What a Girl Wants (28 page)

I shrugged, trying to find my bench in the park. ‘Could be. You never know with Al, do you?’

Three sharp knocks announced Nick’s entrance. He walked right in before we could invite him, without waiting for anyone to come to the door. I knew it was really my fault for not locking it behind me on my way in but I was still annoyed enough to blame him for anything and everything that came to mind. The door not being locked, apartheid, Justin Bieber’s breakdown, whatever.

‘There you are.’ Nick strode into the middle of the room in a beautiful light blue shirt that almost matched his eyes, his hair darker than usual, still damp from a shower maybe, and his jeans were perfectly tight in the arse and loose in the leg. I wondered how many pairs he had tried on before he bought them. I hoped it was at least nine. Jeans shopping was soul-destroying.

‘You’re just so bloody good-looking,’ Amy sighed loudly, sliding down onto her backside and sighing. ‘Could you wear a bag over your head or something?’

‘Is there anywhere else I should be?’ I asked him, ignoring Amy. It was something that took a lot of practice and he seemed to be struggling with it, his attention constantly flickering over to her stony expression.

‘You’re not where I left you,’ he said. ‘Does she need to be here for this?’

‘Not where you left me?’ I was confused. ‘I’m not your car keys.’

‘No, she’s not,’ Amy agreed. ‘And yes, Nicholas, I do need to be here. It’s my room.’

‘You said you were tired and I woke up early so I went for a run,’ Nick said, rolling up the arms of his sleeves as he spoke. He did not seem to be enjoying his audience. ‘And I got back and you weren’t there.’

‘I was tired last night,’ I said, so glad I had washed my hair. Clean hair was much better for self-righteous flicking. ‘That didn’t mean I was tired this morning.’

Nick stared across the room and out of the window, his jaw tight and his expression dark. Our living room had gorgeous high ceilings and huge, bright windows but Nick managed to suck all the air out of the room and replace it with tension in a heartbeat. Someone had turned the volume up on the cars driving by on the street below and every dog bark made me jump.

‘Ooh!’

One too many seconds of awkward silence were broken by Amy.

‘So, you slept in his bed last night but didn’t put out?’ she asked, pointing at me. ‘And then he woke up this morning with a hard-on, as you do, but thought you didn’t want to eff him so he went for a run, or he had a wank but doesn’t want to say that in front of me, and when he got back, you’d disappeared. So now he’s being mardy?’

I looked at Nick and shrugged, the sounds outside returning to normal volume, the room relaxing around me. ‘Sounds about right.’

‘And
you’re
annoyed because he wasn’t there when you woke up and
he’s
annoyed because you’d gone when he got back from his run, which had to be really difficult with a hard-on. Just saying.’ Amy rolled her eyes and rested her head on the back of the settee. ‘Do you two need a full-time translator or what?’

‘It would seem so,’ Nick replied, carefully folded sleeves now folded right across his chest.

‘It’s not Tess’s fault,’ Amy said, hopping up off the settee and patting Nick on the shoulder as she passed. ‘She’s never really had to deal with a proper wanker like you. She’s probably going to fuck this up another couple of times … just so you know.’

‘Duly noted,’ he said, the suggestion of a smile crinkling around his eyes while Amy backed into her bedroom while theatrically staring at Nick’s arse.

‘I was annoyed that you weren’t there when I woke up,’ I said as her door closed. ‘You should have woken me up.’

‘And I was annoyed that you weren’t there when I got back,’ he replied. ‘Now that’s cleared up, can we talk? Without an intermediary?’

I looked out the window and immediately found my bench. It looked different in the daytime.

‘Apparently not well but we can try,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you start?’

‘Not here.’ Nick held out a hand and cocked his head towards the door. ‘I want to show you something.’

‘Maybe he didn’t run off the erection,’ Amy shouted through her closed bedroom door. ‘Be safe.’

‘She doesn’t get out much,’ I said, my body fizzing as his fingers wove themselves through mine. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Somewhere erections are frowned upon,’ he replied. ‘So Amy doesn’t have to worry.’

I made a small half-laughing sound but I couldn’t help but be a little bit disappointed. Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered washing my hair after all.

‘I can’t believe you made me get on a motorbike,’ I said, my arms still wrapped around Nick’s waist minutes after we had come to a standstill. ‘My legs don’t work.’

‘Your legs do work,’ Nick said, calmly peeling away my arms and knocking down the kickstand with his boot. ‘Can you stand up?’

‘No.’ I was not lying.

In twenty-eight years, I had never been on a motorbike. When I was little, my uncle had come off his and spent an entire summer in traction. While I found his agony hilarious at the time – very few things were as funny to a seven-year-old girl as a grown man in a full-body plaster cast – the message was clear: get on a motorbike and you will die. My mother had been quite vocal about it, my uncle had been lucky but every single other person who came within fifteen feet of a motorbike was absolutely, definitely, one hundred per cent guaranteed to die. And like everything else my mother had banged on about over and over and over, I took the message to heart and considered it gospel.

Until an attractive man asked me to get on the back of his bike …

‘It’s the best way to see Milan,’ Nick explained, manoeuvring himself out of his seat and attempting to loosen my vice-like grip on the handles behind me. ‘Didn’t you love it?’

I stared at him with wide-open eyes. ‘I have had my eyes closed for the last twenty minutes.’

‘We were only on the bike for five,’ he replied. ‘Come on, it’s safe now.’

‘I’m not getting back on it,’ I said, letting him lift me off the leather seat of the bike, holding my breath until I felt solid ground beneath my feet.

‘Then you’ll walk home,’ he said without flinching. ‘Now look, wasn’t that worth it?’

The sun was so strong, it was hard to see exactly where I was until Nick pulled the sunglasses off the top of my head and slid them over my eyes.

‘Honestly,’ he sighed and tilted my head upwards. ‘Look up there.’

We were parked beside what looked like a big church until I raised my eyes up and realized that it just kept going. And going and going and going.

‘Woah.’

‘I think that’s what the new pope said when he came here for the first time,’ Nick commented. ‘It’s the
duomo
. Isn’t it amazing?’

The blinding white spires of the cathedral stretched so high, it looked like they would split the sky and make it bleed. Back on the ground, I stumbled backwards, dizzy from looking upwards and still trying to find a spot where I could take it all in. It was basically the size of the village I had grown up in. I was impressed. I’d never been especially religious – me and my sisters hadn’t been raised to believe in anything other than being home in time for tea – but I’d always been impressed by churches and cathedrals. The idea that someone, or rather a lot of someones, would dedicate their lives to building something so epic without so much as an iPhone to help them blew my mind. I couldn’t even put up a picture without the spirit level app. Not that I ever put up my own pictures, but I did like playing with the app.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, feeling as though I could look at it for days and never get bored. ‘How have I not seen this before now?’

‘You’ve been walking around with your eyes closed?’ Nick pulled on my arm. ‘Let’s go.’

I pulled up my shades to show him that my eyes were wide open. ‘We’re going in?’

‘No.’ He leaned in and pressed his lips against mine, quickly enough for it not to be a big deal to anyone around us, but long enough to make all the blood rush to my head. ‘We’re going up.’

As much as I hated how arrogant and self-righteous Nick could be, I loved the fact that he took charge and made plans. I was so used to being the Boss of Everything at work and waiting for Charlie to plan anything more exciting than a lunchtime trip to Subway that it made a nice change. He made me feel like a girl, rather than a bossy loser.

‘This way.’ He pushed me through a metal detector, surrounded by very tall men in very impressive uniforms, carrying very big guns. I cowered, keeping my eyes down and praying that they wouldn’t shoot me. Nick gave them all manly nods and kept on going. ‘You don’t mind a few stairs, do you?’

‘No …’ I wasn’t entirely sure. How many stairs were a few?

‘Ladies first, then.’

In front of me was a very narrow, very dark, stone staircase. I peered around the corner, only to see it twist upwards into the darkness after four or five steps, and looked back at Nick. He gave me a bright sunny smile, followed by a gentle push on the arse.

‘Is there not a lift?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘But we’re not using it.’

‘Gotcha,’ I said, turning my back to him and trying to delicately dab away the sweat that was already speckling my forehead from being out in the morning sun. ‘How many steps is it?’

‘To the top?’ he asked, turning to squint at a sign in Italian behind him. ‘That would be nine hundred and nineteen.’

‘Brilliant,’ I said. ‘Great workout. I haven’t had my run today.’

‘You run?’ he asked.

‘No.’ I replied. ‘I don’t.’

‘One foot in front of the other, Tess.’ Nick gave me a second, considerably less gentle shove. ‘There are people waiting.’

‘Easy,’ I said, my legs already protesting. ‘Piece of cake.’

‘You enjoying yourself?’ he asked as we rounded the second corner. ‘With the project, I mean?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, pleased to discover I could speak and climb upstairs at the same time. Tess Brookes, multitasker. ‘I’m loving it, actually, and I’ve got so many great shots. It’s fun, documenting Al’s new baby.’

‘More fun than advertising?’

I reached out to run my hand along the cold stone wall of the staircase and kept going.

‘It’s different,’ I said, not wanting to start a row in such an enclosed space. ‘I know you don’t approve but I love working in advertising. It’s a different kind of challenge, though.’

‘Explain it to me,’ Nick’s voice sounded so close but I didn’t dare turn around to look at him in case I fell. The staircase was narrow and winding and stiflingly hot. ‘I want to understand.’

‘To me, both jobs are about telling a story,’ I said, turning another blank corner. Oh good, some more stairs. ‘With advertising, you have a blank page or fifteen seconds of airtime, and someone wants you to tell the story of their product as clearly and convincingly as possible. With photography, it’s the same. There’s a story in every picture and it’s up to you to tell it. It’s really easy for me to see a concept in my head, advertising or photograph, but to put it on paper or on TV and have everyone else get exactly what I was trying to say? That’s the challenge. And I love that.’

‘OK, I get that.’ There wasn’t even a trace of exertion in Nick’s voice. ‘But it sounds like a creative thing, not something you should be whoring out for a Pot Noodle.’

‘I don’t consider it whoring.’ I was concentrating too hard to make air quotes but I was still thinking them. ‘I consider it a challenge.’

‘Convincing people their lives aren’t complete until they’ve bought whatever you’re selling is a challenge?’ he went on. ‘Telling them they aren’t good enough until they’ve bought a new pair of trainers? I don’t think I’ll ever get that.’

‘Maybe I’m just not as precious about things,’ I said, my breath coming shorter, my thighs starting to burn. It was all very sexy. ‘And I don’t think about it that way. I’m just trying to do a good job.’

‘But you’re a photographer now, right?’ His transatlantic lilt came in at the end of the sentence. If I hadn’t been heaving for breath, I might have made a sarcastic comment. ‘Surely you can see that working in advertising eats away at the soul?’

‘Mm-hmm,’ I said, panting. ‘What if I haven’t given up advertising?’

He didn’t reply and I was fairly certain it had nothing to do with his being out of breath. Didn’t he say he’d been for a run this morning? How was he still upright? My legs were so heavy but I refused to give him the satisfaction of asking if we could slow down.

‘Are we nearly at the top yet?’ I asked.

‘No.’ he replied. ‘Not even close.’

I wondered how they would get my body back down if I died in the staircase. Hopefully, they would make Nick carry it back down to teach him a lesson but I assumed he would probably just chuck me out a window and leave me for the Alsatians. Except I hadn’t seen any Alsatians in Italy and I didn’t think I could cope with the indignity of being eaten by a group of dachshunds. So I kept on going. Sweating, heaving and staggering onwards, ever onwards.

Just as I was considering giving up on Nick, life and breathing in general, I turned the last corner and caught a glimpse of a painfully bright sky ahead of me.

‘Thank you Sweet Baby Jesus and all the angels,’ I whispered, scraping the sweat from my forehead and searching for something sacred-looking to kiss. Somewhere along the last one hundred steps, I’d gone from lightly glowing to looking like I’d been in a spinning class for fourteen hours. Which was actually a ridiculous thing to say – I mean, as if I’d ever been in a spinning class in my entire life?

‘Isn’t it amazing?’ Nick grabbed my hand and stepped in front of me, pulling me along a narrow walkway. I was so busy putting one foot in front of the other and waiting for the sparkles in front of my eyes to go away that it took me a moment to look up and realize where we were. ‘Milan might not be the most classically beautiful city in Italy but this is pretty bloody impressive.’

‘We’re on the actual roof,’ I said, my fingers tightening around Nick’s. ‘That is the actual edge of the actual roof!’

‘I know.’ He stopped in front of another, shorter but steeper, open-air staircase. ‘Where did you think we were going?’