Someone Like You (49 page)

She peered around as if expecting a Candid Camera host to appear suddenly and tell her she was the star of the latest show. The coincidences that were piling up were way off the Richter scale and there had to be a reason.

‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything,’ Felix said, sitting down on Hannah’s other side, quite clearly not giving a damn if he was interrupting anything. In fact, he was pleased to be interrupting it, Hannah deduced, if the cool smirk he’d directed at Harry was anything to go by.

‘What brings you here?’ Hannah asked. ‘I didn’t know you were back in Ireland.’

‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?’ Felix said, ignoring her question and placing substantial emphasis on the word ‘friend’.

Hannah ground her teeth some more. ‘Harry Spender, Felix Andretti,’ she said.

‘How do you know each other?’ said Harry pointedly, looking at Felix as if he were Hannah’s father and Felix was a particularly unsuitable boyfriend who’d just rolled up.

‘We went out together, Harry,’ Hannah explained kindly. ‘But it didn’t last.’

‘Oh,’ said Harry, pleased. He reached for Hannah’s hand again.

She moved out of his reach and encountered Felix’s long, muscled thigh against hers. He stared at her, smouldering in his own special way. If smoulderability could be marketed, Felix would be a billionaire.

‘How long since you broke up?’ asked Harry, piqued.

‘We haven’t,’ hissed Felix.

Hannah arched an eyebrow. Talk about l’embarras de richesses. One minute, she had no man on the horizon.

Suddenly, she had two and they wanted to fight over her, like medieval knights jousting in a tournament for the hand of the fair lady. Well, she had news for them: the fair lady had to be game before there was any point in jousting for her hand. And this lady wasn’t keen at all. She’d finished with both knights and they could get stuffed.

‘Enough chitchat, boys. I’m afraid I have a date and I’ve got to go. Nice talking to you, Harry, and you too, Felix.’

She gave them a bright smile and got up.

Both of them looked dismayed, although on Felix’s handsome face, dismay was wedded with displeasure.

, ‘You can’t go,’ he said, flicking back his golden hair, his trademark gesture.

The little creature who stoked Hannah’s inner rage got out the bellows and gave things a huge blast of air. She felt the fire inside her grow into an inferno of fury.

If she thought she’d been irritated to see Harry, that was nothing to what she felt at the sudden reappearance of Felix. A month and nothing. At least Harry had actually dumped her. Felix had just vanished and his mobile number had bleated that it was no longer valid when she’d rung it in tears. And here he was again, behaving as if nothing had happened despite his mysterious absence.

‘You’ve got a date?’ Felix said hotly, as if he disapproved of this idea.

Etna erupted.

Hannah turned on him. If the eyes were the window of the soul, she hoped he’d see flames in hers.

‘What I do is none of your business, Felix,’ she breathed.

‘Don’t forget that. I’m leaving, goodbye.’

She stormed out, daring either one of them to follow her. If they did, she’d kill them with her bare hands, so help her God.

The rage left her before she reached home and by the time she was sticking her key in the lock, she was grinning at the lunacy of the whole thing. It was official: she had yoyos for boyfriends. They kept coming back, in spite of their best efforts to keep away.

Within an hour, Felix yo-yoed back again. He rang the doorbell continually for ten minutes and, when Hannah stuck her head out of the window and told him to piss off, he started ringing everyone else’s doorbells. Finally, she stomped downstairs and let him in.

‘What are you doing here, Felix?’ she demanded as he followed her up to her flat. She was irrationally pleased that she hadn’t changed out of her work clothes, which meant that Felix was getting an eyeful of swaying hips and long legs as he walked behind her.

‘To see you, Hannah. We need to talk.’

Deja vu or what? she thought grimly, remembering Harry saying those very words to her only hours before.

‘Is this International Ex-Boyfriend Day?’ she enquired.

‘Was there something about it on the news? No, don’t tell me. You were stuck in a time machine for four weeks and have only just come back to this century. Am I right?’

‘I’ve been so stupid, Hannah,’ murmured Felix. While Harry had relied on verbal reasoning to put his case for disappearance, Felix used much more carnal means. He slid his arms round her waist and began to kiss her, his soft lips scorching hers. Hannah felt her stomach contract with sheer, animal lust. Felix was a superb kisser. If he ever decided to leave the world of acting, he could undoubtedly make a fortune as a gigolo.

Momentarily, she let herself sink into his kiss, leaning her body against him, feeling his hips grind against hers erotically. It was wonderful, glorious, so sexy. After a month without him, Hannah felt like a thirsty Saharan traveller faced with a rippling, icy-cool stream. Her hands roamed eagerly over his back, one pulling his head down to hers, the other moulding him closer to her. And then she stopped. What was she doing? If she wanted cheap sex with no strings, all she had to do was hit the nightclubs and pick up a bloke who’d hidden his wedding ring in his back pocket. Why succumb to Felix when all he was doing was lulling her into a false sense of security? He’d have her eating out of his hand again and then, when he felt like it, he’d leave. Dump her. Like Harry had.

She imagined them sharing notes once she’d left the pub.

Stupid Hannah, what a pushover.

Give her the puppy-dog eyes and she’s putty in my hands, Harry would say smugly.

No, no, Felix would smirk, she is sexy, she loves making love. Tease her with kisses and wonderful sex and she’ll fall into my arms.

Hannah pushed him away forcefully.

‘Hannah?’ he gasped.

‘Felix, you left me without a word. I can’t forgive that.

It’s over,’ she said, panting with a mixture of desire and temper.

‘I know, but it’s because I’m weak, Hannah,’ he said.

‘And scared. I was ashamed to phone you after Christmas, I knew you’d be so angry with me and I couldn’t… You’re so strong, you’re my rock. I need you.’

‘What a load of old crap!’ she hissed, not sure who she was more furious with: Felix for waltzing back into her life unannounced, or herself, for falling for his tactics and kissing the face off him. ‘You knew I’d be angry, I’d every right to be. But I’d have forgiven you. I loved you. One week, two weeks, I’d have forgiven you after that long.

But four is pushing it, Felix. And at Christmas into the bargain. The season to be jolly, my backside. I’m sorry.

Get out. You wanted to talk and we have. You’ve got what you came for.’

‘I came for you. You’re my rock, Hannah,’ he repeated.

It sounded so corny, like a line from a second-rate TV

movie.

‘Tom Stoppard not writing your lines, then?’ she said bitchily. ‘You need something snappier than that, Felix.’

‘Nobody I know is as funny as you, Hannah,’ he said fondly.

‘Not even all the bimbos you’ve been fucking since you left me?’ she spat. ‘I saw the piece in Hello! about you and “your lovely companion” at that horror movie premiere.

She looked like girlfriend material from the way she was clinging to you. Either that or she’s an aspiring actress practising for a role where she plays your girlfriend. Or maybe she’s someone important’s daughter and you’re dating her as a favour, although it isn’t much of a trial going out with some babe in slashed to the waist Gucci. Was she someone helping your career, Felix?’

The photo had cut her to the bone, the sight of Felix mid-laugh with one arm around a blonde vision in barely there jungle-print silk, the picture of twenty-one-year-old beauty. He was described as the handsome actor who’d been a big hit in the TV sitcom Bystanders. She was an unidentified blonde, but they were two fabulous blondes really, glamorous other-worldly creatures. Hannah had felt like a bog-trotting beast by comparison.

A woman not given to self-criticism when it came to her looks, she’d felt ugly as she looked at Hello! No wonder he’d left her, she’d thought in misery, when he could have a woman like that.

‘I can’t imagine you were missing me too much that night, eh, Felix?’

He hung his head in sorrow. ‘I know. I don’t deserve you, Hannah. But please -‘ he sank on to her couch and put his face in his hands - ‘please don’t send me away. I need you, so much. You can’t tell me you haven’t missed me too.’ He turned beseeching eyes up to her.

Christ, he was handsome, she thought irrationally.

Almost impossible to resist. She had to.

‘I have missed you,’ she said slowly. ‘You have no idea how much. Which is why I won’t have anything to do with you any more, Felix. I’m not a masochist. Please leave.’

He uncurled his long body from the couch, graceful as ever, and gave her another heart-rending look with those soulful eyes. He was going.

‘I want to explain one thing before I go,’ he said softly.

‘You don’t understand; I didn’t want to fall in love with you. Having a person I loved wasn’t part of my career plan. I didn’t want to be in love, I wanted to play around and have fun, but I met you and it went haywire. I fell in love with you, Hannah.’ His face was strangely bleak as he spoke, the lines around his eyes more noticeable than usual. He did look weary and anguished; it wasn’t an act.

‘I know it doesn’t show me in a very good light if I admit that I tried to fight what I felt about you, Hannah. I wanted you to be like all the others, to be with me for a month before we both got bored with each other. But it didn’t work that way. I love you, in spite of myself. I’m not proud of how I’ve behaved, but it’s the truth. I wanted you to understand and I’m sorry I hurt you.’

Hannah said nothing, she couldn’t trust herself to speak.

She hoped she could keep her face stony for as long as it took him to leave the flat. He didn’t say anything else as he left, closing her door behind him quietly. Watching him leave without calling him back was one of the hardest things Hannah had ever done.

She wanted to desperately but she couldn’t, wouldn’t.

She waited motionless until she heard the front door slam shut and then she broke down.

Tears flowed down her face as she wept with grief. She’d been kidding herself. She wasn’t over Felix, not even a little bit. She was still crazily, horrifically in love with him. She longed for him, longed to hold him and kiss him and let him make love to her. And the sensation of holding him earlier had been such bliss … It was agony to think he was gone from her life, that she’d never hold him again, never touch him, never feel his hot breath on her skin. It was as if he was dead to her. Imagine a life where Felix existed but she couldn’t see him or talk to him ever again, never hear his voice husky with love, never touch his face tenderly. Waves of sheer misery swept over her as she cried helplessly, standing alone in her flat, with nobody to love her or care about her ever again. She cried for what felt like hours. For once, the tears simply wouldn’t stop. She cried thinking of all the wonderful times they’d had together and she cried because she knew Felix would have stayed with her, if only she’d let him. She didn’t care what he did, whether he had ten women as well as her, as long as she could be with him sometimes. In her hubris, she’d sent him away and now she was paying for it. Alone, alone for ever.

Finally, she forced herself to stop sobbing. Mechanically, she went into the bathroom to wipe her face and almost didn’t recognize the stranger staring back at her from the mirror: a hollow-eyed woman with mascara trails running blackly down her face. She looked a hundred, not thirty-seven. No wonder Felix had wanted to date a carefree blonde child. He wanted a woman who was girlish and pretty, not a neurotic hag with enough emotional baggage to fill an airport. She listlessly removed her makeup and then washed her face with a flannel, scrubbing her skin as if to punish herself. Then she stripped off her work clothes and pulled on the most comforting thing she could find: old soft jeans that had been washed so often they were the palest blue imaginable, and a giant sloppy grey jumper she’d had for years. Barefoot, she padded into the kitchen and looked around. She’d been making dinner when he’d arrived: pasta with tuna, garlic and onions. The garlic she’d been chopping scented the air enticingly, but Hannah didn’t have an appetite any more. She never wanted to see food again.

She scraped the garlic into the bin and threw the plastic chopping board into the sink. Meals for one, that was her life from now on. She’d never cook up a delicious feast for two again. Not that she’d ever been much of a cook, but Felix had always been so appreciative of her meals.

‘I love the things you can do with pasta and a tin of supermarket spaghetti sauce,’ he’d tease her when she was assembling a meal with the help of a tin-opener.

Everything came back to Felix, she sighed. Why had she fallen in love with him? Why hadn’t she been able to resist?

It wasn’t as if she didn’t know the problems men brought with them, but she hadn’t taken her own advice. She’d fallen for him hook, line and sinker. All she was left with now was a sense that a huge part of her life was over for ever. The things she’d valued so much seemed curiously hollow - her job, her flat, her independence. They paled into insignificance beside love. Or lack of it. Loving somebody shouldn’t be important, that had been her mantra.

True love was such a pile of rubbish, she was sure of it.

The only person in life who truly loved you was yourself.

Nobody else could be trusted. People like Leonie, who longed for love with incredible intensity, were mad.

. Leonie. A picture of her friend’s laughing, kind blue eyes came to her suddenly. Yes, she’d go and see Leonie.

Hannah couldn’t bear the thought of spending the rest of the evening alone in the flat. Her heart ached and she couldn’t think of anyone better to comfort her. Leonie understood pain, heartache and love. Hannah looked at her watch: it was only ten to nine. How strange that her life should receive such a mortal, shattering blow, yet a mere two hours had passed.