leading out to the stairs.

‘That tinsel has alopecia,’ I comment.

He gazes at it. ‘You’re absolutely right,’ he says. He tries to rip it down, and shreds hundreds of individual strands of tinsel confetti. ‘Bugger!’ he shouts. He tries to pick them up off the floor, loses first his balance and then his patience, throwing all the tinsel pieces up in the air and spinning under them. ‘Abby, what am I? A snow globe.’

‘You’re so butch when you’re twirling. Like a big galumphing ballet dancer.’

‘Well, I trained professionally for years. Till I got in a fight defending a dog from a pack of rabid old ladies.’

I don’t mind about Dave not calling, I think suddenly, picking up a half-full bag of chocolate coins from the floor. He’ll turn up at some point. And I’m having fun here, anyway.

‘I wonder if I’ll get a Christmas stocking this year,’ I say. ‘I think my mother might have outlawed it.’

‘I always get one,’ Robert says, picking up my legs with one hand and sliding himself onto the couch, then letting my feet plop back down over him. ‘My mother tried to stop it a few years ago. She announced that she was tired of spending the whole of December trying to find puzzles and games and toys for three people whose combined ages were almost 100.’

‘That is way harsh. What did you say?’

‘We pretended to cry,’ says Robert. ‘Obviously.’

I rest my head on Robert’s arm and sigh happily. I feel like I’m home for the first time in weeks, I muse. I can’t even remember the last time we sat here together. I remember the first time, after that disastrous date with Paulie. That seems like a very long time ago.

‘How old are these?’ I say, chewing a chocolate coin.

‘At least four years. Possibly five.’

‘Mmm, yes, excellent vintage. I particularly like the white specks, they’re extra tasty. So . . . Why are you so stressed?’

‘Work.’

‘Are you ever going to tell me what you do?’

Pause.

‘I’m an accountant,’ he says.

I start to laugh, then stop. ‘Oh, um, really? I thought you were kidding.’

‘That’s why I never tell anyone,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘It’s an instant conversation stopper.’

‘What kind of accounting is it?’

‘The heady world of corporate finance,’ he says, crunching more pretzels.

‘Sexy. Is it your dream job?’

‘Erm, yes, I guess so,’ he says. ‘You know, I ploughed the postgrad, then studied law in the States, then realised I didn’t want to be a lawyer . . . I felt like such a fuck up. Nothing fit. But somehow, I ended up in the right place,’ he says. ‘Everyone does eventually.’

‘I hope so,’ I say, sighing. ‘I can’t believe that after all that fuss about not telling me what you do, you’re an accountant.’

‘I’m private. And I have better things to talk about. Though it’s not as boring as everyone thinks.’

‘I think you’re a control freak,’ I say. ‘That’s why you pump and dump women like you do.’

‘“Pump and dump”? Nice. Sex is actually fun for everyone involved, has anyone ever told you that?’

‘Ha,’ I say, thinking about Dave. There’s a pause. ‘What are you doing for Christmas, by the way?’

‘I’m working, mostly, with a bit of family time. My sister Alice is coming over with her kids. Every Christmas morning should have an overexcited four-year-old, it makes it much more fun for everyone. You?’

‘I’m in France from Christmas Eve till New Year’s Eve.’

‘You get along with your parents, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I love them. But they think we’re still aged seven and nine. I swear my mother would be thrilled if I came home with a report card from work at the end of each year.’

‘I would have thought you’d love that, too,’ he says, and pretends to read from a report card. ‘Abigail is a delightfully serious, bright and enthusiastic child, she plays well with others, especially after a few shots . . .’

‘Shuddup,’ I say, poking him with my toe. ‘Anyway, Sophie’s leaving early this year to be with Luke . . . I wish I was coming back to London early, then you and I could go drinking and have fun.’

And I could see Dave, if he is even going to be in London. Which I don’t know, because he doesn’t ever bring up the future, and neither do I. And he doesn’t even know that it’s my birthday on the 1st of January, because I don’t want him to think I’m just telling him so he’ll buy me a present. God, the game-playing is getting exhausting.

Thinking all this, I sigh.

‘Don’t worry about him,’ says Robert. ‘Dave likes girls who don’t chase him.’

‘I don’t
chase
him,’ I say irritably. ‘Stop reading my mind. It’s casual. We don’t ever discuss, you know, feelings.’

‘Good. I’m against that kind of filth, myself.’

‘Surely you must get fond of your ladyfriends sometimes. You’re not a heartless bastard underneath, I know you’re not.’

‘I get very fond of them. I love their company. I just don’t love . . . them.’

‘Do they ever fall in love with you?’

He shrugs. That’s a yes, then. ‘I try to keep that sort of thing, uh, to the bare minimum.’

‘Why not just say, I love you, so they feel good, and then hand them a terms and conditions contract saying, limited time only, offer subject to change, etc.’

Robert laughs for a very long time at this. I love making Robert laugh, I think suddenly. He has a loud, unselfconscious guffaw.

‘Seriously, don’t worry about Dave,’ he says later .

‘You have to stop mind-reading me,’ I say. ‘It’s getting weird.’

‘But it’s so easy. You’re like a book,’ he says. ‘A kid’s book with very big print. Like
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
.’

‘That was my favourite!’ I exclaim. ‘I used to read it whenever I was upset.’

‘Me too,’ he says, sipping his drink. ‘I hate Jack Daniel’s.’

‘Me too,’ I agree, taking another sip. ‘Shall we have another? Oh! I love this song,’ I say, as ‘Santa Baby’ comes on. We both start singing along, with Robert doing a very bad Eartha Kitt impression.

‘Is anything happening with Vix, by the way?’ I ask, when the song has finished and ‘Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire’ comes on, which neither of us knows the words to. ‘Obviously it’s difficult because she’s in Edinburgh, but are you guys in post-pull contact?’

‘I wasn’t with Vix in France,’ says Robert in surprise. ‘I thought you knew that.’

‘No,’ I say, shocked. ‘But – you came downstairs together.’

‘We slept in the same bed, me on top of the sheets, and her underneath,’ he says. ‘There weren’t any other beds and we’d been up late, talking about her love life. Nothing else happened.’

I’m stunned. Does it seem odd to you that Robert, the great lothario, would lie in bed with a pretty girl and not make a move? Perhaps he knows it’s unwise to plunder the wedding party, as Sophie warned. I’m about to ask him, when my phone rings. Dave! My chest leaps in delight. I reach for my phone and nearly fall off the couch.

‘Don’t answer too fast,’ advises Robert. ‘Keep him waiting.’

I shoot him a glare and then hold the ringing phone for a second to compose myself. I look at the screen. Yep, it’s Dave.

‘Why, hello,’ I say casually.

‘Why, hello to you,’ mimics Dave. ‘May I speak to Abigail Wood, please?’ He’s slurring slightly.

‘One second please,’ I respond, and then sing some hold music in a very high voice (‘Are You Going To Scarborough Fair’), before clearing my throat. ‘Hello, this is Abigail speaking.’