Behaving Like Adults (5 page)

‘It's wonderful,' I said, glancing out of the window to check the propeller. ‘But' – it was only fair to tell him as soon as I could – ‘I feel queasy. I'm not going to be able to eat any roast chicken.' Even the idea made me shudder.

Stuart grinned at me. ‘No problem, Holly. There are other things we can do.'

I realised I was ice cold and my teeth chattered. I like to think the best of people, I really do, but this oily innuendo could only mean one thing. His next sentence was bound to contain the word ‘joystick'. I can't think of one good reason why, but I laughed.

‘Stuart,' I said. Shake, rattle, hum, mechanical fault. ‘If that was a veiled reference to the Mile High Club, you have got to be
kidding
me. I mean that.' I stopped. I wasn't going to reel out a list of reasons why not (I don't know you, I don't fancy you, I need you to fly the plane, etc.). No was it. That, in my view, is enough. But curiosity overcame pride. ‘I can't believe sex is possible, in
this
. I bet you haven't. Ever.'

Stuart laughed. ‘There are ways and means,' he said. ‘You set the controls, let her ride.' He nodded at his lap, a wicked look on his face. ‘But for a pretty girl you've got a dirty mind, Holly. I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about
this
.'

I shrieked shrill and loud as our tin coffin jerked harsh left and tipped in a rush of noise, till the plane lay dead on its side and I could see its flimsy wing sharp above us. ‘What are you doing?' I screamed. ‘Stop, stop, stop, you're going to kill us!' Normally I'd never speak to anyone like that, not even Nick. ‘Oh my Go o o o o d, help meeeee!'

We were plummeting, spiralling, a heinous lunatic rollercoaster, towards earth. My hair stood on end, every follicle prickled, and I had to swallow and swallow, to gulp down the saliva, the nausea, the fear. I couldn't even grab
the controls. I screeched and Stuart
smiled
. He cried, ‘Wheeeeeeeee!' I just cried.

‘Never,' I choked, as he soared upwards, ‘do that again.' As it was I could barely speak for quaking. ‘Take me down. Properly. Carefully. Or I'll be sick on you. Or I will have a heart attack from fright and my parents will sue.'

‘Holly. A spiral is just a bit of fun. It's not dangerous. It's like the natural fall of a paper plane. It's a glider movement, a natural way of swooping. It doesn't even put stress on the plane. I thought you'd find it exhilarating. I'd never put us in danger. It's not like a full 360. I'd never do something as brash as that. That's best left for the circus.'

He patted my knee and I wanted to jam a pencil through his hand. ‘Stuart. You've forfeited your right to preach about responsibility. Back. Down. Now.'

The remainder of our flight was conducted in silence. The only talk was with air traffic. Landing was as violent as take-off, but I was too enraged to scream aloud. The rain was fierce as we touched down and we got soaked as we crossed the tarmac, but I was so delirious to be alive I didn't care. Once we were back in Stuart's car, he stuck the heating on high and touched my hand.

‘Sorry,' he said, ‘if I scared you. I didn't mean to. I thought you'd enjoy it eventually.' His blue eyes looked pained, and I knew he meant it. Giddy with the euphoria of cheating death, I banished the nausea to the back of my throat, and sighed. ‘Forget it. You loon.'

Then Rachel's dress – soaked in the downpour – started to dry, giving off, as it did so, the smell of sicked-up crayfish. That was it for me. What with the terror, the trauma and the shake it all about, the surprise bonus of eau de crayfish puke was more than my guts could handle. I projectile vomited my fry-up, mostly over the cream interior of Stuart Marshall's Mercedes Kompressor and some over Stuart Marshall himself.

HE WAS ACTUALLY
very kind. I looked at him aghast, straight after I'd finished puking. I'm not sure what shocked me most. The fact that I'd been sick on a stranger and his lovely upholstery, or that so much vomit could fly that fast out of my mouth in a horizontal jet. Stuart's face, at that moment, was a study in naked horror. The stench grabbed you by the gut and, by the speed of the pulse throbbing in his neck, I thought he might throw up too. That or punch me.

‘My fault,' he'd said, after a terrible second. ‘Oh
lordy
, the car!'

Already I felt much better, if a little shaken by ‘Oh lordy'. We both leapt from the Mercedes stink prison, grateful for the fresh sting of the rain. I tore off my soiled pink jumper and Stuart pulled off his sick-splattered shirt, revealing a tight white T-shirt. Very
Top Gun
. I remembered the blue Speedos. I spat discreetly on the ground before speaking.

‘Stuart,' I said. ‘I'm so embarrassed. I will, of course, pay for the car to be cleaned.'

I didn't wish to appear excessively contrite, as privately I felt that none of this was really my digestive system's fault. I fumbled for chewing gum, and Stuart held up a hand. I noticed that his hair was curling in the wet. My personal preference is straight hair on a man. I find curly hair less masculine. Shame on me. Nick's hair is caramel – half-way between brown and blond – shiny, thick and
straight
.

‘Holly, forget it,' replied Stuart. A moderate impression of a smile. ‘I guess I frightened you up there. As a pilot you reach a certain level of expertise. You get cocky and forget that what's normal to you isn't to a non-flier. Don't fret about the Merc. Camille, my PA, will deal with it, I'll ring her now, yes, I know – “weekend” – but she's a saint! She'll send for it to be picked up. We'll get a cab to your little motor, nip home to yours, you'll change, and then I'll take you to a nice restaurant to make up for scaring the hell out of you.'

I couldn't quite believe that,
A
, the man was suggesting food and,
B
, he wasn't rabid enough to tear my head off. It didn't make sense. He was nothing like the Stuart on his application form. That guy had standards like NASA. This one
adapted
. It was as if he twisted a dimmer switch in his head:
FROWN, FADE – SMILE, ON.
I didn't think he was a fake (well, no more than any of us are on a first date). I thought he was reasonable. He could admit he was wrong. I liked that. It was a nice change from what I'd been living with for the past five years.

However, Stuart did not feature in
my
immediate plans, which were to head home alone for a long bath that would be hot enough to turn my skin pink. So, despite his curt disappointment, I said a polite goodbye at the airport. Stuart rang my mobile three times the following afternoon. (‘He wants to make good on his investment, babes,' said Rachel.) It was my niggling guilt more than Nick's swaggering triumph that drove me to call him back a day later. Stuart didn't seem
un
pleased to hear from me, if a little piqued that I'd left it twenty-four hours, and we chatted. ‘Unfortunately', he was off the next morning, a two-week business trip to Bolton. He was ‘gutted' we couldn't meet that night. Neither I – nor the agency – had heard from him since.

Despite the unprofessionalism (I shuddered at what he must think of Girl Meets Boy), I'd have left it there. Like every woman who craves respect, I'm a martyr to my
career, but there are limits. Sadly, Nige and Claudia, bubbling with evil glee at my misfortune, fostered a communal fondness for the legend of Stuart and wouldn't let the matter drop. And in a way, he
was
the ideal escort for me to take to the Girl Meets Boy party. After the vomit episode there was no danger of an unsolicited pounce. Yet, a repeat appearance might convince Nick of our burgeoning love.

Because, predictably, despite my bargain with fate at two thousand feet, I hadn't marched up to Nick and said, ‘Go'. Back in the real world it wasn't that simple. Nick hadn't cheated on me. His sins were not tangible enough to give me the moral right to boot him out of
our
house. We had the ultimate in complications, a joint mortgage. Not forgetting that I'd ended our engagement and therefore, perhaps, I should have gone. But Nick had insisted I stay where I was ‘for now'. He'd move to Manjit's. Or so he kept saying, but
when?
My first date with Stuart had given him a jolt. Maybe a second, albeit a month later, would see him off? I had nothing to lose, or so I thought. My best hope was to insult Nick out of my life, with Stuart's help.

But you can understand if the prospect of seeing him again didn't exactly thrill me.

I h'mmed. Claudia still had her legs on the desk and was staring at me expectantly. Nige was filing his nails.

‘If I ask Stuart to the Girl Meets Yob party,' I said, ‘I'll have to tell him who I really am. That I own the agency.'

‘So?' said Nige, blowing fingernail dust. ‘What's the big deal? He'll be flattered. It's not like we charged him for his elite date.'

‘Nige, his elite date cost him about five hundred quid in ground fees and insurance and fuel and steam cleans. He might decide to invoice me. Not that I care about that, it's more the lie.'

‘What lie?' said Claudia. ‘Holly, Nige did all the lying, you just turned up. Do me a favour, stop analysing and ask
him to the party. We've got more serious things to worry about. Like what to wear.' She swung her elegant legs off the desk and muttered, ‘It's casual, God help me.'

I gave in and invited Stuart.

On the night of the party, Nick skulked about like a vulture waiting for an antelope to peg it. He knew Stuart was picking me up and was itching to answer the door in a proprietorial way. I was far too tired to do anything but let him. Fortunately I'd had the foresight to explain Nick's status and mental age to Stuart. After a short, shocked silence, he'd been extremely understanding.

Nick's feelings were, I decided, the least of my worries. In the end, Nige had convinced me to hire a room at his club. (The amusing thing about Nige's club was that it was decorated to look about 250 years old yet it had been established for all of seven months. I couldn't see the pinstriped young fogeys who lolled in its brown leather sofas without thinking, ‘But my dear chaps, eight months ago you didn't
have
a club'. It makes me ache, how badly we all want to belong.) I still wasn't sure it was the best venue for a party.

‘This is a cracking party venue,' said Stuart, nodding as we stepped into the cold marble reception. ‘I like it. Nice choice, Hol. You've got an instinct. That's why you run a successful business.'

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nick bristle. So there, I thought. Nick's behaviour so far that night had been disgraceful. He'd done all he could to cause trouble. He'd begun by asking Stuart to give him a lift to the party and gone on to blurt, accidentally on purpose, that I owned Girl Meets Boy.
That
was a nerve-shredding moment. Like sticking the last of your rent in a fruit machine and watching your destiny spin. But Stuart had recovered admirably. As I embarked on a speedy damage limitation exercise, his scowl became a smile that spread wide across his face.

‘Well, Holly, a powerful woman like you, choosing
me
. I'm chuffed as a rat,' he kept saying. ‘I'm chuffed as a rat.'

I prayed that was a good thing.

Stuart, Nick and I trooped meekly up the wide curling staircase, past a string of stern ancestral portraits – presumably secured last week from Sotheby's – to the top floor. Oh, now this was special. A high-ceilinged room with huge French shuttered windows, blood red walls, a stone fireplace in which flickered a real fire, a glass chandelier, gilt mirrors, genteelly battered chaise longues and grand bow-legged chairs. If it weren't for Missy Elliot grinding out orders from the stereo, I'd have felt bad for not wearing a bustle. Nige and Claw surged from the stately gloom in a joyful wave.

‘It's fine. He knows,' I mouthed, behind Stuart's broad back.

Nige took this as a cue to start talking. ‘Well, Hollyberry, what do you think, isn't it
so
fab? Isn't it
gorge
? Roy in the kitchen says we're going to have nibbles coming out of our ears. And there's shedloads of booze, stacks of it. And the bar's through those doors. No one'll want to be the first to arrive, the vile shame of looking too eager, so I reckon we've got one hour max to get off our heads before the proles turn up, no offence Stuart.' All lavishly accessorised with hand movements.

Stuart bobbed his head at the ‘no offence' comment. I smiled and said, ‘It's fantastic.' Apologies to the community but the first time I met Nige I thought he was gay. He didn't seem like a heterosexual male, he was so . . . friendly. When I discovered he was straight I felt cheated. All pizzazz, no action. Then it emerged he was an actor. Alright. Half forgiven. I worry though, that Nige thinks the phrase ‘no offence' excuses him any slander. (Last week, I heard him on the phone, telling his bank manager he was, ‘A c* * *, no offence'.)

Claudia looked Stuart up and down, then Nick. It was hard for my little sis. She and Nick got on brilliantly, until
I broke off our engagement. I knew she lost respect for him when he stayed and stayed, but while her support of my decision was hardline, bordering on virulent, I suspected that secretly she pitied his situation and felt rotten acting cool towards him. ‘Still hoping, Nicky?' she said, not unkindly.

It was verging on awkward, when a clatter on the stairs made us all turn. The door banged open and in clomped Rachel. She wore a red silky shawl flung around her shoulders and was unbothered at five people scrutinising its stains. Rachel isn't beautiful but she's very striking, with fine silky hair and large dramatic features that look clumsily put together. She reminds me of a Picasso. No offence.